His Majesty The King has approved the appointment of Professor Wim Decock, of the Universities of Louvain and Liège, as the new Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford. He will take up the post on 1 October 2026 and succeeds Professor Wolfgang Ernst. Professor Wim Decock Founded in the 1540s by King Henry VIII, the Regius Professorship of Civil Law at Oxford is one of the oldest of…
Quick Hits USCIS will continue to accept adjustment of status filings based on the Dates for Filing Chart in February 2026. All EB-3 categories advance, except India and China-mainland. EB-4 Certain Religious Workers (SR) is Unavailable (U) in February 2026 due to the program’s sunset on January 30, 2026. Final Action Dates The final action dates in the EB-3 category advance for all countries except for China-mainland and India in…
The Civil Rules Review Working Group’s Final Policy Report (the Final Report) was released on December 15, 2025, following extensive stakeholder consultation. The report builds on earlier reform proposals and continues to recommend sweeping changes to Ontario’s Rules of Civil Procedure, aimed at faster, more proportionate, and court-driven adjudication. If implemented, the proposals would significantly alter the civil litigation landscape in Ontario. Key proposals include: From a two-track process to…
The use of medications for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has increased substantially across Europe over the past decade, with the steepest rises seen among adults - particularly women - according to a large population-based study published in The Lancet Regional Health - Europe. In the context of the Data Analysis and Real World Interrogation Network (DARWIN EU®), researchers in the DARWIN EU® Coordination Centre analysed electronic health records from five…
Dr Victoria Nash, Oxford Internet Institute On 10 December 2025, many younger Australian teenagers woke up to a tough new reality: attempts to access TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram or YouTube were met with screens showing locked accounts and instructions to verify age.This is the result of legislation introduced by the Australian government to stop young people under the age of 16 from using major social media services, in an effort to protect them…
Anna Wilding, Research Fellow in Health Economics at The University of Manchester, said: “Working full time presents challenges for many workers whose jobs don’t offer the flexibility needed to take time away to attend healthcare appointments. This has significant implications for early diagnosis and management of long-term conditions.“The findings of our research make it clear that population health could be significantly improved by removing barriers during typical working hours to…
Belgrade’s reluctant move to comply with American sanctions and force Russia out of its energy industry exposes the real limits of national sovereignty in a world where the United States is asserting its will with increasing disregard for established norms and rules, writes Milan Lazović, Programme Manager at the Russian International Affairs Council The fate of the Serbian company Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS) already turned into an extremely complex political…
The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) has released its annual statistics on enforcement under the federal False Claims Act (“FCA”), reporting more than $6.8 billion in settlements and judgments for fiscal year (“FY”) 2025, the largest single‑year recovery in the statute’s history. The report reflects record whistleblower activity, the continued dominance of health care enforcement, and DOJ’s expanding use of the FCA in procurement, cybersecurity, pandemic relief, and trade matters.…
Quick Hits The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit provided guidance in a recent unpublished opinion on leave and remote work as reasonable accommodations under the ADA and West Virginia Human Rights Act. Indefinite leave is not a reasonable accommodation as a matter of law. Remote work is not a reasonable accommodation for an employee who is receiving short-term disability insurance benefits, which typically are awarded only when…
In 2025, both the B.C. Court of Appeal and the Federal Court of Canada issued significant decisions that speak to the role of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in interpreting and applying provincial and federal laws. Although subject to appeal, the decisions have immediate and far-reaching consequences for Indigenous peoples, project proponents, and governments. Key takeaways UNDRIP is now part of Canadian law as an…
The Valdai Discussion Club’s Russian-Indian conference, titled “India and Russia in the Changing Global Order: Strategic Autonomy, Security, and Partnership in the 21st Century,” will be held in New Delhi on February 4. The conference is co-organized by the Club’s Indian partner, the Vivekananda International Foundation. This is the Club’s third annual Russian-Indian conference. Since its inception, it has become a platform for in-depth intellectual exchange, allowing experts to discuss…
The team examined two potential limiting factors for hopping - the strength of the foot bones and the ability of the ankle to anchor the powerful tendons that drive a hop.Their analysis show that the giant kangaroos had shorter, thicker foot bones capable of withstanding landing forces and their heel bones were broad enough to support much thicker ankle tendons than those of modern kangaroos.However, these giants probably did not…
On January 22, a discussion titled “Russia’s Policy in the CIS: Is a Reset Needed?” took place at the Moscow venue of the Valdai Club. The moderator, Timofei Bordachev, stressed that the CIS—Russia’s immediate neighbourhood—continues to be the most important direction of Russian foreign policy, as it remains linked to the security of the Russian Federation and the implementation of its long-term development plans. He invited participants to discuss whether…
The Trump administration has issued an executive order limiting the purchase of single-family houses by large institutional investors. What’s the role of such investors in the housing market?When people discuss institutional investors in the housing market, they typically refer to companies with a large portfolio of single-family homes (SFHs) purchased to rent out to tenants. Right now, the “big three” in this space are Invitation Homes (formerly owned by Blackstone),…
Transcript Harlan Krumholz: Welcome to Health & Veritas. I’m Harlan Krumholz.Howard Forman: And I’m Howie Forman. We’re physicians and professors at Yale University. We’re trying to get closer to the truth about health and healthcare. Our guest today is Jonathan Cohn of The Bulwark. But first, we like to check in on current or hot topics in health and healthcare. What do you have today, Harlan?Harlan Krumholz: Yeah, thanks, Howie.…
On January 12, 2026, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed Assembly Bill 4182 amending key sections of the New Jersey Employer-Employee Relations Act (NJEERA). Originally enacted in 1968, NJEERA governs labor relations in the state’s public sector and established the Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) to oversee collective bargaining and dispute resolution for public employees. This new legislation, which contains multiple pages of additional text, (1) implements a significant shift…
Quick Hits On December 19, 2025, Governor Hochul signed into law legislation amending New York’s General Business Law to restrict the use of an applicant’s/employee’s credit history in employment decisions, effective April 28, 2026. The new law prohibits employers from requesting or using credit reports for employees or job applicants unless they fall into specific exceptions, such as certain positions that will have regular access to trade secrets, and positions…
Quick Hits Workers in certain certified professions in Canada can now more easily obtain authorization to work in other jurisdictions. Labour mobility between the provinces and territories, and at the federal level, has reduced red-tape barriers to help qualified professionals work outside the province where they are licensed or regulated. These changes make it easier for employers to reach a larger labour pool while reducing delays and paperwork. Federal—Free Trade…
Collection No. 11 To confront pressing societal challenges, we need businesses focused on new ideas and new solutions—and old ideas executed in new ways. We talked with Yale SOM faculty and alumni about pushing limits, taking disciplined risks, and developing resilient ventures while sustaining a dual commitment to profit and purpose. Illustration by Eva Bee. Published January 21, 2026 ‘Tough Tech’ Requires a Different Kind of Venture Capital Katie Rae…
What is impact investing, and how does it differ from regular investing?Impact investing is about having an investment strategy that seeks to generate positive, measurable social or environmental outcomes. It seeks to create those returns across a spectrum: financial gain is part of it, on the investing side, and then the other part of it is purposeful, positive impact. That can encompass a whole set of things, ranging from climate…
Russia—for which constructing a stable security order in Eurasia remains the overriding priority—is uniquely positioned to serve as a catalyst for understanding between Beijing and New Delhi, both in bilateral conversations and through multilateral platforms, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Anton Bespalov. The past year has witnessed a notable thaw in relations between Eurasia’s two largest powers—China and India. The process symbolically began with Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi’s meeting…
The study, The Silicon Gaze: A typology of biases and inequality in LLMs through the lens of place, by Francisco W. Kerche, Professor Matthew Zook and Professor Mark Graham, published in Platforms and Society on Tuesday 20th January, analysed over 20 million ChatGPT queries. When AI learns from biased data, it amplifies those biases further and can broadcast them at scale. That is why we need more transparency and more independent scrutiny of how these systems make claims about people and places,…
What blows me away is the power of evolution: we don’t yet know how to design a really good biological quantum sensor from scratch, but by carefully steering the evolutionary process in bacteria, Nature found a way for us.First author Gabriel Abrahams, Department of Engineering ScienceIn the study, the researchers created a new class of biomolecules called magneto-sensitive fluorescent proteins (or MFPs), that can interact with magnetic fields and radio…
January 20th is a symbolically interesting date. US President Donald Trump has been in office for a year now. It's time to take stock. In this year, he has accomplished (and some might say "wrecked") more than many American presidents have accomplished in their entire terms. He has radically changed the parameters of global politics, breaking traditional intra-Western alliances, writes Oleg Barabanov. February will bring another symbolic date. According to…
19 January 2026By Alena WabitschIn 2025 Alena Wabitsch won the ECB’s Young Economist Prize with the research highlighted in this blog post. Applications for the 2026 Prize will be open soon. For more details, go to the dedicated webpage.The way central banks communicate has a profound impact on how people perceive monetary policy. But who delivers messages also matters. This ECB Blog post explains how the messenger can affect both the reach…
The Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout, to be completed by summer 2026, will equip Manchester students with future-ready skills and enable researchers to accelerate interdisciplinary discovery and analysis at scale. Through access and training, Manchester graduates will be well prepared for the modern workplace, where employers increasingly expect graduates to be confident users of AI technologies. Students will also be able to use Microsoft 365 Copilot to support their studies in line with the University’s policies on the…
Seyfarth Synopsis: The California Court of Appeal rejected the argument that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) cannot apply absent evidence of interstate commerce, emphasizing that arbitration under the FAA is a matter of consent. Thus, the Court affirmed that an arbitration agreement is governed by the FAA when the parties expressly agree to its application. Tuufuli v. West Coast Dental Administrative Services, LLC, 2nd Appellate District, Case No. B338584. The…
On January 14, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that the 2026 threshold for applying the size-of-parties test of the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act will increase from $126.4 million to $133.9 million. Deals that exceed this $133.9 million threshold may need to be reported to the FTC and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) depending on the size of the parties to the transaction as measured by the volume of their…
Quick Hits The California Civil Rights Department’s preliminary pay data reporting templates for the 2025 pay reporting cycle show three new columns on both the payroll employee and the labor contractor employee reports: (1) Exemption Status; (2) Employment Type; and (3) Total Annual Weeks Worked. The preliminary templates show that these new columns are not required fields for the 2025 pay data reporting. The preliminary templates and FAQs are subject…
This year, YC has partnered with nearly two dozen companies to offer students who attend YC events a suite of free credits for AI devtools.The YC AI Student Starter Pack includes over $20,000 in cloud credits on Azure and AWS, over $5,000 in credits for GPT/Claude/Grok, and generous credits for AI devtools in voice, browser automation, web search, video generation, databases, web crawling, and more. We’re especially happy that 14…
On January 16, the Valdai Discussion Club’s Moscow venue hosted the presentation of the new Valdai Paper, “Turkey in the Context of Transforming International Relations and the New Eurasian Geopolitics.” Discussion moderator Anton Bespalov described Turkey as a classic example of a middle power—influential in its region, capable of projecting power outward, and skilfully balancing between greater powers. He emphasized that Russia shares Turkey’s ongoing search for identity, which arises…
A decade-long study led by Penguin Watch, at the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University, has uncovered a record shift in the breeding season of Antarctic penguins, likely in response to climate change. These changes threaten to disrupt penguins’ access to food and increase interspecies competition. The results have been published today (20 January - World Penguin Awareness Day) in the Journal of Animal Ecology. Chinstrap penguin with its…
16 January 2026By Benjamin Böninghausen and Andreea Liliana VladuThe euro area yield curve steepened significantly in 2025 as long-term and especially very long-term interest rates increased. This ECB Blog post dissects what happened and explores key drivers behind the unusually strong shift.Over the course of 2025, many debtors in the euro area faced the phenomenon that borrowing over longer time periods has become more costly relative to borrowing over the…
Quick Hits The legal landscape of employment arbitration continues to evolve as plaintiffs’ attorneys mount new challenges, particularly in light of laws like the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (EFAA). Employers can avoid pitfalls by staying informed on the latest issues and carefully crafting and regularly evaluating their arbitration agreements to maintain effectiveness and enforceability. The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) promotes the use of arbitration…
In Rizzuto v. Hamilton Wentworth Catholic District School Board, 2025 ONCA 773 (Rizzuto), the Court of Appeal for Ontario affirmed the dismissal of a negligence claim arising from a schoolyard bullying incident (the Incident). Although the trial judge found several shortcomings in how earlier bullying was addressed, the court was “unable to conclude more supervision or disciplinary measures would have deterred or prevented the incident.” Without a causal link between…
How the iron bar formed is currently a mystery, the authors say. They will need further, more detailed observations to unravel what is going on. There are two potential scenarios: the iron bar may reveal something new about how the ejection of the nebula by the parent star progressed, or the iron might be an arc of plasma resulting from the vaporisation of particles of iron dust embedded in the…
Quick Hits Employees may use FMLA leave to attend medical appointments related to serious health conditions for themselves or for a qualifying family member. FMLA leave also covers reasonable travel to and from such appointments. Medical certifications need not include an estimate of travel time to be complete and sufficient. Using FMLA Leave for Medical Appointments The FMLA entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take up to twelve work…
An uptick in performance in recent fundraising In this bulletin we provide our view on positive trends in the Canadian private equity market, discuss liquidity options being used in the current environment, and share three critical points that clients should keep in mind when negotiating private equity deals in 2026. The start of 2025 saw a positive development in a subdued Canadian private equity environment. During the first five months…
Quick Hits CBP recently proposed changes to its Visa Waiver Program and Electronic System for Travel Authorization and invited public comment through February 9, 2026. Proposed changes include moving to a mobile-only application (the ESTA mobile app) and requiring extensive new data, including social media information and family member details. Enhanced vetting and security changes include adding required applicant biometric uploads (i.e., a photograph of the applicant’s face or a…
The most recent amendments to Ontario’s Construction Act are now effective (as of January 1, 2026). The most significant implication of these amendments are to the administration of the statutory holdback and the requirement for the annual release of holdback going forward for construction projects in Ontario. The amendments were introduced through Building Ontario for You Act (Budget Measures) (Bill 216). An overview of key amendments under Bill 216 is set…