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MAHA has reshaped health policy. Now it's working on environmental rules
WASHINGTON (AP) — On New Year's Eve, Lee Zeldin did something out of character for an Environmental Protection Agency leader who has been hacking away at regulations intended to protect Americans' air and water.
The New Science of Craving
We often view our cravings—whether for drugs, alcohol, food, or approval—as indictments of our character. Yet neuroscience and psychology say otherwise; here's why.
Scott Pilgrim EX Arrives In March, Two New Playable Characters Revealed
Two former enemies of Scott now rally by his side.
Investment and Statecraft: The International Politics of Sovereign Wealth Funds - Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
In 1953, Kuwait established the world’s first sovereign wealth fund to invest the country’s oil revenues and generate returns that would reduce its reliance on a single resource. Since then, over 100 separate funds have been created to preserve national wealth and ensure long-term fiscal sustainability. Today, they manage over $10 trillion in global assets. In this discussion with GJIA, political economist Kathryn Lavelle explains the increasingly novel dynamics that surround fund behavior and what the world can come to expect from their growing presence in international financial markets. GJIA: When it comes to the roles sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) play in global markets and politics, what would you say makes them unique? Kathryn Lavelle: Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) operate on behalf of governments as investors. That in itself is a strange relationship. Within them, a core contest takes place between the state’s interests (or sovereign) part of the dynamic, and the money interests (or wealth) part of it, and these two aspects are frequently in contradiction, serving fundamentally different goals. SWFs are also quite fascinating because when you talk to the people who manage these funds, they have an interest in convincing you that the decisions are made almost exclusively on a financial basis—they really will go to great lengths to differentiate their government owners and those who make the management decisions. At the same time, these people ultimately answer to someone in power. Therefore, for most SWFs, it remains deeply unclear who is actually making the investment decisions and for what purposes. Of course, it is not always clear how other vehicles, such as hedge funds and private equity make the decisions they do, but I think what a lot of people find particularly disconcerting about SWFs is that they seem to act on behalf of people who have a different identity from their own. People who could be trying to manipulate politics and markets in a way that would have a long-term effect on their own populations. Regular investors come and go at will, and they only share an interest in profit as far as most of us understand. However, SWFs have that extra “sovereign” part right behind them that obscures their true interest. GJIA: These funds can be found in countries all across the globe, in both authoritarian states and democracies. Would you say SWFs differ in their goals and structures between regime-type? KL: It is not necessarily regime type that makes the goals and structures of SWFs different. It has to do with their economies. Let’s look at a country like China. There’s going to be a debate about exactly how to characterize the regime, but it is a country with many different kinds of sovereign wealth funds, and a particularly opaque state connection to each. At one time, some of the state-owned Chinese oil companies created specialized investment vehicles listed outside Chinese markets that excluded parts of the firms that were more associated with human rights violations. At the same time, the China Investment Corporation (CIC)—China’s largest SWF—draws a lot of concern, not necessarily because of its investment activities, but because of the dynamics of global politics. So, I wouldn’t really tie differences to regime types themselves in a wholesale way, but rather to how such funds are perceived and how they are structured. Saudi Arabia’s SWF is getting all kinds of attention for its involvement in Hollywood, and this takes me right back to when I was a student in the 1980s, when people were concerned about Japanese investment entities buying assets in Hollywood. They aren’t quite the same in financial terms, but it’s the same kind of concern about foreign investment that drives people to be suspicious, and the whole idea that “foreigners are influencing Hollywood.” This holds true across industries, and it reflects where politics are in places like the United States right now. One metric we can try to look at is transparency, where all the funds will tell you, “we are transparent.” The problem you’ll keep running into with this approach is how you value things. When trying to do comparative studies of equity markets, you’ll find that every country doesn’t use Generally Accepted Accounting Principles like we do in the United States. A fund may appear opaque politically and not want people to show what they’re invested in or what their intent with that investment is, but they could also just not be able to report it because of the way it was purchased, or the kinds of shares they purchased. There are some assets out there that really are difficult to put a monetary value on. GJIA: To what extent do domestic politics shape SWF behavior in both the investing “home” country and the recipient “host” country? KL: This depends on the type of fund present and also on the extent to which voters’ political views are able to influence the fund. For example, in a democratic home state like Norway, the SWF doesn’t invest in nuclear weapons or tobacco because of social concerns, but there is a continuing debate over whether it should invest in oil, even though that’s where most of the money comes from. The degree to which Norway will continue to make those investments, and whether they contradict the government’s overall climate goals, is an open question in Norwegian politics. Because of the way the fund’s governance is structured, it may not be easy to resolve. On the other hand, some people consider pension funds, like the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) in Ohio, to be quasi-SWF. They have a very strict separation between the people who make up the management division and the fund owners. No teacher or professor would want to invest in things that may harm the future of their students. At the same time, a fund manager might see an opportunity in a diversified multinational corporation that offers a good return, despite it deriving part of its revenue from e-cigarettes. These contests are very apparent. Domestic politics can work in host countries too. A good example is Singapore’s SWF, Temasek, investing in Thailand’s telecommunications sector. If you study political economy, you already know that countries everywhere are uncomfortable with foreign ownership of their telecom sectors because a foreign entity could monitor or manipulate our communications with each other. In the case of Temasek, there was significant pushback from Thai citizens surrounding the deal, which went on to influence national political sentiment toward Singapore as a whole, underscoring the risks some SWFs may face with their investment choices. In this case, fund behavior led to the dissolution of the entire Thai government in 2006 and a subsequent coup d’état. GJIA: To address some of this unease, the Santiago Principles were established in 2009 to ostensibly promote trust and transparency. From your perspective, have these mechanisms actually changed fund behavior? KL: In international relations theory, we always like to have a clear set of norms and best practices—the orientation we want the proverbial ship to be going in. In that regard, the Santiago Principles at least got the discussion going about which direction SWFs should take at a time when people were very skittish about the growing size of these funds. Nobody wanted them to be out there and potentially destabilizing economies, so talks about disclosure, conditions for withdrawal, and the independence of managers were helpful when initiated. The biggest stumbling block was that there wasn’t exactly a good way to measure compliance with the Principles, let alone how to hold funds to them. If you read the Principles, they’re overall quite vague. In general, a fund doesn’t want to reveal how and why they make certain investment decisions because that information is proprietary—a fund makes money off of how and why it makes decisions—so how do you reconcile that with loosely-defined ideas of openness? Some decisions might have a political purpose. The bottom line is that trying to figure out and assign a score to compliance is not easy, and it is therefore the reason why the Santiago Principles never really got off the ground to the point where they could truly direct fund behavior. GJIA: Many emerging markets are looking to build their own SWFs from mineral and oil revenues. Historically, have funds shaped development trajectories in these countries? KL: I think the big story in international emerging markets investment is that the investment is increasingly no longer unidirectional. In the past multinational corporations of primarily Western background were the main form of foreign direct investment in a country. That has changed dramatically, to the point where you have companies from so-called “developing countries” taking over companies in the United States. Therefore, the landscape of international investment has changed, and I think SWFs are certainly a possibility to be the next step in the game. Historically, you didn’t need an entire financial vehicle to reinvest commodity revenues in your country, but as emerging markets get more financially sophisticated, their capacity to operate such funds has increased. SWFs would allow treasuries to move from relying on holding foreign exchange assets like cash or government bonds to having broader financial markets and targeted growth areas, while easing pressure on welfare expenditures. GJIA: With their increasing financial weight, do you see the presence of SWFs being a factor in the political choices leaders will have to make with regard to domestic and foreign policy? KL: It will depend on just how big the funds get. One of the reasons people are already apprehensive is because of their scale, and if certain SWFs in certain countries achieve a large-enough size, the presence will absolutely be cause for concern. The other factor political leaders will have to consider are their objectives. It’s not always clear how to define a SWF, or even where its activity is concentrated, but it is certainly a worry from the perspective of national security of opaque external investment. More than that, I think one of the most interesting questions going forward is whether the United States, the home to the world’s largest financial markets, will develop its own fund, for which the Trump administration announced a plan. There have also been several proposals in Congress. Were it to come into being, it would have tremendous weight. At the same time, one of the hallmarks of U.S. capitalism is a lack of government ownership of shares, so it would not be clear how such a fund would be received in domestic politics, or which direction it would take. Given how politically fragmented the country is, a Democratic administration would likely be concerned about different sectors of the economy, such as healthcare, and want investment there, rather than a Republican administration, which might prefer defense industries. No investment vehicle could thrive under conditions of such instability. Moreover, it remains unclear where the money to fund a theoretical U.S. SWF would come from. It would be a fundamentally different entity depending on whether it is financed with debt, economic surplus, commodities, or the sale of state companies, as in the case of Singapore. If it is debt, or government borrowing of some form, then the fund would have to outperform whatever the cost of that debt is, which is not an easy thing to do. I think our political leaders have enough on their plate. Our system has worked well keeping political and investment functions generally separate. We have seen different forms of business rise and fall, and even the perception of different countries, all of which funds are tied to. Unless a major SWF either starts—like in the case of the United States—or collapses—an issue that concerns the Saudis, I don’t see any political tsunamis on the horizon. . . . Kathryn Lavelle is the Ellen and Dixon Long Professor of World Affairs at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Her research explores the exchange between domestic and international and political institutions with a particular emphasis on political economy and multilateralism. Dr. Lavelle’s first book, The Politics of Equity Finance in Emerging Markets, explored the political circumstances that surround large issues of stock in the developing world. After being granted tenure at Case Western, she was awarded an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship and named the William A. Steiger fellow, a designation given to the most promising political scientist in her class of fellows. While in Washington during 2006-2007, she worked on the staff of the House Committee on Financial Services on issues related to domestic and international monetary policy. Dr. Lavelle holds a PhD in political science from Northwestern University; an M.A. in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia; and a bachelor’s degree in international economics from Georgetown University. She is a permanent member of the New York Council on Foreign Relations. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Interview conducted by Sid Mehrotra. Image Credit: Jason Leung, Unsplash Content Licenses, via Unsplash
Yes, romance & fantasy novels are political. : It's Been a Minute
How do romantic tropes and fantasies impact how you understand politics?You might be a fan of Romantic Fantasy, or as the internet calls it: Romantasy. Even if you're not, you would recognize the tradwives or fascism. Romantasies combine supernatural characters and plotlines with the rush of a whirlwind romance novel, and, in this episode, we're exploring how the politics of some of these books have an effect on politics in the real world.Brittany is joined by Netta Baker, Advanced Instructor of English at Virginia Tech, and Princess Weekes, video essayist and online pop culture critic. They get into how this genre demolishes misogyny while reinforcing conservative politics.Support Public Media. Join NPR Plus.Follow Brittany Luse on Instagram: @bmluseFor handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR’s Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub.
Killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis scrambles Second Amendment politics for Trump and Republicans
Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped elicit a White House turnabout this week after bristling over the administration's characterization of Alex Pretti, the second person killed in January by ...
Innovative Artists Entertainment Signs Jim Cummings, Voice Actor Behind Winnie The Pooh, Tigger, Tasmanian Devil & Other Classic Characters
Veteran voice actor Jim Cummings has inked with Innovative Artists Entertainment for representation, Deadline can report exclusively.
Alexander Skarsgård says he's 'not really comfortable' playing a righteous character
Alexander Skarsgård questions his morals, saying he's 'not really comfortable' playing a righteous character
Nightin Cage dev responds to fan feedback for more immersive fanservice
The developer of the upcoming Action RPG Nightin Cage has responded quickly to fan feedback regarding fanservice and the character's animations. In a recent post, the developer showed off the main…
Letter: Hawaii lawmaker puts politics over women
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda’s revisionist history of Title IX suggests the late U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink intended it also apply to transgender groups. Title IX addressed sex and related immutable characteristics, not gender, a social construct.
I didn’t mean to keep my daughter’s Christmas gift, but here we are: Jan Risher
In the newsroom lately, Jan Risher has sounded a lot like an infomercial — which is both out of character and mildly alarming. Turns out, her column this week is not a product pitch. It's a story about a Christmas gift and discovering there’s an easier way to carry things.
Treasury chief unloads on Gavin Newsom’s Davos stunt, mocks governor’s ‘brain the size of a walnut’
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent escalates feud with California Gov. Gavin Newsom after comparing him to "American Psycho" character.
Four questions for the NFL’s final four as a Super Bowl berth is on the line
This weekend will determine who plays in the Super Bowl. Sure that’s the Big Game, but this decides the storylines and characters that will dominate the Big Game.
Techmarine: Dive Into Space Marine 2’s Upcoming New Class
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 deploys in the Xbox Game Pass next week, and a new playable character is set to follow soon after. How does it play? We’re here to find out!
Game Preview: Pittsburgh Penguins @ Calgary Flames 1/21/26
Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (23-14-11, 57 points, 3rd place Metropolitan Division) @ Calgary Flames (21-23-5, 47 points, 7th place Pacific Division) When: 9:30 p.m. eastern How to Watch: Locally broadcast on Sportsnet Pittsburgh, SN1 and TVAS in Canada, streaming on ESPN+ Pens’ Path Ahead: The road trip continues tomorrow night in Edmonton, then an uncharacteristic two-day break gives […]
Donkey Kong Country Returns keeps on returning, as Nintendo adds Switch 2 upgrades, a new playable character and more
Nintendo has announced a free update for Donkey Kong Country Returns HD on Switch and Switch 2.
Here's the next batch of Xbox Game Pass games for January
Microsoft has revealed the next batch of games coming to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service this January.
Which dog breed stereotypes are true? Here’s the science
A large dataset shows some dog stereotypes are based in reality, and others might be unfair characterizations
Kate Hudson reveals letters Daniel Day-Lewis used to send to her dressing room
Kate Hudson is remembering the 'flattering' letters that Daniel Day-Lewis used to send to her dressing room that were written as his character Guido Contini when they filmed their movie musical, 'Nine.'
Heather McBreen’s new novel is a witty second-chance romance
Seattle author Heather McBreen chatted with us about her new book, "Sunk in Love," and its characters.
Ball X Pit’s First Free Update Adds New Characters, Balls, And More Next Week
The Regal update bolsters the award-winning game with a nice batch of new content.
Ketsu Battler adds Narmaya from Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
Ketsu Battler, the one-on-one butt shaking fighting game, has added Narmaya from Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising as a free guest character today alongside the previously announced Beelzebub via its…
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising DLC character Ilsa launches February 10
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising Character Pass Season 2 downloadable content character Ilsa will launch on February 10 for $7.99 / 880 yen alongside the game’s version 2.50 update, publisher …
No One’s Buying? Maybe Consumers Are Just ‘Choiceful,’ Executives Say.
A new way to characterize unenthusiastic consumers has overtaken earnings calls.
Christian McCaffrey Wins 2026 Bart Starr Award
Christian McCaffrey earns the Bart Starr Award, highlighting leadership and character as the 49ers prepare for the Seahawks.
Elden Ring: Nightreign Patch 1.03.2 Buffs All the Worst Nightfarers
Elden Ring: Nightreign just got a big balance patch, and even if you're not someone who's great at parsing patch notes, you might want to tune into this one, because basically every character that's been widely regarded as terrible for months now got a big buff.
House Speaker urges colleagues to fight Trump, who ‘would hold Colorado hostage’
A top Colorado Democrat on Wednesday characterized Colorado as under siege by the Trump administration, as she invoked Winston Churchill and urged colleagues to fight back. “In this moment, when the White House would hold Colorado hostage, I’m reminded of a Churchill saying: ‘You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, […]
Lithia neighbors push back against proposed sports complex in agricultural area: 'It's worth fighting for'
Residents living near Boyette Road in Lithia say what they call a sports complex operating on land zoned “agricultural rural” is changing the character of their community.
Hytale is Twitch's most-watched game as devs finally release Minecraft rival they've "waited ten years" for
Developers and fans celebrate the much-anticipated release of Minecraft rival Hytale, which has already topped the Twitch charts.
Amendment 34: A.6 Landslide Change Characterization Experiment Science Team Final Text and Due Dates
A.6 Earth Venture Suborbital-4 Landslide Change Characterization Experiment (LACCE) Science Team (ST) solicits proposals to build the full LACCE Science Team,
People put off giving CPR by unrealistic TV depictions, researchers say
Most dramas show characters searching for pulse and giving breaths but experts say chest compressions on their own can save lives
Federal Reserve Chair Powell under criminal investigation over HQ renovation, report
U.S. prosecutors investigate whether Fed Chair Jerome Powell allegedly mischaracterized renovation details during Senate Banking Committee appearances.
Oddball 'platypus galaxies' spotted by James Webb telescope may challenge our understanding of galaxy formation
Astronomers spotted nine galaxies with characteristics that have never been seen as a collection before. It's possible this is a newly found type of star-forming galaxy.
Bulls-Heat postponed because of condensation on United Center court during humid, rainy winter night in Chicago
On an uncharacteristically warm January day in the Windy City, a nearly two-hour delay was followed by a postponement.
List of all characters in Mario Tennis Fever
Check out the full list of characters in Mario Tennis Fever, which is the most ever in the series' history.
Google and Character.AI negotiate first major settlements in teen chatbot death cases
The settlements are among the first tied to lawsuits accusing AI companies of harming users.
Google, chatbot maker Character to settle suit alleging bot pushed teen to suicide
Google and Character Technologies have agreed to settle a lawsuit from a Florida mother who claimed a chatbot pushed her son to kill himself
‘Shōgun’ Creators Reveal Season 2’s New Main Character
Filming on Season 2 starts soon. Get the latest updates.
Character.AI and Google agree to settle lawsuits over teen mental health harms and suicides
Character.AI has agreed to settle multiple lawsuits alleging the artificial intelligence chatbot maker contributed to mental health crises and suicides among young people, including a case brought by Florida mother Megan Garcia.
Chris Hemsworth had to be told to stop defending his villainous character
Chris Hemsworth knows that a good actor has to empathize with his character — no matter how wicked. But one supervillain proved a bridge too far when he began to defend him during the press tour.
Stranger Things Returns To Dead by Daylight: Vecna, Dustin, & Eleven Enter The Fog
Stranger Things returns to Dead by Daylight with a brand-new Chapter, featuring iconic characters Vecna, Dustin Hendersen, and Eleven.
Code Vein II ‘Walkthrough’ trailer; ‘Character Creator Demo’ launches January 23
Bandai Namco has released an eight-minute “walkthrough” trailer for Code Vein II, as well as announced that a “Character Creator Demo” will be available starting January 23.
Alleged First Look at The Sims Project X Character Design
The rumors about The Sims Project X keep spreading like wildfire. First we got some talks spreading that The Sims 4 will be getting its last Expansion Pack
Embark CEO Confirms That If You Kill On Sight In Arc Raiders, You'll Get Matched With More Aggressive Players
Yep, as of a week ago, Arc Raiders has aggression-based matchmaking.
Scientists Find a Never-Before-Seen Animal Living in the Great Salt Lake
Utah biologists have characterized D. woaabi, the first of two nematode species recently discovered in the lake’s microbialites.
How the ‘Stranger Things’ series finale turned the Upside Down ‘Rightside Up’
With a giant evil spider monster, mysterious briefcase and a whole lot of teary characters bidding adieu, “Stranger Things” has now become a thing of the past.
Jan. 6 attack 'does not happen' without Trump, Jack Smith told Congress
In a closed-door interview, Smith characterized the Republican president as the “most culpable and most responsible person” in the criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
'Stranger Things' Couples, Ranked by How Much Chemistry They Actually Have
The grand finale arrives on Netflix December 31, so here's one last look back at the characters' most inconsistently important aspect: their love lives.
'The Last of Us' season 3 to recast Danny Ramirez's character
Danny Ramirez has seen the last of the post-apocalyptic landscape of 'The Last of Us' — the role of Manny will be recast in the upcoming third season.
Thousands in Kabul attend Afghanistan’s national buzkashi championship
Taliban authorities attend traditional sport characterised by limited formal rules and fierce physical competition.
Report: BioShock 4 Brief Glimpse Into the Characters and Setting
Meet the potential new villain and hero of BioShock 4. We break down the game's assets, the possible return of ADAM, and additional details.
Rainbow Six Siege Is Being Hacked, As Players Are Gifted 2 Billion Credits, While Ban Logs Are Spammed With Digs At Ubisoft
Content creators urge players to stay offline until the problem has been resolved, given the extent of the breach.
Guilty Gear Strive Producer offers details on big Version 2.0 update including new characters, rebalancing, new moves and more
Guilty Gear Strive closed out its fourth season of content earlier this year with the release of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners' Lucy, and things for the game are going to be apparently quite different going into 2026.Arc System Works has now ...
Code Vein II character trailer
Bandai Namco has released a new trailer for Code Vein II introducing character Valentin Voda.
Stranger Things Season 5's New Romance Highlights One Of The Show's Biggest Problems
A moment between two characters in Stranger Things season 5 volume 2 once again underscores the silliness of a status quo decision.
Timothée Chalamet's character in 'Marty Supreme' is based on a real hustling ping-pong icon from the 1950s
In "Marty Supreme," Timothée Chalamet plays the charismatic ping-pong playing hustler Marty Mauser. He's based on a real person.
New 'Community Playbook Academy' to revolutionize youth sports leagues in the U.S.
In youth sports, one of the most important charactersitics needed to
The Year in Entertainment 2025: The TV that was top
The small screen took us everywhere from the shores of Cousins Beach to the emergency room at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center this year. Here's a look at the shows and limited series that defined 2025:It was the medical procedural drama The Pitt that scored the top prize at the Emmys this year. Led by Noah Wyle, who won the best actor in a drama Emmy for his portrayal of Dr. Robby in the new series, The Pitt's first season followed the challenges faced by health care workers on the front lines over the course of a single, 15-hour shift at the hospital. Other big winners at the ceremony included Seth Rogen's new comedy series The Studio, as well as the Netflix limited series Adolescence.Many prestige shows captured the cultural zeitgeist in 2025. Fans traveled to Thailand to check in for season 3 of The White Lotus, while the mystery at Lumon Industries continued to unfold as Severance season 2 rolled out. The Last of Us viewers mourned a fan-favorite character during its sophomore season, while Star Wars fans returned to a galaxy far, far away to bid farewell to Andor as it debuted its second and final season.Nobody could stop talking about The Summer I Turned Pretty. Whether you were team Conrad or team Jeremiah, fans couldn't keep their eyes off the dramatic third season of the teen romance series, which spanned from the U.S.'s East Coast all the way to Paris. While the series ended with Belly finally picking which brother she wanted to be with, the story isn't quite over. A feature film that will end the romantic saga has been greenlit by Prime Video.Finally, the year ended with the release of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things. It turned Netflix's streaming records upside down, accumulating 59.6 million views in its first five days and becoming the best-ever premiere week viewing numbers for an English-language series on the streaming platform.Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
'Palace fight will have delighted Glasner'
Former Crystal Palace forward Glen Murray says Oliver Glasner will be "delighted" with the spirit shown by his side despite their Carabao Cup quarter-final exit on Tuesday evening. The Eagles fought back after Maxence Lacroix's late own goal to equalise deep into stoppage time and force penalties away at Arsenal, before the Gunners eventually progressed by winning the shootout. "When you take into consideration the way they lost the game at the weekend against Leeds, coming away to the Emirates in the quarter-final of a cup competition and digging in in the manner that they did showed character," Murray told BBC Radio 5 Live's Football Daily podcast.
See photos of sports fans dressed as the Grinch ahead of Christmas
Sports fans across the United States got into the holiday spirit by dressing as their favorite Dr. Seuss character.
'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' reveals casting for Sulu and Bones
'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' has revealed the casting for two fan-favorites characters that will appear in season 5's finale episode.
The disunity of science is a feature, not a bug
Mathematical models wield miraculous power, but mistaking them for reality has trapped science in a destructive quest for a “Theory of Everything.” Physicist and philosopher Ragner Fjelland argues that this leads to bloated, Frankenstein theories kept alive by clumsy, ad-hoc amendments, which reduce rather than boost science’s power. Fjelland calls for a radical shift in our attitude: we must reorientate towards creating entirely new theories, celebrating rather than lamenting disunity and diversity in science. Science, from the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century to the present day, has more or less developed in a “reductionist” way. The fundamental assumption is that all sciences may be ordered in a hierarchy that can be represented as an upside-down pyramid. At the top we find the human sciences, and at the bottom physics. Strong (or “ontological”) reductionism maintains that all theories at one level can be completely reduced to the lower level, all the way down to theories of atoms and elementary particles, or whatever is “at the bottom.” In the end, all diversity in the world can be unified in one fundamental theory. Hence it is called a final theory, or a Theory of Everything.One of the central figures in developing the idea of a Theory of Everything is the Dutch theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft, who received a Nobel Prize in physics in 1999 for his work. He emphasizes the non-empirical status of the theory:There exists no closely resembling alternative theory. This means that any slight change brought about in the rules would make the theory unlikely or inelegant. The theory will be a "package deal": take it, or leave it. This should hold both for the local laws and for the boundary conditions.This endeavor is not new. On the contrary, it goes all the way back to the birth of Western philosophy 2,500 years ago. The Babylonians made regular astronomical observations during a period of 600 years, from 747 BCE until 150 ACE. They developed mathematical techniques to predict astronomical phenomena, but they made no attempts at explaining them. However, the Greeks developed models, both material and theoretical, to explain the observed phenomena.The best example is Plato’s late dialogue Timaeus. Here he introduces a divine craftsman, the Demiurge, who has constructed the universe according to an original plan. Plato seems to have thought that the original plan is what is actually real, while the material world is merely an imperfect realization of it. He therefore does not, in the Timaeus, reconstruct the material universe, but the original plan, which can then be used to explain the material universe.Plato’s aim in producing a theoretical model is to reconstruct the original plan. That is what he carries out in Timaeus—and some modern physicists have embarked on the same project. For example, Einstein’s basic attitude is reflected in the title of Abraham Pais’ biography: “Subtle is the Lord...,” echoing Einstein’s comment, “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.” In an interview Einstein compared our situation to a child who enters a huge library. The child knows that someone has written the books, but he does not know the languages in which they are written. He suspects that there is a mysterious order, but he does not know what it is.___“We have all been working in what Husserl called the Galilean style; that is, we have all been making abstract mathematical models of the universe to which at least the physicists give a higher degree of reality than they accord the ordinary world of sensation.”Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize in Physics (1979)___This Platonist view is contrary to a widespread impression of science, symbolized by the picture of the “father” of modern science, Galileo Galilei, with his telescope. According to this impression, Galileo liberated himself from the dominating metaphysics of his day—basically Aristotelian philosophy—and constructed a telescope that he directed towards the sky, showing that Jupiter has four moons. He also performed experiments with bronze balls rolling down inclined planes and found the law of freely falling bodies.However, in other cases Galileo emphasized the unreliability of our senses. It is easy to see why. He defended Copernicus’ heliocentric hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, we are not at rest at the center of the universe, but moving at a tremendous speed through space. Why don’t we observe this motion? Galileo praises Copernicus because “with reason as his guide he resolutely continued to affirm what sensible experience seemed to contradict.” In other places he directly refers to Plato. SUGGESTED VIEWING The quest for a final theory With Michio Kaku Galileo’s Platonism goes back to his early writings. In The Assayer, published as early as 1623, Galileo compared the universe to a grand book that is written in the language of mathematics, and “its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.” Therefore, things that cannot be described by mathematics—for example, colors, smells and odors—are not real. They are merely subjective.This division into subjective and objective, advocated by Galileo and his younger contemporary René Descartes, is normally associated with a mechanistic world view, which is regarded as the opposite of Platonism. When we reduce something to, for example, molecules and atoms, we move “downwards.” In contrast, the Platonist moves “upwards,” to abstract entities. However, it only shows that when we address fundamental questions, we should be careful in applying everyday spatial metaphors like “up” and “down.”___Nature is complex, and we cannot in general construct mathematical models that adequately describe the world.___The endeavor of finding a Theory of Everything has been heavily criticized. In 2006, the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin published “The Crisis in Fundamental Physics.” He argued that one of the most fundamental principles of science is that we should only regard theories as scientific if we have the possibility to show that they are false by experiments. Although he did not refer to Karl Popper, other critics have referred to Popper and argued that a theory is not scientific if it cannot be falsified (see for example Ellis & Silk 2014).These were not the first physicists to be anti-reductionists. In 1972, the journal Science published an article by the physicist Philip Anderson with the title “More Is Different.” This is the kind of article a scientist would normally write only after he has won a Nobel Prize. However, Anderson won the Nobel Prize for physics five years later, in 1977. The article is amazing, not primarily because it argues in favor of anti-reductionism in general, but because it argues for anti-reductionism within physics itself. Anderson’s conclusion was:At each stage entirely new laws, concepts, and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry.We may say that Plato started the “unity of science movement,” based on Euclidean geometry as the model of all knowledge. A distinguishing mark of geometry is that all possible constructions can be reduced to a few fundamental principles. We have to acknowledge that this approach has limitations. In general, we can easily model technological systems. In addition, we may construct simplified and idealized models that capture important aspects of systems, from various perspectives and for various purposes. But nature is complex, and we cannot in general construct mathematical models that adequately describe the world. In a complex system, each level has its distinct, emergent, properties that are characteristic of this level. Therefore, a complex system should be investigated at different levels and from different perspectives. Instead of exclusively pursuing a scientific ideal based on the unity of science, we should acknowledge the diversity—or even the disunity—of science.
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Seventeen-year-old Grace Lee from Chula Vista is gaining national attention as a finalist in the global Breakthrough Junior Challenge, an annual competition that invites students to create original videos explaining complex scientific ideas in creative and engaging ways. Founded in 2015, the contest encourages young people to break down advanced scientific theories using imagination and storytelling— “Steven Spielberg meets Albert Einstein,” as organizers describe it. Lee’s submission centers on the principle of least time in physics, a concept that explains why light always travels the path that takes the least amount of time. To bring the idea to life, she used intricate origami characters and stop-motion animation, along with simple at-home experiments, she said. “The fact that light always travels via the path that takes the least amount of time sounds simple at first, but nature is full of surprises,” she said. “This principle is actually very profound and underlies many different fields in physics that seem completely unrelated, from optics to Newton’s laws to Einstein’s theory of relativity.” Also, origami has long been one of her passions and integrating it into her project felt natural. She often makes origami gifts for friends and teaches origami in her school clubs. “A single 10-second scene would take hours to craft,” she said, noting the mixture of stop-motion and post-production editing required to animate expressions and movement. To ensure the science remained accurate and accessible, she spent time reading books and online resources, writing a script, creating a storyboard, and filming and editing repeatedly until the visuals worked.The experiments were among the biggest challenges. To demonstrate water waves, she used everyday household items — “a spatula and an electric toothbrush to vibrate the waves, glass in a baking pan for different depths, and an iPhone flashlight so the waves would be visible.” She also put careful thought into explaining the principle through analogies, including a gingerbread man and a fox. “Analogies and visuals are incredibly important,” she said. “Visual demonstrations allow viewers to see how the science actually works.” Beyond the competition, Lee is deeply involved in science leadership and advocacy. She serves as International President of miRcore, the world’s largest student computational biology organization, with 136 chapters across five countries. She leads a 20-member executive board, organizes outreach connecting schools worldwide, and has helped run workshops at locations including Scripps Research Institute and the University of Michigan. “I used to be intimidated,” she said, but she gradually grew her skills and confidence. “Now I am no longer afraid to use my voice and enthusiasm to bring out the best in others.” Her research experience includes two peer-reviewed papers on asthma and vaping. Misconceptions around vaping, she said, show why clear science communication matters. “Our research shows that there is long-term harm to your lungs on the cellular level that isn’t obvious unless you come down with an illness like the flu,” she said. Lee also founded Full Hearts at Eastlake High School, transforming the small club into one of the school’s largest, with hands-on service projects in partnership with local nonprofits. She continues mentoring younger students to sustain the mission. If she wins the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, Grace hopes the $100,000 science lab prize for her school will expand opportunities for students who have limited access to equipment and hands-on science outside the classroom.
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The New WHO Pandemic Treaty and Global Health Governance: Incorporating Common but Differentiated Responsibilities into PABS - Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
On May 20, 2025, the World Health Assembly unanimously adopted the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Agreement, an international treaty designed to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. The product of three years of arduous negotiations, the treaty marks a new era of global cooperation in public health. However, core aspects of the agreement remain unresolved—notably the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) System, which is intended to ensure equitable access to pandemic-related materials and benefits. To support the successful implementation of the WHO Pandemic Agreement, the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” should be formally incorporated into the negotiating agenda of the PABS annex. Introduction For the first time, an international treaty has enshrined the principle of “One Health,” the compelling idea that the health of animals, humans, and the environment all contribute to pandemic risks. SARS (2003), H1N1 (2009–10), Ebola (2014–16), and COVID-19 all emerged through zoonotic spillover from animal hosts—respectively, civets, hogs, and bats. Together, they underscore the need for a coordinated, cross-sectoral approach. The Pandemic Agreement responds to this call, requiring state parties to acknowledge the ecological interplay and commit to a comprehensive “One Health” strategy. Specifically, Article 5 charges governments to address “the drivers of pandemics and the emergence and re-emergence of infectious disease at the human-animal-environment interface,” including wild animal markets, deforestation, and antibiotic overuse. Yet the effectiveness of this “One Health” vision depends equally on the free flow of scientific information and data among countries and institutions. Just as environmental and animal health factors have been neglected in past global frameworks, so too has data sharing been marginalized, despite its centrality to timely detection and response. The Pandemic Agreement takes an important step by requiring governments to enhance data collection and cooperate with the World Health Organization (WHO). However, these provisions will remain aspirational without a robust Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) annex. The PABS system will determine whether countries and researchers can rapidly exchange pathogen samples and genetic data while ensuring equitable access to resulting research and development, including diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines. Without such mechanisms, the treaty’s promise to operationalize “One Health” and strengthen global preparedness will risk becoming largely symbolic, echoing earlier failures to translate shared principles into coordinated action. Equity Concerns When the 2025 Health Assembly adopted the Pandemic Agreement, it left the difficult question of access to pathogens and the sharing of resulting benefits to be addressed in a separate agreement. Negotiations on this separate agreement, PABS, are now underway in Geneva. Yet governments remain divided over fundamental questions of equity between the countries that primarily contribute to the system and those that primarily draw from it—and consequently benefit. For example, wildlife in countries bordering the equator is likely to produce PABS materials, but companies in Europe are likely to use them to develop lucrative products. The most likely contributor countries are likely to be those biodiverse countries around the equator, such as Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Indonesia, where the number of human-mammalian viral host interactions is large. Conversely, countries most likely to benefit from this material are those with the technology, investors, and infrastructure to capitalize on genomic data, such as the United States, EU member states, and Japan. This imbalance reflects a broader pattern seen in prior international frameworks. Now, as in the past, the wealthiest countries in the world (a useful heuristic is membership of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)) disproportionately benefit from systems in which pathogens and genomic sequencing data are contributed to a common source. Under the International Agreement on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (the “Plant Treaty” or “Seed Treaty”) and the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) Framework, companies from Europe and North America disproportionately withdraw biological samples and data for development into lucrative medical products. Their governments and companies have both statutory and contractual claims to the products that those companies correspondingly produce. PABS appears poised to follow the same pattern. The text calls for strong language on access to pathogens and associated data, but the corresponding benefits that should flow to poorer countries are couched in equivocal or non-binding language. Common but Differentiated Responsibilities To address these inequities, the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” should be formally incorporated into the negotiating agenda of the PABS annex. Common but differentiated responsibilities are often a feature of climate change negotiations. The basic principle is that, even though all countries should reduce carbon emissions, governments that became rich and powerful through massive carbon emissions (e.g., France, the United Kingdom, the United States) should have a greater obligation to address the resulting crises. Applied to PABS, it would require that governments hosting and supporting companies developing lucrative products carry greater obligations toward the cost of running the PABS system; share benefits or final medical products; and transfer technology to help countries worldwide develop their own capacities to innovate and manufacture vaccines during an emergency. For example, an annex could mandate that any company based in an OECD country that withdraws PABS material would be obligated to donate the resulting diagnostics, therapeutics, or vaccines to the WHO during a public health emergency or pandemic. Questions remain about how robust those donations would be, but the principle is that they should deliver highly significant lifesaving benefits to be equitably shared. Theoretically, this approach mirrors the PIP Framework, in which companies withdrawing influenza samples are required to pay half of the operating costs. In practice, however, the framework has fallen short. The PIP Framework Secretariat has struggled to secure payments from companies, with companies often disagreeing over how much is owed. Additionally, without another pandemic influenza to test the strength of the agreement during a public health emergency, corporate compliance with sharing mechanisms remains unknown. Even if these limitations did not characterize the PIP Framework, partially paying for operating expenses does not address the inequity in access to genetic data and pathogen samples that left less developed countries last in line for COVID-19 vaccines (and, before them, H1N1). Common but differentiated responsibilities would go further, addressing governments’ legitimate grievances regarding information sharing. It would make withdrawals of PABS material and resulting products more transparent, building trust across the board. Enforcement and Enduring Success A key implication of this approach is that the governing mechanism of the PABS must have real enforcement authority. The WHO Pandemic Agreement delegates its core governance responsibilities to a Conference of the Parties (COP)—a governing body composed of one representative from each participating government, similar to those established under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The proposed WHO Pandemic Agreement COP is charged with oversight functions but ultimately possesses no real authority to compel a government to take any action it does not wish to take. The text does not give the COP the ability to, for example, sanction a party that does not comply with either textual obligations or PABS provisions. In other words, there are no effective mechanisms in place to ensure compliance. Perhaps just as significant, establishing a meaningful enforcement mechanism within the PABS system would strengthen the WHO’s credibility and its ability to ensure compliance across global health governance. By setting a precedent for accountability, such a mechanism could enhance the organization’s authority not only within the Pandemic Agreement but also in enforcing the revised International Health Regulations and other frameworks for public health emergencies. Conclusion The PABS annex can—and should—be different. It should establish clear responsibilities for funding as well as for sharing the diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines that result from contributions to the system. The system, in turn, must include a dedicated body empowered to hold governments and the corporations they sponsor accountable for their responsibilities before, during, and after pandemics. Doing so would restore trust in the broader agreement, which was eroded as commitments were repeatedly diluted while parties scrambled to meet their own self-imposed deadlines during the Pandemic Agreement negotiations. A robust PABS Annex would cement a grand social bargain. Wealthier countries and their corporations would gain unimpeded access to scientific information essential for developing and manufacturing lifesaving medical products. As such, they would stand to gain considerable economic benefit. Yet that privilege must be matched with responsibility. The grand bargain must include not only the right to innovate, but also the duty to ensure that innovation serves all. As medical products are developed and produced through collective contributions, every person must have equal access. All human beings deserve an equitable chance to survive—to save their own life, the lives of their families, and the well-being of their communities. … Sam Halabi, JD, MPhil, is the Bette Jacobs Endowed Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Health and the Director of the Center for Transformational Health Law at Georgetown Law. He serves as the co-lead for the WHO’s Working Group on Regulatory Consideration on AI and Health’s training workstream. He earned his JD from Harvard, his MPhil from Oxford, and undergraduate degrees from Kansas State University. Lawrence Gostin, LLD (Hon.), JD, BA, is University Distinguished Professor and Founding Director and Timothy and Linda O’Neill Professor of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. He is the author of Global Health Security: A Blueprint for the Future (Harvard University Press, 2021); Global Health Law (Harvard University Press, 2014); Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint (University of California Press, 3rd ed., 2016); Public Health Law and Ethics: A Reader (University of California Press, 3rd ed., 2018); Law and the Health System (Foundation Press, 2014); Principles of Mental Health Law & Practice (Oxford University Press, 2010). He also directs the WHO Collaborating Center at Georgetown University. Image Credit: United States Mission Geneva, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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The Shade Room (@theshaderoom)
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ON THE OBJECTIVITY OF SCIENCE: KARL POPPER and THOMAS KUHN. Lecture 5 of Postmodern Philosophy [Peterson Academy course]
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