Junior REIS/Unsplash You’ve forgotten a few appointments lately and you find yourself losing track of conversations. Close friends or family may have also noticed some changes in your memory or thinking. Becoming more forgetful and feeling slower in your thinking is normal in older age.

But when these changes are more than you’d expect for your age it might be a sign of mild cognitive impairment. So does that mean you’ll soon develop dementia? The short answer is no, not necessarily.

And there are things you can do to help prevent, slow or reverse the decline. How do I know if I have it? With mild cognitive impairment, changes in memory and thinking may not feel “mild” but are less severe than those in dementia.

They also do not impact your ability to carry out daily activities. No single test can diagnose mild cognitive impairment. Rather, a diagnosis is made based on your medical history, information from a friend or family member, and from the results of clinical tests that measure problems with memory or thinking.

So if you think you might have mild cognitive impairment, see your GP. They can perform some memory tests and refer you for further testing if needed. Your GP can also rule out other conditions that might be causing your symptoms.

These include nutritional deficiencies, thyroid problems or depression. Addressing these can potentially reverse the changes in memory and thinking. Why haven’t I heard of it? Mild cognitive impairment is not a new diagnosis. But it’s commonly under-diagnosed.

Not everyone agrees diagnosis benefits people with mild cognitive impairment. This is partly due to the uncertainty of how it may progress and stigma surrounding memory and thinking problems. It can also impact how someone feels about themselves or is treated in the community.

But a diagnosis provides the opportunity to take positive steps to stay independent for longer. It can also reassure you about whether your current activities may be affected. For example, a diagnosis is unlikely to immediately impact someone’s ability to drive safely, which is a common concern.

So, you have a diagnosis. Now what? There are many things you can do after a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment to help maintain your memory and thinking for longer. Regular check ups with your GP or specialist are important to detect further changes, review medications, and manage any ongoing health conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes.

Slowing cognitive decline over the long term is also possible by targeting a range of factors, such as diet, exercise and keeping your brain active through social activities and learning new things. Science is moving towards trying to prevent mild cognitive impairment progressing to dementia.

This involves combining the known benefits of making positive health behaviour changes with new drug treatments for some forms of dementia, namely Alzheimer’s disease. Lifestyle changes can make a difference even if you’re not eligible for current drugs.

Read more: What’s the difference between Alzheimer’s and dementia? How is it linked to dementia? Mild cognitive impairment is often considered an intermediate stage between normal cognitive ageing and dementia, but this is not always the case.

Not all people with mild cognitive impairment have the underlying brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s. This means not everyone goes on to develop it and some people don’t continue to decline at all.

Reviews examining multiple studies suggest about 6–11% of people with mild cognitive impairment develop dementia each year. Overall, about 40% of people with mild cognitive impairment will go on to develop dementia in the next five years.

While this may seem high, up to 28% of people may revert to normal cognition. We are getting better at predicting which people with mild cognitive impairment go on to develop dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s. Tests to help make these predictions are continuing to be improved but are not widely available in the clinic.

Read more: Can wiggling your pinky really stop cognitive decline? Is it too late to do anything about it? We are better placed than ever to address changes in thinking and memory as we age.

And it’s never too early or too late to reduce your risk of mild cognitive impairment or dementia. There are now 14 well-established risk factors for dementia which, if eliminated, could reduce the overall number of dementia cases by 45%.

You can reduce your personal risk by looking after your health, such as eating well and being physically active, as well as doing less-well known things, such as getting your eyes checked. A good place to start is to assess your own dementia risk with a free online tool.

This can show you where you might be able to make positive changes to your health and lifestyle. There’s also hope for the future for the treatment of both mild cognitive impairment and dementia.

Cost and poor motivation are among barriers for people to reduce their risk of dementia. However, new online programs aim to reduce these barriers by providing people with mild cognitive impairment more accessible advice about implementing lifestyle changes and setting goals.

And despite a major review finding Alzheimer’s drugs do not meaningfully slow progression of the disease, and may harm, others say newer drugs in this class still show promise and will likely help at least some people.

Planning ahead Whether or not you have been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, it is always a good idea to be prepared for the future should your cognition and memory decline. Ensure supports are in place to manage your affairs and your care.

Talk to your family about your wishes.

This will help make sure you and your family can focus on what is most important – living well now.

Nikki-Anne Wilson has previously received funding from the Australian Association of Gerontology and the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/03/what-is-mild-cognitive-impairment-and-does-it-always-lead-to-dementia/

Noa Paz/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC-SA Labubus, “dumpling squishies” and Lego minifigures are examples of small collectable toys sold in “blind boxes”. Blind boxes are essentially mystery boxes. When you purchase a blind box, you don’t know which specific version of the collectable is inside until you open it.

You might purchase a blind box that has a really rare, special figure inside it. Or you might end up with a common one you already have five of. It’s a game of chance.

The phenomenon is not new. I remember standing in the supermarket checkout line as a kid and asking my mum to buy me a Kinder Surprise, eager to eat some chocolate and see what toy I got inside.

Pokemon cards work in a similar way. You pay for a sealed pack and only find out which cards you got (and how rare they are) after you open it. Or, for another classic example, think of a lucky dip.

If you are a parent of kids who love blind boxes, you might be worried about how the game of luck echoes gambling. So are blind boxes gambling? And how can parents best approach them with their children?

Read more: Gambling for children? Why Australia should consider regulating blind box toys like Labubu Is it gambling? Blind boxes aren’t gambling under most legal definitions.

According to Australian law, an activity generally needs three key elements to be classified as gambling: a prize of money (or something of value) is on offer or can be won a person needs to play (or stake) money or something valuable to participate the outcome involves chance, even if influenced by skill.

Blind boxes don’t meet this definition. While you pay money, and the outcome is uncertain, there’s no opportunity to “lose” money. You always receive a product, even if its value varies. But this doesn’t mean blind boxes don’t share similarities with gambling – especially the way gambling acts on the brain.

So you still might want to be careful with how children engage with them. The dopamine effect of gambling Blind boxes tap into the same neurological pathways that make gambling so compelling, and dopamine plays a central role.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter – a chemical messenger that facilitates communication between the brain and the central nervous system. It sends messages between different parts of your nervous system, helping your body and brain coordinate everything from your movement to your mood.

Dopamine is most known for its role in short-term pleasure, and the boost we get from things such as eating tasty foods, scrolling social media or winning a prize. Chasing this boost means dopamine can amplify both harmful and helpful behaviour.

And it’s not just activated when we experience pleasure. It also plays a role in anticipation and the pursuit of pleasure. The brain finds it “exciting” to wait in suspense and have a reward revealed, as opposed to the certainty of knowing exactly what is going to be purchased.

Uncertain rewards are especially powerful, which is why “blind” rewards feel so compelling. This is the same mechanism we see at play in gambling, particularly with poker machines. Dopamine creates excitement, anticipation and reward in our brains – not just when we win, but also when we “almost win” (which is when we lose, but feel like it was a close thing).

This is a key factor that adds to the addictive nature of pokies. What can parents do? The goal isn’t to scare kids (or parents), but to help them make healthy, informed choices. This might mean deciding on a simple rule together.

For example, parents might encourage children to use a set portion of their pocket money. When limits are agreed in advance, you’re not “being mean” in the moment, you’re just following the plan you made together.

You might also want to encourage your child to wait until they get home to open their blind box.

This avoids a situation of temptation, where they open it as soon as they have bought it, and feel tempted to go back in the store and buy another if it isn’t what they were hoping for.

Disappointment is part of the learning, too. When they don’t get the “rare” one, it can be tempting to soften the frustration by buying “just one more”. Instead, naming the feeling (“It’s so annoying when you were really hoping for that one”) and sitting with it together helps kids practise tolerating disappointment without immediately chasing the next thing.

Finally, it’s worth watching for when blind boxes shift from an occasional treat to a constant preoccupation or need. Signs might include your child talking about them all the time, secretly buying them online, or becoming unusually distressed when you say no.

That’s a cue to press pause, and redirect some of that energy toward other interests or “healthy dopamine” activities, like creative projects, sports, time with friends or collecting in ways where the outcome is more predictable, such as saving up for a specific figure instead of relying on chance.

Anastasia Hronis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/03/blind-boxes-are-a-game-of-chance-heres-how-to-keep-kids-from-getting-hooked/

A photo taken by Tianwen-2 of itself with Earth in the background. China National Space Administration The Moon is not the only natural object travelling through space alongside Earth. Several small asteroids travel around the Sun in near lockstep with our planet.

And just like Earth, these space rocks also take a year to complete a full orbit. Today, we know of eight such “quasi-moons” or quasi-satellites. One of them may, in fact, be a fragment of the Moon itself.

This intriguing quasi-satellite is known as 469219 Kamo’oalewa or “oscillating celestial object” in Hawaiian, a nod to its apparent path across the sky. Measuring between 30 and 60 metres across, it follows a remarkably stable Earth-like orbit around the Sun.

But scientists are keen to explore the asteroid in detail for other reasons than its unusual orbit. A Chinese spacecraft is about to fetch a sample so we can learn more. Heavily debated origin Based on the way it absorbs and reflects light, Kamo’oalewa was thought to be a chunk of lunar material that a meteor impact ejected from the Moon’s surface long ago.

However, more recent analysis suggests it may simply be a common type of stony asteroid, a so-called LL chondrite, whose surface has been severely weathered by the harsh space environment. To shed light on this confounding mystery, in May 2025 the China National Space Administration launched a scientific probe, Tianwen-2, an ambitious mission to study the asteroid at close range and return samples to Earth.

Its mission is technically demanding. Kamo’oalewa rotates once every 28 minutes, making sample collection challenging. The spacecraft is now getting close to its destination. Observations from a ground station in Bochum, Germany suggest the probe briefly fired its propulsive engines to make some small manoeuvres, followed by a main burn on 7 June.

It’s now believed to be in orbit around the asteroid, with science operations expected to commence in the first week of July. Tianwen-2 will attempt several approaches to collect samples for detailed laboratory analysis on Earth.

It will hover over the object’s surface as it sucks up loose dust, briefly touch down to collect a more sizeable rock sample, and attempt to fire robotic extensions into the subsurface rock layer.

So what exactly is a quasi-satellite, why has Kamoʻoalewa puzzled astronomers, and why are samples collected by Tianwen-2 likely to succeed where even our most powerful telescopes have fallen short? Not quite a moon Quasi-satellites never become true moons.

The Moon orbits Earth because it’s gravitationally bound to it, but quasi-satellites remain gravitationally bound to the Sun. However, from our vantage point they often appear to orbit our planet, sometimes for centuries. Kamoʻoalewa’s orbit around the Sun is expected to remain in lockstep with Earth’s for a remarkably long time.

Although it appears to accompany Earth, the asteroid never comes particularly close to us. Long-term orbit analyses have allowed astronomers to conclude that Kamoʻoalewa entered its current quasi-satellite orbit some 100 years ago. At its closest approach, on December 27 1923, Kamoʻoalewa was 12.44 million kilometres from Earth; by late May 2369, it will have reached a distance from us of twice the Sun–Earth separation.

Timelapse of Kamo’oalewa (2016 HO3) moving relative to background stars, as seen by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope’s MegaCam on April 28 2016.

Richard Wainscoat/CFHT/Canadian Astronomy Data Centre, CC BY Valuable samples The reason we don’t know for sure where Kamoʻoalewa came from is because it’s so difficult to observe distant objects from Earth.

Astronomers are good at figuring out what an object in space might be made of thanks to a fundamental aspect of physics – the wavelengths of light (or spectra) reflected from object surfaces carry information about the chemical elements present.

Early spectra of Kamoʻoalewa looked a lot like those of materials from the Moon. More recent observations have challenged that interpretation, suggesting instead that prolonged space weathering – just existing in and being exposed to the harsh environment of outer space – may have tricked the observers.

From a distance, we can only study an object’s surface. And space weathering can change the appearance of that surface very dramatically. So when we get a sample from below the surface of an asteroid, analysing that can be invaluable in determining its true nature and origin.

Previous missions, such as Japan’s Hayabusa-2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, demonstrated the value of close-range observations and sample returns. Laboratory analysis can reveal mineral compositions, isotopic signatures and other clues that are impossible to measure from Earth.

Both missions revealed unexpected details about the asteroids they targeted that we couldn’t have inferred from Earth-bound observations. NASA gathered a first-of-its-kind sample from asteroid Bennu in October 2020. Next steps If current expectations are on target, Tianwen-2 will begin its most important scientific observations on or around July 4 2026.

Images, measurements and sampling attempts may quickly provide new clues about Kamoʻoalewa’s origin. The returned samples, however, will provide the ultimate test.

Once analysed in the lab, they should allow scientists to determine whether the asteroid is indeed a fragment of the Moon or, instead, an ordinary asteroid from the Solar System’s main asteroid-belt family, transformed by millions of years of weathering in the harsh space environment.

Either conclusion would be scientifically valuable. Ruling out a popular hypothesis can be just as important as confirming it.

Kamoʻoalewa may soon lose some of its mystery, but in doing so it could teach us something new about the evolutionary history of the Earth–Moon system and the dynamic environment of the early inner Solar System.

Richard de Grijs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/03/could-this-asteroid-be-a-piece-of-the-moon-a-chinese-spacecraft-is-about-to-find-out/

History is possibly only 90 minutes away for the Socceroos as they gear up to face Egypt on Saturday morning (Australian time) in Dallas. The Socceroos have only made it to a knockout game at a World Cup twice but lost both times.

The Round of 32 clash will be only the third time these two teams have met in senior men’s competition: Egypt beat Australia 3-0 in 2010, and in 1987 the Socceroos beat Egypt in a penalty shoot-out at the President’s Cup in South Korea after a 0-0 stalemate.

So, who are the key players, what tactics will the coaches look to implement, and how may the clash pan out? Read more: ‘Park the bus’, ‘the false nine’ and ‘total football’: what do soccer’s strange phrases mean?

How did each team get here? This is the Socceroos’ seventh World Cup: they first appeared in 1974, then returned after a 32-year absence in 2006 and have not missed once since. But a win against Egypt would be a first knockout-round victory.

The Socceroos qualified from Group D after a promising yet patchy group stage: they surprised many by beating Turkey 2-0, then played poorly to lose 2-0 to the United States, before a 0-0 draw against Paraguay ensured they reached the knockout round.

Egypt is also out to create history. The Pharaohs have qualified for the World Cup four times: 1934, 1990, 2018 and this year. In their previous three appearances, they were eliminated in the first round. They reached the knockout stage after defeating New Zealand 3–1 and drawing against Iran (1–1) and Belgium (1–1).

Who are the key players in each team? This Socceroos’ squad is a blend of experience and youth.

Older heads include midfielder Jackson Irvine and defender Harry Souttar, but it’s the exciting, emerging talent that has really caught the eye so far: lightning-quick striker Nestory Irankunda, winger/attacking midfielder Cristian Volpato, Jordan Bos, a dynamic left back, and 18-year-old defender Lucas Herrington, who was the youngest Australian player to start in a World Cup game when he took the field against Paraguay.

The surprise X-factor has been goalkeeper Patrick Beach, who was a shock selection for the first game against Turkey at the age of 20. The A-League local has been outstanding in his debut World Cup. Read more: Where do Socceroos come from?

Our map reveals Australia’s junior talent hotspots For Egypt, captain Mohamed Salah is undoubtedly their key playmaker.

A right winger and striker, he has had a legendary career for English Premier League powerhouse Liverpool and will be desperate to transfer that success to his country, as this may be his last World Cup.

However, the 34-year-old is racing the clock to be fit for the Socceroos clash after a reported hamstring injury – he was subbed off in the final group-stage clash. Other key players are Omar Marmoush, Mahmoud Trezeguet, Ahmed Sayed and goalkeeper Mohamed El Shenawy.

What are the teams’ usual tactics? Australian coach Tony Popovic primarily focuses on compact defence first with an eye to counterattacking opportunities. This approach has had mixed success so far, reflected in Australia’s results in the group stage.

His usual formation is either 4-3-3 (four defenders, three midfielders and three up front) or 4-4-2. In defence, Popovic instructs the Socceroos to form a very narrow central shape to close the space near goal, with the wingers dropping back too when needed.

The Pharaohs generally employ a flexible 4-2-3-1 system, adapting their tactical approach based on the opposition. They played a more attacking style against New Zealand, using width and quick combinations to secure a 3-1 win.

Against Belgium, they adopted a compact defensive structure with a focus on counterattacking, earning a disciplined 1-1 draw. Their match against Iran was more balanced and physical, with an emphasis on midfield control and organisation.

Overall, Egypt combines defensive discipline with quick transitions into attack and effective wide play. What a win – or loss – would mean for the Socceroos Progressing to the next round would represent a significant step forward for Australian soccer.

It would be the strongest men’s World Cup performances in the nation’s history. Based on the current style under Popovic, this is a realistic objective. The team has developed a clear tactical identity built around a highly organised and compact defensive structure that is difficult to break down.

Regardless of the final outcome, the campaign can already be considered a success. Popovic has implemented a clear culture of discipline, structure and hard work – qualities that strongly align with the traditional identity of the Socceroos.

His leadership approach, which was evident during his time at Perth Glory and other coaching jobs, has translated effectively to the national team. When Popovic took over in late 2024, there was a noticeable dip in performance, particularly against Asian opponents such as Bahrain, Indonesia and Japan.

These matches exposed limitations in both tactical organisation and technical consistency. However, he has addressed this by introducing a new generation of young players and reshaping the squad. This transition is already producing positive results.

The emergence of this younger cohort, combined with Popovic’s leadership, will be crucial for upcoming competitions such as the Asian Cup in early 2027.

Notably, among Asian nations, only Australia and Japan progressed to the knockout stage of this World Cup, highlighting the significance of the Socceroos’ achievement.

Fadi Maayah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/03/why-the-socceroos-should-be-confident-of-a-history-making-world-cup-win-against-egypt/

UCG/Getty Images Europe’s summer heatwave has exposed tens of millions of people to temperatures above 35°C, broken records and claimed hundreds of lives. Early climate attribution studies suggest Europe’s event would have been “virtually impossible” just 50 years ago without human-caused climate change.

Meanwhile in South Asia, where temperatures have been edging past 45C, schools have been forced to close. As the planet continues to warm, severe heatwaves like this are expected to grow more frequent – and even more intense.

New Zealand, with its mild, maritime climate, might seem insulated from such extremes. But it, too, is expected to experience significantly warmer temperatures in future. By the end of the century, in centres such as Auckland and Christchurch, peak summer temperatures in the hottest years could climb several degrees higher than they reach today.

Our new research explores what that could mean for human health – and how cooling in summer, rather than heating in winter, may place greater pressure on Aotearoa’s electricity system. Modelling homes in a hotter future New Zealand’s houses have traditionally been designed to keep people warm in winter.

As temperatures rise, managing overheating will increasingly require either expensive retrofits or greater use of air conditioning, which has historically been uncommon. That is already beginning to change. A recent survey found nearly three-quarters of households with heat pumps use them for cooling.

But renters, families with children and Māori are all less likely to have access to, or use, space cooling, largely because of cost. This reflects a wider problem of energy poverty in New Zealand.

Many low-income and other marginalised households already limit – or go without – heating because they cannot afford it. Combined with poorly insulated homes, these compromises worsen health outcomes and increase healthcare costs. To test how homes might respond to higher temperatures, we used a specific computer model that simulated how households use electricity under different conditions.

It considered factors such as income, temperature and housing, and estimated when people would choose to use air conditioning. We then modelled how rising temperatures over the rest of this century, under mid-range and high-end warming scenarios, could affect neighbourhoods across the socio-economic spectrum in Auckland and Christchurch.

As well, we tested how greater access to heat pumps changed the results. Our findings suggest climate change will have major consequences for both New Zealand’s health and electricity systems. In our highest warming scenario, summer electricity demand overtook winter demand and homes were more likely to overheat.

By 2100, this could mean thousands of additional heat-related deaths each year, with the greatest impacts falling on the most vulnerable communities. Under lower emissions scenarios and over shorter timeframes, the effects were much smaller. We also found that coordinated policies could help reduce these impacts by improving access to cooling – but there was trade-off.

While greater use of heat pumps reduces overheating and saves lives, it further increases electricity demand. In our highest-temperature scenario, annual cardiovascular deaths increased by between 1,264 and 2,390, depending on how many households had heat pumps.

Greater uptake of heat pumps also increased costs for electricity providers and consumers, with a combined average cost of around NZ$640,000 for each excess life saved. Why adaptation should begin now Without action, the burden of higher temperatures would not be shared equally.

Lower-income households and older people would bear a disproportionate share of the health impacts. Our modelling may also underestimate the scale of the risk. It does not account for the additional heat generated in urban areas, for instance, and may understate the intensity of future heatwaves.

In other words, these findings are unlikely to represent a worst-case scenario. Nonetheless, they clearly highlight a need for interventions spanning Aotearoa’s energy, health and infrastructure sectors. So, what can be done? Our findings point to several priorities.

Space cooling should be recognised as a public health tool, with greater access to heat pumps helping save lives while also providing year-round heating and cooling benefits. Support should be targeted towards lower-income and other at-risk communities, where access to cooling is often limited despite greater vulnerability to extreme heat.

Building standards should also place greater emphasis on preventing overheating through passive cooling, reflecting a future where cooling becomes increasingly important. At the same time, electricity generators, transmission companies and distributors will need to prepare for growing summer demand to ensure security of supply.

Most importantly, saving lives in the future means planning needs to begin now.

While the effects of climate change are already being felt today, adapting homes, infrastructure and energy systems is likely to take decades.

Baxter Kamana-Williams receives funding from the Quadrature Climate Foundation.

Rebecca Peer receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and Royal Society Te Apārangi.

J.

Geoffrey Chase does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/02/climate-change-will-raise-the-risk-of-severe-heatwaves-nz-homes-arent-ready/

In May, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced plans to double the capacity of Canada’s electricity grid by 2050, using natural gas in the name of “powering Canada strong.” Almost all Canadian natural gas these days is derived from hydraulic fracturing — known as fracking — an industrial process involving large amounts of water laced with chemicals pumped long distances underground.

Many of the chemicals used in fracking are harmful to humans and include carcinogens such as PFAS (commonly referred to as “forever chemicals”) and endocrine disruptors. These chemicals can leak into the environment through spills, pipes that eventually erode and crack, and evaporation into the air when stored in open wastewater ponds.

The toxicity of this chemical mix is further exacerbated by naturally occurring radioactive materials and heavy metals unearthed from deep underground during the fracking process.

Another source of health harms from residential proximity to this industry is air pollution from diesel traffic, compressor stations and the venting and flaring of methane and other volatile organic gases — all of which are integral to shale gas extraction.

Residential setback regulations Jurisdictions where fracking takes place acknowledge the potential harms from living nearby active wells through a key regulation termed a “residential setback” — defined as the minimum allowable distance between where a person lives and the construction of an active well.

As part of an ongoing study, we recently examined setback distances in two Canadian provinces (British Columbia and Alberta) and four American states (California, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Texas) with major shale gas industries. It turns out that B.C. and Alberta have the shortest and least protective residential setback regulations compared to their major U.S. counterparts.

This distance — a mere 100 metres — is significantly shorter than California’s and Colorado’s default setback distances at 975 metres and 610 metres respectively.

California’s 975-metre regulated setback distance not only applies to private residences but also covers other “sensitive receptors,” defined as education resources, community resource centres, health-care facilities, live-in housing or any business open to the public.

There is no mention in B.C.’s regulations of other “sensitive receptors” except a non-binding policy to disallow gas wells within 1,000 metres (one kilometre) of a school. A drill pad seen from above.

The evidence base for health harms associated with living close to active oil and gas wells emerged long after B.C.’s setback regulations were created in 2010. (Tim Takaro), CC BY Impact on health Researchers have used residential setbacks as a way to measure individuals’ exposure to fracking activity and its association with a variety of health outcomes.

Several studies have demonstrated that mothers living closer to active gas wells are at greater risk of having smaller babies. This can lead to significant developmental and other health challenges later in life. The farthest distance within which impaired fetal growth was observed in these studies was 10 kilometres — a distance 1,000 times greater than B.C. and Alberta’s currently regulated 100-metre setback distance.

Other studies report higher rates of congenital birth defects among infants born to mothers living within 10 kilometres of an active well compared to mothers living farther away. A shorter distance to the nearest well has been linked to more self-reported symptoms in several studies.

In one community-based survey in Pennsylvania, a significantly higher proportion of survey respondents living within 457 metres of a gas well reported symptoms than those living beyond that distance. The researchers further reported that when a gas well, compressor station or impoundment pit was 457 to 1,219 metres away, 27 per cent of participants reported throat irritation.

This increased to 63 per cent at 152 to 457 metres, and to 74 per cent at less than 152 metres. This pattern was similar for sinus problems and headaches. California researchers found that people living less than 200 metres from oil wells had significantly poorer lung function test results compared to those living beyond that distance.

Other health harms using setbacks to measure exposure reported greater risk of gestational hypertension within one kilometre of an active well and adverse mental health among a group of American and Canadian women attempting to conceive within two kilometres of an active well.

All these studies report health harms occurring at distances far greater than B.C.’s currently regulated 100-metre setback. Other studies, deploying exposure measures that combine residential proximity and density of wells, found a wide range of human health harms.

These include higher rates of childhood leukemia and other cancers, heart and lung diseases and overall mortality within perimeter distances greater than 100 metres. Vulnerable populations Environmental exposures are also not equally distributed across and within populations.

B.C.’s shale gas industry is located in the northeast area of the province. This is a rural and remote part of B.C. that’s the traditional territory of Treaty 8 First Nations who rely on the land for food, water sources, ceremonial practices and cultural identity.

One study set in northeast B.C. reported that areas with high proportions of Indigenous people experienced more air pollution compared to areas with a low proportions of Indigenous people. The study reported a similar pattern and even larger disparity in areas with high versus low socio-economic vulnerability.

Rural B.C.’s northeast is experiencing a massive expansion in the number of active wells to meet the increasing demand from B.C.s new liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. The harms from these wells are minimally regulated at best and not subject to cumulative environmental assessments.

The evidence base for health harms associated with living close to active oil and gas wells emerged long after B.C.’s setback regulations were created in 2010. The burden of these health harms are likely to worsen with the current fracking boom.

Setback regulations remain the only lever that affords some protection to those bearing the greatest health risks from shale gas development. Provincial and federal governments have made the unfortunate decision to go “full-bore” on expanding fracking.

There is an urgent need to align regulatory setbacks with environmental health evidence and best practices to protect peoples’ health.

Margaret McGregor is a member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

Deborah Curran is the Executive Director of the Environmental Law Centre.

Élyse Caron-Beaudoin receives funding from CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC, and the University of Toronto.

Kevin Berk is a former Articling Student at the Environmental Law Centre.

Tim K.

Takaro receives funding from SFU School of Medicine as Planetary Health Lead. He is a member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/02/b-c-and-alberta-fall-behind-on-fracking-safety-distances-for-residents/

Three The compelling new New Zealand comedy-drama Head Girl, based on the debut poetry collection from writer and performer Freya Daly Sadgrove, centres on three 20-something flatmates living in Wellington, each at a moment of personal crisis.

The six-part series is a bold and thought-provoking work that veers between hilarity and dread, while exploring what it means to understand oneself – or not. Uni dropout Flo (Nī Dekkers-Reihana) has gone viral after reading her shocking poem Head Girl online.

Despite debilitating anxiety – she vomits spectacularly after a live poetry event – she is trying to capitalise on her new role as “New Zealand’s own literary Banksy”. Apparently, she’s the next “voice of her generation” – a clear nod to the HBO series Girls, to which this show is indebted.

She’s also entering her villain era, using poetry to build herself up by viciously taking down her perceived “enemies”, all while trying to navigate her fraught relationship with her wealthy, overbearing mother (Michelle Langstone).

Sadie (Tatum Warren-Ngata) is a high achieving PhD student and entrepreneur who is developing a real-time Māori language translation app – the “Māori Alexa” – using the voice of her fluent father.

She’s caught between a Māori way of being that foregrounds connection and whānau – the app is called Te Tūhono, which means to connect or join – and her embrace of a individualistic Western lean-in type feminism that privileges success and money at any cost.

She feels the weight of her people as well as the weight of corporate success, and frustration at her sweet but dim rich kid boyfriend Djared (Lachie Oliver-Kerby). It’s driving her towards self-destruction. Dee (Liv Parker), the flat’s id, is repulsed by “normal” life – job, uni, boyfriend.

When she’s not nursing an injured hedgehog in her bedroom (she’s also livestreaming the little guy) she’s compulsively hooking up with strangers, as many and as quickly as possible. An odd friendship with Mormon Elijah (Arlo Gibson) might offer a more satisfying sort of intimacy.

The three flatmates clearly don’t like each other, or themselves. When they are not getting in each other’s way, they move past one another like ghosts. Flo basks in online admiration. Three There’s something else brewing, though.

At times the women are hounded by whispered overlapping lines of poetry that grow to a scream. There are dream-like images of the house glitching, or being destroyed by a storm. We are watching a spiralling mental health crisis, and things are coming to a head.

Finding your way As each woman implodes, the series questions what it means to “succeed”, or to have a “normal” life. It finds the clash between internal and external pressures, between ambition and social expectation, to be potentially irreconcilable.

The question becomes more about how an individual finds their own meaningful path – but how can you do this when you can’t find your voice, and don’t even know who you are? The show is very well made.

The episodes, all directed by Robyn Grace, are well balanced and the character arcs and conflicts are compelling. It is shot beautifully by cinematographer David Paul, particularly scenes set on the streets of Wellington at night.

The performances are also impressive. These are complex, demanding roles: physical and intense, sometimes hilarious and often laced with pathos. In a time where reboots, sequels and literary adaptations are cornerstones of the entertainment industry, Head Girl is also a fascinating and possibly unique exercise in working with an author’s material.

It draws directly from many poems from Daly Sadgrove’s collection, particularly the title work, the sad and funny I Used To Be Head Girl Of My High School And Now I Am A Massive Cunt, which reflects on ambition, disappointment and depression.

The collection directly informs the work’s characters, and their intense responses to the world. The series taps into the poetry’s combination of dry observation, gallows humour, vulgarity and absurdity, and then finds ways to express these elements creatively through sound and image.

Art is also a form of connection. Three The series also asks many ethical questions about confessional modes of poetry. The collection Head Girl – cover art and all – appears in the show as Flo’s own work.

What is the relationship between the author and their work? What does it mean to adapt your own pain, and the stories and hurt of others? How is extreme self-disclosure encouraged and incentivised online? How can art help us understand and navigate feelings that are too big and complicated for conventional description?

Art is also a form of connection. For these characters, meaningful connection is pretty thin on the ground. The show offers no easy answers to these big questions – a good choice. Daly Sadgrove’s poem You’ve Put Your Eggshell On the Ground Now Walk on It ends “and I’m always winking / but I’m never even telling a joke”.

The same is true with Head Girl. While it starts in a big, chaotic flurry of dirtbag energy, the series eventually settles into something more pensive. It leaves the audience with some thought-provoking ideas about the relationships between internal selfhood, external identity, and connection with others.

It doesn’t romanticise “girls behaving badly” (even though it gets a lot of satisfying laughs out of some sequences), nor mental illness, but it does suggest that compassion, for oneself and others, is a step towards getting better.

Head Girl is now available in New Zealand on Three and ThreeNow.

Erin Harrington does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/02/new-nz-series-head-girl-veers-between-hilarity-and-dread/

Kampus Production/Pexels The end of the school term means parents and grandparents are often looking for ways to entertain the kids. As temperatures drop throughout winter, your family may also be looking for more indoor activity ideas.

A great way to pass the time is to involve the kids in cooking. It’s a fun, low-pressure hobby, and you’re likely to have more time for it during the school holiday period.

Some parents may worry cooking is unsafe or too difficult for children. But by assigning tasks that are age-appropriate, kids can easily help out in the kitchen. Benefits of cooking together When children cook with older family members, they get more than just a tasty meal.

Cooking helps children and teenagers understand the importance of nutrition earlier in life, and frequent family meals can encourage kids to try a wider variety of food. Research suggests cooking with children can also support their emotional wellbeing by strengthening family bonds and creating a sense of belonging.

As children cook – and improve their concentration and coordination skills – they build more confidence in themselves too. So where is the best place to start? And which dishes work best? What works well Every family is different, so the best recipes for you will depend on particular food preferences, dietary requirements, and kitchen equipment.

In general, recipes are more likely to work well with kids if they don’t have too many ingredients and can be adapted to suit different tastes. It’s also a good idea to use affordable ingredients so that if things go wrong it doesn’t become an expensive meal.

These are some of our favourite, family-friendly food ideas for winter: soups – a great budget-friendly option that’s easy to adapt to different tastes porridge – a versatile meal that allows kids to create flavour combinations by selecting their own ingredients curries – another flexible dish with a range of different recipes that can be easily modified to suit personal flavour preferences fritters – a crowd-pleaser that is perfect for using up leftover vegetables.

Other great food ideas for families are: homemade pizza tacos or wraps pasta bake muffins apple crumble beans on toast. All of these foods are simple, flexible, and can involve children of all ages at different points in the process.

For recipe ideas and meal-planning tips, check out the Grow&Go Toolbox. It’s a free government-funded, dietitian-approved resource that helps families feed children under five. Getting children involved There are many tasks kids can be involved in before even stepping foot into the kitchen.

They can pick the recipe, write the shopping list, and pick ingredients at the shops. These are all key parts of the process that help build food skills and encourage healthier eating habits over time.

A simple way to start is to ask your child to choose a new food to try, and then build a meal around it. When it comes to the big event – cooking – parents may be nervous about the safety of kids in the kitchen, which is understandable.

However, there are cooking activities suitable for all ages, from toddlers to teens. For example, young children (two to three years-old) can wash fruit and veggies, mix and knead dough with their hands, or use tools like cookie cutters.

These tasks have the added bonus of strengthening their fine motor skills. Pre-school children (three to five years-old) can help mix, stir and mash ingredients. They can also use child-safe knives for cutting (with supervision).

Early primary school-aged children (five to seven years-old) can flour and crumb food, peel produce using their fingers, and pour ingredients into dishes. Older children (seven years and above) can weigh and measure ingredients, and use equipment like graters or hand-mixers.

Safety in the kitchen As a rule, keep steps involving heat and sharp items to adults. You know your child best and can match their tasks to their abilities. Safety knives, plastic knives and butter knives can be used by three to five-year-olds to chop soft ingredients under close supervision.

As children practise and become stronger, sharper knives and harder foods can be introduced. While safety with knives and heat might be at the top of your mind, teaching kids how to prevent foodborne illnesses is just as important.

You can help your children learn about food safety by teaching them the importance of handwashing, cleaning surfaces before and after cooking, using separate chopping boards for meat, and keeping raw and cooked foods separate.

Clare Dix has received funding from Australian Department of Health and Aged Care.

Stella Boyd-Ford received funding from Australian Department of Health and Aged Care.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/02/four-great-dishes-to-cook-with-kids-these-winter-school-holidays/

Childhood vaccination rates have slumped globally. In several countries, people are more hesitant about getting vaccinated. Populist political actors promote distrust of government and scientific institutions. And the disinformation economy means we can’t agree on the facts behind policy debates.

Did COVID vaccine mandates – which placed legal limits on where people who didn’t receive a COVID vaccine could go or work – produce this mess? Some scholars in the United States seem to think so.

Australia’s COVID inquiry found COVID vaccine mandates drove vaccine hesitancy and scepticism. It drew a clear line between mandates and mistrust in government and medical science. But it’s hard to establish COVID vaccine mandates were entirely to blame for today’s laundry list of woes.

It’s difficult to disentangle the effect of vaccine mandates from those of other coercive COVID-era policies, such as lockdowns or border closures. Yet, the mandates had their after-effects, as my colleagues and I are discovering.

Leaders thought vaccine mandates were needed We are evaluating the effects of COVID vaccine mandates on the uptake of COVID vaccines, how people felt about the mandates, groups that may have been harmed, and how mandates have been legally contested.

As part of this ongoing MandEval project, I have interviewed more than 130 senior people in government and policy in Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe and California to find out why many decision-makers thought vaccine mandates were necessary.

Although the analysis of these interviews has yet to be published, generally speaking each Australian state and territory had its own reasons to mandate COVID vaccinations, as did governments overseas. Leaders anticipated some negative consequences.

They worried about backlash, including from people who were willingly complying with other prevention policies such as lockdowns and border closures. They feared people might start resisting, or become less trustful of vaccinations in the future.

But they believed vaccine mandates were necessary to protect lives. The policies certainly produced higher vaccination rates. But there may be a cost: childhood vaccination coverage is now sub-optimal in Australia. More parents are succumbing to misinformation about vaccines than in pre-pandemic times.

Uptake of adolescent and adult vaccinations is even more worrying. Yet individuals disgruntled by COVID vaccine mandates aren’t driving all these changes. Less direct mechanisms are also contributing. So what’s going on? COVID vaccine mandates have contributed to “reactance”, where people respond to limits on their freedom by pushing back.

Mandates can also worsen political polarisation on vaccination. This is where political “camps” are divided over questions of vaccination’s safety or benefits. This is dangerous, because high rates of vaccination rely on it being boring and bipartisan.

Influencers get on board, following the money that can be made through public engagement on divisive issues. Even before the pandemic, foreign actors were using bots to fuel vaccination debates with the goal of destabilising societies.

There are both financial and geopolitical incentives for content creators to prompt outrage or polarisation. As the disinformation economy thrives, populist politicians capitalise on low trust and high disenchantment with institutions. In this environment, a small number of people – but larger than before COVID – refuse vaccinations.

Nevertheless, mandates are, at best, one driver among many. These problems also plague countries that largely avoided vaccine mandates. Lowering trust in government A distrust of vaccines is also related to a distrust in government and health care institutions.

For instance, people’s concerns about the safety or efficacy of vaccines can reflect deeper worries about the expert systems that govern vaccination programs. Such distrust animated the minority who refused vaccines well before COVID vaccine mandates.

COVID vaccine mandates have also eroded some people’s perceptions of government. My team’s research in Western Australia found people who refused COVID vaccines already viewed government negatively, but when governments introduced mandates they had a sense of being morally punished.

This produced nightmarish predictions of industrial-scale persecution and harms. Based on their dismay and distrust, several of our participants who had vaccinated routinely before the pandemic vowed to never do so again. More recently, we tried to understand the political shifts of mandate opponents in the otherwise progressive city of Fremantle.

Our new publication details how potential participants’ deep distrust of government and university researchers meant they declined to take part altogether or were sparing in what they would reveal. Read more: In the rare event of a vaccine injury, Australians should be compensated What next?

If we are to use vaccine mandates in the future, we need to work differently with communities before the next emergency disease outbreak. Building trust in vaccination and government institutions is not easy in the present environment.

However, governments can lead with transparent communications about vaccinations’ benefits, risks and uncertainties, and with programs that are accessible and well-communicated. We also need mechanisms in place to allow communities to participate in decision-making about such outbreaks.

Governments could establish panels of citizens who could comment on proposed policies, question experts, and provide recommendations about communications. We must also communicate the reasoning behind vaccine mandates more clearly. Populations need to hear transparent ethical reasoning and to understand the public benefit.

Finally, there’s the issue of vaccine side effects. We know vaccines, like all medicines, come with the risk of side effects. But during the pandemic, this was generally thought to be far lower than the risk of side effects of catching COVID.

The COVID inquiry recognised the importance of a compensation scheme for rare vaccine injuries. But Australia’s scheme was short-lived and was criticised for being difficult to access. The inquiry noted very few claims had been paid out.

Without an accessible and fair scheme, disgruntled consumers learn to distrust government motives and programs. This sentiment threatens vaccination programs not just during a pandemic, but afterwards too. I acknowledge feedback on this article from Chris Blyth, Amy Thomasson, Jane Williams and Chas Dolphin.

I recognise the wider MandEval team’s ongoing intellectual contributions.

Katie Attwell leads ‘MandEval: Effectiveness and Consequences of Australia’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates’ funded by the Medical Research Future Fund of the Australian Government (Grant ID: 2019107).

She has received an unrestricted research grant from SANOFI Winthrop Industrie, Grant: RSV501. All funds were paid to her institution.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/02/we-cant-entirely-blame-covid-vaccine-mandates-for-lower-vaccination-rates-today-its-not-that-simple/

There is a crisis of rental housing across Australia. Areas in major cities and regional Australia alike are facing extremely low rental stock and record high rents. Many cities around the globe have cracked down on platforms such as Airbnb and Stayz to try and deal with the overlap of rental shortages and high numbers of short-term rentals.

The aim is to preserve rental supply for locals by restricting short-stay accommodation for tourists to certain areas, limiting the number of nights an unhosted home can be rented, or banning short-term rentals altogether. Australia has been following suit, and the big question is: will it work?

What rules are in force? A broad range of new rules have been put in place in the past few years, as outlined in our recent study. New South Wales, Western Australia and Victoria require short-term rentals to be listed on state registers, an important first step to regulation.

Tasmania goes further by forcing platforms to share detailed listings data, so registry information can be checked. Victoria has introduced a 7.5% levy paid by the booking platform or hosts on stays of less than 28 days.

This has two goals: shifting profitability in favour of long-term rentals, and raising revenue for social and affordable housing. The NSW government limits unhosted short-term rentals to 180 days per year across Greater Sydney. In high-demand Byron Shire, the limit is 60 days per year, outside of designated tourism precincts.

Other councils, such as the City of Sydney, which has both high tourism demand and extreme affordability pressures, want to follow suit. In WA, local councils are able to ban short-term rentals in particular land-use zones.

Within the Perth metropolitan area, property owners must seek development approval to offer short-term rentals for more than 90 nights per year. There is also an incentive payment of A$10,000 to encourage owners to shift to the long-term rental market.

In Tasmania, Hobart City Council has begun the process of modifying its planning scheme to ban the issuing of new permits in residential areas. How effective are these changes? There are some promising results from the different approaches.

In Victoria, there are signs growth in short-term listings has stalled, and the $85.8 million in revenue collected from the levy has been greater than expected, meaning more money for social housing. However, the funds aren’t necessarily directed to the tourism regions most affected by short-stay demand.

In Byron Bay, the strict day caps have contributed to a 15% decline in short-term listings and some properties have come back onto the long-term market. But after one year, it’s too early to say how effective the caps have been.

Evidence from overseas International research does show that regulating short-stay accommodation reduces pressure on the long-term rental market. For instance, Canadian researchers have found that regulations restricting short-term rentals caused rents to fall in following years, although the declines were modest.

In cities with longstanding bans, such as in Barcelona, which imposed a total ban on new registrations for short-term rentals in 2014, researchers estimated there were 9,000 fewer Airbnb listings than there would have been without the policy.

That prevented an estimated 3% of rentals from becoming short-stays. The strict enforcement of short-term rental bans in New York City has cut short-term listings by 90%. However, rental market changes are difficult to analyse because short-term listings are only one factor affecting the market.

It’s also clear that day caps, levies and outright bans are not the silver bullet to encourage property owners to make the switch. Barriers to making the switch Our latest report investigated the financial and other motivations for short-term rental providers in Australia.

We found: some properties – particularly those in scenic areas away from key services and amenities – may not be competitive, appropriate or affordable on the long-term market some owners want to use their property or are reluctant to rent to a long-term tenant.

Switching between short and long-term rental markets is complex property owners with a low or no mortgage are less likely to be affected by financial penalties such as day caps or levies. Without considering these aspects, tighter regulation could result in vacant properties rather than more long-term rental supply.

What can be done?

Better data on short-term rental stock: we found that most state registration systems are yet to deliver consistent and reliable data to enable local councils to monitor compliance with rules, and monitor the effects on the housing market.

Increased enforcement: greater resources and collaboration across levels of government are needed to ensure rules are being followed.

Considering the housing system as a whole: unfavourable borrowing conditions to buy a property, such as the recent interest-rate rises and changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax, can affect the feasibility of the short-term market.

These indirect changes can be additional tools beyond direct regulation to change investor behaviour. For example, the ATO’s updated guidance on expenses and deductions for holiday homes could have more impact on short-stay rentals than government or council policies.

By making these changes, we can focus on the acute need to properly house local residents, while balancing the needs of tourism economies.

Caitlin Buckle has received funding from AHURI and the Henry Halloran Urban and Regional Research Initiative (formerly Henry Halloran Trust) to research short-term rental accommodation, and is currently funded by the Australian Research Council to undertake research on rental vulnerability.

Nicole Gurran receives funding from the Australian Housing & Urban Research Institute (AHURI) and has received funding from the Australian Research Council and Australian Coastal Councils Association.

She is currently leading a research project in collaboration with Byron Shire Council on measuring the impacts of short-term rentals.

Peter Phibbs has received funding from Shelter Tasmania, Hobart City Council and AHURI to undertake research on Short Term Rentals.

He is a Board member of the Housing Data Justice Lab in the USA which produces the website, Inside AirBnB.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/02/can-tighter-rules-on-short-stay-rentals-help-the-long-term-market/

Janosch Lino/Unsplash Most of us have attended sex-ed classes in school. If we’re lucky, we’ll learn about consent and how to roll a condom onto a banana. But the classroom rarely goes into the specifics of sexual health and wellbeing – including what to do when a condom breaks.

Where can you get the morning-after pill in your local area? What about post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV? When do you need testing for sexually transmitted infections (STIs)? And where to find support if the test comes back positive?

Governments, community health organisations, peer-led health networks and commercial services use social media to share essential sexual health information with young people and adults alike. This includes up-to-date, evidence-based information on HIV and STI testing and treatment, and the latest on reproductive health care.

Online outreach of this kind has been widely recognised as a low-cost, accessible means of providing sexual and reproductive health content to those whose needs aren’t always met by traditional school-based education or legacy media outlets.

Current online safety rules are focused on removing harmful content, not on supporting health promotion. Unfortunately, sexual health content is often flagged as “against community standards” and suppressed by platforms – a practice known as shadowbanning.

But Australia’s promised new “digital duty of care” provides an opportunity to remedy that, creating a safe and healthy online environment for all. What is a digital duty of care? A digital duty of care is sometimes referred to as “safety by design”.

It will require social media platforms to establish risk management systems. They must identify potential risks from their services and take reasonable steps to prevent or mitigate serious harms. It will apply to all online service providers.

This includes social media services, messaging apps, online gaming services, online dating services, and search engines. The duty will sit alongside and complement Australia’s pioneering social media minimum age law. It will also significantly upgrade current expectations for online service providers to ensure a safe online environment for everyone.

The content that deserves protection However, there’s a danger the duty will focus exclusively on certain kinds of harmful content, such as deepfakes. It’s important to define content that should be removed or restricted, but this approach also assumes that content promoting the public good doesn’t require definition or protection.

Some content is in the public interest, such as public health information, news, or legitimate self-expression. Only regulating harmful content overlooks potential harms from suppressing or removing useful posts. For instance, community health organisations use social media for outreach to adults with specific sexual health needs.

This includes women’s health, LGBTQI+ health, and HIV prevention and health care. Research shows that using culturally appropriate images – which may be playful and even suggestive – and direct, nonjudgmental language reduces the fear and stigma often associated with sexual health concerns.

Digital sexuality education and wellbeing content is produced globally, both by independent content creators (or “influencers”) and various organisations. Young people highly value peer-to-peer online spaces, from TikTok to Reddit. Here, they can share their lived experience of sexual and reproductive health concerns, including advice on how to seek clinical care.

Barriers are increasing However, government and community-based public health organisations increasingly face barriers when they do digital outreach. In Australia, account and content restrictions have negatively affected evidence-based health advice for marginalised communities. This includes information on HIV treatments and harm-reduction approaches to drug use.

Such content has also been rejected by platform advertising services. This vital information is not suppressed because platforms have a deliberate agenda against it. Instead, it’s an inevitable byproduct of automated content moderation systems that suppress and remove content found to be “sexually suggestive” or inappropriately “political”.

Complaining to platforms about content suppression or moderation mistakes hasn’t improved the situation. In fact, reporting content to moderators is something politically-motivated groups may weaponise when they want to suppress certain information, or when they want to amplify health misinformation.

This is a known public health and human rights threat. How can we improve under a duty of care? The digital duty of care should recognise that restricting digital platform user access to relevant public health information is itself a critical harm, and must be prevented.

A proactive and positive duty of care should require platforms not just to remove content, but to maintain inclusive digital environments. We may not need a wholesale redesign of algorithms to achieve this. Instead, government-funded health organisations could be made exempt from moderation.

Public health communicators could be granted expedited pathways when they need to appeal content moderation decisions. And the moderation system could be regularly reviewed in terms of its impacts on health-related content. Australia’s online safety laws need an upgrade.

A digital duty of care can require online platforms and services to actively support safe, inclusive, healthy and rights-respecting digital environments for all Australians.

Kath Albury receives funding from the Australian Research Council, VicHealth and FORTE, the Swedish Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare.

She is affiliated in an advisory or ordinary membership capacity with ASHM, the National Association of People with HIV, Australia (NAPWHA), Scarlet Alliance, Thorne Harbour Health and UNESCO.

Christine Parker receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/02/if-we-force-online-platforms-to-control-harmful-content-where-does-that-leave-sex-ed/

Mina Rad/Unsplash Two brothers – Paul Issa and Phillip Issa – fronted court in Sydney this week, both facing criminal charges after allegedly accessing the personal banking details of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The younger brother, 21-year-old Paul, was a graduate employee of consulting firm EY and on secondment to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia at the time of the alleged offence.

He has since been sacked by the firm. Neither the Issa brothers nor EY have publicly commented on the case.

Noting that the matter was still before the courts, Albanese told ABC News Breakfast on Wednesday it was “appropriate that charges have been laid” and that: accessing anyone’s privacy, any Australian’s privacy, is alarming.

Regardless of the outcome of this case, these allegations raise some obvious questions. Who – among bank staff, regulators, technology providers and other third parties – can access our private financial data? What protections are in place to stop them misusing it?

And are there any steps we can take to protect ourselves? Who can see my bank details? Within a bank (or other financial institution, such as a superannuation fund), access to your personal information is not a free-for-all.

Authorised access is generally determined by a staff member’s role and responsibilities. It is also limited to what is absolutely necessary for legitimate business purposes, a principle called “least privilege” access control. For example, customer service staff at your bank may be granted access to your information where it is needed to manage your account, answer your queries, or provide basic financial services.

Members of the fraud, risk, compliance or audit teams may also have access to customer information where required to perform their duties. These teams use this data to investigate suspicious transactions, monitor risk and ensure the bank is meeting its legal and regulatory obligations.

Who else can access my data? Bank staff themselves aren’t the only ones who may have access to your financial data. To provide modern banking services, banks also work with a range of third-party providers.

These include technology companies, cloud service and data analytics providers, cybersecurity specialists and consultants.

In similar fashion, these groups may be given access to customer information where necessary to deliver services on behalf of the bank: for example, to improve a bank’s core operating system, or detect cyber threats.

But, as with bank staff, this access is governed by strict contractual arrangements, security standards and relevant laws. In principle, these third parties do not have independent rights to use customer data for their own purposes.

They must handle it with care and protect it from unauthorised use. Does the bank track every click? Importantly, access to customer data is not unrestricted. It is controlled through internal permissions. Banks typically apply “role-based access controls”, which restrict what different staff members can see, depending on their role.

Most banks also maintain detailed monitoring and audit systems. They record when customer information is accessed, who accessed it, and why. These systems are designed to detect unusual or inappropriate access and support internal investigations where needed.

What the law says Banks have these sophisticated systems in place because they are required to comply with a range of internal bank policies, security controls and external regulatory obligations. Most major Australian banks are voluntarily members of the Australian Banking Association and subscribe to the Banking Code of Practice.

This industry-led framework sets standards for dealing with customers. Banks must also comply with a range of Australian laws, including the Australian Privacy Principles under the Commonwealth Privacy Act. This is enforced by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Broader financial services regulation is overseen by key regulators, chiefly: the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC). Where access to customer information is improper or unauthorised, it may result in disciplinary action.

In serious cases, there could be criminal penalties. How can we protect ourselves? Most of the legal responsibility for protecting customer data sits with financial institutions and regulators. But individuals can still play an important role in protecting their own privacy.

Practical steps include: using strong, unique passwords enabling multi-factor authentication where available regularly monitoring account activity being cautious about phishing attempts or unsolicited requests for banking information. Some banks offer customers the ability to opt in to data-sharing arrangements through “open banking” (also known as the “consumer data right”).

This allows customers to give permission for accredited third parties to access their banking data for specific purposes. For example, this could include comparing mortgage products or managing finances. Importantly, this access is consent-based, time-limited, and can be revoked by the customer at any time.

While alarming, incidents involving alleged unauthorised or inappropriate access do not necessarily mean governance systems have failed.

In many cases, they highlight that monitoring and control systems are functioning as intended.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/02/who-has-access-to-my-bank-details-what-protections-are-in-place-to-prevent-misuse/

We are well into this largest and longest FIFA men’s World Cup. Before it kicked off in Mexico City on June 11, there was intense media and public discussion of its geopolitics. After all, it is the first to have a co-host (the United States) engaged in open military combat with one of the participating FIFA members (Iran).

This tension is accompanied by several others, not least between the US and the other hosts, Mexico and Canada.

Read more: A host nation at war with a participant: uncertainty and tension swirl around soccer’s World Cup The second Trump administration has also picked a series of fights with many of the world’s nations.

Critical commentary about the prospects of a conflict-ridden World Cup was, for these reasons, widely spread across the world’s media after Trump returned to power in 2025. Let the games begin As the games have got going, though, the tide of World Cup political commentary has notably receded.

The absence of any major incidents involving visiting teams and fans at the time of writing has directed most eyes towards the on-field games and off-field fun. What does this unfolding story tell us about the rhythms of media and public attention at a global extravaganza like the World Cup?

The downplaying of politics is, in fact, no big surprise. The various stages of a mega sport event present variable opportunities to focus on sporting, social, political, cultural and environmental issues. They unfold as the four-part sequence of: host bid, event lead-up, sporting action and legacy.

These rhythms of concentrated attention are well understood by the various parties involved in trying to set the public agenda of a gigantic sporting carnival. World governing bodies like FIFA and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the hosts, are most vulnerable to moral and ethical criticism before sporting competition commences.

At that point, the most compelling subjects – athletes’ performances, exciting contests and the responses to them – are yet to be formed as compelling narratives. By contrast, before the teams take the field, historical and contemporary issues can dominate the frame.

These include: expenditure of scarce public funds player and fan exploitation political oppression human rights institutional inequalities “sportswashing” and environmental consequences. The journalists who cover the tournament, especially those travelling to the venues, usually have some time to file so-called “colour stories” before sport takes centre stage.

Primed by preceding political debates, they are able to explore these broader matters with the authority of “on the spot” reportage. But there is no escaping the reality that World Cups and Olympics are global cultural events for sporting rather than political reasons.

If sport lacked a deep appeal to those who practise and watch it, there could be no grand spectacle in the first place. Ethics and fandom Critical social science and humanities researchers have historically challenged the comforting myth that sport is an apolitical escape from everyday social struggles.

But it is a difficult task to recognise the legitimate pleasures of soccer and other sports while simultaneously highlighting their negative consequences.

It may be unwelcome to point out to fans the stadium they are occupying or watching on screen was built at the cost of many migrant worker lives – as was the case of the 2022 Qatar men’s World Cup.

Or that, at Qatar and the 2018 Russia men’s World Cup, LGBTQIA+ players, officials and fans who travelled to those countries were justifiably nervous about their safety. In the 2026 edition, fans may not be too receptive to suggestions they bought FIFA-inflated tickets at the expense of the less affluent.

Or occupied some of the seats of fans from the many countries with denied or restricted entry to the US. Or that international visitors got tickets because many US-based fans of colour feared attending a “home” World Cup.

Detention and deportation after running a gauntlet of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents loomed large as a threat, particularly for Hispanic people. Intensifying such anxieties, even Africa’s best referee, the Somalian Omar Artan, was refused entry to the US on the eve of the World Cup.

Read more: Referees, athletes, fans: how the US border crackdowns are tarnishing the World Cup Many fans are also unimpressed by the unedifying spectacle of FIFA President Gianni Infantino constantly flattering US President Donald Trump, apparently tarnishing rather than burnishing the tournament’s image.

But such reservations are generally set aside in making World Cup travel plans. When political protests occurred before Mexico’s first home game to take advantage of World Cup-stimulated global profile, most media coverage was cursory at best.

With 104 scheduled matches, it would take something genuinely dramatic – or tragic – to wrest the spotlight from the on-field action. A juggling act for critical fans It is a difficult juggling act to be both soccer fan and social critic.

After tournaments start, it becomes even harder.

For critical fans the optimal time for geopolitical commentary is before the first goal is scored and after the post-tournament hangover takes hold.

David Rowe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/02/with-the-world-cup-in-full-swing-why-have-the-geopolitical-criticisms-quietened/

Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images It’s almost the Fourth of July and Donald Trump is making the most of the 250th anniversary of American independence. He has all but declared himself Patriot-in-Chief.

He’s putting his face on commemorative 0 bills and passports. A giant structure on the White House’s South Lawn, built for a pay-per-view UFC bout on Trump’s 80th birthday, was nicknamed the Arc de Trump.

Perhaps Trump would have put his name on that, too, but as it was being built a court ordered his name be removed from another federal building. Trump is not the first president to lean into an exaggerated patriotism at a time of crisis, attempting to direct or reorient Americans’ sense of national purpose.

But the vanity of Trump’s actions signals something perhaps unique or at least singularly intense, as he attempts to fuse patriotism with personal loyalty so that love of country is the same as loving him.

Other presidents have used patriotism to narrate the character of the nation, or to emphasise some change they felt necessary. Patriotism as service and the presidency as stewardship For George Washington, patriotism took the form of stepping down from the role as the nation’s first president.

In doing so, he showed the new republic was serious about its claim that it would be governed by popular sovereignty rather than by an inherited monarchy. Washington’s actions showed that keeping the balance of the three branches of government – executive, legislative and judicial – required good-faith actors and restraint.

Roughly 200 years later, President Gerald Ford faced a dilemma. Richard Nixon had recently resigned in disgrace, and the oil shocks of the early 1970s meant wages were stagnant and inflation rampant for the first time since the Great Depression.

In those circumstances, Ford opted to mark the nation’s 200th birthday with a low-key expression of US patriotism. On July 4, Ford did not appear at an edifice built to honour him. Rather, he presided over a ceremony at Thomas Jefferson’s hallowed home and plantation, Monticello, to naturalise immigrant citizens.

Patriotism as a global mission and a loyalty test Many American presidents have framed national pride and devotion in terms of the United States’ place in the world. They adopt a tradition captured in revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine’s 1776 work, Common Sense, that the cause of America is in a great measure the cause of mankind.

With the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1930s, this sense of the US as having a global mission became acute. As Franklin Roosevelt exhorted those he called “my fellow Americans” to step up to join the Allies, he argued their good fortune was also an obligation.

His January 1941 Four Freedoms speech said the US must defend the freedom of expression and religion Americans already enjoyed but also “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear” for everyone, worldwide. This strain of internationally-focused patriotism remained the hallmark of presidential rhetoric all the way through the Cold War and its immediate aftermath.

Then, in 2000, George W. Bush entered office with a promise to curb the US’s international entanglements. The 9/11 attacks ended that ambition, and from there Bush trumpeted a patriotism that foreshadowed what is happening today in its emphasis on loyalty.

“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” Bush told other nations. American citizens were also subject to new laws (one literally known as The Patriot Act), institutions and norms to intensify domestic surveillance and stifle dissent.

Freedom for some Americans, unfreedom for others Even presidents with the grandest ideas of patriotism have not escaped the contradiction at the core of America’s self-image as a nation uniquely devoted to freedom. Because while in theory all people may be born equal, the US has never treated all of them that way.

American freedom has always come by excluding some from its bounty. George Washington himself enslaved hundreds of people and ferociously pursued those who escaped to freedom. President Woodrow Wilson, who wanted the US to make the world safe for democracy, segregated a previously integrated federal public service and promoted racist myths about America’s history.

Franklin Roosevelt’s much-lauded New Deal and GI Bill, which did so much to redistribute wealth and build America’s middle class, excluded African Americans, Native Americans and many other people of colour. In this regard, Trump’s inward-looking patriotism is familiar, although it is much more explicit about who it excludes than most presidents have been for some time.

What is new, however, is Trump’s fusion of patriotism, personal loyalty and an idea that he – as president but also because of his self-proclaimed sense of superiority in all aspects of life – somehow embodies the nation itself.

This is the patriotism of the corporate raider: acquire the institution, put your name on the façade, reward loyalists and above all, extract all the value you can. The 250th anniversary of independence doesn’t require us to ask if Trump is politicising patriotism.

Patriotism is always political.

The question is whether and how patriotism can be made to serve the greater good, or whether it is just yet another asset for Trump to own.

Clare Corbould has received funding from the Australian Research Council.

She is a member of the Australian Historical Association.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/02/the-us-is-turning-250-and-trump-is-making-it-all-about-him/

Only rarely in the 250 years since the signing of the US Declaration of Independence has an 18-month period commanded as much global attention as the opening years of the second Trump administration.

Since taking office for the second time, US President Donald Trump has reshaped the federal bureaucracy, launched sweeping tariffs and military strikes, and is even physically rebuilding some of the very foundations of the nation’s capital.

The immediate aftermath of Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 saw some of the largest swings in Australian views of the United States on record. Our new poll results suggest Australians have now largely made up their minds on Trump’s America.

But they are questioning why Australia needs its alliance with the US at all. What we found In May 2026, the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in collaboration with YouGov, polled more than 1,000 Australians on their views of the US.

Our results paint a picture of an Australian public wrestling with a rapidly shifting strategic landscape — and Australia’s place within it. In 2025, perceptions of the US tumbled to new lows. And in 2026, these views appear to have solidified.

Most Australians (58%) continue to say the second Trump administration has been bad for Australia. This includes a ten percentage-point increase since last year in those who describe the administration as “very bad”. Australians are far more likely to say the US is harmful rather than helpful in Asia.

It’s a sharp reversal from sentiment just four years ago. They continue to express concern about US institutions: from the future of US democracy (71%) to potential political violence in the country (83%). And less than half think the US alliance makes Australia more secure.

Perhaps most strikingly, less than a third of Australians (31%) think the Australian government has properly explained why Australia even needs the alliance at all. Uncomfortable bedfellows But what do Australians think their government should actually do about the alliance?

Despite their pessimism, just 15% of Australians want Australia to abandon it. Around half (49%) of those surveyed even say Australia needs the US alliance “more than ever” — more than twice the number who disagree. The 2026 Lowy Poll similarly shows record low levels of trust in Washington but robust support for the alliance.

In January this year, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a headline-grabbing Davos address which called for middle powers to “act together” in an era of “rupture” for the international order. This vision appears to be popular with the Australian public.

When asked to consider alternatives to the alliance, 75% of respondents supported forming stronger relationships with other middle powers around the world. Only a handful disagreed with doing so. A public divided Our poll indicates a bottoming out in views of Trump among Australians.

Opinions have trended more negative this year compared with last. But the bulk of the dramatic change in Australian opinions on the US occurred immediately in the months following Trump’s inauguration, rather than as a result of more recent developments.

In other words, Australians long ago made up their mind on the US president. This mirrors Trump’s generally steady favourability ratings among Americans over most of the past decade. Demographic breakdowns also reveal a country divided on political and social lines when it comes to many of these key questions.

Australian men are twice as likely as women to describe the US as mostly helpful in Asia. Labor voters are twice as likely as Coalition voters to describe it as mostly harmful. Labor voters are also significantly more open to Australia becoming closer to China or having a policy of neutrality compared with Coalition voters.

Younger Australians under 35 years old are half as likely as those over 65 to support a higher defence budget or to agree that the alliance is more needed “than ever”. A challenging future The Australian government faces a difficult foreign policy landscape, balancing between an unpredictable security ally and a volatile Indo-Pacific region.

While our results suggest Australian views of Trump have stabilised, broader questions about the alliance — what it means for Australia’s security and the region, and the government’s rationale for it — may still be up for debate.

As the US barrels towards midterm elections in November — and the contours of the 2028 presidential election begin to take shape — navigating this tension is likely to be a central challenge for Australian foreign policy in the years to come.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/02/after-250-years-of-american-independence-what-do-australians-think-about-the-us/