Mauritians are set to find out who will govern their Indian Ocean island nation for the next five years after a hotly disputed election race.

Mauritius' incumbent Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth said on Monday his political alliance was headed for a major defeat to a rival coalition led by a three-time former premier following Sunday's parliamentary election.

Mauritius opposition leader Navin Ramgoolam was confirmed as prime minister on Tuesday following a thumping election victory for his coalition that took every parliamentary seat on the main island.

I met two debut authors at a summer conference and was taken with their warmth and earnestness. Their book, Black Boy, Black Boy, is an affirmation that celebrates both past accomplishments by Black men and the limitless possibilities for a child’s future. Their book is sure to encourage discussion with children and families, whether they are Black or not. Both authors graciously agreed to a blog interview.

2FA, the common abbreviation for two-factor authentication is a word often spoken about when one is setting up a website or account where security is vital. With more and more confidential information being uploaded on the net, it makes sense to add additional measures to prevent hackers from gaining access to an account. In terms […]

The post Enabling Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for a PayPal Account appeared first on Tips and Tricks HQ.

Tuesday 12 November 2024 – Best Wallet ($BEST) sold out its first presale stage in just six hours, raising $162,000… Continue reading Best Wallet’s Presale Generates $162K in 6 Hours, Sells Out on Launch Day

The post Best Wallet’s Presale Generates $162K in 6 Hours, Sells Out on Launch Day appeared first on ReadWrite.

Continuing to set records, Pepe Unchained recently achieved a new milestone after reaching $26 million. The project’s presale has now… Continue reading As Pepe Unchained Launch Date Nears, Analyst Makes ‘Massive’ Prediction For PEPU

The post As Pepe Unchained Launch Date Nears, Analyst Makes ‘Massive’ Prediction For PEPU appeared first on ReadWrite.

Construction has started on the undersea component of Google's Umoja fibre-optic cable.

Nigeria began a process to sanction Starlink after the satellite-internet service owned by billionaire Elon Musk increased its prices without approval from the regulator.

Cape Town police have arrested two suspects in connection with the murder of Noem My Skollie actor David Manuel and his friend, Alfonso Fisher, in Gugulethu last month.

The Gauteng education department has postponed the appointment of new office-based staff as well as teachers who applied to be promoted as heads of department, deputy principals and principals until April because of budget constraints.

Gauteng legislature secretary Linda Mwale has signed a sweetheart agreement with Nehawu to let 32 employees accused of defrauding the institution off the hook.

KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi has ordered an "immediate investigation" after a video went viral on social media of a police officer slapping and pulling around a man.

July was a big month for model releases: There are new large models from Mistral and Meta, smaller multilingual models from Mistral and DeepL, another Mistral model that specializes in code generation, and a small version of GPT-4o. The security world saw another software supply chain disaster when CrowdStrike released a bad software update that […]

A Minnessota maker named Caleb Olson built the Poopcopter, an autonomous drone that seeks out dog-doo and retrieves it for disposal.

He describes it as the "world's first aerial bound self-guided dog poop removal system." See it in action below.

"The Poopcopter is capable of scanning areas defined by a user, your backyard for example, and as it scans it's performing real-time computer vision using the camera which is inside the drone," Olson says. — Read the rest

The post The Poopcopter is a DIY autonomous drone that finds and collects dog-doo appeared first on Boing Boing.

Instant Reaction: CPI, August 14, 2024

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Remember back when turning 40 was about being over the hill? Back when I was a kid, I remember that 40th birthday parties were about those black OVER THE HILL balloons, and joke “you’re old now” gifts like canes with a blowhorn attached to them. That seems to have been phased out with the Boomer […]

The post AK Monthly Recap: August 2024 appeared first on Adventurous Kate.

For years, the Dems and their media enablers have complained about the 'divisive' nature of politics, and invariably laid blame on the 'other' party.

The post Campaign Door-Knocker Caught Going Full Racist On Camera — Guess Which Party? appeared first on Clash Daily.

There are a few moments in this race that historians will wrangle over as the 'real' reason Kamala lost. There are a couple of key events that are sure to make the list.

The post The RIGHT Rally: On Election Night, MAGA Takes Moment To Honor God Beautifully appeared first on Clash Daily.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Gov Walz trying to load his shotgun was emblematic of his entire reign in Minnesota. Now,..

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Mainstream leftist media, along with the Democrats (The Party of the KKK), are trying their best..

Pro-Trump businessmen Elon Musk (the richest man in the world) and Vivek Ramaswamy have officially joined the incoming Trump administration. President-elect Donald Trump announced in a statement published Tuesday that […]

The post Breaking: Musk, Ramaswamy Officially Join Trump Administration - Their Job Is to Destroy Bureaucracy appeared first on The Western Journal.

Sir Kenny Dalglish hailed nine-time Major champion Gary Player and expressed his delight at Liverpool's position at the top of the Premier League during his visit to South Africa this weekend.

As captain, Aiden Markram is allowed a long rope from a wonky form perspective, but how long can that rope be as the run river continues to shrivel, asks Khanyiso Tshwaku.

The race to succeed Bill Beaumont as chairman of World Rugby comes to a conclusion in a vote in Dublin at the governing body's headquarters on Thursday.

May 10, 2022 (New York, NY) – Elon Musk has his work cut out for him as he takes the reigns at Twitter. Worldwide user growth will be essentially flat […]

Review: The Cultural Revolution still haunts China The World Today mhiggins.drupal 30 January 2023

Tania Branigan’s searching ‘Red Memory’ reveals the costs to Chinese society of not addressing that upheaval’s lingering injustices, writes Nathan Law.

Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution
Tania Branigan, Faber, £20

The Cultural Revolution, a decade-long socio-political upheaval initiated by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966, caused as many as two million deaths and reshaped China. Under the influence of Mao’s personality cult, an entire nation was mobilized to purge the ‘reactionary elements’ in society and the Chinese Communist Party through public denunciation and demolition of traditional heritages.

Children turned on their parents; pupils murdered their teachers, and those who survived the summary public trials were often banished – as a young Xi Jinping himself was, living in a cave for seven years, after his father fell from favour.

Impossible moral choices

In her engaging and sensitive narrative account of the revolution’s upheaval and its consequences, Tania Branigan, the Guardian’s China correspondent between 2008 and 2015, speaks to some of those who survived those terrible years, considers their impossible moral choices and explores the far-reaching legacy of the revolution in present-day China.

Mao urged the party to cleanse itself of its ‘class enemies’: ‘capitalists’ such as landowners and shopkeepers, but also artists, farmers and university professors. Often their family members were tainted by association and persecuted. Branigan captures the awful sense of intimate betrayal and tragedy nowhere more than in the testimony of Zhang Hongbing, a lawyer turned zealous Red Guard.

Zhang denounced his mother, a hospital worker, as a ‘counter-revolutionary’ because her father owned land. She was eventually executed but not before her son struck her twice during her arrest to show his party loyalty. ‘What I did to my mother was worse even than to an animal,’ the remorseful Zhang tells Branigan.

Zhang points out that his actions were far from uncommon: ‘The whole country was doing it.’ This unreconciled sense of betrayal and fear still blights China: ‘Our society is ethically hollow. If we trace these problems to their roots, we are likely to find them in the Cultural Revolution,’ one survivor is quoted as writing.

Branigan encapsulates the difficulties around reconciliation and remembering in the story of Song Binbin. As a schoolgirl in 1966, she and two classmates were the first to pin up a poster attacking teachers for urging students to focus on their work instead of the revolution. Song’s classmates then beat the school vice principal Bian Zhongyun to death in the playground. The case was never properly investigated, and the death was dismissed as an accident.

The pain of remembering

In 2014, Song apologized publicly for the poster and expressed a sense of guilt for not intervening on Bian’s behalf. But Bian’s widower rejected the apology. Song did not speak to Branigan herself, instead allowing her friends to speak in her defence. ‘They had spoken of truth and reconciliation, but not once of justice. Every remark brought them towards closure, not accountability,’ Branigan writes.

The inability to come to terms with the past pervades the book, most of whose interviewees express feelings of resentment, fear and shame about the Cultural Revolution. I sensed the same emotions when, as a boy, I talked to a neighbour in Hong Kong who was then in his 70s. He escaped from China in the late 1960s due to political and economic strains. He simply nodded and fell silent when I asked him to elaborate.

As Branigan writes: ‘Most Cultural Revolution survivors had learnt to bend with the will of the time; not only to do as they were told but to imply that doing so was their own idea. It was better – safer – to stay silent or lie.’

This collective trauma is exacerbated by official unwillingness to address the past. The Cultural Revolution warrants no more than a few paragraphs in official textbooks with no mention of the suffering it unleashed. Documents of the period that might tarnish the CCP remain unavailable; any attempts to interrogate the Cultural Revolution are condemned as ‘historical nihilism’ by the party.

Member’s question time: Is Russia losing the South Caucasus? 22 October 2024 — 1:00PM TO 1:30PM Anonymous (not verified) 2 September 2024 Online

Join us and ask Chatham House Senior Research Fellow, Natalie Sabanadze anything about the situation in the Caucasus. Submit your questions in advance.

Whilst Russia focuses on its illegal invasion of Ukraine, the situation at its southern border is evolving. Relations between the three states in the South Caucasus and Moscow have never been easy as Russia tried to maintain its dominance by leveraging vulnerabilities, playing one side against another to keep conflicts simmering and even engaging in open military aggression.  Although the violence seen in the 1990s and early 2000s has abated, the war in Ukraine has had an indirect impact on the region, bringing a change to the status quo.

Russia abandoned its long-standing support for Armenia, allowing for the collapse of Nagorny-Karabakh and the restoration of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan with the backing of Turkey. As a result, Azerbaijan has emerged as a dominant regional player with Baku recently declaring its interest to join BRICS.  Turkey’s influence has grown, while Armenia frustrated by Russia’s change of heart has been turning cautiously towards the EU and the US.

In Georgia, meanwhile, the ruling party has been consolidating its grasp on power, rolling back democratic reforms and pivoting away from the West. Georgia’s long-awaited European integration process has been suspended, following the adoption of the Russian-style foreign agents legislation.

Join us as our Senior Research Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme answers your questions in this quick-fire session assessing the extent to which the Russian influence has changed since the start of the invasion of Ukraine and who is there to fill the vacuum; how geopolitical contestation in the region is going to impact aspirations of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia; and much more.

Submit your questions to Natalie Sabanadze in advance of the event. Your questions will drive the conversation.

What are the lasting impacts of the AUKUS agreement? Interview LJefferson 15 August 2022

Drawing on their International Affairs article, Jamal Barnes and Samuel Makinda outline the effect of AUKUS on Australia-France relations and the liberal order.

Almost a year after the surprise announcement of the AUKUS treaty, its full diplomatic implications are still being understood. The security cooperation agreement between Australia, the US and the UK caused outrage in France and was a notable source of discord between states that see themselves as defenders of the liberal international order.

In this interview Jamal Barnes and Samuel Makinda discuss their recent article in International Affairs and assess the effect of the agreement on relationships between its signatories and France and the EU, the potential for reconciliation in the treaty’s aftermath, as well as the implications it has for trust in world politics.  

What was the AUKUS treaty and why did Australia sign it?

The AUKUS treaty is an agreement between Australia, the US and the UK. Signed in 2021, it facilitates cooperation on security issues in the Indo-Pacific between the three countries – specifically, it concerns the sharing of ‘military capabilities and critical technologies, such as cyber, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and undersea domains’.

A key aspect is that Australia will purchase nuclear-fuelled submarines from either the US or UK. Australia decided to purchase nuclear-powered submarines – and reneged on its 2016 agreement to purchase French-built diesel-propelled submarines – because it believed that the French-made submarines were no longer fit for purpose.

However, the agreement is about more than submarines. Although Australia, the UK and US argue that AUKUS is designed to defend the rules-based international order and help ‘preserve security and stability in the Indo-Pacific’, AUKUS has been largely seen as a response to the rise of China and its military activities in the region. The AUKUS agreement reflects the increased attention that the US, UK and Australia are paying to the Indo-Pacific and their commitment to constraining China’s exercise of power in the region.

What were the effects of the AUKUS treaty on relations between Australia and France?

It led to a serious diplomatic rift. Australian officials, including former Prime Minister Morrison, had visited President Macron in France and told him nothing about AUKUS. Morrison had assured Macron in June 2021 while former Australian foreign and defence ministers had assured their French counterparts that Australia was fully committed to the purchase of French submarines just two weeks before the announcement of AUKUS.

When French officials found out about AUKUS on the day it was announced on 15 September 2021, they declared publicly that they had been betrayed and stabbed in the back. Not only had France built its relationship with Australia on trust, but its relationship was more than just about submarines. It was designed to be central to France’s 50-year engagement strategy in the Indo-Pacific. However, France was not only left out of talks but was also betrayed by a country it considered a close ally.

France responded by temporarily recalling its ambassador and stated that it would ‘redefine’ its relationship with Australia. It did not say that it would not work with Australia, but rather downgraded its relationship to one where it would only do so on a case-by-case basis.

In your article you mention that the AUKUS treaty was seen as a betrayal of trust by France in particular. Why use the word ‘betrayal’?

The word betrayal is accurate because Australia’s actions went beyond simply cancelling a business contract. Australia breached France’s trust. Not all agreements involve trust. Some are driven by self-interest while others are simply legal contracts. When these agreements are broken, the usual response is feelings of disappointment and a belief that one party is unreliable and has not lived up to its end of the agreement.

However, when diplomatic partnerships involve trust, they often contain an emotional element. A key element of trust is that one party makes itself vulnerable to another in the expectation that neither party will take advantage. When that trust is breached, the response is different from a breach of contract.

It involves feelings of betrayal as deeper emotional factors are involved. This could be seen in President Macron’s anger, and his and other French officials’ willingness to publicly call Prime Minister Morrison a liar who had stabbed France in the back. If the previous France-Australia agreement was simply a legal contract, it would have been difficult to explain the emotional element of this diplomatic fallout.

How did the signing of the AUKUS treaty affect wider relations between members of AUKUS and EU member states?

The EU, like France, felt betrayed by the AUKUS announcement. Despite being a key ally of the US, Australia, and the UK, it was left out of AUKUS discussions, and was not aware of the agreement until it was announced in the media.

What made this worse was that the EU was in the process of announcing its Indo-Pacific strategy, which was characterized as ‘maybe one of the [EU’s] most important geopolitical documents’ by High Representative for Foreign and Security Affairs, Josep Borrell. For the EU, this was the latest in a long line of recent policy betrayals that had left it uncertain if it could trust key allies on important issues. The result was greater calls from within the EU to more forcefully pursue ‘strategic autonomy’, meaning a more assertive and independent EU foreign policy.

Do betrayals of trust affect the health of the liberal international order?

Yes, they can. While it is common for leaders in liberal democracies to lie to their own people, lying to the leaders of other countries can have serious repercussions for the norms, rules and institutions of international society. A key aspect of international society is the ‘presumption of trust’ that facilitates legal compliance and diplomatic cooperation.

Without this presumption it is difficult for states to engage in long term partnerships or have confidence that diplomatic agreements will be upheld. In our article, we highlight how Australia’s violation of a particular norm, that agreements must be kept, has undermined this presumption of trust. This norm not only helps build trust between states, but also contributes to the maintenance of international order by helping to support the presumption of trust in international society.

Ethics of dealing with authoritarians 28 March 2023 — 12:00PM TO 1:00PM Anonymous (not verified) 20 March 2023 Chatham House

How can democracies simultaneously defend human rights and promote open societies while still engaging with leaders from non-democratic states as strategic allies?

In 2022, the Biden administration called upon the world’s democracies to unite against a rising tide of autocracy. Through its messaging, conferences, and op-eds, the US and its allies presented the public with a binary choice: democracy or autocracy.

But in today’s world, and in the practice of international relations, the choice is rarely this simple.  

Joel Rosenthal, president of Carnegie Council, joins Chatham House to discuss how democracies and multilateral institutions can leverage ethics as a tool to assess concerns and trade-offs when engaging with illiberal actors.

Can democracies afford to be adversarial with certain countries or overly selective in cooperation when facing global-scale challenges such as climate change and the emergence of AI?

How can democracies simultaneously defend human rights and promote open societies while still engaging with leaders from non-democratic states as strategic allies?

Staphylococcus aureus adhesion to the host's skin and mucosae enables asymptomatic colonization and the establishment of infection. This process is facilitated by cell wall-anchored adhesins that bind to host ligands. Therapeutics targeting this process could provide significant clinical benefits; however, the development of anti-adhesives requires an in-depth knowledge of adhesion-associated factors and an assay amenable to high-throughput applications. Here, we describe the development of a sensitive and robust whole cell assay to enable the large-scale profiling of S. aureus adhesion to host ligands. To validate the assay, and to gain insight into cellular factors contributing to adhesion, we profiled a sequence-defined S. aureus transposon mutant library, identifying mutants with attenuated adhesion to human-derived fibronectin, keratin, and fibrinogen. Our screening approach was validated by the identification of known adhesion-related proteins, such as the housekeeping sortase responsible for covalently linking adhesins to the cell wall. In addition, we also identified genetic loci that could represent undescribed anti-adhesive targets. To compare and contrast the genetic requirements of adhesion to each host ligand, we generated a S. aureus Genetic Adhesion Network, which identified a core gene set involved in adhesion to all three host ligands, and unique genetic signatures. In summary, this assay will enable high-throughput chemical screens to identify anti-adhesives and our findings provide insight into the target space of such an approach.

Leukocidin ED (LukED) is a pore-forming toxin produced by Staphylococcus aureus, which lyses host cells and promotes virulence of the bacteria. LukED enables S. aureus to acquire iron by lysing erythrocytes, which depends on targeting the host receptor Duffy antigen receptor for chemokines (DARC). The toxin also targets DARC on the endothelium, contributing to the lethality observed during bloodstream infection in mice. LukED is comprised of two monomers: LukE and LukD. LukE binds to DARC and facilitates hemolysis, but the closely related Panton–Valentine leukocidin S (LukS-PV) does not bind to DARC and is not hemolytic. The interaction of LukE with DARC and the role this plays in hemolysis are incompletely characterized. To determine the domain(s) of LukE that are critical for DARC binding, we studied the hemolytic function of LukE–LukS-PV chimeras, in which areas of sequence divergence (divergence regions, or DRs) were swapped between the toxins. We found that two regions of LukE's rim domain contribute to hemolysis, namely residues 57–75 (DR1) and residues 182–196 (DR4). Interestingly, LukE DR1 is sufficient to render LukS-PV capable of DARC binding and hemolysis. Further, LukE, by binding DARC through DR1, promotes the recruitment of LukD to erythrocytes, likely by facilitating LukED oligomer formation. Finally, we show that LukE targets murine Darc through DR1 in vivo to cause host lethality. These findings expand our biochemical understanding of the LukE–DARC interaction and the role that this toxin-receptor pair plays in S. aureus pathophysiology.

AUKUS reveals much about the new global strategic context Expert comment NCapeling 17 September 2021

The new AUKUS partnership as well as the furore in Paris surrounding its announcement says a lot about the new geopolitical landscape.

The growing diplomatic drama surrounding the announcement of the new Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) risks concealing rather than highlighting what the deal reveals about profound changes in the global strategic context. Several elements stand out.

First, Australia’s decision to break off the $66 billion contract it signed with France in 2016 to purchase a new fleet of diesel electric submarines underscores the heightened level of concern in Canberra about China’s growing naval capabilities.

Despite all the industrial, legal, and diplomatic disruption, the Australian government has decided only the stealthy nuclear-powered submarines developed by Britain with US support can provide the genuine naval capability it needs long-term.

Next, in helping Australia resolve this conundrum, the British government has revealed the versatility of its new foreign policy. Part of the reason UK prime minister Boris Johnson eschewed the concept of a formal foreign policy and security treaty in the post-Brexit deal with the European Union (EU) was to pursue freely new ventures such as the recent ‘G7-plus’ summit in Cornwall, and enhanced cooperation among the Five Eyes allies. AUKUS reveals that this approach can produce real results.

Europe or the Indo-Pacific

During this week’s Polish-British Belvedere Forum in Warsaw, one of the main Polish concerns was that this ‘tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific could overstretch Britain’s scarce resources when it should be focusing on Europe, where they are most needed.

But AUKUS does not over-extend Britain. There is no military commitment involved in the agreement. The UK also remains outside the Quad – made up of the US, India, Japan, and Australia. And the ongoing stately voyage of its new aircraft carrier from the Mediterranean into the South China Sea provides better insight into the substance of the UK’s Indo-Pacific tilt.

Much derided for not carrying enough of its own aircraft – and for depending on US and Dutch escort vessels – the UK has in fact managed to coalesce a flexible group of allies around the Queen Elizabeth while enabling it to fly the British flag in Asian waters and strengthening interoperability with its allies for future joint operations.

Despite the hype, Britain’s main defence investments and deployments remain firmly focused in Europe, as laid out by the recent Integrated Review. And the decision to draft a new NATO Strategic Concept – midwifed by Britain at the 70th anniversary NATO summit hosted in London in December 2019 and confirmed during Joe Biden’s visit to NATO headquarters in June – will give Britain’s role in European security a new purpose and focus in the coming years.

Alone on the strategic landscape

For France, of course, the cancellation of its submarine deal is a painful humiliation, and a severe blow to thousands of workers in its hi-tech defence industry. It also comes at a sensitive moment politically, with Emmanuel Macron keen to demonstrate his international standing ahead of the 2022 presidential election. Instead, France now looks rather lonely on the strategic landscape alongside the more homogeneous and collectively powerful AUKUS trio.

But, rather than take the high road, a furious French reaction has compared Biden to Donald Trump and argued that this defence industrial failure for France should drive an acceleration towards European – for which, read EU – strategic autonomy.

This implies France sees European strategic autonomy as protecting and extending its own sovereign power and industrial interests rather than as a process for EU members to achieve more together in security and foreign policy than they can alone – thereby undermining rather than enhancing its case.

The gap between European strategic rhetoric and practical action was further highlighted by the AUKUS partnership being announced the evening before the EU launched its own Indo-Pacific strategy, and on the same day as China refused to allow a German frigate its first planned port visit to Shanghai.

America is still back

There is still a long way to go before the new submarine deal becomes reality. Australia needs to extricate itself from the French deal, decide how to secure the highly enriched uranium to power its new nuclear submarines, decide with the US and UK the division of labour and technology transfer of production, and assuage the International Atomic Energy Agency’s concerns about the precedent this deal sets. The fruits of this dramatic announcement will, therefore, be a long time in coming.

But, however the details play out, 15 September 2021 was a consequential day. The AUKUS announcement showed that China’s growing hard power is now eliciting a genuinely tough and structural political-military reaction.

Across the Atlantic, it also allowed President Biden – flanked ‘virtually’ by the British and Australian prime ministers – to send the global message that America is indeed back, just three weeks after the ignominious retreat from Afghanistan and chaotic exit from Kabul. And it offered him the opportunity to remind the world that the Indo-Pacific is where the US will be putting its main effort in the future.

For many in China, AUKUS now confirms their belief that the US and its principal allies are determined to contain China’s rise in its own ‘backyard’, where it believes it has the right to flex its muscles. For others, it will confirm Xi Jinping has overreached and China is now paying the price of his more assertive strategy. Either way, the Chinese are on notice that the ambivalent nature of the Obama pivot to Asia has given way to a more determined pivot under Biden.

While the US is stepping up, the UK has shown it is in the mix, leveraging opportunities as they arise. For example, the goodwill the UK has generated in Tokyo with this new partnership with Australia could help its case as it pursues membership of the Transpacific Partnership trade area in 2022.

The EU looks like a bystander in comparison and ill-equipped for the geopolitical competition inherent in this new strategic context. It is essential, therefore, once the dust has settled from these fraught few days, that the US and UK reach out to find ways to involve France and its EU partners in a meaningful, shared transatlantic approach to the Indo-Pacific.

Professor Sir Laurence Martin (1928-2022) News release NCapeling 3 May 2022

Professor Sir Laurence Martin, director of Chatham House from 1991-96, has died aged 93.

Professor Sir Laurence Martin was one of the UK’s leading experts on international security with a particular interest in nuclear strategy.

Before joining Chatham House, he was Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London and Vice Chancellor of Newcastle University. He was also appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Tyne and Wear as well as holding several distinguished professorships.

His most well-known work was Two-Edged Sword: Armed Forces in the Modern World which was also the subject of the BBC’s Reith Lectures he gave in 1981.

Sir Laurence led Chatham House as the world was entering the post-Cold War era, a time when international relations were in a state of flux which, as he wrote in International Affairs, provided grounds for optimism that ‘the objective conditions exist to eliminate violent and mutually harmful conflict at least between the major powers’.

Professor Martin worked hard to ensure the financial sustainability of the institute following the loss of core funding from the UK government in the 1980s. By modernizing its approach to fundraising, he was able to invest in a much-needed refurbishment of the House, as well as the institute’s first foray onto the internet.

This enabled Chatham House to communicate with new audiences beyond its members, event attendees, and readers of printed reports, The World Today magazine, and International Affairs journal. He paid particular attention to the need for the institute to communicate its ideas to those making policy as well as wider audiences.

In addition to strengthening the institute’s research, he was keen to continue engaging its members in discussions to develop a well- informed understanding of international affairs.

On the 75th anniversary of Chatham House in 1995, he wrote that its role was ’providing the evidence and, above all, encouraging the habit of mind, to facilitate prudent, if possible optimistic, but never utopian judgements about world affairs’. Today’s staff would agree this role remains at the heart of delivering the institute’s mission.

Selected works

• Two-Edged Sword: Armed Forces in the Modern World
• The Reith Lectures: The Two-Edged Sword
• British Foreign Policy: Challenges and Choices for the 21st Century

Independent Thinking: Biden and the Republicans, AUKUS Audio NCapeling 9 February 2023

Episode 14 of our weekly podcast examines the Chinese balloon saga, the State of the Union address, and updates on the AUKUS deal 18 months after it was signed.

This week saw US president Joe Biden address an unruly joint session of Congress, during which he discussed America’s place in the world, China, Ukraine, and the state of the US economy.

As a new presidential cycle begins at the mid-point of Biden’s presidency, the panel analyses how Biden is doing and the challenges that lie ahead for him.

Also it is now 18 months since the announcement of the AUKUS partnership between the UK, US and Australia to develop nuclear hunter killer submarines. What does AUKUS mean for Australia, non-proliferation, and the Indo-Pacific more broadly?

Finally, the panel discusses China’s balloon over Montana in the US. Was it a signal from Beijing and what was it trying to photograph?

Joining guest host John Kampfner this week from Chatham House are Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the US and the Americas programme and Dr Patricia Lewis, director of the International Security programme. They are joined by Dr Euan Graham, Shangri-La Dialogue senior fellow for defence and strategy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

About Independent Thinking

A weekly podcast hosted by Chatham House director Bronwen Maddox, in conversation with leading policymakers, journalists, and Chatham House experts providing insight on the latest international issues.

Accumulation of the microtubule-associated protein tau is associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD). In AD brain, tau is abnormally phosphorylated at many sites, and phosphorylation at Ser-262 and Ser-356 plays critical roles in tau accumulation and toxicity. Microtubule affinity–regulating kinase 4 (MARK4) phosphorylates tau at those sites, and a double de novo mutation in the linker region of MARK4, ΔG316E317D, is associated with an elevated risk of AD. However, it remains unclear how this mutation affects phosphorylation, aggregation, and accumulation of tau and tau-induced neurodegeneration. Here, we report that MARK4ΔG316E317D increases the abundance of highly phosphorylated, insoluble tau species and exacerbates neurodegeneration via Ser-262/356–dependent and –independent mechanisms. Using transgenic Drosophila expressing human MARK4 (MARK4wt) or a mutant version of MARK4 (MARK4ΔG316E317D), we found that coexpression of MARK4wt and MARK4ΔG316E317D increased total tau levels and enhanced tau-induced neurodegeneration and that MARK4ΔG316E317D had more potent effects than MARK4wt. Interestingly, the in vitro kinase activities of MARK4wt and MARK4ΔG316E317D were similar. When tau phosphorylation at Ser-262 and Ser-356 was blocked by alanine substitutions, MARK4wt did not promote tau accumulation or exacerbate neurodegeneration, whereas coexpression of MARK4ΔG316E317D did. Both MARK4wt and MARK4ΔG316E317D increased the levels of oligomeric forms of tau; however, only MARK4ΔG316E317D further increased the detergent insolubility of tau in vivo. Together, these findings suggest that MARK4ΔG316E317D increases tau levels and exacerbates tau toxicity via a novel gain-of-function mechanism and that modification in this region of MARK4 may affect disease pathogenesis.

Synapse loss is associated with motor and cognitive decline in multiple neurodegenerative disorders, and the cellular redistribution of tau is related to synaptic impairment in tauopathies, such as Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia. Here, we examined the cellular distribution of tau protein species in human tau overexpressing line 66 mice, a transgenic mouse model akin to genetic variants of frontotemporal dementia. Line 66 mice express intracellular tau aggregates in multiple brain regions and exhibit sensorimotor and motor learning deficiencies. Using a series of anti-tau antibodies, we observed, histologically, that nonphosphorylated transgenic human tau is enriched in synapses, whereas phosphorylated tau accumulates predominantly in cell bodies and axons. Subcellular fractionation confirmed that human tau is highly enriched in insoluble cytosolic and synaptosomal fractions, whereas endogenous mouse tau is virtually absent from synapses. Cytosolic tau was resistant to solubilization with urea and Triton X-100, indicating the formation of larger tau aggregates. By contrast, synaptic tau was partially soluble after Triton X-100 treatment and most likely represents aggregates of smaller size. MS corroborated that synaptosomal tau is nonphosphorylated. Tau enriched in the synapse of line 66 mice, therefore, appears to be in an oligomeric and nonphosphorylated state, and one that could have a direct impact on cognitive function.

Design in an Age of Crisis Launches News Release jon.wallace 13 January 2021

Design open call receives 500 submissions from over 50 countries across six continents.

Expert