Category: MIL-OSI

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Power, Lecturer in Politics, University of Bristol

Peter Mandelson was released on bail this week after being arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Coming just days after the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the images of the former US ambassador being led away by police will likely stick with viewers for some time.

The political ramifications of Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US continue to reflect badly on Keir Starmer’s political judgment. While this is a story that will likely run and run, it is worth taking stock of how we got here.

December 19 2024: Mandelson appointed US ambassador

When Starmer chose Mandelson as ambassador, the general reaction was that it was a risk. The BBC pointed to his friendship with the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and described him as “not a baggage-free choice”. This baggage, if being friends with a known paedophile was not enough, included having to resign from government twice during the New Labour years.

Matthew Lynn, in the Telegraph, went further, arguing that he would make a “terrible” ambassador because he was both “damaged goods” and “put politely … accident prone”. For balance, Tom Harris (also in the Telegraph) described Mandelson as a “political genius” and “the right man to deal with Trump”.

This was, ultimately, the gamble taken by Starmer and his team. They appointed a known associate of Epstein with a dubious ethical track record, but who was – as a Downing Street source told the BBC in February 2025 – “supremely political” and a “brilliant operator”.

May 8 2025: Front and centre of UK-US trade deal

“Cometh the hour, cometh the Mandelson”, read the Guardian headline the day after the UK and the US agreed to a trade deal. A deal which, not for nothing, may well have been unpicked by Trump’s response to the Supreme Court ruling his tariffs unconstitutional. The Times said that Mandelson had “proven the doubters wrong”, and called him the “Trump whisperer”.

This was the moment, as I previously outlined in the Conversation, of supreme triumph. And it was widely seen, across the political spectrum, as vindication of the risk Starmer took.

September 8 2025: Birthday messages to Epstein released, Mandelson fired

The wheels came off with the release, by a US congressional panel, of a 238-page scrapbook given to Epstein for his 50th birthday. In it, Mandelson’s multi-page message to Epstein described him as his “best pal”. Mandelson said that he regretted “very, very deeply indeed, carrying on that association with him for far longer than I should have done”.

Starmer was initially supportive of Mandelson in the Commons, but sacked him after newly surfaced emails showed that he had sent supportive messages to Epstein when he faced charges of soliciting a minor in 2008. The BBC later reported that Number 10 and Foreign Office officials were aware of these emails prior to Starmer’s defence of Mandelson at prime minister’s questions, but that Starmer himself was not aware of the contents.

January 30 2026: Further Epstein files released

The release of further information about the close relationship between Mandelson and Epstein pointed to potential criminality. The emails, published by US officials, suggest that Mandelson passed privileged and market-sensitive information to Epstein during the fallout of the financial crisis. This led to the police investigation for misconduct in public office. Mandelson’s position, according to the BBC, is that he has not acted in any way criminally and that he was not motivated by financial gain.

Read more: Mandelson and the financial crash: why the Epstein allegations are so shocking

February 4 2026: MPs approve the release of documents

A House of Commons debate was held surrounding the release of files related to the appointment of Mandelson as US ambassador. Starmer initially suggested that files which could damage diplomatic relations or national security would be exempt from release. However, after an intervention from Angela Rayner, the government agreed to include a cross-party parliamentary committee in the process. The BBC has subsequently reported that these documents could number over 100,000.

February 23 2026: Mandelson arrested

Mandelson was arrested Monday night on suspicion of misconduct in public office, and released on bail Tuesday morning. Mandelson has claimed that his arrest was based on the “complete fiction” that he was a flight risk and planning to flee to the British Virgin Islands (which have an extradition agreement with the UK). It has now emerged that Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle passed information to the police ahead of the arrest.

What happens now?

Misconduct in public office is notoriously difficult to prosecute and tends to rely on a three stage test: that the accused must have been acting in an official capacity at the time of the alleged offence, that they wilfully misconducted themselves and that that conduct falls “so far below acceptable standards that it amounts to an abuse of the public’s trust”.

Legal experts suggest that the latter is an incredibly high bar. In this instance it might well be the case that simply leaking information does not meet that bar, and that the police will need to show some kind of material gain or beneficial exchange. Either way, Mandelson will ultimately be required to return to a police station when he will either be charged, have his bail extended or face no further action.

Further questions, naturally, will also be asked of Starmer’s judgement. A Cabinet Office due diligence report into Mandelson’s appointment is reportedly expected as early as next week. The document is said to have warned of the “reputational risk” of making him ambassador.

If this is the case, it could reignite conversations about Starmer’s leadership and a potentially bruising night in the Gorton and Denton byelection on Thursday won’t help. Though Starmer’s replacement in most circles is now being discussed as a matter of when, not if.

In the end, Starmer is learning the hard way – just as Boris Johnson did before him – that standards matter in British politics. It is not enough, as Starmer did when he updated the ministerial code, to just talk a big game. One cannot say that “restoring trust in politics is the great test of our era” and then do very little to actually address the root cause of that trust.

– ref. How Peter Mandelson went from US ambassador to arrested over misconduct claims – https://theconversation.com/how-peter-mandelson-went-from-us-ambassador-to-arrested-over-misconduct-claims-276787

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/26/how-peter-mandelson-went-from-us-ambassador-to-arrested-over-misconduct-claims-276787/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aleix Nadal, Analyst, Defence, Security and Justice team, RAND Europe

Officials recently sounded the alarm over Russia intercepting communications from European satellites. But this isn’t a new problem.

Ever since the initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, two Russian satellites have been secretly stalking European spacecraft. They have been manoeuvring close enough to raise concerns about more than mere observation.

In 2018, the French defence minister accused Russia of espionage after one of these vehicles was spotted in the vicinity of a Franco-Italian military communications satellite. Two Intelsat satellites were similarly targeted before that.

These so-called proximity and rendezvous operations (RPOs), in which a spacecraft deliberately manoeuvres to dock or operate near another object in space, are becoming commonplace in geostationary orbit (GEO), where satellites effectively stay fixed over the same spot on Earth.

RPOs are not inherently malicious. These operations can sometimes be used to refuel a satellite and extend its lifespan, or to remove defunct satellites and debris, keeping orbits clear for future missions.

Because the technology to improve satellite manoeuvrability is dual use – it has both civilian and military applications – the challenge is then to define intent and, if required, respond accordingly.

Satellite inspections

Launched in 2014 and 2023, the two highly secretive Russian “inspector” satellites, Luch/Olymp 1 and 2, are part of Russia’s efforts to identify any technical vulnerabilities embedded in Nato countries’ satellites.

If this had been their sole purpose, European officials would have had few grounds for serious concern or complaint. Approaching a satellite to characterise its profile is neither a new mission nor exclusive to Russia.

The US Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) inspection satellites have come as close as ten kilometres of other satellites in the past. Even commercial companies have begun to provide inspection services.

An Australian company called HEO recently flew by a classified Chinese satellite to uncover its technical features. In theory, information like this could be used in the future to disrupt the functioning of satellites.

However, the Russian satellites have often shadowed the same spacecraft for months, occasionally approaching within five kilometres of their targets. This does not fit the mission profile of satellite inspection, which would involve merely passing by a target, taking pictures and quickly moving on to another trajectory.

GSSAP satellites, for example, typically work in pairs, adopting a pincer-like approach: one satellite orbits above GEO, inspecting the back of a target satellite, while the other moves just below, surveying its front.

Luch satellites by contrast are essentially signals intelligence (Sigint) systems. By positioning them between a target satellite and its ground station, Russia can intercept the signal and eavesdrop on communications from European satellites such as those operated by Eutelsat, a French company, and Intelsat, a Luxembourgish-American company. Among other customers, these European satellites provide bandwidth to European militaries for secure communications.

Examined in isolation, these Luch vehicles should be viewed as surveillance satellites rather than counterspace weapons – which are satellites that can actually disrupt or disable another spacecraft. The Russian satellites are simply collecting information. On this basis alone, they do not pose a significant security threat.

However, space as a domain remains entangled with broader geopolitical dynamics on Earth. Any Russian space operation should be seen as part of a larger campaign to accrue strategic benefits, whether to gain a military advantage over Ukraine or to coerce European countries into withdrawing their support for Ukraine.

Future threat

From this perspective, the Luch RPOs could be interpreted not only as part of a Sigint effort, but also as a warning to European countries that their satellites are vulnerable to disruption.

As Major General Michael Traut, commander of Germany’s Space Command has noted, the Luch satellites have also likely intercepted the command links of their targets. The command links are supposedly secure transmissions from ground stations to satellites that convey operational instructions.

If this is true, Russia could potentially replicate the uplink signals used by ground stations to control satellites, allowing them to disrupt European space operations in the future.

If this sounds familiar, it is because the scenario would closely mirror Russia’s hybrid campaign against European undersea cables. This has included years of covertly mapping western infrastructure and, more recently, a sustained effort to sever fibre optic cables.

The RPOs conducted over the last few years by the two Luch satellites could be suggestive of more escalatory moves in the future should Russia continue to fail in deterring Europe from continuing its support for Ukraine.

What can Europe do, in this scenario? A first welcome step has been the release of public information exposing Russia’s activities in geostationary orbit. In the past, space operations were generally concealed under a veil of secrecy.

More transparency can be leveraged to delegitimise these activities in the eyes of the international community whilst also legitimising the development of Europe’s own counterspace programmes for self defence.

Indeed, European countries including the UK and Germany have been much more vocal about the requirement to deploy their own counterspace systems. Russia has demonstrated other in-orbit capabilities that use RPOs and can be employed as counterspace weapons.

Without a comprehensive toolbox that includes self-defence options, Europe may be exposed to more escalatory in-space activities for which it is not adequately prepared.

Safeguarding its dependence on space-enabled services, from military communications to economic connectivity, therefore requires treating orbital security as an integral component of its broader strategic posture.

– ref. How Russia is intercepting communications from European satellites – https://theconversation.com/how-russia-is-intercepting-communications-from-european-satellites-276094

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/26/how-russia-is-intercepting-communications-from-european-satellites-276094/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maxwell Modell, Research associate, Cardiff University

At the 2026 Bafta awards, big wins for independent British film I Swear and American horror film Sinners were overshadowed by a regrettable moment. Activist John Davidson said the N-word – arguably the most offensive slur in the English language due to the centuries of violence and oppression it carries – while Sinners’ stars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting an award.

Davidson, on whom the film I Swear is based, has Tourette syndrome – including coprolalia which causes the involuntary use of obscene and socially inappropriate words and phrases.

Jordon and Lindo looked shaken and have since expressed their discomfort and disappointment with Baftas’ handling of the situation. In an apology letter to Bafta members, the academy said it was launching a “comprehensive review” into the incident.

Since the incident, Davidson has received extensive online abuse, including accusations that he is a racist – an accusation that fails to consider that this was an involuntary audible compulsion. Davidson has stressed there was no intention behind the word, stating he was “deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning”.

Two things can be true at the same time. While this incident was involuntary, that does not lessen the hurt or offence that Jordan, Lindo and members of the viewing public felt. No one could have prevented Davidson’s involuntary compulsion in the moment.

However, it could have been edited out of the delayed broadcast. In fact, a second slur was removed, but this one was missed. Doing so would have spared viewers from hearing the slur and helped protect Davidson and others with Tourette’s from the abuse that followed. It also could have reduced the spread of misinformation about the condition, which directly undermines the mission of I Swear to teach empathy and kindness towards people with Tourette syndrome.

By broadcasting the Baftas on a two-hour delay in a condensed format, the BBC assumes greater editorial responsibility than with live transmission. It must therefore meet higher standards and be able to justify its editing choices. The BBC failed to do that in this instance, causing undue harm to both black and disabled people.

There are two main reasons why the Baftas are broadcast at a delay. The first is engagement. The award ceremony lasts three hours, so to help make it less tedious, the broadcast is edited down to two hours.

The second is political. The BBC’s editorial guidelines require them to prevent harm and offence to viewers. Award shows are considered high-risk because they are live and broadcasters cannot control what winners say.

This is often called “the tyranny of live”. As media and communications scholar Paddy Scannell wrote, in live broadcasting “if something goes wrong, the best you can do is damage limitation, for once the words are out of your mouth they are in the public domain and they cannot be unsaid”.

Yet, by broadcasting at a delay to mitigate “the tyranny of live”, broadcasters open up a new can of editorial worms – “the tyranny of the edit”.

In live broadcasting, when things go wrong, they can often be blamed on live conditions. While this does not necessarily reduce any harm caused, it can reduce culpability. Once a programme has been edited, this no longer applies, raising the editorial standards and making broadcasters accountable for every word spoken and removed.

In other words, broadcasters must be able to justify every editorial choice to their audience, especially when those choices cause harm or censor a political perspective.

Reaction and lessons for the BBC

The BBC has apologised for broadcasting the slur and re-edited the programme for BBC iPlayer. Producers overseeing the coverage told the Guardian that they did not hear the N-word from the broadcast truck due to a technical issue. That would hardly be a reassuring defence of their actions.

Davidson later said that he was assured by Bafta that any swearing would be edited out of the broadcast, and that he felt “a wave of shame” over the incident. He also questioned the decision to seat him so close to a microphone.

The BBC has also offered no explanation for the post-production removal of sections of My Father’s Shadow director Akinola Davies Jr’s acceptance speech, including a statement of solidarity with “the economic migrant, the conflict migrant, those under occupation, dictatorship, persecution and those experiencing genocide” and the remark “free Palestine”.

Labour MP Dawn Butler has written to the BBC seeking a full explanation for these decisions.

Beyond the immediate fallout, this episode carries wider lessons for the BBC about learning from past errors. Last summer, the BBC was found to have broken harm and offence standards after airing “death, death to the IDF” chants in Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury set. After this incident, they promised to review their protocols around the livestreaming of “high-risk” events. Yet a similar misjudgement happened again.

To maintain public trust and support, the BBC must be more responsive in explaining their editorial choices – and more forthcoming when they get things wrong.

– ref. Baftas racial slur controversy: what should the BBC have done? – https://theconversation.com/baftas-racial-slur-controversy-what-should-the-bbc-have-done-276801

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/26/baftas-racial-slur-controversy-what-should-the-bbc-have-done-276801/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Garritt C. Van Dyk, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato

Two of Australia’s top ten bestsellers in 2025 were cookbooks, both by Nagi Maehashi of RecipeTin Eats. Other popular books include Brooke Bellamy’s Bake with Brooki and Steph De Sousa’s Easy Dinner Queen. Yet increasingly, people are cooking from YouTube videos and other social media clips. What is the appeal of cookbooks today?

Cooking content on social media has become one of the most popular categories globally. Dedicated apps like SideChef have been created to help beginners understand technical terms in online recipes and automatically generate shopping lists.

In a 2025 study, SideChef found there were more than 4.6 million #TikTokFood posts and Pinterest listed food and drink as a top category. On YouTube, there are 6.74 million food and drink channels, which are 99% creator-driven. All-time YouTube views of food content reached 5.9 trillion in 2025.

Short-form videos provide step-by-step instruction and glamorous depictions of your next meal, but hard-copy cookbooks are more than just a collection of recipes.

Most cookbooks are technically categorised as illustrated non-fiction, filled with close-up photographs of food and images of the author in action. These illustrate the recipes, integrated with accompanying conversational text to engage the reader.

The three types of cookbook readers

Today’s cookbook audiences can be divided into three major groups: aspirational readers, everyday cooks and escapists.

The aspirational readers may want to cook like a chef, hoping the author will share secrets and include them in an inner circle of confidants. Others may aspire to a gendered ideal of domesticity, or seemingly effortless sophistication (just a little smoked duck breast and pickled fennel salad with pomegranate seeds and candied mandarin peel they threw together at the last minute).

The everyday cooks are looking to answer the dreaded question: what’s for dinner tonight? Some of these readers seek reliable, practical, frugal, and efficient solutions for the task of making food at home.

Others are seeking specialised instruction for new generations of appliances offering shortcuts or hands-off cooking, such as slow cookers, air fryers, or electric pressure cookers.

The escapists, however, are less concerned about 30-minute meals or how to reverse sear a steak. Their ideal cookbook is instead a fantasy, travelogue, or memoir, transporting the would-be cook to a nostalgic past or a far-off land, such as Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s Jerusalem.

The most extreme form of this escapism was described by US food writer Molly O’Neill as “food porn”, a substitute for actually engaging in the physical act of cooking. Stripped of the connections of community and shared meals, food porn is an extreme form of self-indulgent food writing that replaces the depth of social and cultural connections with “prose and recipes so removed from real life that they cannot be used except as vicarious experience”.

Cookbooks in this category are more like coffee-table books, meant to be perused at leisure rather than addressing an urgent need to get a meal on the table. Impractical recipes with difficult techniques, specialised equipment, and exotic ingredients are no barrier to this genre. The reality that time is also an expensive ingredient is not a consideration.

The most successful, bestselling cookbooks in Australia in recent years, like Maehashi’s RecipeTin Eats: Dinner or De Sousa’s Easy Dinner Queen, combine some elements of aspirational and everyday cooking, while turning away from the extremes of food porn. Their appeal extends beyond competent instructions and dependable results.

Maehashi’s recipes start with a pitch to the reader: Why should I make this, and why should I use this recipe? How will the dish fit into my repertoire of standbys? Her unpretentious, personable tone is reassuring for anyone developing their skills. The notes to the methods include helpful tips, substitutions, and explanations, avoiding technical terms. Many recipes are easy enough for rank novices, but include a wide range of cuisines and dishes that elevate the everyday cook. Her most challenging recipe is beef wellington, now infamous for its connection to the “mushroom murders”.

As with other successful cookbook authors, Maehashi’s popularity benefits from social media crossover. She has 1.7 million Instagram followers alone.

Is there a generational divide?

While there is a presumption that younger readers are more likely to get their food inspiration online and older readers prefer hard copy, the desire to limit screen time and “be present” also drives print sales.

Physical cookbooks are an antidote to the false efficiency of recipes on social media. Influencers often ask you to follow, comment and like to get their recipes. This content often ends up unread in your inbox or in a jumbled folder of saved posts and screenshots.

Without an extra paid app, such as ReciMe, and the time to organise the content, locating that viral recipe may take longer than pulling a book off the shelf and flipping to an old favourite. Some print cookbooks, like Jerusalem, now offer access to the e-book edition, so you don’t have to lug the hard copy around the grocery store or take photos of the cookbook with your phone.

Historically, cookbook audiences were first limited by literacy levels and the cost of purchasing books. Because of this, the first cookbooks were written by, and for, an elite audience rather than skilled professionals. During the 17th century, French cuisine as a distinct mode of cooking became the standard for noble households across Europe, and cookbooks for nouvelle cuisine gained popularity. Many skilled chefs, however, were illiterate and were prohibited from sharing the methods of their guilds.

Before printing technology increased the availability of books in the early modern period, cooking and baking were reliant on oral tradition and apprenticeship to teach skills and share knowledge. Chefs working in noble households, however, were exempt from guild restrictions and revealed their trade secrets to an elite audience only.

Today’s hard-copy cookbooks bear the scars of use – tangible evidence of time and effort in the kitchen, covers stained with splatters of tomato or pages stuck together with drips of pancake batter. The dirtiest, dog-eared cookbook is the one you turn to for dependable, familiar results. This contrasts with the pristine, glossy cookbook gathering dust in the front room, filled with recipes you will never make.

Like yellowed, handwritten recipe cards from a bygone era, a physical cookbook becomes an heirloom to pass on to the next generations. Smudged with butter, dotted with red wine, and covered in annotations (too much salt!), the cookbook becomes part of family history.

The ubiquity and convenience of digital recipes, often fleeting, has not replaced the physical cookbook as a touchstone of reliability, a cultural archive, or a guilty pleasure.

– ref. There are more than 4.6 million food posts on TikTok alone. Why, then, do we still love cookbooks? – https://theconversation.com/there-are-more-than-4-6-million-food-posts-on-tiktok-alone-why-then-do-we-still-love-cookbooks-276505

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/26/there-are-more-than-4-6-million-food-posts-on-tiktok-alone-why-then-do-we-still-love-cookbooks-276505/