Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff Maxim Oreshkin says ‘The Future of the World’ is moving beyond debate, with mentorship helping turn ideas into action

The II Open Dialogue, 'The Future of the World. A New Platform for Global Growth,' has concluded at the National Centre RUSSIA in Moscow. Maxim Oreshkin, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Russian Presidential Administration, summed up the event, saying its key difference from last year was a stronger focus on turning ideas into practice.

”The difference between the second Open Dialogue and the first is that we are paying more attention to the implementation stage of the proposed ideas. A mentorship format has been introduced: Russian businesses and international companies are beginning to work with the essayists and involve them in their projects. They are genuinely helping to implement the essayists’ ideas from the standpoint of business, society, and humanity as a whole. So the format is definitely evolving and becoming stronger, and next year another step forward will be made,” Oreshkin said.

He also stressed the forum’s human-centered approach.

”A person must always remain at the center – their development, the realization of their potential, and the preservation and extension of active life under the demographic changes we are witnessing today. A person’s active life is becoming increasingly significant not only from the point of view of life itself, but also from the point of view of the development of our societies and the economy,” he said.

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The winner of the Investment in People track was Lubinda Haabazoka, who proposed creating a common education system within BRICS.

”As the events of recent years have shown, the education system is structured in many ways like the global financial system, where only certain countries have full access, and that access can be restricted or cut off at any moment – as happened, for example, with access to SWIFT. It is the same in education,” Haabazoka said, adding that African researchers often have to adapt to external standards for their work to be accepted by recognized journals.

The forum’s conclusions will be considered at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Essayists will also take part in preparations for the Russia-Africa summit and BRICS-related work. A key feature of the dialogue was continuity, with essayists from previous years serving as experts.

The II Open Dialogue was organized by the National Centre RUSSIA together with the Third Rome Center for Cross-Sector Expertise, with support from the Russian Presidential Administration.

Nigerian women of working age are mostly (90%) self-employed. By comparison, self-employment accounts for less than 16% of employment in high-income countries such as the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is far lower in middle-income countries like South Africa and Turkey too.

Official statistics show that self-employment in Nigeria is concentrated in the northern regions. And there’s a gender difference: women make up the majority of those working for themselves (Figure 1).

What these numbers do not explain is why women are far more likely than men to operate businesses from their homes, or whether those businesses generate meaningful economic returns.

As economists working on labour, gender, energy and development, we addressed these questions in a recent paper.

Using nationally representative household data from 2010 to 2019, the study examines why Nigerian women run enterprises from their homes. These kinds of operations include selling goods from a front room, preparing food at home, or offering haircuts, beauty services, laundry and dry cleaning, and shoe repair. They also make textiles, crafts, garments, shoes and cosmetics at home rather than in shops, kiosks or workshops.

The findings challenge the idea that home-based self-employment is mainly about personal preference or flexibility.

Childcare responsibilities, housing access, electricity and cultural norms strongly shape women’s work location. These insights reveal that supporting women in business must go beyond training or microfinance, and remove structural barriers.

Childcare limits women’s workplaces

We first identified factors associated with operating home-based businesses, using data (2010-2019) from national surveys that follow the same households over time.

We then examined how individual, household and contextual factors shape the likelihood of operating a business from home. We found that childcare was the strongest factor influencing women’s choice of work location.

The presence of young children doesn’t much affect where men work. For women, however, having young children makes it more likely they will run a business from home.

In Nigeria, women shoulder most of the unpaid domestic labour, including childcare, cooking and cleaning. Home-based businesses allow women to earn income while doing that labour.

For many women, home-based work may not be the most attractive option. Rather, the patterns we saw in the data suggest that it’s a way to reconcile income-earning with unpaid domestic responsibilities. Other research into women’s experiences has also shown that working from home may be a necessity rather than a choice.

Why home ownership doesn’t benefit women equally

Homeowners who operate home-based enterprises are better positioned to use property as collateral, access credit, expand workspace, or invest in equipment. They are able to turn housing into productive capital.

However, these advantages are not equally accessible to women.

Only 8.2% of women aged 20-49 are sole owners of land, compared with 34.2% of men, according to World Bank research into gender disparities in property ownership in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Nigerian constitution grants women equal rights to own, inherit and manage property. But many face legal, financial and social barriers that limit their actual control over assets.

Even in owner-occupied households, customary and patriarchal practices can mean that ownership doesn’t translate into decision-making power. Consequently, the same asset generates different economic returns for men and women. It confines women to lower-return home-based activities.

We found that 67% of female homeowners operate home-based enterprises compared with 33% of male owners. Most men who own homes work away from home.

Geography and social norms matter

We found that home-based enterprises are concentrated in poorer regions where returns are low, particularly in northern Nigeria, as shown in figure 2.

Even after accounting for income and education, women in northern Nigeria are far more likely to run businesses from home than women in the south. Cultural and religious norms that restrict women’s mobility and public participation probably play a central role.

This complicates global policy narratives that frame home-based work as inherently empowering. In Nigeria, it often reflects the need to juggle paid work with household obligations under restrictive conditions. These businesses tend to cluster in low-entry sectors, offer limited skill development, and have little growth potential.

Education helps, but only up to a point

Education and household income do expand women’s options, but their effects are limited. Our study shows that better-educated women are less likely than equally educated men to remain in home-based businesses when alternatives are available.

As household income rises, women are also less likely to operate enterprises from home. Importantly, observable characteristics do not explain the full gender gap. The study finds that less than half of the difference in home-based self-employment can be attributed to education, household size, marital status and housing. The rest likely reflects deeper structural forces that shape outcomes differently for men and women. These are forces like social norms, unequal access to finance, gendered returns to assets, and expectations around unpaid care work.

What this means for policy

Promoting home-based self-employment as a route to women’s economic empowerment can be misleading. When women are pushed into home-based enterprises because childcare is expensive, institutions and property rights are weak, or finance is inaccessible, entrepreneurship becomes a response to constraint, not opportunity.

Policies that reduce childcare costs, strengthen women’s property and inheritance rights, and improve access to credit are likely to do more to expand women’s choices than entrepreneurship programmes alone.

Digital infrastructure can help some home-based businesses reach wider markets, but only if deeper barriers are addressed. And because constraints vary across regions, one-size-fits-all solutions are unlikely to work.

More than flexibility

Home-based self-employment in Nigeria reflects deeply gendered expectations about work and care. Many women work from home not to assert independence, but because they have limited options.

Recognising this distinction matters. Celebrating women’s “flexibility” without addressing the constraints behind it risks turning resilience into a permanent requirement. A more equal future is one in which women can choose where and how they work, rather than adjusting their livelihoods around structural barriers.

Ikechukwu (Ike) Nwaka is affiliated with REACH Edmonton Council for Safe Communities as a Board Member

George Nwokike Ike does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Exclusive: Government should back projects that prioritise renewables to protect consumers from ongoing price shocks, they say

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Former oil and gas industry leaders, including senior executives from BP and Shell, are warning the Albanese government that Australians risk ongoing price shocks and higher costs if it prioritises fossil fuel development in response to the global energy crisis.

Sixteen ex-executives and professionals – who had worked for companies including Woodside, Inpex, Exxon Mobil and Esso – have urged the government to reject calls for fast-tracked gas and coal extraction, arguing it would do nothing to improve the nation’s liquid fuel security.

Artist posted social media video showing large sculpture being towed into Waterloo Place in middle of night

A new Banksy statue, featuring a man with his face covered by a flag, was this week erected in the dead of night in central London.

His new work of art was first spotted on Wednesday, and the artist’s signature was scrawled at the base of the statue’s plinth.

Two months into the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz is still mostly shut. Vessel traffic is running at a fraction of pre-war levels, with the patchwork of ceasefires, blockades and re-closures since February 28 not restoring confidence on the bridge of any tanker.

Hormuz has long been understood as one of the world’s central trade chokepoints. It normally carries around 20 million barrels of crude and oil products each day, as well as roughly a fifth of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. A third of the world’s helium and a similar amount of the urea that ends up as fertiliser also pass through the strait.

Plans and projects to diversify away from Hormuz have been on drawing boards for decades, and those workarounds are now being stress-tested as never before. The bypass infrastructure is doing roughly what architects had hoped, providing around 3.5 million barrels to 5.5 million barrels a day of crude capacity.

But this is still nowhere near enough.

Hormuz workarounds

The most important pipeline on the planet right now runs across Saudi Arabia. The East-West Pipeline – also known as Petroline – was built in the 1980s during the original Tanker war, when Iran and Iraq attacked merchant vessels in the Gulf as part of their wider conflict.

The pipeline’s capacity was expanded to a 7 million barrel emergency ceiling in 2019. However, the loading terminals in the city of Yanbu on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast were never designed to carry this much oil this fast, and analysts tracking tanker traffic estimate that less oil is currently flowing through the pipeline than its theoretical ceiling.

From Yanbu, oil bound for Europe still has to cross Egypt via the Sumed pipeline, which has a capacity of just 2.5 million barrels per day. Although oil flows through this pipeline have surged by 150% since the start of the war, its comparatively small capacity remains a binding constraint on European supply.

Iran noticed the geoeconomic importance of Petroline and has targeted it accordingly. An Iranian drone strike on a pumping station in April knocked 700,000 barrels a day offline. Saudi Aramco, the operator, had the line back at full capacity within three days. While the repair time is reassuring, the fact of the strike is not.

The other half of the Gulf bypass story runs through the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline (Adcop) goes from Habshan to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman side of the country. With a capacity of just under 2 million barrels per day, Adcop is the only major bypass that exits the Gulf directly into the Indian Ocean.

But as with Petroline, it has been targeted during the war. Iranian drone strikes on Fujairah on March 3, 14 and 16 set storage tanks on fire and suspended loadings. While Adcop offers some diversification for the UAE, it does not solve the targeting problem.

The situation is worse for the Gulf region’s other big oil producers. Iraq’s 3.4 million barrels per day of pre-war crude exports went almost entirely through the southern port city of Basra and the Strait of Hormuz.

There is one northern pipeline, connecting oil fields in Kirkuk to Ceyhan in Turkey. This pipeline was reopened in September 2025 after a two-and-a-half-year halt, with flows ramped up to 250,000 barrels a day in March. But this volume pales in comparison to what Iraq has lost.

Kuwait has it worse still. Pre-war crude exports ran at around 2 million barrels per day, with every barrel exiting through Hormuz. Kuwait has no pipeline alternative. Kuwait Petroleum Corporation declared force majeure in March, temporarily allowing it to suspend its obligations to meet delivery contracts.

This was extended on April 20, with the oil company saying it could not meet contractual obligations even if Hormuz reopened. Overcoming the damage that has been inflicted on Kuwait’s production base – and then ramping up production – will take months.

Qatar’s vulnerability is a different shape. Its pre-war crude exports were smaller than its Gulf neigbours, at around 0.6 million barrels per day. These exports all left Qatar via the strait. For Qatar, the story is gas. Its 77 million tonne LNG capacity at Ras Laffan is the largest in the world, supplying about 19% of global LNG trade. There is no alternative to shipping this gas through Hormuz.

Iran itself has built a Hormuz bypass: a 1,000-kilometre pipeline from Goreh at the head of the Gulf to a terminal at Jask on the Gulf of Oman. It is designed for 1 million barrels per day. But in practice, sanctions and unfinished terminal infrastructure have kept actual throughput at a fraction of design.

The US Energy Information Administration estimated that, in summer 2024, under 70,000 barrels per day were flowing through the pipeline. Loadings stopped altogether that September. According to Kpler, which provides real-time data on global shipping movements, only a single tanker – around two million barrels – has loaded at Jask in the war so far.

A call for more pipes in the Gulf, as there have been since the war began, is understandable. But it is no answer. Replicating Hormuz in pipelines would cost hundreds of billions of US dollars and a decade of construction. And at the end of it, new pipelines and terminals at Yanbu, Fujairah and wherever else would be no harder to reach with a drone than the old ones.

David B Roberts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Abu Dhabi’s break with the oil cartel is less about barrels than power – testing Riyadh, helping Trump, and redrawing Gulf alliances

Although the United Arab Emirates has tried to present its upcoming exit from OPEC and the wider OPEC+ framework as part of its sovereign energy strategy and long-term economic planning, its timing and regional context suggest that this is a political act.

With its exit, the UAE is challenging the authority of Riyadh, strengthening its own strategic autonomy, offering Washington a useful instrument for influencing energy prices, and moving closer to a regional make-up where the US and Israel remain central actors in the pressure campaign against Iran. It’s a signal that Abu Dhabi no longer wishes to behave as a secondary participant in a Saudi-centered order that has shaped the Gulf oil system for decades.

Economic ambitions

The economic explanation is the most visible one, since the UAE has spent years building production capacity that the OPEC+ framework did not allow it to use fully. Abu Dhabi’s production capacity is estimated at around 4.85 million barrels per day (bpd), while the country has been moving toward a target of 5 million bpd by 2027, although before the latest regional shock it was producing around 3.4 million bpd and remained close to its effective OPEC+ ceiling. This created a growing contradiction, because Abu Dhabi had already built the industrial, financial, and logistical architecture for a larger role in the oil market, while the collective rules of the cartel forced it to operate as though its ambitions and capabilities were still limited.

The first and most cautious scenario is a gradual release of restrained supply, in which the UAE, once export routes are stabilized and infrastructure disrupted by the Iran war is restored, could add several hundred thousand bpd to the market without immediately provoking a full-scale price war. Such a path would allow Abu Dhabi to demonstrate that leaving OPEC+ produces real commercial benefits, while still avoiding a direct collision with Saudi Arabia, softening prices without collapsing them, and testing the limits of its new freedom without burning all bridges with Riyadh and other producers.

The more ambitious scenario would emerge if regional conditions calm and Asian demand remains strong, allowing the UAE to move toward 4.2 million or even 4.5 million bpd within 12 to 18 months, while the most aggressive scenario would involve a push close to 5 million bpd and the addition of roughly 1.3 million to 1.5 million bpd compared with its previous constrained position. In a tight market, such volumes could stabilize prices and provide relief to consumers, but in a softer market they could intensify downward pressure, undermine OPEC+ discipline and force Saudi Arabia to decide whether it is prepared to tolerate the political symbolism of Emirati barrels entering the market outside Saudi-led restraint. The real danger for OPEC+ is therefore not only a lower oil price, but the loss of confidence that collective discipline remains stronger than national ambition.

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The UAE vs. the KSA: A deep-seated rivalry

Yet the economic argument, however important it may be, explains only the surface of the decision, while the deeper meaning is political. Abu Dhabi is not merely seeking a larger export quota, nor is it simply trying to correct a technical imbalance between capacity and production limits, but is using oil to redraw its position inside the Gulf hierarchy. For decades, Saudi Arabia has treated OPEC as an extension of its regional leadership, while Riyadh’s ability to convene producers, manage scarcity, and influence prices has served as one of the foundations of its claim to leadership in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

The UAE’s exit challenges this architecture, implying that Abu Dhabi no longer accepts a system in which Saudi Arabia sets the rhythm and others are expected to adjust their ambitions accordingly. This makes the whole issue a dispute over who has the right to define the economic and political order of the Gulf.

Competition between the UAE and Saudi Arabia has been building for years and has long gone beyond oil. The two states may remain partners when they face external threats, and they may continue to cooperate in selected areas where their interests overlap, but they are increasingly rivals when the question becomes who will shape the future of the Gulf, who will attract global capital, who will dominate logistics, and who will become the main regional gateway between East and West.

Saudi Arabia is trying to transform itself into a financial, logistical, entertainment, and investment hub under its Vision 2030 initiative, while the UAE already occupies many of these spaces through Dubai’s commercial networks, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign-wealth power, Emirati airlines, ports, free-trade zones, and investment platforms. Because both states are attempting to sell themselves as the indispensable center of the post-oil Gulf economy, their rivalry is structural.

The role of oil

Saudi Arabia needs high oil prices to fund its vast transformation agenda, while the UAE can often tolerate lower prices more comfortably because its economy is more diversified and its fiscal break-even level has historically been lower. This gives Abu Dhabi more room to favor volume over price, while Riyadh is more inclined to defend a price floor that protects the financing of its domestic transformation.

This difference does not automatically make conflict inevitable, but it makes compromise more difficult, since the two countries are no longer simply discussing quotas within a shared framework. They are defending different models of Gulf power, different visions of economic transformation, and different ways of turning oil wealth into political influence.

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This confrontation could become open if Saudi Arabia deems that the UAE is using oil to weaken Saudi leadership. In that case, Riyadh may respond by increasing output, defending market share, applying diplomatic pressure, or trying to isolate the Abu Dhabi inside the Arab system.

The risk goes beyond just a price war – Saudi Arabia still has weight in the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab League, Islamic diplomacy, and the wider oil system. If the UAE’s move is seen as serving American and Israeli strategy at a moment of confrontation with Iran, Riyadh may find ways to portray Abu Dhabi as a state that is destabilizing the Arab consensus for the sake of its own narrow advantage.

A boon for Trump

The UAE’s exit gives the US, and specifically the administration of President Donald Trump, a potential strategic advantage. Trump has long criticized OPEC for restraining supply and supporting high oil prices, and a UAE decision to leave the cartel and eventually raise production gives Washington a friendly Gulf producer that can help soften energy prices without requiring a direct American confrontation with Riyadh.

This gives Trump an opportunity to argue that pressure on OPEC has worked and that America’s partners in the Gulf are helping stabilize the market. If additional Emirati barrels eventually reach the global market, Washington may be able to claim a political victory at home, even if the underlying regional situation remains unstable and dangerous.

Unshackled Emirati oil supplies would also provide Trump with additional political breathing room at home, easing energy-price pressures such as inflation and transport costs and alleviating public anger and voter dissatisfaction.

This would make Abu Dhabi an invaluable partner, in turn giving it political leverage in Washington. In essence, this is a political transaction where barrels are exchanged for strategic importance.

However, the UAE’s decision makes strategic sense only if the US-Iran conflict over the Strait of Hormuz remains in a cold phase without escalating into a wider regional war. If Hormuz is fully closed, if insurance costs become unbearable, or if Gulf infrastructure remains under constant threat, Abu Dhabi’s spare capacity becomes much less useful. The UAE needs stability, but not necessarily peace, because what it requires is a managed confrontation in which Iran is pressured, shipping is controlled, American and Israeli coordination remains active, and Emirati exports can gradually recover.

Frozen conflict is the perfect state of the US-Iran war for the UAE’s current ambitions – a situation where it can benefit from the pressure applied on Tehran, but oil infrastructure does not become part of the active battlefield. The UAE wants the presence of American and Israeli power, but it does not want to be part of a shooting war. It wants OPEC+ market discipline weakened, but it does not want total market chaos. Its strategy is therefore a balancing act between confrontation and continuity, because Abu Dhabi seeks to profit from instability without being consumed by it.

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Israel and Arab pushback

The Israeli dimension is also important, especially because, since the normalization of diplomatic relations with Israel via the 2020 Abraham Accords, the UAE has developed a new regional identity as a state that has openly integrated Israel into its diplomatic, technological, and security calculations, and in the context of confrontation with Iran, this matters enormously.

The UAE can present itself to Israel as a partner capable not only of intelligence and diplomatic coordination, but also of energy-market influence. If Abu Dhabi can help stabilize prices while Iran faces pressure, then Emirati oil policy becomes part of the wider anti-Iranian front.

This carries risks inside the Arab and Muslim worlds. Even states that distrust Tehran may not want the Gulf order to be openly reorganized around Israeli and American strategic needs, especially if such a reorganization weakens Arab collective mechanisms and deepens divisions among Gulf states. Saudi Arabia in particular may not oppose pressure on Iran in principle, but it will resist any arrangement in which the UAE becomes Washington’s preferred Gulf energy partner at Saudi Arabia’s expense, especially if that arrangement appears to combine energy policy, Israeli cooperation, and pressure on Iranian regional influence.

The view from Russia

OPEC+ was built as a Saudi-Russian mechanism for stabilizing the global oil market, and Moscow has benefited from the predictability that this format provided. The UAE’s departure does not automatically create a crisis in Emirati-Russian relations, especially given the broader economic and political ties between Moscow and Abu Dhabi, yet it may cool the atmosphere around energy coordination.

If Emirati production eventually puts pressure on prices or weakens discipline among other producers, Moscow may view the move as a step that complicates the very framework through which Russia and the Gulf states managed oil volatility in recent years, adding a layer of mistrust and cautious calculation to the dialogue between Abu Dhabi and Moscow.

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Worst-case scenario for the UAE

The worst scenario for the UAE would combine several pressures at once, with Saudi Arabia responding aggressively, Russia becoming more cautious, Iran escalating in the Gulf, export infrastructure remaining constrained, and Trump failing to provide the expected level of political and security support. If, in addition to all this, energy prices fall too far to reward the UAE’s extra production, the Emirates may find themselves in a difficult position in which they have weakened OPEC+ without gaining enough from the US, challenged the Saudis without neutralizing their influence, and exposed themselves to Iranian pressure without securing full protection.

American support is both the most vital and the most uncertain part of the UAE’s calculation. Trump may welcome the weakening of OPEC+ and the possibility of lower prices, but his domestic and international room for maneuver is not unlimited. If pressure inside the US grows, if Congress resists deeper regional commitments, or if American voters become tired of Middle Eastern entanglements, the UAE may discover that Washington’s promises are less durable than its own strategic exposure.

OPEC was created to give producers more control over their resources and more collective power against outside consumers, while OPEC+ was built to extend that control into a wider system that included Russia and other non-OPEC producers. The UAE’s exit reverses that, weakening producer solidarity and giving major consumers, especially the US, more leverage.

Abu Dhabi may gain autonomy, but the oil-producing world loses coherence. It is a breach in the idea that oil producers can still act collectively when their national projects, foreign-policy alignments, and strategic ambitions begin to diverge. The UAE is betting that autonomy will be more valuable than discipline, that partnership with the US and Israel will bring greater strategic returns than deference to Saudi Arabia, and that Moscow will treat the issue carefully enough to preserve broader relations with Abu Dhabi. It is also betting that Iran can be contained without turning the Gulf into a wider battlefield, and that the conflict can remain cold enough for oil to move while staying hot enough to keep pressure on Tehran. Each of these bets depends on conditions that Abu Dhabi does not fully control.

The exit from OPEC and OPEC+ is the beginning of a political test. The UAE has chosen to convert barrels into leverage and capacity into sovereignty, while also choosing confrontation over compromise and strategic autonomy over cartel discipline. The coming months will show whether Abu Dhabi has opened a path toward a new energy architecture, or whether it has underestimated the price of breaking the old one.

What’s the point of play? Is it simply a way to keep children occupied, or something more? For some, it’s about learning literacy and numeracy. For others, it’s how friendships form and relationships deepen. But it can be all of these at once, and more.

Most parents recognise that play matters. But there’s less agreement on what kind of play is best. Should children be guided towards activities designed to build specific skills, like sports for coordination, or construction for maths and engineering? Or should the child’s own interests lead the way, regardless of perceived educational value?

Our research focuses on a type of play often dismissed as “just for fun” – playing with dolls. Across a series of studies, we found that doll play can help children understand other people’s thoughts and feelings. This is a skill that underpins social interaction throughout life.

There is pressure on parents to create the “right” environment for development, often filled with toys that promise clear educational outcomes. STEM-focused toys (science, technology, engineering and maths), in particular, are widely seen as beneficial for learning. Doll play, on the other hand, can be viewed as having little educational benefit.

Our findings challenge that assumption.

More than make-believe

When playing with dolls, children often play out scenes between characters. These may seem simple on the surface but could present opportunities for the child to develop social and emotional skills.

As parents, it seems obvious that playmates are important for building and learning about relationships and other people, and recognising others’ emotions (empathy). But what if children can develop these skills even when playing alone?

Previous studies have found that children who engage more in pretend play tend to have stronger social understanding and empathy. Earlier studies, however, didn’t often use controlled methods to separate out the different factors linking pretend play and social understanding.

So, we set out to test this more directly. We worked with children aged four to eight, assessing their ability to understand that others can hold different beliefs and desires to their own. This is an important milestone in social development. If children recognise that their own mental states may vary from others, this should help them better understand other people and know how to interact with them.

After that initial assessment session, children were randomly assigned either a set of dolls or a tablet with open-ended creative games. They were asked to play several times a week, with parents logging how and when play occurred. We didn’t instruct children how to play because we wanted to understand their natural behaviour.

Read more: How realistic is Mattel’s new autistic Barbie?

After approximately six weeks, both sets of children came back and again completed the task about understanding others’ mental states. We found that the children who had been assigned dolls to play with, rather than tablets, showed a greater improvement in their understanding of others’ mental states during the intervening period.

The findings suggest that doll play can actively support the development of social understanding. This is consistent with prior research of ours showing that areas of the brain linked to social processing are activated during doll play, and that children use more language about thoughts and feelings when playing with dolls than when using tablets.

Why it matters beyond childhood

For parents, the message is reassuring – playing with dolls lets children practice skills that they can also use when playing with playmates, like understanding others, anticipating behaviour and responding appropriately.

These abilities matter far beyond childhood. They help us collaborate, resolve conflicts and navigate relationships. In a world that often feels increasingly divided, the capacity to see things from another person’s perspective is not just useful – it’s essential.

Sarah Gerson received funding for this project from Mattel Inc.

Ross E Vanderwert received funding from Mattel for this research.

Salim Hashmi received funding for this research from Mattel Inc.

To mark International Dawn Chorus day we’ve asked wildlife experts to make their case for why their favourite songbird deserves your vote. Cast your vote in the poll at the end of the article and let us know why in the comments. We hope their words will inspire you to step outside and soak up some birdsong this spring.

Song thrush

Championed by Cannelle Tassin de Montaigu, Research Fellow in Ecology and Evolution, University of Sussex

When people talk about the UK’s best bird songs they often go straight for the big names – loud, dramatic performers that grab your attention. But quietly in the background is the song thrush, a bird whose song is far more impressive than it first appears.

What sets the song thrush apart is not volume or flair, but structure. Its song is built from short, clear phrases, each repeated two or three times before moving on. It’s as if the bird is politely checking that its audience is paying attention. In a dawn chorus that often feels a bit chaotic, there’s something refreshingly organised about it. It’s a bird that’s actually thought things through.

It might not have the dramatic flair of the common nightingale, and it’s less showy than some of the usual favourites. There are no soaring crescendos or dramatic flourishes. But that’s part of its charm. The song is neat, rhythmic and surprisingly memorable once you start listening for it.

In the early morning soundscape, where many birds seem determined to out-sing one another, the song thrush isn’t trying to steal the spotlight. It just quietly does its thing, and does it very well. Underrated? Definitely. Worth your vote? I’d say so.

Robin

Championed by Judith Lock, Principal Teaching Fellow in Ecology and Evolution University of Southampton

The European robin is a delightfully common sight in gardens. You will very likely have heard the characteristic “tic”, followed by a tuneful verse lasting a few seconds. In noisy urban environments they sing louder, less complex songs, in order to be heard.

The male robins use their spring song (January to June) to signal their quality to females, then forming breeding pairs, and to signal competitive ability to other males. The spring song lasts one to three seconds, composed of four to six short motifs. They have an impressive repertoire of about 1,300 motifs, indicating that song is the particularly important for robins, in comparison to birds that rely more on colourful plumage or behavioural displays to communicate with each other.

Most birds sing mainly in the morning but robins sing all day. People often mistake their lovely evening song for a nightingale’s. Constant territory defence from non-migrating robins means that the robin song is a year-round soundtrack too. From July to December, both males and females sing the autumn song, of higher-pitched long, descending notes, with interspersed warbles. This song is to defend their individual winter territories. This indicates that song first evolved first in songbirds to ensure survival, before it became a signal used by males for reproduction. Each robin’s song is dynamic, constantly changing in response to the condition and age of the bird, and their rival.

Great tit

Championed by Josh Firth, Associate Professor of Behavioural Ecology, University of Leeds

Its song may not be as flashy as the nightingale or as poetically melancholy as the blackbird. But scientists have been taught so much by the great tit’s song, heard across British habitats from ancient woodlands to urban gardens. This spring marks 80 continuous years of UK-based scientists studying great tits at Wytham Woods, Oxford, the world’s longest-running study of individually-marked animals.

The unique dataset includes a family tree totaling over 100,000 great tits, with some birds’ lineages traceable back 37 generations. Early research on Wytham’s great tits during 1970s-1980s resulted in some the first studies to inform the scientific world about how bird song can help males find mates and defend territories, how larger song repertoires can bring more reproductive success, and how young birds learn these repertoires from neighbours (not just their fathers).

And a pioneering study published in 1987 taught us how male great tit song even tracks female fertility, increasing their singing efforts as their female partner’s egg-laying period approaches, and then quietening after she starts laying. Modern technological advances are allowing insight into the hidden meaning embedded in great tits’ songs. In-depth processing of 109,000 recordings of great tit songs has revealed how each bird’s melody tells the story of their own identity as well as that of their local culture and social circles.

A great tit’s age also affects their song: older males keep singing rarer, fading song types while younger birds adopt newer ones. So, Britain’s greatest song belongs to the great tit’s “teacher-teacher” call, for all it has taught us, and for all we have left to learn.

Chaffinch

Championed by Joey Baxter, PhD Candidate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Sheffield

Why change a winning formula? As far as I’m concerned, the chaffinch sings the biggest banger that UK birds have to offer. While the blackcap attempts to impress with ostentatious bells and whistles, the chaffinch keeps things simple with a catchy riff. Where the starling goes for quantity and novelty, with a frankly plagiaristic repertoire of mimicry, the chaffinch goes for quality, singing proudly in the knowledge that it is delivering a true earworm.

Bubbling trills accelerate before tumbling downwards, slowing to rich watery chirps and finishing with the final flourish. This jaunty lick, the real hook of the song, is often punctuated by an upward inflection at its end, the rising intonation giving it the air of an unanswered question. The chaffinch’s song has rhythm, it has melody, and it’s instantly recognisable. It possesses the wisdom that sometimes it is better not to do everything, but to do one thing well.

Joey Baxter receives funding from UK Research & Innovation (UKRI), via the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Josh Firth receives from UK Research & Innovation (UKRI), via the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Cannelle Tassin de Montaigu and Judith Lock do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Criminals recruit youths via social media and messaging platforms to carry out murders and assaults, Europol has said

A new European task force formed to crack down on “violence as a service” has made 280 arrests in its first year, the EU’s police agency, Europol, has said in a statement.

The unit, dubbed GRIMM, was formed last April to tackle the growing trend of outsourced violence, sometimes described “gig economy” terrorism, in which criminals hire individuals via social media to carry out acts ranging from assaults to murder. The task force involves police from several EU countries, alongside the UK, Norway, and Iceland.

”Violence is no longer confined to… local dynamics. It is increasingly offered as a service: accessible, scalable and driven by online ecosystems that enable recruitment, coordination, and execution across borders,” read the statement released on Wednesday. More than 1,400 people linked to these activities have been identified, it added.

”This phenomenon is spreading like a wildfire across Europe,” Andy Kraag, head of Europol’s European Serious Organized Crime Center, told Dutch TV programme Nieuwsuur.

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Recruitment mainly takes place via platforms such as Snapchat, Telegram, and TikTok, as well as gaming environments, Kraag said. Recent cases include teenagers as young as 14 recruited online to carry out shootings in Denmark and Sweden, as well as a Dutch suspect accused of acting as a getaway driver for two minors behind a series of explosions in Germany in 2025.

The report comes amid a push in Europe to restrict social media for minors due to growing concerns over mental health, online safety, and addictive platform design. France has passed an age-verification bill for under-15s, while Germany is debating a ban for under-14s. The UK is weighing restrictions for under-16s alongside limits on addictive features, and the European Parliament has backed a non-binding proposal for a bloc-wide minimum age of 16.

Messaging and gaming platforms have come under increasing scrutiny. Telegram, which has fewer than 45 million users in the EU, is facing a criminal investigation in France over alleged failures to curb illegal content, while Russian authorities have imposed restrictions on the service citing security concerns.

READ MORE: Meta turned blind eye to sex trafficking – court filings

Russia also blocked online gaming platform Roblox, citing distribution of illegal materials, including extremist content, and attempts by adults to contact minors inside Roblox’s chat features.

The $25 billion figure given to Congress excludes the rebuilding of US bases damaged in Iranian strikes, sources have told the outlet

The Pentagon’s latest cost assessment of the war against Iran is a lowball figure that does not include the extensive damage to US military bases during the conflict, CNN has reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.

On Wednesday, senior Pentagon official Jules Hurst gave lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee the first official statement on the controversial war’s price tag, estimating it to be around $25 billion. 

However, sources told CNN that the true cost is significantly higher when factoring in the expense of rebuilding damaged US military installations across the Middle East. One source put the real figure closer to $40-50 billion.

As reported by CNN, Iranian strikes across the Gulf during the conflict damaged at least nine US military sites, including facilities in Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. Several US radar systems were reportedly destroyed, including components linked to an American THAAD battery in Jordan and similar installations at two sites in the UAE. The outlet added that a US Air Force E-3 Sentry was also destroyed in a strike on a Saudi air base.

Hurst noted that most of the $25 billion had been spent on munitions. War Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to say whether the figure included repairs to damaged US bases.

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Last week, Hurst also told reporters that the Pentagon does not yet have a final estimate for damage to overseas installations and that the repair costs are not reflected in the War Department’s $1.5 trillion budget request for 2027.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Democratic and some Republican lawmakers grilled Pentagon officials, with Representative Ro Khanna calling the $25 billion estimate “totally off” given that they had previously told Congress the conflict cost roughly $11 billion in just the first six days.

Hegseth was also scrutinized over the war’s economic impact, rising gasoline costs, and misleading justifications for the conflict. The war secretary pushed back, calling Democrats “reckless, feckless, and defeatist,” and insisting the cost was justified to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The US-Israeli war on Iran, launched in late February and initially expected to last several weeks, has left more than 1,300 civilians dead and has triggered a global energy crisis due to the ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

CEO Sam Altman “stole a charity” and betrayed its founding nonprofit mission, the billionaire has claimed

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has charged that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman “stole a charity” and called himself a “fool” for funding the company, claiming that the ChatGPT maker had strayed from its original nonprofit mission.

Musk sued OpenAI in 2024, alleging he was misled when he co-founded and funded the company in 2015 on the understanding it would remain a nonprofit. The AI firm, now valued at about $85 billion, has since restructured, with a nonprofit parent retaining a stake in its for-profit arm, including ChatGPT.

Testifying on Wednesday, Musk said OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, had broken that founding commitment by shifting toward a profit-driven model, according to court proceedings.

He said he continued financing OpenAI after receiving assurances from Altman that it would remain a nonprofit.

“I was a fool who provided them free funding to create a startup,” Musk told a federal court in Oakland. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said he contributed $38 million from December 2015 through May 2017, believing he was supporting a charitable venture.

Musk’s lawsuit alleges OpenAI abandoned its founding agreement by pivoting to a for-profit model and seeks to remove Altman and Brockman, reverse the shift and secure damages for the nonprofit arm. He described his view of OpenAI’s leadership in three phases, moving from “enthusiastic support” to a loss of confidence and finally to a belief that “they’re looting a nonprofit.” 

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“They can’t have it both ways,” Musk said of OpenAI. “They can’t have a nonprofit and free funding and the positive halo effect of being a nonprofit charity and also enrich themselves greatly.”

Under cross-examination, Musk clashed with OpenAI lawyer William Savitt. When pressed for simple answers on emails discussing a for-profit structure, Musk pushed back. “Your questions are not simple,” Musk said. “They are designed to trick me essentially.” 

OpenAI has rejected the allegations, arguing that leaders never promised the organization would remain a nonprofit forever. The company contends Musk’s legal challenge aims to undercut OpenAI’s rapid growth and bolster his rival AI startup, xAI.

Musk left OpenAI in 2018 due to disagreements with Altman, bought Twitter (now X) in 2022, and launched his own artificial intelligence firm xAI the following year.

The trial in California started on Monday and is expected to last about four weeks.

The army leadership has stressed continued offensives and ruled out any negotiations with armed groups

Sudan’s military leadership has ruled out any talks with rebel forces, signaling a hardline stance as the conflict grinds on.

Speaking at a ceremony honoring the former chief of staff and members of the general staff on Wednesday, Sudanese army chief and head of the Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said the military offensive against what he described as a “rebel militia” would continue until it is decisively defeated.

“There will be no negotiations with the rebels or those who support or cooperate with them,” Burhan stressed. He added the armed forces remain committed to securing victory, portraying the conflict as a duty to protect civilians, “who have endured the horrors of this rebellion and nightmare.”

READ MORE: Sudan war triggered world’s largest displacement crisis – UN

Sudan plunged into a civil war in April 2023 after a struggle for power broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), nearly 12 million people remain displaced due to the conflict, including 6.8 million within Sudan, while around 4.5 million have sought refuge in neighboring countries.

Chief of staff of the SAF, Yasser Abdel Rahman Al-Atta, echoed the message, vowing to press ahead with operations across all regions until full territorial control is restored. 

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Last week, the Sudanese army launched a series of coordinated air and ground operations targeting RSF positions across six states, during which it claimed to have destroyed weapons depots, ammunition stockpiles, and drone launch sites used by the paramilitary forces.

In March, Sudan’s armed forces announced that they had taken control of two localities in the Blue Nile state, strengthening their foothold in the country’s south-east. The following month, the military reported that it had fended off a renewed offensive launched by the RSF alongside the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) faction led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, in the same Blue Nile area.

Military sources also told the Sudan Tribune last month that the army had destroyed two key rebels supply bases located near Sudan’s borders with Chad and Libya.