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Ontario moves ahead on subsea Toronto Third Line

On Jan.7, 2026, the Ministry of Energy and Mines released a proposal (ERO 026-0019) to bring forward an order in council and Minister’s directive pursuant to Section 25.32 of the Electricity Act, 1998 that would direct the Independent Electricity System Operator’s (IESO) to undertake a competitive procurement process and enter into a procurement contract with a transmitter to develop and construct the Toronto Third Line project with an in-service date…

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University of Manchester mathematicians appointed as Fellows of new National Academy

Four researchers from the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE) have been appointed as inaugural Fellows of the Academy for the Mathematical Sciences, a new national body established to bring together the UK’s strongest mathematicians to help solve some of the UK’s biggest challenges. The appointments place Manchester researchers among a cohort of around 100 Fellows drawn from academia, business, industry and government. The Academy’s Fellowship will work collectively to address major national challenges including pandemic preparedness, economic transformation, national security, climate change and the safe…

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Mary-Ann Etiebet: Confronting Preventable Disease

Howie and Harlan are joined by Mary-Ann Etiebet of the public health organization Vital Strategies to discuss how policy, prevention, and stronger public-health systems can reduce the global burden of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other preventable conditions. Harlan reports on the federal push toward fully autonomous clinical care for heart failure; Howie looks at proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage payments and what they mean for beneficiaries, plans, and taxpayers. Show…

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Programme of the Third Russia-India Conference

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 development of bilateral relations between Russia and India, as well as the broader geopolitical situation.   Programme of the Russia-India Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club and the Vivekananda International Foundation “India–Russia in a Changing Global Order: Strategic Autonomy, Security, and Partnership in the 21st…

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NLRB Clarifies New Charge Intake Procedures Aimed at Reducing Backlog

Quick Hits The NLRB has implemented new case intake procedures requiring charging parties to submit evidence before their unfair labor practice cases are docketed. Under the new procedure, a failure to provide documentation and information supporting a charge within two weeks may lead to the dismissal of the charge. Designed to enhance efficiency in case handling and reduce the existing case backlog, the updated process may result in quicker resolutions…

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Without War and Peace: The Post-Conflict Development of the South Caucasus

Watching the developments in the South Caucasus, we see a picture that seems paradoxical by all previous standards of our understanding of the nature of international relations: rather than overcoming political barriers, numerous economic partnerships have adapted to them, entrenching existing fault lines. Since powerful external forces are involved in these partnerships, the regional conflict is projected onto the global level, becoming an element of a larger geopolitical competition. In…

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Who is accountable for high-value audience growth?

Where does accountability sit for attracting and retaining high-value audiences? Editorial, Marketing, Product, or … somewhere else? Reading time: 2 minutes As search declines, high-value audiences are no longer “acquired”, they are built. This report explores how fragmented accountability across editorial, product and commercial teams slows progress, and why clear leadership, shared priorities and common metrics are now critical to driving habitual, high-value audience growth. Download the full report here.…

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Managing Risk During a Government Shutdown: What Contractors Should Know

Quick Hits Identifying Impacted Contracts: Review contract terms and engage your contracting officer to determine if contracts are affected by the shutdown. Responding to Stop-Work Orders: Stop-work orders typically require immediate compliance. When complying, be sure to document all related communications and actions. Proactive Communication: If no stop-work order is issued, seek written confirmation from your contracting officer on whether to continue work. Mitigation Strategies: Manage financial exposure, communicate with…

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Firms with a Well-Paid Chief Human Resources Officer Build More Effective Workforces

A few decades ago, the role of an HR manager was fairly mundane. They were responsible for tasks such as managing payroll, ensuring compliance with labor laws, and organizing the office holiday party.Today, the role of chief human resources officer (CHRO) at large firms has become much more critical. These leaders have moved into the C-suite, often have the ear of the CEO, and are involved in major decisions about…

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Weathering the Storm: Understanding Sleep Time Deductions for Extended Employee Shifts

Quick Hits When an employee is required to be on duty for more than twenty-four hours, the FLSA allows employers to exclude up to eight hours of sleep time from compensable hours. This exclusion applies where: (1) there is an implied or express agreement to the exclusion; (2) the employer provides adequate sleeping facilities; and (3) the employee gets at least five hours of uninterrupted sleep. Nonexempt employees who are…

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443-million-year-old fossils reveal early vertebrate eyes

Synchrotron X-ray Fluorescence imaging works by scanning a sample in front of the intense X-ray beam generated by the synchrotron particle accelerator. The X-rays cause atoms in the sample to emit their own X-rays (X-ray fluorescence), which the scanning system detects. The properties of the fluoresced X-rays are specific to the chemical element they originated from. As such, this technique can be used to identify and map tiny differences in…

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Potential Immigration Impacts on Employers of Another Government Shutdown

Quick Hits To avoid a partial government shutdown, a funding package for the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, Treasury, State, and other agencies must pass the U.S. Senate before January 30, 2026. A government shutdown of these departments would suspend critical immigration functions, including PERM processing, prevailing wage determinations, and Labor Condition Applications. E-Verify would also likely be unavailable, and…

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Oxford academics among the first Fellows of the Academy for the Mathematical Sciences

The Academy for the Mathematical Sciences (AcadMathSci), founded in September 2023, brings together academia, education, business, industry, and government from across the UK to provide an authoritative, persuasive, and influential voice for the whole of the mathematical sciences. The Academy’s new Fellowship will bring together the UK’s ‘hidden problem solvers’, whose breadth of experience and depth of expertise will make the Fellowship much greater than the sum of its parts.Working…

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European Political Architecture: Dynamics and Prospects

Given the direction of world politics and recent events, institutions like the EU and NATO are increasingly losing influence, and if the US were to truly disengage from Europe, the future awaiting European countries could be brighter than imagined, writes Christian Baldi. The author is a participant of the Valdai – New Generation project.  As the months pass, the deepening divisions within the Western bloc are becoming increasingly pronounced: American claims on Greenland, tensions between…

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OFCCP’s Start to 2026—Proposed Funding and a Focus on Complaints and VEVRAA

Quick Hits OFCCP issued an Information Collection Request on January 2, 2026, seeking to revise questions on its complaint and pre-complaint inquiry forms to align with Executive Order 14173. OFCCP issued a renewed Information Collection Request on January 7, 2026, seeking to extend existing recordkeeping requirements under VEVRAA. On January 20, 2026, an appropriation bill was introduced that proposed to fund OFCCP at $100,976,000 for fiscal year 2026. This appropriation…

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Researchers find reducing salt in everyday foods could prevent tens of thousands of heart attacks and strokes

The study, published in the American Heart Association's Journal Hypertension, examined how much salt people in the UK currently consume from packaged and takeaway foods, and estimated what would happen if all food categories covered by the government’s 2024 salt targets met those goals.The 2024 salt targets set maximum and average salt limits for 108 categories of everyday packaged and out-of-home foods - from bread and ready meals to takeaway…

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State Department Announces Suspension of Immigrant Visa Issuance for 75 Countries

Quick Hits Effective January 21, 2026, the State Department will pause issuance of immigrant visas to applicants from seventy-five designated countries. Nonimmigrant visas (e.g., H-1B, L-1, TN, and B-1/B-2) will continue to be processed and are not impacted by this directive. Scope and Designated Countries The seventy-five countries impacted by the announcement include: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia, Brazil, Burma,…

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AI Monopolists Could Be a Disaster for Workers

What do you think is missing from the debate about AI and job loss?The macroeconomists who are thinking about this question are focused on comparing two rates. Let’s say that eventually goods essentially get to be free, because AI makes more energy and makes more robots and goods become very cheap to make in terms of the actual cost of the resources used. Meanwhile, since the machines are making everything,…

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Global population living with extreme heat to double by 2050

Most of the impacts will be felt early on as the world passes the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Agreement, the authors warn. In 2010, 23% of the world's population lived with extreme heat, and this is set to grow to 41% over the next decades.Published in Nature Sustainability, the findings have grave implications for humanity. The Central African Republic, Nigeria, South Sudan, Laos, and Brazil are predicted to see…

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Radical measures needed to close arts class gap in Greater Manchester, inquiry finds

Working class creatives are struggling to break into and are leaving the arts, a new inquiry has warned. Class Ceiling, led by Chancellor of The University of Manchester Nazir Afzal OBE and Avis Gilmore, former Deputy General Secretary of one of Europe’s biggest trade unions, found that barriers preventing working class talent from succeeding included class-based discrimination, low pay, a lack of connections and exploitative practices.   Less than half of creatives surveyed…

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Mind the gap: credit dynamics in the euro area

26 January 2026By Paola Di Casola, Caterina Mendicino, Giulio Nicoletti and Ana SkoblarAn effective transmission of monetary policy to credit is key for supporting investment and growth. This blog post examines the recent credit recovery, highlighting that it has been more gradual than in past episodes and explores the factors behind this sluggish recovery.Since the ECB began cutting rates in June 2024, credit to the private non-financial sector has seen…

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Trump’s Extra Tariffs: A New Round of Trade Disputes Within the WTO?

Amidst a breakdown in the global trading system, more dispute resolution bodies and arrangements are coming into being as viable alternatives to the established institutions of old. Yet even in the newly emerging trading landscape the United States maintains an advantage, writes Ekaterina Knyazkina, Junior Research Fellow, Institute for International Studies, MGIMO University The opening stages of the Trump presidency brought the world to the brink of a large-scale trade…

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EEOC Rescinds Biden-Era Guidance Recognizing Unlawful Harassment Over Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity

Quick Hits The EEOC voted 2–1 along party lines to rescind the 2024 anti-harassment guidance that recognized harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity as unlawful under Title VII. The reversal aligns with the Trump administration and EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas’s federal policy shift to define sex as immutable and binary. This rescission follows a federal court ruling that the EEOC had overstepped its authority with the original guidance,…

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New Jersey Enacts ‘Historic’ Expansion of the New Jersey Family Leave Act

Quick Hits On January 17, 2026, outgoing New Jersey governor Phil Murphy signed into law a bill that will expand the reach and protections of the NJFLA. The new law also appears to greatly expand state law, including new job-protection provisions for employees taking medical leave. The new law takes effect on July 17, 2026, six months following its enactment. Smaller Employers Affected and Newer Employees Eligible The new law…

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Canada Revenue Agency reverses its long-standing position on the GST/HST Status of Mutual Fund Trailing Commissions

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has announced a major change to the goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) treatment of mutual fund trailing commissions (Trailing Commissions). Effective July 1, 2026, Trailing Commissions will be treated as taxable supplies, reversing the CRA’s long-standing position that these payments were in respect of exempt financial services. This change will have significant implications for mutual fund managers (Managers), dealers, and advisors, including new…

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Congratulations to EquipmentShare on Going Public

When we first met the founders of EquipmentShare in Winter 2015, they didn’t come from Silicon Valley or Wall Street. They came from rural Missouri: the “Show Me” state. Their background is one where you learned to build things yourself, fix what was broken, and work with what you had.EquipmentShare’s founders grew up in a commune where rules were strict, and self-reliance wasn’t a slogan — it was a necessity.…

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Oxford tops Medicine and Computer Science rankings

The University of Oxford has been ranked first in the world in the Times Higher Education (THE) Subject Rankings for Medicine and Computer Science. Oxford leads in Medicine for the 15th consecutive year and in Computer Science for the 8th. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings are widely regarded as one of the most authoritative indicators of academic excellence, drawing from a rigorous set of criteria, including research influence,…

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Wim Decock appointed as new Regius Professor of Civil Law

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…

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February 2026 Visa Bulletin Shows Advancement in the EB-3 Category, Except for China-Mainland and India

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…

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A new era for civil litigation in Ontario: Highlights from the Civil Rules Review final report

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…

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ADHD medication use rises sharply across Europe, driven by growth among adults

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…

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Expert Comment: Is an under-16 social media ban the right course?

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…

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Lack of employee flexibility to attend healthcare appointments during work hours has knock-on health impacts

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…

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Pressed by Sanctions: Western Coercion and the Future of Russian–Serbian Relations

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…

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DOJ Reports Record $6.8 Billion in False Claims Act Recoveries for FY 2025

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.…

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Indefinite Leave and Remote Work? When Accommodations Are Not Reasonable

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…

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From mineral tenures to nuclear projects: The evolving role of UNDRIP in Canadian domestic law

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…

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The Valdai Club and the Vivekananda Foundation to Hold the Third Russian-Indian Conference

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…

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Jumping giants: Fossils show giant prehistoric kangaroos could still hop

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…

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Russia’s CIS Policy: Reset or Fine-Tuning?

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…

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