The African National Congress (ANC) is a social democratic party that has been in power in South Africa since the apartheid ended in 1994. The Democratic Alliance is the biggest opposition party in South Africa based on previous election results and is a centrist party. The second largest opposition party is the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) which is a far left populist party. The DA and EFF have traditionally opposed each other. Currently, the DA is planning form a coalition of opposition parties against the ANC that excludes the EFF.

Manchester United is currently owned by the Glazers family, who are known to take out high amounts of dividends from the club, pile up more debt, and not invest much in club infrastructure. They have announced their interest in selling the club and there are currently two bids: one of Sheikh Jassim Al Thani from Qatar and Sir Jim Ratcliffe from England. Sheikh Jassim Al Thani promises to buy the entire club, get rid of its debts and invest heavily in facilities and player transfers. Sir Jim Ratcliffe wants to buy 51% of the club (while the rest of the shares stay publicly traded in NYSE and partially owned by the Glazers family) and has an experience of owning Nice Football Club in France and is a minority shareholder of Mercedes AMG Petronus Formula One team. He (Sir Jim Ratcliffe) also pledged a fan centric approach to governing the club.

The "Right to Repair" is a movement advocating for products to be designed for ease of repair by both owners and independent shops. Apple has a history of creating products that have low repairability by using non-standard components, requiring special tools for repairs, and voiding warranties if unauthorized repairs are attempted. This contrasts with some of Apple's industry competitors who favor more repairable designs.

Dissociative feminism is a passive and detached approach to addressing feminine struggles, characterised by a jaded outlook on society. It contrasts with active forms of feminist resistance and acknowledges the emotional and physical toll of direct activism. Dissociative feminists also embrace choices that may not conform to mainstream feminist behaviours.

"Leni Robredo is the leading opposition figure in the Phililpines and was formerly the Vice President from 2016 to 2022. She defeated Bongbong Marcos (aka BBM), son of former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, in the 2016 Vice Presidential election but lost to BBM in the May 2022 presidential election where she ran a campaign centered on good governance, transparency, democratic values, equitable development, and pandemic recovery. She has been unclear about her political future since.

The day after, she started the Angat Buhay NGO which focuses on anti-poverty efforts and pandemic response through improving health, education, food security, and disaster risk response. Within the same year, the NGO had served 16,237 families and 12,541 individuals in 162 communities and is known for its large volunteer presence. She has also indicated her willingness to back other candidates from the opposition in future elections.

The Philippine midterm election where some legislators and local officials are elected will occur in 2025, while the next general election (including the presidential and vice presidential election) will happen in 2028. BBM is no longer eligible for the presidency in 2028, but his current VP Sara Duterte and sister Senator Imee Marcos are currently eligible."

"Yevgeny Prigozhin is the founder of the Wagner Group, a paramilitary organization used by Russia in the invasion of Ukraine as a means of strengthening its forces and gaining plausible deniability. After disagreements regarding the Russian government's support to Wagner Group, Prigozhin publicly criticized the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) for mishandling the Russian offensive, attacking Wagner forces, and even called out Vladimir Putin and MoD Minister Sergei Shoigu for having lied to the Russian public regarding the justification for the invasion. Most controversially, the MoD suggested the integration of Wagner forces into the Russian army.

On June 23 2023, Prigozhin began an armed rebellion and attempted to march to Moscow with Wagner forces, even taking some territory and shooting down Russian aircraft. He had a wide range of demands from greater protections for Wagner troops, up to the ouster and replacement of Shoigu.

Prigozhin ended the coup after a deal brokered by Belarus. The deal involved halting the coup in exchange for immunity from prosecution, but required that Prigozhin relocated to Belarus. In addition, Wagner forces would also have to move to Belarus or sign defense contracts with Russia. Last night, Lukashenko stated that Prigozhin was in St. Petersburg, which would be in violation of the agreement.
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The Ballroom community is an African-American and Latino underground LGBTQ+ subculture. Beginning in the late 20th century, Black and Latino drag queens began to organize their own pageants in opposition to racism experienced in established drag queen pageant circuits. In order to participate in a "ballroom", participants will compete in a "ball" arranged by the community across different categories such as voguing, walking through runways wearing fashion elements according to the set categories, etc. The community has been very vocal about non-Ballroom individuals partaking in those acts, such as shaming them for voguing by calling it as "no-guing", exclaiming that non-Ballroom individuals doing those acts have committed grave cultural appropriation, etc.

Starting in 2023, the EU is introducing a policy called the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). This puts a tax on imports that aren't environmentally friendly. From 2026, this tax will be 20-35% on some goods. Importers will have to say how many goods they bring into the EU and how much these goods add to global warming each year. To balance out these emissions, importers must get CBAM certificates, which cost based on the amount of CO2 emissions and the EU's weekly average price for emissions.

Formula 1 has been trying to aggressively expand commercially even at expense of sporting integrity. The commercial expansion strategy includes partnering with Netflix to produce the Drive to Survive documentary which has been known to overdramatize the events in the sport, prioritising commercially lucrative countries (such as the US - thrice in 2023) for hosting rights, making drivers do more fan service than they are comfortable, and interpreting and implementing regulations to get more viewership at the expense of precedence and norms.

The Rohingya are an ethnic minority, primarily Muslim, originating from Rakhine State in Myanmar. They have faced decades of systematic discrimination and oppression in Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and are considered illegal immigrants, even though their presence dates back centuries. Near one million Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh with the largest influx happening in 2017.

BRICS is an acronym for the geopolitical bloc of the countries Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Cooperation among BRICS countries spans across various sectors.

The Cairo Declaration, released during the meeting of heads of state of the Organisation of African Unity (now African Union) in its first session in 1964, led to the development of an international practice of respecting and sustaining the territorial situation as it existed at independence. This later evolved as the rule of the status quo, which preserved the border arrangements left behind by colonial regimes.

“Divine femininity” discourse encourages women to live a ‘soft life’ by stepping into their ‘divine feminine energy’ and living more intuitively and authentically in line with their femininity. It also encourages the disengagement from tasks and socially-embedded behaviours that exude "masculine energy"; such as overexerting oneself to work, being assertive, repressing emotions, etc.

"Drag Race" is a drag queen reality competition television franchise, created by American drag entertainer RuPaul, starting with its first season in 2009. The popularity of the original series led to the creation of a media franchise including spin-offs and international adaptations across more than 15 different countries.

"The Climate Co-benefits Approach mandates that any World Bank project must have a percentage of that project's budget and activities directed towards climate adaptation or mitigation, regardless of its primary objective (e.g. including projects whose primary objectives are related to health, education, and social protection). The climate co-benefits connect climate action to the project's primary objectives. Examples of climate co-benefits would be adding solar panels to schools, hospitals and other infrastructure; actively directing funding towards more climate vulnerable areas; including training modules on climate adaptation etc.

The World Bank's Climate Investment Fund (CIF) is a dedicated climate fund for climate change related projects. The CIF exists independently of climate co-benefits and is funded separately.
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Financial repression occurs when the government lowers the cost of their own borrowing, channeling funds to themselves that in a deregulated market would go elsewhere. In an era of cross-border capital mobility, financial repression policies such as interest rate caps and large-scale capital controls are expected to be less effective, and governments are typically more inclined to access funds from "captive audiences" such as pension funds, banks, and insurance companies which are mandated to provide loans to the government at significantly below market rates by various means (referrered to in this motion as "captive loans").

Pharmacotherapy is the treatment of health conditions by using pharmaceutical products (drugs) as medication.

‘Life statistics’ is a technology that constantly tracks statistics about an individual's observable behavior and actions throughout their life. It requires no manual input or involvement from the individual and is consistently live, updating, and is aware of all actions an individual engages (e.g. time spent doing specific activities, number of instances an action has been done, and other trends in behavior).

The “Mottainai” mentality is a Japanese concept that highlights and strongly grieves wastefulness. The notion has been adopted by environmental movements to promote positive actions such as recycling, but also is one that calls attention to wastefulness in every aspect of our lives, such as in how we spend our time, money, etc.

For the purposes of this debate, an individual with an intellectual disposition has a strong willingness to seek information and prioritise reason over emotion.

"Cosmic pluralism is the belief that suggests the existence of multiple inhabited worlds, universes, and dimensions beyond our own.

Cosmic monism is the belief that the universe is a single, unified entity, and that there are no other worlds or beings beyond this universe."

For the purposes of this debate, modernised fairytales refer to traditionally popularised fairytale stories that have been altered in order to appeal to modern social norms, such as through changing the plot, characters or moral of the story.

"In May 2023, the Writers Guild of America launched a strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), a trade association that represents over 350 American television and film production companies. The ongoing strike is the largest interruption to the American film and TV production since the COVID-19 pandemic. The guild, representing 11,500+ screenwriters, demands for the increase of wage and residuals (i.e. bonus/royalty) which have been decreasing due to the rise of streaming platforms and for the strict (and potentially regulated) boundaries of the use of AI technologies in the screenwriting process (i.e. as a complementary tool as opposed to a replacement tool).

Following suit, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) launched an independent strike (i.e. not involving the WGA) focusing primarily on increase of wages and residuals, in which they managed to strike a deal with the AMPTP. This deal awarded higher compensation and more residuals for directors."

In the 2000s, following the rise of the software industry, many industries shifted their development models to have far shorter cycles, reducing the timespan between the inception of a project to its completion where it would be launched or commercially available.

For the purposes of this debate, social-punishment methods are behaviours that are designed to disrupt or cost society as a negative consequence for norms and state behaviours that detriment women. Movements such as 4B (or “Four No’s”), which originated in South Korea in 2019, are based on the use of these methods. Its members renounce four activities; sex, child-rearing (giving birth), dating, and marriage with men.

The Categorical Approach is the approach to classifying mental disorders involving assessment of whether an individual has a disorder on the basis of symptoms and characteristics that are described as typical of the disorder. The Dimensional approach is the approach to classifying mental disorders that quantifies a person’s symptoms or other characteristics of interest and represents them with numerical values on one or more scales or continuums, rather than assigning them to a mental disorder category. Diagnosis then becomes not a process of deciding the presence of a symptom or disorder but rather the degree to which a particular characteristic is present.

"The proposed National Critical Capabilities Defense Act (NCCDA) – would establish an interagency committee led by the Office of the US Trade Representative. This committee, according to the language in the current NCCDA proposal, would be able to review transactions by US businesses in 'countries of concern' and where 'national critical capabilities' are at stake The committee can then mandate for these transactions to be suspended should they be deemed as risky.

Analysis suggests that up to 43% of US FDI to China over the past two decades would have been covered under the broad categories set out in the NCCDA. The NCCDA is also likely to focus on investments in three “force-multiplying” technologies: advanced semiconductors, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing. "

Short-selling is the practice of selling a (borrowed) stock in the open market, and buying it later at a cheaper price. Activist short-sellers actively try to lower the price of a stock by directly influencing the perception of the market on a company commonly through investigative journalism. Activist short-sellers publish research reports which highlight deficiencies in the company’s management, overall corporate strategy, and any scandals the company may be involved in. In January 2023, the activist short-selling firm Hindenburg Research published a report on the Adani Group from India. The stock prices of seven Adani group companies have lost significant value, with Adani Total Gas shares taking the biggest plunge of 56%.

Talk therapy, also known as psychotherapy, is a type of mental health treatment that involves talking to a therapist about one's thoughts, feelings, and experiences. The therapist can help them understand and process their problems, develop coping skills, and make progress in their life.