NewzIntel.com

Category: Africa

  • MIL-OSI Security: Mercer County Accounting Professor Convicted Of Tax Evasion And Filing False Tax Returns Sentenced To 24 Months In Prison

    Source: Office of United States Attorneys

    TRENTON, N.J. – A Mercer County, New Jersey man was sentenced today to 24 months in prison for evading federal income taxes and filing false tax returns, Acting U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna announced.

    Gordian A. Ndubizu, of Princeton Junction, New Jersey, was convicted on Aug. 15, 2024, of all eight counts of an indictment charging him with four counts of tax evasion and four counts of filing false tax returns in tax years 2014 through 2017, following a four-day trial before U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi, who imposed the sentence today in Trenton federal court.

    According to documents filed in this case and evidence introduced at trial:

    During tax years 2014 through 2017, Ndubizu was a professor of accounting at a university in Pennsylvania as well as the co-owner of Healthcare Pharmacy in Trenton, New Jersey. Healthcare Pharmacy was organized as an S corporation, the income of which flowed through to Ndubizu and his wife and was to be reported on their personal income tax returns. Ndubizu prepared fraudulent books and records for Healthcare Pharmacy inflating the pharmacy’s costs of goods sold to reduce and underreport the pharmacy’s actual profits flowing through to Ndubizu and his wife. In the fraudulent books and records, among other things, Ndubizu identified certain wire transfers as payments to purchase goods sold by the pharmacy when those wire transfers were in fact made to personal bank accounts under Ndubizu’s control and to bank accounts in Nigeria associated with an automotive company under Ndubizu’s control. Each of Ndubizu’s tax returns for tax years 2014 through 2017 falsely underreported his income and falsely reported that he had no financial interest in or signature authority over any foreign bank accounts. Ndubizu failed to report approximately $3.28 million in income from the pharmacy, resulting in the evasion of approximately $1.25 million in tax due and owing.

    Acting U.S. Attorney Khanna credited special agents of IRS-Criminal Investigation Division, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Tammy Tomlins in Newark, with the investigation leading to the sentencing. He also thanked special agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and officers of the Trenton Police Department and Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office for their work on this case.  

    The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Alexander E. Ramey and Ashley Super Pitts of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division in Trenton.
     

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: India’s Wildlife Conservation Milestones

    Source: Government of India

    India’s Wildlife Conservation Milestones

    Policies, Achievements and Global Commitments

    Posted On: 03 MAR 2025 6:47PM by PIB Delhi

    “Today, on World Wildlife Day, let’s reiterate our commitment to protect and preserve the incredible biodiversity of our planet. Every species plays a vital role—let’s safeguard their future for generations to come! We also take pride in India’s contributions towards preserving and protecting wildlife.”

    Shri Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India[1]

     

    Introduction

    Every year on March 3rd, the world celebrates United Nations World Wildlife Day (WWD) to honour the vital role of wild animals and plants in our lives and the planet’s health. This day is a reminder of the need to protect and preserve biodiversity for future generations. The theme for WWD 2025 is “Wildlife Conservation Finance: Investing in People and Planet.” [2]

    [3]

    Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi visited Gir National Park in Gujarat today to chair the 7th meeting of the National Board for Wildlife. The Board reviewed the Government’s key wildlife conservation efforts, including the expansion of protected areas and flagship programs like Project Tiger, Project Elephant, and Project Snow Leopard. Discussions also covered initiatives for the conservation of dolphins and Asiatic lions, along with the establishment of the International Big Cats Alliance.[4]

    [5]Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi at Gir National Park

    India is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, even though it covers only 2.4% of the Earth’s land. It is home to 7-8% of all known species, including over 45,000 types of plants and 91,000 types of animals. The country’s varied landscapes and climate have created different ecosystems like forests, wetlands, grasslands, deserts, and coastal and marine habitats. These ecosystems support rich biodiversity and benefit people in many ways. India also has 4 of the world’s 34 major biodiversity hotspots—the Himalayas, the Western Ghats, the Northeast region, and the Nicobar Islands—making it an important region for global conservation.[6]

    The Government of India, primarily through the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), has instituted a comprehensive framework of policies, legislative measures, and initiatives aimed at conserving and protecting this natural heritage.

    Budgetary Allocations[7]

    In the Union Budget 2025-26, the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change has been allocated ₹3,412.82 crores, which is 9% higher than the 2024-25 revised estimates of Rs. 3125.96 crores.

    • ₹3,276.82 crore (96%) is for revenue expenditure, which has increased by 8%.
    • ₹136 crore (4%) is for capital expenditure, which has risen by 46% from 93.25 crore from 2024-25 revised estimates.

    For 2025-26, the central government has allocated ₹450 crore for the Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats under its centrally sponsored scheme. Additionally, ₹290 crore (64% of the total allocation) has been earmarked for Project Tiger and Elephant, reflecting an 18% increase from the 2024-25 revised estimates.[8]

    National Wildlife Database Cell

    The National Wildlife Database Centre of Wildlife Institute of India (WII) has been developing a National Wildlife Information System (NWIS) on the Protected Areas of the country. As of 27th November, 2023 India has a network of 1014 Protected Areas including 106 National Parks, 573 Wildlife Sanctuaries, 115 Conservation Reserves and 220 Community Reserves covering a total of 1,75,169.42 km2 of geographical area of the country which is approximately 5.32%. [9]

     

    Category

    Number

    National Parks

    106

    Wildlife Sanctuaries

    573

    Conservation Reserves

    115

    Community Reserves

    220

    Total

    1014

     

    The National Wildlife Database Centre (NWDC) is providing information on the conservation status of animal species, biogeographic regions, administrative units, habitat types and the network of protected areas in India, in a variety of formats and also providing an extensive bibliographic support for wildlife research.

    1. Legislative and Policy Framework

    • National Wildlife Action Plan (2017-2031): This strategic plan emphasizes landscape-level conservation, community involvement, and the integration of climate change considerations into wildlife management.[10]
    • National Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation Strategy and Action Plan: The National Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation Strategy and Action Plan (2021-26) (HWC-NAP) aims to systematically reduce human-wildlife conflict (HWC) while ensuring wildlife conservation, ecosystem protection, and sustainable development. Developed through a four-year consultative process under the Indo-German Project on HWC Mitigation, it integrates scientific, policy, and community-driven approaches to balance human well-being with wildlife protection. [11]

    2. Species-Specific Conservation Initiatives – Success Stories

    2.1 Project Dolphin: Key Developments and Conservation Efforts[12]

    Launched on 15th August 2020, Project Dolphin aims to conserve both marine and riverine dolphins, along with associated cetaceans, through habitat protection, scientific research, and community awareness. In 2022-23, ₹241.73 lakhs and in 2023-24, ₹248.18 lakhs were allocated under the CSS: Development of Wildlife Habitats for conservation activities. Key dolphin hotspots have been identified in Assam, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, and Lakshadweep, with focused efforts on species protection, habitat improvement, monitoring, patrolling, and awareness programs. A Comprehensive Action Plan (2022-2047) has been finalized and shared with relevant Ministries for execution.

    Policy & Governance Enhancements

    • The Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 was amended in December 2022, empowering the Indian Coast Guard with enforcement powers and recognizing Gangetic & Indus River Dolphins as distinct species under Schedule I.
    • The Project Dolphin Steering Committee was reconstituted, with the first committee meeting held on 6th September 2023, where the first edition of the Project Dolphin Newsletter was launched.
    • States have been urged to align with International Whaling Commission regulations, appointing Dolphin and Whaling Commissioners for conservation efforts.

    Scientific Research & International Engagement

    • Population estimation of riverine dolphins has been completed, with the report under finalization.
    • A meeting on Irrawaddy dolphins was conducted in Odisha with the Minister of Environment, Forest & Climate Change in attendance.
    • India participated in discussions on the Global Declaration for River Dolphins (23-24 October 2023, Bogotá, Colombia), reinforcing its commitment to global dolphin conservation.
    • Chambal River Conservation Zone: A 200 km stretch in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh has been recommended for designation as a Dolphin Conservation Zone for targeted protection efforts.

    India’s First-Ever Ganges River Dolphin Tagging: A Historic Conservation Milestone[13]

    On 18th December 2024, India achieved a groundbreaking milestone by successfully satellite-tagging the first-ever Ganges River Dolphin (Platanista gangetica) in Assam under Project Dolphin. Led by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in collaboration with the Assam Forest Department and Aaranyak, and funded by the National CAMPA Authority (MoEFCC), this initiative marks a global first in dolphin conservation.

    • With 90% of the global population found in India, knowledge gaps on their movement and ecology have hindered conservation efforts.
    • This initiative will study their habitat use, migration patterns, and environmental stressors, aiding better conservation strategies.

    Technology & Future Steps

    • Advanced lightweight satellite tags compatible with Argos satellite systems enable tracking despite dolphins’ minimal surfacing time.
    • Plans are underway to expand tagging across other states, creating a comprehensive conservation roadmap.

    2.2  50 Years of Project Tiger: [14]

    Project Tiger, initiated in 1973, has been India’s flagship conservation initiative, successfully completing 50 years in 2023. Focused on tiger conservation through dedicated reserves and strict protection measures, it has played a crucial role in reviving tiger populations. Marking this milestone, the Prime Minister inaugurated a commemorative event in Mysuru, Karnataka, on April 9, 2023. As per the 5th cycle of All India Tiger Estimation 2022, India now hosts over 70% of the world’s wild tiger population, reaffirming its leadership in global tiger conservation.

    Statistic

    Value

    India’s Share of Global Wild Tigers

    Over 70%

    Minimum Tiger Population

    3,167

    Estimated Upper Limit

    3,925

    Average Population

    3,682

    Annual Growth Rate

    6.1%

    India has reaffirmed its position as a global leader in tiger conservation, with the tiger population rising to 3,682 (range 3,167-3,925) as per the All India Tiger Estimation 2022, marking a steady increase from 2,967 in 2018 and 2,226 in 2014. The population is growing at 6.1% per annum in consistently sampled areas.[15]

    To commemorate 50 years of Project Tiger, the Prime Minister released key reports, including the ‘Amrit Kaal Ka Vision for Tiger Conservation’, the 5th cycle of Management Effectiveness Evaluation (MEE) of Tiger Reserves, and the official summary of All India Tiger Estimation 2022. A commemorative coin was also issued.

    Major Conservation Efforts

    Tiger Reserve Expansion & Management

    • India now has 54 tiger reserves, covering over 78,000 sq. km (2.30% of the country’s geographical area), with Rani Durgavati Tiger Reserve (Madhya Pradesh) being the latest addition.
    • MEE 2022 assessed 51 reserves, ranking 12 as ‘Excellent’, 21 as ‘Very Good’, 13 as ‘Good’, and 5 as ‘Fair’.

    Reintroduction of Tigers in Extinct Areas

    • Tigers have been reintroduced in Rajaji (Uttarakhand), Madhav (Madhya Pradesh), Mukundra Hills (Rajasthan), and Ramgarh Vishdhari (Rajasthan) Tiger Reserves, with plans for Buxa Tiger Reserve next.

    Global Conservation Recognition & Collaboration

    • 23 Indian tiger reserves are now CA|TS-accredited, ensuring global best practices in conservation, with six new reserves receiving accreditation this year.
    • Pench and Satpura Tiger Reserves received the prestigious Tx2 Award for doubling their tiger populations.
    • India signed MoUs with Cambodia for tiger reintroduction and held bilateral discussions with Bangladesh for transboundary conservation in the Sundarbans.

    2.3 International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA) Becomes a Treaty-Based Organization[16]

    The International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA) officially became a treaty-based intergovernmental organization on January 23, 2025, with Nicaragua, Eswatini, India, Somalia, and Liberia ratifying the agreement. With 27 countries onboard, IBCA aims to drive global big cat conservation through cross-border collaboration.

    About IBCA

    • Launched by PM Narendra Modi on April 9, 2023, during the 50 Years of Project Tiger event.
    • Union Cabinet approved its establishment in February 2024, with headquarters in India.
    • Founded by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) under MoEFCC on March 12, 2024.
    • Focuses on the conservation of seven big cat species: Tiger, Lion, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Cheetah, Jaguar, and Puma.

    Key Objectives & Impact

    • Enhances global collaboration among governments, conservationists, and NGOs.
    • Establishes a central fund and technical hub for research and conservation efforts.
    • Strengthens habitat protection, anti-poaching strategies, and wildlife law enforcement.
    • Combats illegal wildlife trade and promotes sustainable conservation practices.
    • Integrates climate change mitigation into conservation strategies.

    With IBCA’s legal status now formalized, it marks a historic milestone in global big cat conservation, fostering stronger international cooperation to protect these apex predators and their ecosystems.

    In collaboration with Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve, the IBCA organized an executive course on capacity building for wildlife and conservation practitioners, bringing together officials from 27 countries, underscoring the shared global commitment to wildlife conservation and sustainable development. ​[17]

    2.4 Project Cheetah

    Project Cheetah is a landmark wildlife conservation initiative launched on September 17, 2022 aimed at reintroducing cheetahs to India after their extinction in the late 1940s and early 1950s. As the world’s first intercontinental large wild carnivore translocation project, it operates under the umbrella of Project Tiger and aligns with the Cheetah Action Plan to restore and conserve the species. Efforts are underway to expand suitable habitats, ensuring long-term survival and ecological balance in India’s grassland ecosystems.

     Key Achievements:

    • Transcontinental Relocation: In September 2022, eight cheetahs from Namibia were translocated to Kuno National Park, followed by twelve cheetahs from South Africa in February 2023. [18]
    • Successful Adaptation: The majority of these cheetahs have adapted well to their new environment, exhibiting natural behaviours such as hunting, territory establishment, and mating. Notably, a female cheetah gave birth to cubs on Indian soil after 75 years, with one surviving cub reported to be six months old and showing normal growth patterns as of September 2023.[19] On 3rd January, 2024 three cubs were born to Namibian Cheetah Aasha at the Kuno National Park.[20]
    • Community Engagement: The project has actively involved local communities, providing direct and indirect employment opportunities. Over 350 ‘Cheetah Mitras’ (Cheetah Friends) from surrounding villages have been engaged to educate the public on cheetah behaviour and human-wildlife conflict mitigation, fostering peaceful coexistence. [21]

    2.5 Project Elephant:

    India, home to over 60% of the global Asian elephant population, has undertaken significant measures to protect and conserve these majestic animals. Project Elephant, launched by the Government of India, is a flagship initiative aimed at ensuring the long-term survival of elephants in their natural habitats. This program focuses on habitat preservation, human-elephant conflict mitigation, and the welfare of captive elephants, reflecting India’s deep-rooted cultural and ecological commitment to elephant conservation. [22]

    Key Achievements and Initiatives

    1. Growing Elephant Population: India’s wild elephant population has increased from 26,786 (2018 census) to 29,964 in 2022, reinforcing the country’s successful conservation efforts.[23]

    Year

    Elephant Population in India

    2018

    26,786

    2022

    29,964

    2. Expanding Protected Areas: India has 33 Elephant Reserves across 14 states, covering a vast 80,777 km², ensuring elephants have safe migratory corridors and protected habitats.[24]

    3.Integrated Wildlife Protection: Elephant Reserves are often overlapping with Tiger Reserves, Wildlife Sanctuaries, and Reserved Forests, ensuring comprehensive protection under multiple forest and wildlife laws.[25]

    4. Financial Investment in Conservation: Under the 15th Finance Commission cycle, the Government has approved a total outlay of ₹2,602.98 crores for wildlife conservation, with ₹236.58 crores specifically allocated for Project Elephant to strengthen conservation measures and reduce human-elephant conflicts.[26]

    2.6 Conservation of the Asiatic Lion in India

    The Asiatic lion (Panthera leo persica), once teetering on the brink of extinction, has witnessed a remarkable resurgence in India, primarily within Gir National Park and its surrounding landscapes in Gujarat. This conservation success is attributed to dedicated efforts by the Government of India, the Gujarat State Government, and local communities.

    Key Initiatives

    • Project Lion:[27]
      Launched as a flagship initiative, Project Lion focuses on:
      • Landscape ecology-based conservation, ensuring sustainable lion habitats.
      • Habitat restoration and securing additional areas for lions.
      • Community participation, creating livelihood opportunities for local residents.
      • Disease management, establishing India as a global hub for big cat health research and treatment.

     

    Significance and Achievements

    1. Population Recovery:[28]
    Through rigorous conservation efforts, the Asiatic lion population has shown a consistent upward trend:

    • 2010: 411 lions
    • 2015: 523 lions
    • 2020: 674 lions
    1. Increased Conservation Funding:[29]
      The Gujarat Government has steadily increased its financial commitment to lion conservation, ₹155.53 crore in 2023-24.
    2. International Recognition:[30]
      Due to India’s conservation initiatives, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reclassified the Asiatic lion from “Critically Endangered” to ‘Endangered’ in 2008, acknowledging the success of India’s efforts.

    2.7 Conserving the One-Horned Rhinoceros in India

    The Government of India has implemented several strategic initiatives to conserve and protect the one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), leading to significant achievements in their population recovery and habitat preservation,

    Key Conservation Initiatives:

    • National Conservation Strategy for the Indian One-Horned Rhinoceros (2019): Launched by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in 2019, this strategy aims to repopulate rhinoceros populations in areas where they previously existed by augmenting existing conservation efforts through scientific and administrative measures. [31]
    • Indian Rhino Vision (IRV) 2020: This program focuses on increasing the rhino population and expanding their distribution by translocating individuals to suitable habitats, thereby enhancing genetic diversity and reducing the risk of localized threats. [32]

    Impact and Achievements:

    • Population Growth: As of 2022, Kaziranga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is home to 2,613 greater one-horned rhinoceroses, reflecting effective conservation efforts.[33]
    • Global Significance: Assam’s rhino population accounts for approximately 68% of the world’s greater one-horned rhinoceroses, underscoring the state’s pivotal role in global conservation.[34]
    • Community Engagement: Initiatives such as World Rhino Day celebrations in Kaziranga National Park involve local communities and raise public awareness about rhino conservation, fostering a collective sense of responsibility towards protecting this iconic species. [35]

    3. Habitat and Ecosystem Conservation

    • Digitization of Flora, Fauna and herbarium records: In 2024, the Botanical Survey of India (BSI) and Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) has carried out the digitization of 16500 specimens with 45000 images of the Type and Non-Type of Indian Faunal specimens. ZSI has completed faunal documentation from 27 States and Union Territories as well as all of the 10 Biogeographic Zones across the country. Data of 6124 springs in 11 IHR States and 1 UT (J&K) has been geo-tagged spatially online on the HIMAL Geo portal.[36]
    • Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats & Tangible Incomes (MISHTI): Launched on World Environment Day 2024, MISHTI focuses on the restoration of mangroves to bolster coastal sustainability. Approximately 22,561 hectares of degraded mangroves have been restored across 13 states and union territories. [37]
    • National Mission for Green India (GIM): As part of the National Action Plan on Climate Change, GIM was launched in February, 2014 aiming to protect, restore, and enhance India’s forest cover, thereby contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation.[38]
    • Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats (IDWH): This centrally sponsored scheme provides financial and technical assistance to state and union territory governments for wildlife conservation activities. The scheme encompasses the development of wildlife habitats, Project Tiger, and Project Elephant, with a total outlay of ₹2,602.98 crores for the 15th Finance Commission cycle.[39]

    4. Research and Monitoring

    • Advanced Research Facilities: In December 2024, the MoEFCC inaugurated a Next Generation DNA Sequencing facility at the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun. This facility enhances research capabilities in wildlife genetics, aiding in the development of effective conservation strategies.[40]

    5. Community Involvement and Awareness

    • ‘Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam’ Campaign: Launched on World Environment Day 2024, this initiative encourages individuals to plant trees in honour of their mothers and Mother Earth. By December 2024, over 102 crore trees had been planted under this campaign, with a target of 140 crore trees by March 2025.[41]
    • World Wildlife Day Celebrations: The 2024 World Wildlife Day, themed “Connecting People and Planet: Exploring Digital Innovation in Wildlife Conservation,” was celebrated at Okhla Bird Sanctuary. The event featured eco-trails, poster-making competitions, and interactive sessions to raise awareness about wildlife conservation.[42]

    6. Conservation of Marine Species

    • National Marine Turtle Action Plan: Released by the MoEFCC, this plan focuses on the conservation of marine turtles and their habitats along the Indian coastline.[43]
    • Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification, 2019: This regulation emphasizes the conservation of ecologically sensitive areas such as mangroves, coral reefs, and turtle nesting grounds, ensuring their protection from unregulated developmental activities.[44]

    7. Combating Wildlife Crime

    • Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB): Established to combat organized wildlife crime, the WCCB coordinates enforcement actions, gathers intelligence, and assists in international efforts to curb illegal wildlife trade. Between 2019 and 2023, the WCCB conducted 166 joint operations in the North Eastern Region, leading to the arrest of 375 wildlife offenders.[45]

    Key Announcements by the Government of India on World Wildlife Day 2025[46]

    • Release of India’s first-ever riverine dolphin estimation report, covering 28 rivers across eight states. Encouragement of local community participation in dolphin conservation.
    • Foundation stone laid for the National Referral Centre for Wildlife at Junagadh to enhance coordination in wildlife health management.
    • Establishment of a Centre of Excellence at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) – SACON, Coimbatore to tackle human-wildlife conflict.
    • Deployment of Rapid Response Teams with advanced tracking technology, surveillance systems, and AI-driven intrusion detection.
    • Collaboration between Forest Survey of India, Dehradun, and BISAG-N to enhance forest fire prediction, detection, prevention, and control using space technology.
    • Integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) for wildlife conservation and conflict mitigation.
    • New sites identified for cheetah reintroduction, including Gandhisagar Sanctuary (Madhya Pradesh) and Banni Grasslands (Gujarat).
    • Announcement of a Tiger Conservation Scheme focused on protecting tigers and co-predators outside traditional tiger reserves.
    • Launch of a dedicated Project on Gharials to address their dwindling population.
    • Announcement of a National Great Indian Bustard Conservation Action Plan to upscale conservation efforts.
    • Documentation and research on India’s traditional forest and wildlife conservation practices using AI.
    • Expansion of India’s engagement with the United Nations Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) for enhanced international cooperation.

    Conclusion

    India’s unwavering commitment to wildlife conservation, under the leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, is reflected in a series of transformative initiatives that blend tradition with cutting-edge technology. From strengthening flagship programs like Project Tiger and Project Elephant to pioneering new conservation efforts for species such as the gharial and the Great Indian Bustard, the Government has adopted a holistic and science-driven approach. The integration of artificial intelligence, geospatial mapping, and community-led conservation underscores India’s global leadership in biodiversity preservation. The remarkable resurgence of endangered species, strengthened legal frameworks, and a strategic integration of technology underscore the Government of India’s proactive approach to environmental stewardship. Moreover, India’s collaboration with international organizations, multilateral bodies, and conservation partners has reinforced its leadership in addressing global biodiversity challenges. By fostering cross-border cooperation, leveraging scientific innovation, and ensuring community participation, India continues to drive a holistic and inclusive conservation agenda. As we mark World Wildlife Day 2025, the nation reaffirms its resolve to protect and restore ecosystems, ensuring a sustainable and resilient future for generations to come.

    References

    Kindly find the pdf file 

    ***

    Santosh Kumar / Sheetal Angral / Vatsla Srivastava

    (Release ID: 2107821) Visitor Counter : 30

    MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

  • MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Outcome of the EUR 318 million investment in better migration management – E-002911/2024(ASW)

    Source: European Parliament

    In 2023, the EU provided EUR 318 million to address migration challenges in North Africa, building on actions funded under the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa[1] (EUTF) and the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument — Global Europe (NDICI-GE)[2].

    By December 2024, the entire budget was fully contracted, supporting assistance and protection to forcibly displaced persons, strengthening asylum and migration governance and management, fostering return, readmission and sustainable reintegration, and promoting legal migration and mobility.

    In 2024, EU efforts yielded positive results, including a significant decrease in arrivals to the EU (minus 60% on the Central Mediterranean route) and an increase in assisted voluntary returns to countries of origin (nearly 4 600 returns from January to November 2024, representing a 229% increase compared to the same period in 2023).

    EU assistance also contributed to bolster protection capacities in North African countries, enhancing access to basic services (such as education and health) for people in need.

    Additionally, the EU has developed programmes to improve labour migration governance and established mobility schemes from Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt to Europe under the Talent Partnerships framework[3].

    The new phase of the regional programme ‘Towards a Holistic Approach to Labour Migration Governance and Labour Mobility in North Africa’[4] (funded under NDICI-GE ), aims to increase the number of new mobilities in 2025-2028.

    • [1]  https://trust-fund-for-africa.europa.eu/index_en
    • [2]  https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/funding-and-technical-assistance/neighbourhood-development-and-international-cooperation-instrument-global-europe-ndici-global-europe_en
    • [3]  https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asylum/legal-migration-resettlement-and-integration/talent-partnerships_en#:~:text=The%20Talent%20Partnerships%20aim%20to%20provide%20a%20comprehensive,and%20skills%20between%20the%20EU%20and%20partner%20countries
    • [4]  https://trust-fund-for-africa.europa.eu/our-programmes/towards-holistic-approach-labour-migration-governance-and-labour-mobility-north-africa_en

    MIL OSI Europe News –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: UN Human Rights Council 58: UK Statement for the Item 2 General Debate

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    Speech

    UN Human Rights Council 58: UK Statement for the Item 2 General Debate

    UK Statement at the 58 Human Rights Council for the Item 2 General Debate. Delivered by UK Ambassador for Human Rights to the UN, Eleanor Sanders.

    Thank you, Mr Vice President. 

    And thank you for your update, High Commissioner.  

    First of all, we share your concern at Thailand’s decision to deport forty Uyghurs to China. We urge China to ensure they are treated in accordance with international standards. 

    Mr Vice President, 

    Sudan’s people have suffered enough. This Council’s Fact-Finding Mission has reported appalling violence: women raped and sexually abused, people executed because of their ethnicity, children recruited as soldiers, and heavy artillery shelling including in civilian areas. All parties must adhere to their obligations to protect civilians and perpetrators of atrocities must be held accountable.  

    We commend DRC for its engagement with the Council and urge all parties to act in accordance with international law.  

    In Venezuela, civil society and independent media are targeted and political opposition face severe restrictions. We call on the authorities to immediately and unconditionally release those arbitrarily detained. 

    And in Guatemala, the continuing persecution of justice officials linked to the fight against corruption is deeply concerning and must stop.  

    Finally, Mr President, 

    The situation in Libya remains precarious, with armed groups and security actors operating with impunity. We urge all Libyan actors to comply with international law and engage in the UN-facilitated and Libyan-led political process in good faith.

    Updates to this page

    Published 3 March 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Donald Trump is picking fights with leaders around the world. What exactly is his foreign policy approach?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon O’Connor, Professor in U.S. Politics and U.S. Foreign Relations, United States Studies Centre,, University of Sydney

    Since returning to the US presidency, Donald Trump has outdone himself, gaining global media headlines and attention with outrageous statements and dramatic decisions.

    The most consequential decision so far has been the freezing of many US aid and development programs. The freeze had an immediate impact. Even with some waivers now in place, it is likely that starving people in Ethiopia will not get the famine relief desperately needed; food is rotting in African harbours as constitutional battles over executive power are waged in Washington.

    In Africa alone, the US has also been funding lifesaving malaria prevention efforts and HIV/AIDS drug programs. Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency has cruelly disrupted those.

    There are numerous examples of other reckless policy decisions. In terms of long term consequences, arguably the worst decision Trump has made is pulling the United States out of the Paris Agreement on climate change. He also wound back a slew of Biden administration policies while erasing the term “climate change” from various government websites.

    Trump has attempted to bully Mexico and Canada with threats of a 25% tax on all imports from those two trading partners. He has also imposed a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports coming into the US.

    Then there are Trump’s statements on Ukraine, Gaza and Panama. Last weekend, his treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House meeting caused widespread dismay around the world, as Trump doubled down on his promotion of Putin’s talking points and Russian government interests.

    So what’s Trump’s game plan?

    With Trump, it is tempting to claim he is a chaos merchant with no plan or method to his madness. According to this view, when he is challenged or criticised, he will escalate the threats and increase the insults.

    Therefore, conventional wisdom has it that the best way to deal with Trump is to flatter and humour him, then wait for his attention to be distracted by another prize. This understanding of Trump has been developed by international relations scholar Daniel Drezner into the “toddler-in-chief” thesis.

    Psychological understandings of Trump are useful to a point, but it is worth remembering presidencies are run by vast administrations of people, departments and agencies, and not just one person. Moreover, an institution as large as the US Defense Department – with its two million employees and military bases in at least 80 countries around the world – has a near permanent mindset of its own. This, in turn, tends to make presidents as seemingly different as Obama and Trump custodians of many similar military policies and postures.

    The way I have initially examined Trump in my own research is to see him as a hardline conservative nationalist who believes projecting US power with tough talk and reminding other nations of American military might is the best approach to world politics.

    Previous Republican presidents, most notably George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, adopted this so-called “cowboy” approach. It’s a posture that rejects the idea that the US is the leader of a liberal international order (a leadership role promoted by their Democratic party opponents).

    My starting point for analysis sees continuities between Reagan, Bush and Trump, and highlights their arrogance and ignorance when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world.

    Similar, but different

    However, there are some things about Trump that are clearly different and distinct. Before his second term, the most unusual aspect of Trump’s foreign policy approach was the volume and range of his scattergun rhetoric towards other leaders and nations. For example, he threatened North Korea with “fire and fury and, frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before”, but later told a rally of supporters that, “We fell in love. No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters.”

    As for academic perspectives that might help us better understand what kind of politician Trump is and what his next moves might be, the obvious label is “crudely transactional”. His attitude to most minor and middle powers seems to be “what have you done for me lately?” or “why does America owe your nation anything?”.

    When it comes to Russia, and potentially China, there has been speculation Trump is adopting a geopolitical approach with parallels to the “great game” of the 19th century. The “great game” is another way of saying imperialism, and this is a largely underused way of describing American foreign policy in general and the second Trump administration in particular.

    Then there is the question of whether the (other) “f-word” is a useful way to understand Trump and Trumpism: are his rhetoric and his domestic and international policies fascist? They are definitely ultra-nationalist and racist, which are two key components of fascism; Trumpism revolves around a charismatic leader that has enough in common with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to make opponents of Trump justifiably nervous. But does Trumpism have the other key element of fascism: mob or state violence that is at times directed at scapegoated enemies?

    There is certainly an embrace of revenge and cruelty by Trump in general, which is being carried out in practice by Musk’s DOGE project. However, whether it is useful to call the second Trump administration fascist, or just fascistic for now, is a complex question within scholarly circles.

    Five weeks into the second Trump administration, and many of the most destructive ideas that were laid out last year in the unofficial campaign manifesto Project 2025 are being put into place. It has been a long-term dream of many hardline conservatives to gut America’s foreign aid and development programs, which is now happening at a frightening pace.

    What lies ahead that turns rhetoric into reality is hard to entirely predict, but many of Trump’s utterances this year have clearly been imperialistic and fascistic. Trump does not have to ignore the constitution or be a textbook fascist to be a terribly dangerous president. Being an authoritarian, which he has no qualms about embracing, is worrying enough.

    Brendon O’Connor 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.

    – ref. Donald Trump is picking fights with leaders around the world. What exactly is his foreign policy approach? – https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-is-picking-fights-with-leaders-around-the-world-what-exactly-is-his-foreign-policy-approach-251238

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: ‘Ghosts of the radio universe’: astronomers have discovered a slew of faint circular objects

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Miroslav Filipovic, Professor, Western Sydney University

    Some of the objects captured by ASKAP. Author provided

    Radio astronomers see what the naked eye can’t. As we study the sky with telescopes that record radio signals rather than light, we end up seeing a lot of circles.

    The newest generation of radio telescopes – including the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and MeerKAT, a telescope in South Africa – is revealing incredibly faint cosmic objects, never before seen.

    In astronomy, surface brightness is a measure that tells us how easily visible an object is. The extraordinary sensitivity of MeerKAT and ASKAP is now revealing a new “low surface brightness universe” to radio astronomers. It’s comprised of radio sources so faint they have never been seen before, each with their own unique physical properties.

    Many of the ASKAP results presented here were obtained with one of its major observing programs called EMU (Evolutionary Map of the Universe). EMU is mapping the entire southern sky with an unprecedented sensitivity and will deliver the most detailed map of the southern hemisphere sky to date – a spectacular new radio atlas that will be used for decades to come.

    EMU’s all-hemisphere coverage paired with ASKAP’s exceptional sensitivity, especially within the Milky Way, is what’s yielded so many recent discoveries.

    Here’s what they’re teaching us.

    Unstable stars

    Kyklos (left) and WR16 (r).
    Author provided

    The ghostly ring Kýklos (from the Greek κύκλος, circle or ring) and the object WR16 both show the environment of rare and unusual celestial objects known as Wolf-Rayet stars.

    When big stars are close to running out of fuel, they become unstable as they enter one of the last stages of the stellar life cycle, becoming a Wolf-Rayet star. They begin surging and pulsing, shedding their outer layers which can form bright nebulous structures around the star.

    In these objects, a previous outflow of material has cleared the space around the star, allowing the current outburst to expand symmetrically in all directions. This sphere of stellar detritus shows itself as a circle.

    Exploded stars

    Left to right clocwise: the supernova remnants Stingray 1, Perun, Ancora and Unicycle.
    Author provided

    Stingray 1, Perun, Ancora and Unicycle are supernova remnants. When a big star finally runs out of fuel, it can no longer hold back the crush of gravity. The matter falling inwards causes one final explosion, and the remains of these violent star deaths are known as supernovas.

    Their expanding shockwaves sweep up material into an expanding sphere, forming beautiful circular features.

    The supernova remnant will be deformed by its environment over time. If one side of the explosion slams into an interstellar cloud, we’ll see a squashed shape. So, a near-perfect circle in a messy universe is a special find.

    Teleios – named from the Greek Τελεɩοσ (“perfect”) for its near-perfectly circular shape – is shown below. This unique object has never been seen in any wavelength, including visible light, demonstrating ASKAP’s incredible ability to discover new objects.

    The shape indicates Teleios has remained relatively untouched by its environment. This presents us with an opportunity to make inferences about the initial supernova explosion, providing rare insight into one of the most energetic events in the universe.

    ASKAP EMU radio image of the Teleios supernova remnant.
    Author provided

    At the other extreme, we can take an object and discover something entirely new about it. The Diprotodon supernova remnant is shown below.

    This remnant is one of the largest objects in the sky, appearing approximately six times larger than the Moon. Hence the name: the animal Diprotodon, one of Australia’s most famous megafauna, a giant wombat that lived about 25,000 years ago.

    ASKAP’s sensitivity has uncovered the object’s full extent. This discovery led to further analysis, uncovering more of the history and the physics behind this object. The messy internal structure can be seen as different parts of the expanding shell slam into a busy interstellar environment.

    ASKAP radio image of Diprotodon, a supernova remnant. Green circle shows the previous measured size, and the yellow circle shows the new ASKAP measured size. Earth’s Moon size is shown in the top right for scale, and Diprotodon’s namesake is shown in the top left.
    Author provided

    A cosmic mirror

    Lagotis is another object that can show how new telescope data can reclassify previously discovered objects. The reflection nebula VdB-80 has been seen before, within the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. The light we see was emitted by nearby stars, and then reflected off a nearby cloud of gas and dust.

    Lagotis, with its cloud of ionised hydrogen or HII region seen on the right.
    Author provided

    However, with newly available ASKAP EMU data, we were able to discover an associated cloud of ionised hydrogen (known as an HII region, pronounced “aitch two”), where stellar energy has caused the gaseous matter to lose its electrons.

    This HII region is seen to coexist with the reflection nebula, sharing the same stellar centre, and is created from the star pushing into a molecular cloud. This movement is akin to burrowing, so the object earned the name Lagotis after Macrotis lagotis, the Australian greater bilby.

    Outside the galaxy

    ASKAP and MeerKAT are also illuminating objects from outside our Milky Way galaxy – for example, “radio ring” galaxies. When we use visible light to look at the stars in this galaxy, we see a rather plain disk.

    But in radio light, we see a ring. Why is there a hole in the middle? Perhaps the combined force of many exploding supernovas has pushed all the radio-emitting clouds out of the centre. We’re not sure – we’re looking for more examples to test our ideas.

    Finally, LMC-ORC is an Odd Radio Circle (ORC), a prominent new class of objects with unfamiliar origins. Only being visible in radio light, they are perhaps the most mysterious of all.

    A radio ring galaxy (left) and LMC-ORC (r).
    Author provided

    The next generation

    MeerKAT and ASKAP are revealing incredible insights into the low surface brightness universe. However, they are precursors for the Square Kilometre Array, an international collaborative endeavour that will increase the abilities of radio astronomers and reveal even more unique features of the universe.

    The low-surface brightness universe presents many mysteries. These discoveries push our understanding further. Currently, the EMU survey using ASKAP is only 25% complete.

    As more of this survey becomes available, we will discover many more unique and exciting objects, both new to astrophysics and extensions on previously known objects.

    Acknowledgements: Aaron Bradley and Zachary Smeaton, Masters Research Students at Western Sydney University, made valuable contributions to this article.

    Nicholas Tothill receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

    Andrew Hopkins, Luke Barnes, and Miroslav Filipovic 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.

    – ref. ‘Ghosts of the radio universe’: astronomers have discovered a slew of faint circular objects – https://theconversation.com/ghosts-of-the-radio-universe-astronomers-have-discovered-a-slew-of-faint-circular-objects-249141

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: Secretary-General’s message on the launch of the Berlin Initiative: for a Diplomatic Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

    Source: United Nations – English

    commend the launch of The Berlin Initiative and its commitment to a diplomatic resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Since the horrific terror attacks by Hamas on October 7, the ensuing Israeli military operations have unleashed an unprecedented level of death and destruction in Gaza.  Meanwhile, the deteriorating situation in the West Bank is fueling further instability and suffering.

    The ceasefire in Gaza must hold and be implemented in full.  All hostages must be released immediately, unconditionally, and in a dignified manner.  And humanitarian aid must be maintained, funded, protected, and reach people in dire need without restrictions.

    But beyond ending this terrible war, we must lay the foundations for lasting peace – one that ensures security for Israel, dignity and self-determination for the Palestinian people, and stability for the entire region.

    That requires a clear political framework for Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction.  It requires immediate and irreversible steps towards a two-State solution – with Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, unified under a legitimate Palestinian authority, accepted and supported by the Palestinian people.  And it requires putting an end to occupation, settlement expansion and threats of annexation.

    Efforts like The Berlin Initiative help forge a diplomatic path.  I urge everyone to seize this moment to build a future where Israel and Palestine live side by side, in peace and security, in line with international law and UN resolutions.  It is the only way.

    ***
     

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Cornyn, Padilla Introduce Bill to Safeguard U.S. Research Against Foreign Adversaries

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Texas John Cornyn
    WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Alex Padilla (D-CA) today introduced the U.S. Research Protection Act to shield American research from malign foreign influence by updating language in the CHIPS and Science Act to include additional restrictions against programs sponsored by countries of concern:
    “In a world where competition turns into hostility all too often, we must do everything in our power to safeguard American ingenuity against bad actor nations,” said Sen. Cornyn. “This legislation will place even more restrictions on academic programs involving countries of concern to ensure American scientific research is protected.”
    “The bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act included important provisions to bolster our research security,” said Sen. Padilla. “This legislation will provide much needed clarity for federal agencies and academic institutions to better safeguard national security, while preserving research collaboration and international partnerships crucial to the strength of America’s innovation economy.”
    Background:
    Malign Foreign Talent Programs are sponsored by countries of concern like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea to obtain American scientific research and technology by incentivizing or coercing American researchers to act on their behalf. The CHIPS and Science Act included provisions to prohibit the U.S. government and academic institutions from partnering with such programs.
    However, the law’s current definition of a Malign Foreign Talent Program only includes programs that “directly provide” incentives and benefits to researchers to participate, leaving out other methods to provide indirect benefits to researchers to induce their cooperation. This legislation would broaden the definition to include “indirect benefits,” ensuring foreign adversarial nations cannot exploit this loophole to evade U.S. research restrictions.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: UN Human Rights Council 58: Sri Lanka Core Group Statement at the General Debate on Item 2

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments 3

    Speech

    UN Human Rights Council 58: Sri Lanka Core Group Statement at the General Debate on Item 2

    Sri Lanka Statement at the 58 Human Rights Council during the Item 2 General Debate. Delivered by UK Ambassador for Human Rights to the UN, Eleanor Sanders, on behalf of the Core Group on Sri Lanka.

    Thank you, Mr President,   

    This statement is by the Sri Lanka Core Group comprising Canada, Malawi, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and the United Kingdom.   

    High Commissioner, we wish to thank you for your oral update on Sri Lanka

    We would like to commend Sri Lanka’s peaceful elections and the smooth transition of power last year. We recognise that the new Sri Lankan Government has only been in place for four months, and we encourage Sri Lanka to use  the  opportunity that this transition represents to address the challenges it faces.   

    We appreciate the Government’s commitment to making meaningful progress on reconciliation and the initial steps taken, including returning land, lifting roadblocks, and allowing communities in the North and East to commemorate the past and to memorialise their loved ones. 

    In order to build and sustain trust, it is essential to ensure the protection of civil society spaces, including by ending surveillance and intimidation of civil society actors and organisations.  

    We welcome commitments to implement devolution in accordance with the constitution and to make progress on governance reforms.    

    We take note of the Government’s stated intention to replace the Prevention of Terrorism Act and emphasise that any new legislation should be in line with Sri Lanka’s international obligations. We encourage the release of those who remain detained under the Act.  

    As the Government seeks to make progress on human rights and corruption cases, we urge that any comprehensive reconciliation and accountability process carry the support of affected communities, build on past recommendations and meet international standards.   

    We also encourage the Government to re-invigorate the work of domestic institutions focused on reparations and missing persons. 

    We reaffirm our willingness to work with the Government to ensure that any future transitional justice mechanisms are independent, inclusive, meaningful, and meet the expectations of affected communities.   

    Thank you.

    Updates to this page

    Published 3 March 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Cartel Boss Tied to Southlake Murder-for-Hire Among Defendants Expelled From Mexico

    Source: United States Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF)

    Among the 29 cartel bosses expelled from Mexico and transferred to the custody of the United States on Thursday was Northern District of Texas defendant Jose Rodolfo Villarreal Hernandez, aka “El Gato,” announced Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Chad Meacham. 

    Mr. Villarreal Hernandez, a Mexican national who held a high-level position in the Beltran-Leyva Organization (BLO) Drug Cartel, was charged in June 2018 with interstate stalking and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire in the brutal slaying of a 43-year-old Southlake, Texas lawyer in 2013. 

    He was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List in October 2020 and arrested by Mexican law enforcement agents in Atizapán de Zaragoza, Mexico in January 2023.

    Attorney General Pam Bondi announced his successful extradition yesterday, pledging to prosecute all extradited cartel bosses “to the fullest extent of the law in honor of the brave law enforcement agents who have dedicated their careers — and in some cases, given their lives — to protect innocent people from the scourge of violent cartels.” 

    Mr. Villarreal Hernandez will make his initial appearance in federal court next week.

    According to evidence presented at the trial of his coconspirators, Mr. Villarreal Hernandez allegedly directed and financed a multi-year effort to locate and assassinate his victim, an attorney with ties to a rival cartel. Testimony revealed that Mr. Villarreal Hernandez allegedly believed the attorney was involved with the death of Mr. Villarreal Hernandez’s father and wanted revenge. 

    The victim was shot while sitting in the passenger seat of his vehicle outside an upscale shopping center in  Southlake on May 22, 2013. His wife was standing near the driver’s side door when her husband was killed. 

    Three men who, acting on orders from Mr. Villarreal Hernandez, tracked the victim prior to his death were convicted and sentenced in 2016: Jose Luis Cepeda-Cortes and Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Cepeda were convicted at trial of interstate stalking and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire; Mr. Cepeda-Cortez was also convicted of tampering with documents or proceedings. Both men received life sentences. Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Campano, son of Mr. Ledezma-Cepeda, pleaded guilty prior to trial to one count of interstate stalking and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

    A fourth defendant, Ramon Villarreal-Hernandez, the brother of Jose Rodolfo, was arrested in Mexico and extradited to the United States in 2020. He pleaded guilty to interstate stalking in June 2022 and was sentenced to ten years in prison.

    According to the U.S. State Department, in addition to allegedly ordering the Southlake murder, Mr. Villarreal Hernandez is believed to have overseen the importation of large quantities of cocaine into the United States as well as committing violent acts within the Republic of Mexico and the United States to maintain his organization’s power and status.

    “After more than a decade, Mr. Villarreal Hernandez will have to answer for his alleged crimes in an American courtroom,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Chad Meacham. “Since the victim was gunned down in a public parking lot in 2013, law enforcement’s commitment to this case has never wavered. I extend my sincere thanks to the federal, state, local, and international partners who have pulled together to ensure this defendant will be brought to justice.”

    “FBI Dallas and the Southlake Police Department have been determined to bring this individual to justice since he orchestrated a brutal murder in one of the many communities we serve in North Texas,” said R. Joseph Rothrock, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Dallas Field Office. “We would like to thank the United States Marshals Service for ensuring that Villarreal-Hernandez arrived safely and is now in federal custody on U.S. soil.”

    “An investigative success such as this one does not come easily or through individual efforts.  Policing is a team sport,” said DEA Dallas Special Agent in Charge, Eduardo A. Chávez. “We are proud to stand hand-in-hand with our colleagues from the FBI to secure Villarreal Hernández’ indictment, arrest, and transfer.  Violence and drug trafficking are evil bedfellows, but together we will ensure communities remain safe and criminals face justice.”

    An indictment is merely an allegation of criminal conduct, not evidence. Mr. Villarreal Hernandez is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

    The statutory maximum penalty for interstate stalking is life in prison; the statutory maximum for the murder-for-hire charge is life in prison or death.

    The investigation was led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Dallas Field Office and the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Dallas Field Division, with assistance from the Southlake Police Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, US. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office, the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office, the Fort Worth Police Department, and the Grapevine Police Department. The  Mexican Secretariat of the Navy, Fiscalía Generalde la República (FGR), Coordinación Nacional Antisecuestro (CONASE) coordinated in the arrest of Mr. Villarreal-Hernandez.  The U.S. Marshal Service for the Northern District of Texas assisted in securing the defendant upon his arrival in Texas. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, the FBI’s Legal Attaché Office in Mexico City, and the U.S. Marshals Mexico City Foreign Field Office provided valuable assistance.

    Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joshua Burgess (fmr) and Aisha Saleem prosecuted the case against Mr. Luis Cepeda-Cortes, Mr. Ledezma-Cepeda, and Mr. Ledezma-Campano. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Shawn Smith and Laura Montes are prosecuting the case against Mr. Villarreal Hernandez.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The female explorers who braved the wilderness but were overlooked by the history books

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sarah Lonsdale, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, City St George’s, University of London

    Ferryland lighthouse near Labrador in the Canadian Arctic, an area mapped by Mina Hubbard in 1905. Nagel Photography

    In the summer of 1905, a young Canadian widow, Mina Hubbard, set out on an expedition to map the northeastern corner of Labrador, from Lake Melville up to Ungava Bay, an inlet of the Arctic Ocean. It was an unusual challenge for a former nurse who had left school at 16.

    Her husband, Leonidas Hubbard, had died in this same harsh environment two years earlier. Mina, 35, intended to complete his work.

    Although she faced physical dangers on the 600-mile journey – starvation, bears, freezing rivers and rapids – her greatest antagonists were the reporters and editors of the male-dominated outdoors press of early 20th-century north America.

    The popular Outing magazine, for whom Leonidas Hubbard had written, was the most excoriating. Its editor, Caspar Whitney, thundered in an editorial that “the widow” should not be in the wilderness, let alone speak about it.

    The wild was no place for a white woman, especially one accompanied by First Nation (Native American) guides. This was not long after she had given an interview to another paper.

    Mina Hubbard in northern Labrador.

    Other newspapers described her as a grief-stricken hysteric. This was the only explanation they could find for her decision to go on such a long and arduous journey. When she was 300 miles into her expedition, having found the source of the Naskaupi River, the New York Times reported on its front page that she had given up, beaten back by hardship and privations.

    New York Times.
    CC BY-NC-ND

    Instead the paper claimed that a man, an explorer called Dillon Wallace who was also in northern Labrador, was “pushing forward beyond any white man’s previous track”. In fact, Hubbard had neither given up, nor had Wallace caught up with her. She would reach Ungava Bay several weeks before his party. But it fitted the dominant narrative of the time: that the wilderness was no place for a woman.

    I explore the idea of what the wild is, and of its being a gendered space, in my new book, Wildly Different: How Five Women Reclaimed Nature in a Man’s World. From ancient myths such as Ulysses or Gilgamesh, to the present where research shows that women face harassment and othering even on remote Antarctic bases, the wild has for centuries been a site of heroic male adventuring and rugged exploration.

    Studies show that even in modern hunting societies, while women tend forest plots and hunt small game near the village or camp, it is the men who go away, often for many days, to hunt for big game and status.

    Myths from across the world have told listeners and readers that women who stray beyond the city wall, village paling or encampment are either supernatural, monsters, or have been banished for perceived sins against society.

    In the Greek myth of Polyphonte, the young girl who refuses to follow the correct gender role to become a wife and mother, and wants instead to hunt in the forest, is treated to a terrible punishment from the gods. She is tricked into falling in love with a bear-turned-man and gives birth to two bestial children. She and her sons are then transformed into flesh-eating birds.

    In a more recent echo of the media coverage of Mina Hubbard’s journey, in Kenya in the 1980s and 1990s, the environmental activist Wangari Maathai was attacked and belittled. She even had a curse put on her for planting trees in forests earmarked for development by the country’s then president, Daniel arap Moi, and for challenging Moi’s plans to build a skyscraper in one of Nairobi’s last green spaces.

    At the height of Maathai’s confrontation with President Moi, the Daily Nation newspaper repeated criticism of both Maathai and her Green Belt Movement organisation. Headlines included: “MPs condemn Prof Maathai” and “MPs want Maathai movement banned”. Her crime? Wanting to slow disastrous desertification and soil erosion, and to empower rural women by planting 30 million trees.

    When British mountaineer Alison Hargreaves was killed in the Himalayas in 1995, reporting focused on her being a mother and wife. Historical newspaper records I found during my research roundly accused her of abandoning her primary role of caring for her children.

    The Sunday Times called her “A mother obsessed”, while the Independent led with the headline, “Dangerous ambition of a woman on the peaks”. The Daily Telegraph headline read, “A wife driven to high challenges”. Readers’ letters were even more critical, branding her as selfish and irresponsible.

    A novelty nail file

    Women who have received neutral or positive coverage for their work have tended to have novelty value, or had accomplished a feat so extraordinary that their being a woman was part of the narrative.


    CC BY-SA

    The entomologist Evelyn Cheesman spent decades collecting insects on Pacific islands, from the Galapagos to New Guinea. Her work led to support for a biological dividing line between different ecosystems in the New Hebrides to be named Cheesman’s Line, and her contribution to science was a great novelty for the newspaper press.

    Her months-long, arduous expedition to Papua New Guinea in the early 1930s earned her the headline in the now defunct UK News Chronicle, “Woman collects 42,000 insects”.

    After Cheesman published her memoir in 1957, detailing four decades of exploration, the headline in the newspaper Reynolds News announced: “Woman trapped in giant spider’s web”. The sub-head simply statesd, “saved by her nail file”.

    More broadly, my research disappointingly concludes that over 100 years on, women explorers and scientific fieldworkers are still represented as unusual or out of place in the wild. These media narratives are dangerous as they feed into social attitudes that put women at risk and cause them to change their behaviour outdoors by avoiding isolated places, especially beyond daylight hours, for example.

    Studies show that women (and black and hispanic) hikers in the US are more afraid of being attacked by men than by bears or other wild animals. Women’s outdoor groups, and campaigners such as Woman with Altitude and the Tough Girl podcast are working hard to counter this narrative, encouraging women to enjoy the beauties and discoveries still to be made in the world’s most rugged and remote places.

    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Sarah Lonsdale’s book is published by Manchester University Press. Both she and MUP will receive income from sales of the book.

    – ref. The female explorers who braved the wilderness but were overlooked by the history books – https://theconversation.com/the-female-explorers-who-braved-the-wilderness-but-were-overlooked-by-the-history-books-249742

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How gas keeps the UK’s electricity bills so high – despite lots of cheap wind power

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Tamvakis, Professor of Commodity Economics and Finance, City St George’s, University of London

    The UK has become a world leader in offshore wind power. iweta0077 / shutterstock

    Gas and electricity bills will rise again for millions of UK households on April 1, when the latest energy price cap takes effect. A typical household will pay £111 more per year.

    Though prices have fallen somewhat since their peak in 2022, bills are still considerably higher than they have been historically. That’s despite the construction over the past decade of vast wind farms in the North Sea – which, once built, provide electricity for very little extra cost.

    So what explains the UK’s pricey gas and electricity?

    Since the 1990s, the UK has been dependent on natural gas in more ways than one. In 2023 (the most recent year for which we have full statistics), gas accounted for 33% of the UK’s energy and almost as much of the electricity it generated. That year, wind contributed 29% to generation and solar an additional 5%, which is of some significance.

    As nearly all households are connected to mains gas, most energy bills reflect the global price of gas.

    The UK has to compete with demand for gas from other markets, especially, but not exclusively, the EU. The higher the demand, the higher the price. Before the Ukrainian crisis, many EU economies, especially Germany, were able to source abundant gas through pipelines from Russia.

    The UK, like other big European countries such as Spain, Italy and France, was able to meet some of its gas supply via pipelines (from Norway in the case of the UK), but also in the form of more expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG) from as far afield as Qatar, Algeria, West Africa and, more recently, the US.

    Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the flow of pipeline gas has almost entirely stopped. Germany and western EU countries have to compete with everyone else to source their gas from Norway or international LNG markets. A few countries on the eastern side of the EU, such as Austria and Hungary, are still sourcing their gas from Russia but face western criticism for that continued dependence.

    This all matters to UK consumers because most of a household’s average energy bill reflects the vagaries of the international gas market. A relatively harsh winter in Europe means they have purchased more gas and paid more for it. In a global market the UK consumer will have to pay this price as well. Even a harsh winter in Japan means that more LNG is directed there, increasing prices for UK and EU consumers.

    We can’t suddenly turn on the wind

    Even the growth in renewables, especially wind power, does not offer protection against the vagaries of the global gas markets. It is well known that wind energy is intermittent and therefore difficult to forecast and base generation plans on.

    Wind energy is what people in the electricity industry call “non-dispatchable”. Because electricity is a universal good, which we expect to have whenever we ask for it, the national grid needs to be able to balance the randomness of wind generation with the immediate response of a reliable, quick-start, “dispatchable” source of generation. Gas fits the bill.

    As a result, expensive gas which is called on to make up for the loss of wind or solar generation, ends up setting the electricity price (called the “system price”) most days. Other countries experience something similar. Germany, for instance, generates just 15% of its electricity from gas (albeit with a further 25% from coal) and gets a higher proportion from renewables (28% wind and 12% solar). Yet it still has to use gas frequently to balance the electrical system, with the same effect as in the UK.

    Ultimately, the more variable renewable electricity we inject into the system, the more we need to plan for, and invest in, infrastructure that can support it. That means a smarter grid, fewer grid bottlenecks within the UK, more and bigger interconnections to other European countries and battery solutions which can store electricity both for short periods (minutes and hours) and for days and even weeks.

    Putting all these elements in place is a Herculean task. Gas fills the gap, but in a way which is more expensive (for now) and continues emitting greenhouse gases, albeit at half the rate that coal did.

    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Michael Tamvakis 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.

    – ref. How gas keeps the UK’s electricity bills so high – despite lots of cheap wind power – https://theconversation.com/how-gas-keeps-the-uks-electricity-bills-so-high-despite-lots-of-cheap-wind-power-251136

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: The Ecobank Group expands its gender-financing offer to facilitate access to financing for Africa’s women entrepreneurs

    Source: Africa Press Organisation – English (2) – Report:

    LOMÉ, Togo, March 3, 2025/APO Group/ —

    • Ellevate by Ecobank expands to become bigger, better and more inclusive.
    • From supporting corporate businesswomen, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs to individual entrepreneurs, and those in the informal sector.

    ​To bridge the gender financing gap for Africa’s women entrepreneurs, Ecobank (www.Ecobank.com), the leading pan-African financial services group, announces significant enhancements to its multi-award-winning gender-financing solution – ‘Ellevate by Ecobank’. These improvements strengthen Ecobank’s commitment to women-owned, women-led, and women-focused businesses, while reinforcing its market competitiveness.

    The World Bank estimates that closing the gender gap in Africa could add $2.5 trillion to the continent’s GDP by 2025, underscoring the urgency of investing in women – not just for social justice, but for a more prosperous and equitable future for all Africans. In response, Ecobank’s enhanced Ellevate programme is now more ambitious and inclusive, designed to address the diverse challenges faced by women entrepreneurs. The programme is being extended from new and existing Commercial Banking customers to include new and existing Consumer Banking and Corporate Banking customers, as well as female business leaders, with Corporate Banking customers serving as a pool of mentors. With this expansion, individual entrepreneurs – including those in the formal and informal sectors – can now fully benefit from its enhanced financial and non-financial solutions.

    Jeremy Awori, Chief Executive Officer, Ecobank Group, said: “We recognise and applaud the role that women entrepreneurs play in driving socio-economic impact across Africa and are committed to supporting them at every stage of their entrepreneurial journey. Since the launch of the Ellevate programme we have made significant progress, disbursing over US$200 million in loans, providing business networking opportunities, and offering leadership and capacity-building training for businesswomen.”

    “Today, Ellevate 2.0 heralds in a new era for gender financing. It is bigger, better and more inclusive, delivering exceptional value to female entrepreneurs and women business leaders. Enhancing our products and solutions for women entrepreneurs to position Ecobank as their bank of choice is an integral component in accelerating the success of our Growth, Transformation and Returns strategy’s objectives. It also supports our Group-wide objective of promoting gender equality and contributing to sustainable development.”

    The enhanced Ellevate’s value propositions now include:

    • Increasing access to finance with unsecured loans of up to US$50,000
    • Competitive interest rates and favourable collateral requirements
    • Accommodating customers with a two-year track record instead of the industry-standard three years
    • Helping them to find new customers and access new markets across Africa through our innovative online matchmaking MyTradeHub platform
    • Training, knowledge sharing webinars, support and other initiatives to enhance customers’ business and leadership skills
    • Customised wealth management services
    • A one-stop shop to meet insurance needs.
    • A loyalty programme providing exclusive offers and discounts at select retail stores and recreation centres

    To coincide with the celebrations of the International Women’s Day, our enhanced Ellevate program will be launched by nine of our affiliates (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Senegal, Togo and Zimbabwe) by the end of March 2025. It will then be rolled-out in phases across all our other sub-Saharan African affiliates throughout the year.

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI: UPDATE – BCMI More Than Doubles Cloud-based Dispatch Footprint

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    REDMOND, Wash., March 03, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In 2024, BCMI Corp. celebrated 10 years in business, and another significant milestone. The technology leader and provider of cloud-based mobile software for concrete and bulk materials producers more than doubled its cloud-based ready-mix dispatch footprint across the U.S.

    Industry-leading companies have adopted BCMI’s cloud-based system, beginning with Smith Ready Mix in Valparaiso, Indiana, followed by many others including Miles Sand & Gravel, Geneva Rock and Sunroc (both Clyde Companies subsidiaries), BARD Materials and GCC. These producers and others have added BCMI’s dispatch as part of the end-to-end software platform that includes extensive operational and customer KPIs, quoting and sales tools, and customer invoicing.

    In 2025, BCMI expects its dispatch footprint to expand at an accelerated rate. Implementations are scheduled for large vertical materials producers, imi and Titan America as well as regional ready mix leaders including Consumers Concrete and Zignego.

    “One of the great advantages of BCMI Dispatch is that any change or update from our dispatchers and drivers is instantly shared across our company—and with our customers—through the BCMI mobile apps,” BARD Materials Vice President of Operations Chad Thier says. “BCMI truly partners with producers to shape a concrete dispatch system that leverages the best technology available, ensuring it meets the needs of the industry.”

    The BCMI Dispatch system has the advantage of being cloud-native, meaning it is developed using the most current technology rather than retrofitting older dispatch systems with hardware that must be maintained by producers. BCMI integrates with related systems, such as truck GPS and accounting programs, through API (Application Programming Interface) connections entirely in the cloud. This allows materials producers to choose their own best-in-class solution set to meet their business needs.

    “After an extensive, six-month evaluation, we concluded that BCMI’s combination of current product offerings, plus the opportunity to take part in the continued development of the product, was the best fit for what imi needs to service our customers and our internal teams,” imi President and CEO Pete Lyons says.

    BCMI’s leadership draws on more than 100 years of collective experience in serving the concrete and bulk materials market, making the team uniquely qualified to understand and address the needs of the industry. “We have all experienced the pain of struggling with outdated technology, and it makes us even more passionate about creating better tools for producers and contractors,” BCMI Vice President of Customer Success Janeen O’Dell says. “Things like mobile apps and eTicketing are old news in other industries, and there’s no reason our industry shouldn’t use them to make our day-to-day jobs easier.”

    According to BCMI Co-founder and CEO Craig Yeack, “Our product team is laser focused on innovation, including aggressive research and development of AI tools for materials producers. In the next few years, we’ll see accelerated growth in technology, faster than we’ve seen in decades. We look forward to being the industry’s trusted partner as we navigate these changes together.”

    About BCMI

    BCMI Corp.’s mobile software empowers bulk construction material producers to improve business processes. BCMI’s performance analytics, interactive communication tools and AI-assisted dispatch keep materials producers and contractors aligned with real-time business solutions. For more on our cloud-based BCMI Dispatch, Material Pro and Material Now apps, visit www.bcmicorp.com.

    Media Contact

    Jennifer Jensen, BCMI Media and PR Specialist: Jennifer.jensen@bcmicorp.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: Finance in Common Summit urges global development finance institutions to harness collective power to address global poverty

    Source: Africa Press Organisation – English (2) – Report:

    CAPE TOWN, South Africa, March 3, 2025/APO Group/ —

    The fifth edition of the Finance in Common Summit (FiCS) concluded on Friday in Cape Town, South Africa, with strong calls for global development finance institutions to work together to address poverty and development challenges. South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana led the call.

    The summit, which was co-sponsored by the African Development Bank and took place alongside the G20 Finance Ministers’ Meeting, was themed “Fostering Infrastructure and Finance for Fair and Sustainable Growth.”

    Godongwana described the meeting as an unprecedented gathering of key financial players, saying: “Your determination and commitment will change the world. Your determination and will have an impact on global poverty.”

    The minister linked the summit’s goals to South Africa’s development trajectory, highlighting the structural reforms the country had undertaken in the electricity, roads, and port sectors, which have opened new investment opportunities to development partners.

    African Development Bank Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer, Hassatou Diop N’Sele—one of several senior officials of the Bank Group at FiCS—represented Bank Group President, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina at a meeting on Wednesday organized by the Council of Europe Development Bank. At the meeting, multilateral development banks reaffirmed a shared commitment to maximize their collective impact.

    During the G20 meetings of Finance Ministers and central bank governors, Hassatou Diop N’Sele said, “We call on G20 nations to enhance financial commitments, especially for the 17th replenishment of the African Development Fund, to simplify processes for accessing climate finance, and to create enabling policies that facilitate sustainable capital flows to Africa.”

    In her various interventions during FiCS, she discussed the innovative financing tools and initiatives launched by the African Development Bank to leverage resources and mobilize the private sector at scale, including the landmark hybrid capital transactions successfully replicated by other development finance institutions and the Africa Investment Forum.

    N’Sele emphasized the urgency for philanthropies and foundations to further strengthen their partnerships with multilateral development banks and to fully embrace innovation to amplify their impact. She also recognized the challenges for expanding climate finance in Africa and reflected on such solutions and platforms as the Alliance for Green Infrastructure in Africa, designed to catalyze bankable, greener infrastructure projects at scale and speed.

    The African Development Bank delegation highlighted the progress of Mission 300 (https://apo-opa.co/4bolqQE), an initiative to accelerate access to electricity for 300 million Africans by 2030. The Bank, working with the World Bank and other development finance institutions and private sector partners, has committed $18.2 billion to this effort.

    Senior leaders of the Bank stressed the need for urgent action. Nnenna Nwabufo, Bank Group Vice President for Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery, said: “Africa is not looking for aid, we are looking for partnerships.”.

    She added: “The time for pilot projects that deliver incremental progress is over. We need investments that enable our nations to take ownership of their development, fostering resilience, self-sufficiency, and sustainable growth that benefits both Africa and the global economy.”

    Solomon Quaynor, the African Development Bank’s Vice President for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialization, called for faster implementation of infrastructure projects. “Africa can no longer sustain infrastructure projects that take seven to 10 years to complete – we must accelerate development to deliver within three years, prioritizing green infrastructure,” he said.

    The African continent needs $2.7 trillion through 2030 to meet its climate action goals, but receives only 3.6% of all global climate finance, despite its minimal contribution to global emissions.

    The African Development Bank’s Director General for Southern Africa, Leila Mokaddem, emphasized that Africa’s green transition must be inclusive. She said: “With 600 million Africans still without electricity, our transition cannot be about climate goals alone. It must be about jobs, industrialization and economic opportunity. The African Development Bank is supporting this vision through its Jobs for Youth in Africa strategy to create 25 million jobs and equip 50 million young Africans with green economy skills by the end of this year.”

    The summit achieved several significant breakthroughs in expanding the scope and impact of development financing. Key outcomes included: the endorsement by G20 finance ministers of public development banks’ crucial role in international financial architecture; steps toward setting up frameworks to support cultural industries as valid asset classes; and the formation of a coalition between public development banks and civil society to ensure that development finance serves communities.

    CEO of Agence Française de Développement and Chair of the Finance in Common Summit Rémy Rioux noted: “We have made tremendous progress in building public development banks as an asset class through innovation, commitment, and shared values. In times of uncertainty and conflict, we are offering a calm, collective alternative.”

    “This has truly been an African FiCS,” said Boitumelo Mosako, CEO of the Development Bank of Southern Africa. He added:  “With 34% of delegates coming from the continent, we have shown that Africa is unstoppable as the second fastest growing region in the world.”

    Following the Finance in Common Summit, the Fourth Finance for Development Conference will take place in Spain between June and July this year. Being organized by the United Nations and the Spanish government, that summit will feature continuing discussions on reshaping the international financial architecture to better serve development needs.

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Government to turbocharge defence innovation

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    Press release

    Government to turbocharge defence innovation

    New defence innovation body to deliver cutting-edge military tech to British troops and create highly skilled jobs across the UK.

    • Chancellor and Defence Secretary and Business Secretary host joint roundtable with leaders from 15 of the country’s top defence firms
    • Government to launch new defence innovation organisation to quickly deliver cutting-edge military tech to British troops and create highly skilled jobs across the UK
    • Follows PM’s announcement to deliver largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War

    A new defence innovation body to harness UK ingenuity and boost military technology is set to be launched, as part of a drive to turbocharge innovation in defence and deliver growth as part of the Plan for Change.

    The Chancellor, Defence Secretary and Business Secretary have today (28 February) confirmed that a new UK defence innovation organisation will work with innovative firms to rapidly get cutting-edge military technology into the hands of British troops, and harness the ingenuity of the UK’s leading tech and manufacturing sectors.

    This new unit – which will be launched at the Spring Statement – is a clear demonstration of how the Government is moving at pace to drive reform in defence and use defence as an engine of economic growth.

    The Chancellor, Defence Secretary and Business Secretary today met leaders from 15 British defence firms of all sizes at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire – one of the RAF’s busiest stations with airborne intelligence aircraft and systems – to discuss the how the new unit will operate.

    Developed as part of Defence Reform – the biggest overhaul of defence for more than 50 years – the new body is set to simplify and streamline the innovation system within MOD. It will take a new approach by moving quickly and decisively, using different ways of contracting, to enable UK companies to scale up innovative prototypes rapidly by setting out a clear pathway, working with the Government, from initial production to manufacturing at scale. 

    As part of a defence innovation drive, the government will also look to enhance investment in defence start-ups and scale-up technology and capability, including through the National Security Strategic Investment Fund. Ministers will work with the venture capital and investment community, as well as industry, to leverage private investment in the technology of the future.

    The meeting comes after the Prime Minister outlined the Government’s commitment to increase spending on defence to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027 and the Chancellor’s message to European allies at the G20 in South Africa to jointly go further and faster on defence.

    The new innovation unit will help equip Britain’s Armed Forces with cutting-edge tech and grow high-tech British businesses in the defence tech ecosystem. It will take the lessons from the rapidly changing nature of warfare, as seen in the conflict in Ukraine.

    Increased defence spending will support highly skilled jobs and apprenticeships across the whole of the UK. Last year, defence spending supported over 430,000 jobs across the UK, the equivalent to one in every 60, and 68% of defence spending goes outside of London and the Southeast, benefitting every nation and region of the country.

    Backing the defence industry will protect UK citizens from threats at home but will also create a secure and stable environment in which businesses can thrive, supporting the Government’s number one mission to deliver economic growth.

    Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves said:

    The world is less certain than it has been for a generation. History tells us that government and industry must rise to meet these moments together. We need to invest in sophisticated, innovative kit and get it into the hands of our fighting men and women.

    In the world we face, national security and economic growth are going to go hand in hand. High-skilled, well-paid jobs across the UK will both make our country safer and put pounds in people’s pockets.

    Defence Secretary, John Healey said:

    The world is changing, and we are changing defence. We will back the high-growth, high-tech UK defence firms of the future, to boost our national security and make defence an engine for growth.

    We will make the UK a defence innovation leader, funding and supporting firms of all sizes to take state-of-the-art technology from the drawing board to the production line, and into the hands of our Armed Forces.

    Defence has a crucial role to play in economic growth across the UK – built on the foundation of the largest sustained funding increase since the Cold War – to support thousands of highly skilled jobs.

    Business and Trade Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds said:

    A strong, robust defence sector is vital for a Britain that’s both secure at home and strong abroad, and ensures a world where business can benefit from the economic security it brings.

    Nearly half a million UK graduates get good, well-paid jobs thanks to our aerospace, defence, security and space sectors. These are areas where the UK excels on the global stage, and where our innovation can add billions to the economy.

    That’s why our Plan for Change puts defence at the heart of our Industrial Strategy, helping us drive economic growth while bolstering our national security for the long term.

    Science and Tech Secretary, Peter Kyle said:

    Britain’s science and research expertise has always played a role in keeping us safe, and still does: from inventions like radar and codebreaking machines in the 20th century, through to innovations around drone technology and cybersecurity, today.

    We are dedicated to making sure the UK tech sector has everything it needs to continue to thrive, and to keep playing a critical role in our national security.

    As set out in the Plan for Change, national security is the first duty of the government, and investment in defence will protect UK citizens from threats at home while also creating a secure and stable environment for economic growth.

    Economic growth is central to the Government’s Plan for Change to put more money into the pockets of working people and will be a core objective of the defence innovation organisation.

    The joint meeting with defence industry organisations comes on the final day of the consultation for the Defence Industrial Strategy, which will ensure a strong defence sector and resilient supply chains across the whole of the UK.

    Industry leaders’ quotes:

    Andy Fraser, Saab UK Group Managing Director said:

    Saab UK welcomes the announcement that the UK Government will increase defence spending to 2.5% by 2027, with a route to 3% in the next Parliament.

    We live in a challenging world which requires industry and government in the UK to work together more closely. In the UK, we know that the defence industry benefits growth, investment and offers fantastic careers – while also helping to ensure the UK’s resilience. Saab UK has recently opened new facilities in the UK because we know that together we can achieve our aim to keep people and society safe.

    Updates to this page

    Published 3 March 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Appointments to the Board of the International Fund for Ireland

    Source: United Kingdom – Government Statements

    News story

    Appointments to the Board of the International Fund for Ireland

    The Irish and UK Governments have today announced new appointments to the Board of the International Fund for Ireland.

    Earlier today, the Irish and United Kingdom Governments announced new appointments to the Board of the International Fund for Ireland.

    The appointments are:

    • Ms Shona McCarthy, Chair
    • Ms Janet McConkey,
    • Ms Katy Hayward,
    • Ms Anne Conaghan
    • Ms Anne Carr,
    • Ms Angila Chada,
    • Mr Bill Pauley,

    In announcing these appointments, the two governments expressed their very warm appreciation for the services given by the outgoing Board Members whose term of office had ended. Particular thanks are due to Mr Paddy Harte who has shown exceptional leadership of the Board through his service as Chairman during the past six years.

    Notes to Editors

    The International Fund for Ireland is an international organisation established by the Irish and British Governments in 1986 with the objectives of promoting economic and social advance and of encouraging contact, dialogue and reconciliation between Unionists and Nationalists throughout Ireland. Contributors to the Fund have included the United States of America, the European Union, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Irish and UK Governments. Ms Anne Carr and Ms Anne Conaghan, who were Members of the previous Board, have been re- appointed for a further term.

    Updates to this page

    Published 3 March 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Nations: DR Congo: Clean water ‘a lifeline’ for around 364,000 children a day in Goma

    Source: United Nations MIL OSI b

    Humanitarian Aid

    The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and partners in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are providing lifesaving clean water supplies to 700,000 people a day – around 364,000 of them children – in the regional capital Goma after breaks in the water supply due to the uptick in fighting.

    The intense conflict at the end of January, which saw the city overrun by Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, left many of the city’s two million residents without access to clean water, sanitation or power. A third of them have only recently been displaced.

    The humanitarian crisis sparked by the fighting between Congolese Government forces, M23 and other armed factions – who have fuelled instability in the restive east for decades – has raised two pressing needs, says UNICEF.

    Hundreds of thousands of people are now moving from previous displacement sites around Goma to areas of return with only limited water and sanitation services.

    “Clean water is a lifeline. With ongoing cholera and mpox epidemics in eastern DRC, children and families need safe water now more than ever to protect themselves and prevent a deeper health crisis,” said Jean Francois Basse, UNICEF‘s acting Representative in DRC.

    Deadlier risk than violence

    “Around the world, children in protracted conflicts are three times more likely to die from water-related diseases than violence. Re-establishing essential services needs to be prioritised, or we risk even more lives.”

    Despite the deteriorating security situation, UNICEF responded immediately by trucking water to three health facilities, including the Virunga General Referral Hospital, which treated around 3,000 injured patients.

    Medical kits to treat 50,000 people were also distributed to health centres overwhelmed with patients.

    Around 700,000 people now have daily access to water through the REGIDESO water utility company after UNICEF and the UN peacekeeping mission, MONUSCO, provided 77,000 litres of fuel, enabling the five main pumping stations to restart after they had shut down due to powerline cuts.

    On the east side of Goma, an additional 33,000 people are receiving water through a UNICEF-constructed water network in the Bushara-Kayarutshiyna area.

    Cholera cases tick up

    However, many still rely on untreated supplies directly from Lake Kivu. UNICEF and partners have set up more than 50 chlorine sites along the coast to treat lake water, supplying 56,000 people daily in a bid to limit the spread of cholera.

    “We are already seeing worrying signs of a rise in cholera cases, closely tied to increased displacement and people relying on unclean water. While gathering data is difficult in these challenging circumstances, with the main rainy season approaching, we’re extremely worried about an explosion in cases,” said Mr. Basse.

    Over the last decade, cholera has killed over 5,500 people in the DRC, where only 43 per cent of the population has access to at least a basic water service, and only 15 per cent has access to basic sanitation.

    In Goma, the conflict has made a dire situation worse. Even before the current escalation, approximately 700,000 displaced people lived in camps with dangerously inadequate access to water, sanitation and hygiene, exposing children to diseases and increasing risks of gender-based violence for women and girls collecting water and firewood.

    In line with the Geneva List of Principles on the Protection of Water Infrastructure, UNICEF is calling on all parties to the conflict to safeguard water supplies.

    MIL OSI United Nations News –

  • MIL-OSI: Flexera Completes Acquisition of NetApp’s Spot FinOps Portfolio

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    ITASCA, Ill. and SAN JOSE, Calif., March 03, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Flexera, the global leader in technology spend and risk management, today announced it has completed the acquisition of Spot from NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP), the intelligent data infrastructure company. The acquisition is Flexera’s latest step towards offering a comprehensive set of solutions to help organizations confront growing cloud cost and usage hurdles, especially as the consumption of artificial intelligence (AI) surges and strains cloud budgets.

    With this acquisition, Flexera expands its leading Cloud Financial Management offering into a suite of AI-powered FinOps technologies and enhances the value of these offerings by expanding its partner ecosystem. This newly bolstered FinOps portfolio from Flexera allows organizations and managed service providers (MSPs) to manage cloud financial commitments, automate billing and invoicing, reduce workload costs and optimize containers. Flexera FinOps aligns with the expanding scope of FinOps to include data centers, SaaS and public cloud, while also supporting enhanced use cases such as software licensing and sustainability.

    “The need for FinOps and cloud cost optimization has never been greater, as critical AI initiatives create more urgency for boards and C-suites to effectively contain swelling cloud and IT spend,” said Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Flexera. “We believe that by bringing Spot and its core products into the Flexera FinOps portfolio, we are now the most comprehensive provider in the space. This also complements our leading positions in IT Asset Management and SaaS Management.”

    The Spot business adds new capabilities to Flexera’s FinOps solution with Kubernetes cost management and accelerates innovation in container management, spot cloud instances and commitment management. Spot’s main product lines include:

    • Spot Eco helps organizations unlock the full value of their cloud services with a series of cloud commitment management features, ensuring organizations capture critical savings from reserved instances, savings plans or committed usage discounts across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
    • Spot Ocean is a Kubernetes infrastructure management product that provides continuous optimization of containers for cost, performance and availability.
    • Spot Elastigroup allows organizations to scale their workloads and maximize the value of their cloud investments with spot instances and virtual machines.
    • CloudCheckr is a powerful cloud cost management tool allowing enterprise, MSPs and distributors to manage and reduce cloud costs, optimize resources and gain operational efficiencies, manage billing and invoicing, improve governance, and strengthen security and compliance.

    These solutions are accompanied by a robust portfolio of policy-based best practice checks for cost, security, governance and compliance.

    “The completion of this transaction further hones our focus of our Public Cloud business. Our highly differentiated first party and marketplace cloud storage services are complemented by intelligent data and operational services such as Data Infrastructure Insights and Instaclustr. These services, in concert with our Hybrid Cloud products, enable customers to build a seamless intelligent data infrastructure across hybrid multi-cloud,” said Haiyan Song, Executive Vice President, Intelligent Operations Services, at NetApp. “We believe that Flexera is the right environment for Spot portfolio of solutions, employees and customers to thrive.”

    Flexera’s integration of Spot also creates new opportunities for partners – particularly MSPs and distributors – to develop or enhance their own FinOps services. With Flexera, partners have a chance to tap into a broader portfolio of technologies and specialists, while building value-added services that cover the expanded definition of FinOps to include ITAM and software licensing, SaaS management, AI spend management and more.

    “Flexera customers can expect to gain in capabilities and a richer portfolio, such as a whole slew of advanced purchase commitment automation and container cost management and optimization capabilities,” wrote Tracy Woo at Forrester in a recent blog post.1 “The Spot acquisition is a boon for Flexera both in market presence with CloudCheckr’s dominant channel presence and with the added capabilities of Spot’s Eco (purchase commitments), Elastigroup (spot automation), and Ocean (container management), which all fill major gaps.”

    Flexera recently achieved a new FinOps certification milestone, and now has the largest group of FinOps-certified practitioners in the world. The company also made a significant investment in its partner program, with an emphasis on expanding its support for MSPs. These events continue to reinforce Flexera’s proven leadership in FinOps, ITAM and SaaS Management.

    For more information about Flexera One FinOps, visit www.flexera.com/products/flexera-one/finops.

    ¹Source: “NetApp Focuses On Storable And Exits FinOps”

    Follow Flexera

    About Flexera
    Flexera helps organizations understand and maximize the value of their technology, saving billions of dollars in wasted spend. Powered by the Flexera Technology Intelligence Platform, our award-winning IT asset management, FinOps and SaaS management solutions provide comprehensive visibility and actionable insights on an organization’s entire IT ecosystem. This intelligence enables IT, finance, procurement, FinOps and cloud teams to address skyrocketing costs, optimize spend, mitigate risk and identify opportunities to create positive business outcomes. More than 50,000 global organizations rely on Flexera and its Technopedia reference library, the largest repository of technology asset data. Learn more at flexera.com.

    About NetApp
    NetApp is the intelligent data infrastructure company, combining unified data storage, integrated data, operational and workload services to turn a world of disruption into opportunity for every customer. NetApp creates silo-free infrastructure, harnessing observability and AI to enable the industry’s best data management. As the only enterprise-grade storage service natively embedded in the world’s biggest clouds, our data storage delivers seamless flexibility. In addition, our data services create a data advantage through superior cyber resilience, governance, and application agility. Our operational and workload services provide continuous optimization of performance and efficiency for infrastructure and workloads through observability and AI. No matter the data type, workload, or environment, with NetApp you can transform your data infrastructure to realize your business possibilities. Learn more at www.netapp.com or follow us on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

    NETAPP, the NETAPP logo, and the marks listed at www.netapp.com/TM are trademarks of NetApp, Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

    For more information, contact:
    Flexera Media Contact:
    Ciri Haugh
    Flexera
    publicrelations@flexera.com

    NetApp Media Contact:
    Kenya Hayes
    NetApp
    kenya.hayes@netapp.com

    Investor Contact:
    Kris Newton
    NetApp
    kris.newton@netapp.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Nigeria’s 2025 budget has major flaws and won’t ease economic burden

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Stephen Onyeiwu, Professor of Economics & Business, Allegheny College

    There are doubts as to whether Nigerian president Bola Tinubu’s N54.99 trillion (US$36.6 billion) 2025 budget will lay a solid foundation for addressing some of the country’s current economic challenges.

    Economist Stephen Onyeiwu unpacks these challenges and sets out why the 2025 budget won’t change Nigeria’s economic landscape (though it has some silver linings).

    What are Nigeria’s four biggest economic challenges?

    Firstly, Nigeria’s economy has grown at a subdued average rate of about 3% for the past three years.

    Though comparable to global economic growth, this rate of growth is insufficient to create jobs and alleviate poverty. The official unemployment rate is 4.3%.

    Only 15% of those employed, however, are in the formal sector as wage earners. About 93% of Nigerians are engaged in informal sector activities. They’re doing low-income and vulnerable jobs, with no social protection.

    Secondly, Nigerians are struggling with a high cost of living. Inflation has remained high for three years, as have interest rates.

    The exchange rate has been elevated and volatile. The result has been rising food, fuel and housing costs.

    Thirdly, the country has not been able to attract enough foreign investment to generate high-paying jobs in the formal sector. Foreign direct investment to Nigeria has been declining. It fell from US$8.6 billion in 2009 to US$1.8 billion in 2023.

    Reasons for the decline are the high cost of doing business in Nigeria, insecurity, poor infrastructure and macroeconomic instability.

    Fourthly, poverty rates are high. This is due to unemployment and the lack of safety nets. The poverty rate rose from 33.2% in 2020 to 47.2% in 2024. The number of poor people is expected to increase by 13 million in 2025, largely due to inflation.

    Will the 2025 budget help?

    There are a number of serious flaws in it which suggest it won’t.

    Tinubu said the 2025 budget “was designed to ensure macro-economic stability, poverty reduction, promoting economic stability, developing human capital and addressing insecurity.”

    But the allocation of funds does not reflect these priorities. The allocations to personnel and overheads far exceed allocations to capital expenditures – things that build the economy’s productive capacity.

    A key challenge for Nigeria is how to shift resources from consumption to production. The 2025 budget reinforces the longstanding consumerist nature of the economy.

    China spends about 45% of GDP on capital formation. This has spurred and sustained the country’s high growth rates for decades. Nigeria’s allocation to capital expenditure in the 2025 budget is about 19%.

    In his budget speech the president said his administration’s goal was to

    “get our manufacturing sector humming again and ultimately increase the competitiveness of our economy.”

    But the federal ministries that should be driving this effort – industry and education – weren’t allocated enough for capital expenditure.

    Nor did the budget prioritise things that would ease the economic burden of Nigerians.

    A big chunk of the budget (about 35.4%) goes to servicing debt. Indeed, about 65% of the 2025 budget will finance debt repayment, personnel costs and overheads.

    Another concern is that the government intends to borrow N9.22 trillion (US$6.2 billion) to finance the budget, higher than the N7.83 trillion (US$5.2 billion) borrowed in the previous year.

    Borrowing to finance a budget increases the interest rate and makes private-sector borrowing costly. Businesses can’t access funds that would enable them to invest and boost economic growth, reduce inflation, create jobs and alleviate poverty.

    Are there any silver linings?

    There are some.

    It is commendable that the Federal Ministry of Communications & the Digital Economy was allocated about N450 billion (US$300 million) for capital expenditure, compared to just N33 billion (US$22 million) for recurrent expenditure. The administration is signalling its commitment to building capacity in the IT sector. This is important because Nigeria needs to promote a knowledge-based economy that would diversify away from hydrocarbons.

    Another encouraging aspect of the budget is that the ratio of budget deficit to GDP (3.89%) is lower than the average 5% prior to 2024. Although the administration will borrow to cover the deficit, it’s borrowing less than before relative to GDP. This signals an intention to be more financially prudent than previous administrations, assuming it won’t resort to supplementary budgets.

    What needs to happen now?

    The 2025 budget is anything but pro-poor. Most of its provisions benefit the elites, contractors and public employees.

    Much will be used to pay politicians and their aides at the National Assembly and workers in the government ministries and agencies.

    Money allocated to capital expenditure will be used to pay contractors for government projects.

    Nigerians in the informal sector will not feel a direct impact. There should have been more proactive measures to address unemployment and poverty.

    Sustainable development requires a strong rural economy. While the manufacturing and services sectors are critical for structural transformation and job creation, they can’t develop without a vibrant agricultural sector.

    Strengthening the rural economy of Nigeria requires raising the productivity of farmers so that they can supply food to urban workers at affordable prices. This helps keep inflation and wage rates low.

    Raising the productivity of rural people raises their incomes and alleviates poverty.

    Higher rural incomes increase farmers’ purchasing power, leading to an increase in the demand for goods and services produced in the manufacturing sector. When rural people earn more, there’s less reason to migrate to urban areas.

    Less migration implies less pressure on urban social services, the labour market and the informal sector.

    More funds need to be allocated to sectors and activities that raise the productive capacity of the economy. This will involve reducing governance costs and using the savings to boost food production, agro-processing and manufacturing.

    The key to stabilising the Nigerian economy is massive food production, which will reduce food inflation. Coupled with agro-processing, food production will boost exports, reduce food imports and strengthen the value of the naira.

    A stronger naira will reduce inflation and interest rates.

    In conclusion, the 2025 budget does not solve Nigeria’s endless cycle of deficits and debts. Neither does it lay the foundation for structural transformation, economic diversification, sustainable economic growth, employment generation and poverty alleviation.

    It will leave the economic landscape unchanged.

    Stephen Onyeiwu 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.

    – ref. Nigeria’s 2025 budget has major flaws and won’t ease economic burden – https://theconversation.com/nigerias-2025-budget-has-major-flaws-and-wont-ease-economic-burden-250713

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: When did our ancestors start to eat meat regularly? Fossilised teeth get us closer to the answer

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Tina Lüdecke, Leader of the Emmy Noether Group for Hominin Meat Consumption (HoMeCo), Max Planck Institute For Chemistry

    Goodboy Picture Company/Getty Images

    For decades, scientists have been learning more about the diets of early hominins, particularly their reliance on plants. Yet we still don’t know when these ancestors of humans started eating meat.

    This is a frustrating gap in our understanding of human evolution. We think regular meat consumption was one of the main drivers of brain growth and evolution in hominins, because animal products are calorie-dense and easier to digest than unprocessed plant foods. They also contain all the essential amino acids and are rich in biologically important nutrients, minerals and vitamins.

    What we do know is that by the time our genus, Homo, emerged over two million years ago, hominins were regularly eating meat. This is clear from their increased reliance at this point on stone tools to butcher and process meat products. We’ve also found fossil bones with cut marks that indicate butchering.

    But that doesn’t explain when and where regular meat eating started and which species of our ancestors made that crucial shift.

    Now, thanks to fossilised tooth enamel, we’re a step closer to an answer. In a study with several other co-authors, we measured nitrogen isotopes in the enamel from fossilised teeth belonging to the hominin genus Australopithecus, discovered in South Africa’s Sterkfontein Caves. This is one of the oldest known human ancestor species.

    Atoms of the same element can have different versions, called isotopes, which have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons. This makes them slightly heavier or lighter but chemically similar. For example, nitrogen has two stable isotopes: nitrogen-14 (¹⁴N) and nitrogen-15 (¹⁵N). These occur naturally, but their ratio varies in nature. In food webs, nitrogen isotopes become enriched as you move up the chain, meaning predators have higher ¹⁴N/¹⁵N ratios than herbivores.

    Identifying these isotopes is a way to reconstruct ancient diets and ecosystems, helping scientists understand how past environments shaped the survival of species – including early humans.

    We also tested the isotopic signature of animals that lived in the ecosystem at the same time. We saw that the isotopic signature of Australopithecus was low – similar to that of herbivores.

    Our findings suggest that these ape-like, small-brained early hominins were eating mostly plants. There was little to no evidence of meat consumption. They may have snacked on the occasional egg or insect but they were not regularly hunting large mammals like Neanderthals did millions of years later.

    A toothy approach

    One of us (Dr Lüdecke) began working with fossilised tooth enamel during her PhD. The focus was on measuring stable carbon isotopes in the enamel as a way to uncover the plant-based part of an extant or extinct animal’s diet.

    This approach reveals whether a species relied on lush, leafy plants or hardy, grass-like vegetation in African savanna ecosystems. But there was always that small, unsatisfying sentence in the discussion section of her academic papers: “This dataset cannot inform about the meat portion of the diet.”

    Then inspiration struck. The co-authors of the latest study, Alfredo Martínez-García and Daniel Sigman, had developed a method with their teams to measure nitrogen isotopes in marine microfossils – tiny creatures that, like fossilised tooth enamel, contain almost no organic material.



    Read more:
    The study of tiny fossils reminds us that museums are key to advancing science

    We wondered whether the same technique could work for ancient teeth and finally provide a date marker for early hominins’ meat eating behaviour.

    We started small by testing the method on rodent tooth enamel from animals with controlled diets in a specialised feeding experiment. It worked. From there, we moved on to the enamel of wild mammals from museum collections and other animals that had lived naturally in African ecosystems.

    When these results aligned with what we expected in terms of their known diets, we knew we had a reliable tool. After more laboratory testing, method tweaking and checking, we felt ready to analyse the fossilised tooth enamel of non-primate fauna found in one of the oldest fossil-bearing deposits of South Africa’s Sterkfontein Caves. This deposit, Member 4, formed about 3.4 million years ago, during the Late Pliocene period.

    Again, these analyses gave us the expected results: it was clear at the isotopic level whether we were dealing with the teeth of a herbivore or a carnivore.

    Then we finally sampled seven Australopithecus molars from Member 4 to uncover whether these ancient hominins, which lived and died around the Sterkfontein Caves about 3.4 million years ago, were sinking their teeth into meat or sticking to a largely vegetarian menu.

    By comparing the nitrogen isotope ratios of these early hominins with those of other animals from the same ecosystem – like antelopes, monkeys and carnivores – we found that the isotopic signature of Australopithecus was low, similar to that of herbivores.

    Future plans

    This discovery is just the beginning. We’re now expanding our research to other fossil sites across Africa and Asia, hoping to answer bigger questions. When did meat truly enter the hominin diet? Which species of hominins through our evolution consumed meat? Did the behaviour emerge several times and did it coincide with the rise of larger brains, or marked changes in behaviour, like new stone tool technology? And what does this mean for how we understand the evolutionary path that led to our species?

    Tina Lüdecke receives funding from the German Research Foundation Emmy Noether Fellowship (LU 2199/2-1). She is affiliated with the Emmy Noether Group for Hominin Meat Consumption, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (Mainz, Germany) and the Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa).

    Sterkfontein fieldwork is supported by South African governmental platforms DSI-NRF and NRF African Origins Platform, and long-term project and student support from GENUS and PAST.

    – ref. When did our ancestors start to eat meat regularly? Fossilised teeth get us closer to the answer – https://theconversation.com/when-did-our-ancestors-start-to-eat-meat-regularly-fossilised-teeth-get-us-closer-to-the-answer-249737

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: Nigeria’s 2025 budget has major flaws and won’t ease economic burden

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Stephen Onyeiwu, Professor of Economics & Business, Allegheny College

    There are doubts as to whether Nigerian president Bola Tinubu’s N54.99 trillion (US$36.6 billion) 2025 budget will lay a solid foundation for addressing some of the country’s current economic challenges.

    Economist Stephen Onyeiwu unpacks these challenges and sets out why the 2025 budget won’t change Nigeria’s economic landscape (though it has some silver linings).

    What are Nigeria’s four biggest economic challenges?

    Firstly, Nigeria’s economy has grown at a subdued average rate of about 3% for the past three years.

    Though comparable to global economic growth, this rate of growth is insufficient to create jobs and alleviate poverty. The official unemployment rate is 4.3%.

    Only 15% of those employed, however, are in the formal sector as wage earners. About 93% of Nigerians are engaged in informal sector activities. They’re doing low-income and vulnerable jobs, with no social protection.

    Secondly, Nigerians are struggling with a high cost of living. Inflation has remained high for three years, as have interest rates.

    The exchange rate has been elevated and volatile. The result has been rising food, fuel and housing costs.

    Thirdly, the country has not been able to attract enough foreign investment to generate high-paying jobs in the formal sector. Foreign direct investment to Nigeria has been declining. It fell from US$8.6 billion in 2009 to US$1.8 billion in 2023.

    Reasons for the decline are the high cost of doing business in Nigeria, insecurity, poor infrastructure and macroeconomic instability.

    Fourthly, poverty rates are high. This is due to unemployment and the lack of safety nets. The poverty rate rose from 33.2% in 2020 to 47.2% in 2024. The number of poor people is expected to increase by 13 million in 2025, largely due to inflation.

    Will the 2025 budget help?

    There are a number of serious flaws in it which suggest it won’t.

    Tinubu said the 2025 budget “was designed to ensure macro-economic stability, poverty reduction, promoting economic stability, developing human capital and addressing insecurity.”

    But the allocation of funds does not reflect these priorities. The allocations to personnel and overheads far exceed allocations to capital expenditures – things that build the economy’s productive capacity.

    A key challenge for Nigeria is how to shift resources from consumption to production. The 2025 budget reinforces the longstanding consumerist nature of the economy.

    China spends about 45% of GDP on capital formation. This has spurred and sustained the country’s high growth rates for decades. Nigeria’s allocation to capital expenditure in the 2025 budget is about 19%.

    In his budget speech the president said his administration’s goal was to

    “get our manufacturing sector humming again and ultimately increase the competitiveness of our economy.”

    But the federal ministries that should be driving this effort – industry and education – weren’t allocated enough for capital expenditure.

    Nor did the budget prioritise things that would ease the economic burden of Nigerians.

    A big chunk of the budget (about 35.4%) goes to servicing debt. Indeed, about 65% of the 2025 budget will finance debt repayment, personnel costs and overheads.

    Another concern is that the government intends to borrow N9.22 trillion (US$6.2 billion) to finance the budget, higher than the N7.83 trillion (US$5.2 billion) borrowed in the previous year.

    Borrowing to finance a budget increases the interest rate and makes private-sector borrowing costly. Businesses can’t access funds that would enable them to invest and boost economic growth, reduce inflation, create jobs and alleviate poverty.

    Are there any silver linings?

    There are some.

    It is commendable that the Federal Ministry of Communications & the Digital Economy was allocated about N450 billion (US$300 million) for capital expenditure, compared to just N33 billion (US$22 million) for recurrent expenditure. The administration is signalling its commitment to building capacity in the IT sector. This is important because Nigeria needs to promote a knowledge-based economy that would diversify away from hydrocarbons.

    Another encouraging aspect of the budget is that the ratio of budget deficit to GDP (3.89%) is lower than the average 5% prior to 2024. Although the administration will borrow to cover the deficit, it’s borrowing less than before relative to GDP. This signals an intention to be more financially prudent than previous administrations, assuming it won’t resort to supplementary budgets.

    What needs to happen now?

    The 2025 budget is anything but pro-poor. Most of its provisions benefit the elites, contractors and public employees.

    Much will be used to pay politicians and their aides at the National Assembly and workers in the government ministries and agencies.

    Money allocated to capital expenditure will be used to pay contractors for government projects.

    Nigerians in the informal sector will not feel a direct impact. There should have been more proactive measures to address unemployment and poverty.

    Sustainable development requires a strong rural economy. While the manufacturing and services sectors are critical for structural transformation and job creation, they can’t develop without a vibrant agricultural sector.

    Strengthening the rural economy of Nigeria requires raising the productivity of farmers so that they can supply food to urban workers at affordable prices. This helps keep inflation and wage rates low.

    Raising the productivity of rural people raises their incomes and alleviates poverty.

    Higher rural incomes increase farmers’ purchasing power, leading to an increase in the demand for goods and services produced in the manufacturing sector. When rural people earn more, there’s less reason to migrate to urban areas.

    Less migration implies less pressure on urban social services, the labour market and the informal sector.

    More funds need to be allocated to sectors and activities that raise the productive capacity of the economy. This will involve reducing governance costs and using the savings to boost food production, agro-processing and manufacturing.

    The key to stabilising the Nigerian economy is massive food production, which will reduce food inflation. Coupled with agro-processing, food production will boost exports, reduce food imports and strengthen the value of the naira.

    A stronger naira will reduce inflation and interest rates.

    In conclusion, the 2025 budget does not solve Nigeria’s endless cycle of deficits and debts. Neither does it lay the foundation for structural transformation, economic diversification, sustainable economic growth, employment generation and poverty alleviation.

    It will leave the economic landscape unchanged.

    – Nigeria’s 2025 budget has major flaws and won’t ease economic burden
    – https://theconversation.com/nigerias-2025-budget-has-major-flaws-and-wont-ease-economic-burden-250713

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: Who’s my dad? In South Africa that’s a complex question – report tracks the rise of ‘social fathers’

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Wessel Van Den Berg, Research fellow, Stellenbosch University

    The State of South Africa’s Fathers 2024 report is published by the new Tataokhona project at Stellenbosch University. The project focuses on research and interventions related to fathers and fatherhood. This is the third edition of this report, and offers valuable insights into the evolving realities of fatherhood in South Africa. Co-authors Wessel van den Berg, Mandisa Malinga, Kopano Ratele and Tawanda Makusha explain why it’s critical to examine the changing role of men in families.

    What were some of the key findings of the report?

    The report presents data from the General Household Survey 2023 and a survey of adult caregivers in South Africa, also done in 2023.

    One of the key findings is that 76% of children in South Africa live with an adult male in the household. This is often overlooked when the media and researchers focus on children’s co-residence with fathers.

    However, fewer children live with their biological fathers than with other men. The percentage of children who live with their biological fathers has dropped from 45.3% in 1996 to 35% in 2023.

    This decline is linked to broader societal factors, including economic instability, migration patterns, and shifts in traditional family structures.

    Never have so few children been recorded as living with their biological fathers, nor have so many lived with other men like uncles, grandfathers, older brothers or mothers’ new partners.

    As researchers, policymakers and other development practitioners, we need to explore the contribution men make in their families, biological or otherwise.

    The case studies and contributions from authors across the country underscore that while physical presence is important, the quality of engagement between the father figure and child is even more crucial.

    Encouraging positive father-child relationships through legal, workplace and social policy changes could help mitigate the known effects of not living together.

    Figure.

    What did the survey reveal about who provides for children?

    Traditionally, fatherhood has been closely linked to financial provision. However, economic hardships and shifting gender roles are reshaping this expectation.

    Co-residence goes down as income goes down. Many fathers, particularly those facing unemployment or economic hardship, struggle to maintain active participation in their children’s lives.

    Many fathers are also forced to migrate to find work.

    Those men who cannot provide do not see any other role for themselves in children’s lives, and so they disengage.

    Data from the State of the World’s Fathers 2023 survey showed that in South Africa 85% of women financially supported their biological children, compared to 80% of men. Most children are supported by both parents, but mothers bear a higher financial burden than fathers.

    Women are also more likely than men to provide for non-biological children (50% vs 44%).

    These figures highlight the growing financial responsibilities shouldered by women and the need to redefine fatherhood beyond economic provision.

    The increasing financial burden on women also reveals deep-seated inequalities in wage distribution and employment opportunities.

    Many fathers who wish to support their children financially face obstacles such as unemployment and precarious work conditions.

    While some men have adapted by taking on caregiving roles, society still puts pressure on them to prioritise financial contribution over direct caregiving.

    This paradox creates stress and identity struggles for many fathers. It reinforces the need for supportive policies like paid parental leave and father-focused caregiving initiatives.

    Read more: Men say they are spending more time on household chores, and would like to do more – survey of 17 countries

    What does the survey tell us about ‘social fathers’?

    With only a minority of children living with their biological fathers, social fathers – men who provide care despite not being biologically related to the child – have become increasingly significant. The State of the World’s Fathers 2023 survey found for example that of the men who care for children whom they had not biologically fathered, 51.1% of the men played with the children, 50.2% provided financial support, and 40.2% read books with them.

    The report emphasises that 40% of children reside with men who are not their biological fathers, a trend that has grown since 1996. We believe these men can and should be encouraged to step into the role of social fathers. They include grandfathers, uncles, stepfathers, teachers and community leaders who contribute to children’s emotional and material well-being.

    However, social fathers lack legal recognition and support in South Africa. This makes it harder for them to access resources that could help them provide better care.

    Policymakers and community organisations must recognise and formalise the contributions of social fathers to ensure children receive consistent and supportive care.

    Social fathers need to be recognised.

    What happens now?

    Many men struggle to find their place in a rapidly evolving society where gender expectations are no longer fixed.

    The rise of feminism and women’s empowerment has rightly expanded opportunities for women, but has left a gap in guiding men towards constructive ways of engaging with these changes.

    Read more: Unpaid care work still falls on women: seven steps that could shift the balance

    Additionally, it remains true that more women than men are unemployed. This is primarily due to societal expectations that women should be homemakers or primary caregivers.

    Policies that recognise diverse forms of fatherhood will be essential in fostering positive father-child relationships for future generations.

    – Who’s my dad? In South Africa that’s a complex question – report tracks the rise of ‘social fathers’
    – https://theconversation.com/whos-my-dad-in-south-africa-thats-a-complex-question-report-tracks-the-rise-of-social-fathers-249763

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: When did our ancestors start to eat meat regularly? Fossilised teeth get us closer to the answer

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Tina Lüdecke, Leader of the Emmy Noether Group for Hominin Meat Consumption (HoMeCo), Max Planck Institute For Chemistry

    For decades, scientists have been learning more about the diets of early hominins, particularly their reliance on plants. Yet we still don’t know when these ancestors of humans started eating meat.

    This is a frustrating gap in our understanding of human evolution. We think regular meat consumption was one of the main drivers of brain growth and evolution in hominins, because animal products are calorie-dense and easier to digest than unprocessed plant foods. They also contain all the essential amino acids and are rich in biologically important nutrients, minerals and vitamins.

    What we do know is that by the time our genus, Homo, emerged over two million years ago, hominins were regularly eating meat. This is clear from their increased reliance at this point on stone tools to butcher and process meat products. We’ve also found fossil bones with cut marks that indicate butchering.

    But that doesn’t explain when and where regular meat eating started and which species of our ancestors made that crucial shift.

    Now, thanks to fossilised tooth enamel, we’re a step closer to an answer. In a study with several other co-authors, we measured nitrogen isotopes in the enamel from fossilised teeth belonging to the hominin genus Australopithecus, discovered in South Africa’s Sterkfontein Caves. This is one of the oldest known human ancestor species.

    Atoms of the same element can have different versions, called isotopes, which have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons. This makes them slightly heavier or lighter but chemically similar. For example, nitrogen has two stable isotopes: nitrogen-14 (¹⁴N) and nitrogen-15 (¹⁵N). These occur naturally, but their ratio varies in nature. In food webs, nitrogen isotopes become enriched as you move up the chain, meaning predators have higher ¹⁴N/¹⁵N ratios than herbivores.

    Identifying these isotopes is a way to reconstruct ancient diets and ecosystems, helping scientists understand how past environments shaped the survival of species – including early humans.

    We also tested the isotopic signature of animals that lived in the ecosystem at the same time. We saw that the isotopic signature of Australopithecus was low – similar to that of herbivores.

    Our findings suggest that these ape-like, small-brained early hominins were eating mostly plants. There was little to no evidence of meat consumption. They may have snacked on the occasional egg or insect but they were not regularly hunting large mammals like Neanderthals did millions of years later.

    A toothy approach

    One of us (Dr Lüdecke) began working with fossilised tooth enamel during her PhD. The focus was on measuring stable carbon isotopes in the enamel as a way to uncover the plant-based part of an extant or extinct animal’s diet.

    This approach reveals whether a species relied on lush, leafy plants or hardy, grass-like vegetation in African savanna ecosystems. But there was always that small, unsatisfying sentence in the discussion section of her academic papers: “This dataset cannot inform about the meat portion of the diet.”

    Then inspiration struck. The co-authors of the latest study, Alfredo Martínez-García and Daniel Sigman, had developed a method with their teams to measure nitrogen isotopes in marine microfossils – tiny creatures that, like fossilised tooth enamel, contain almost no organic material.

    Read more: The study of tiny fossils reminds us that museums are key to advancing science

    We wondered whether the same technique could work for ancient teeth and finally provide a date marker for early hominins’ meat eating behaviour.

    We started small by testing the method on rodent tooth enamel from animals with controlled diets in a specialised feeding experiment. It worked. From there, we moved on to the enamel of wild mammals from museum collections and other animals that had lived naturally in African ecosystems.

    When these results aligned with what we expected in terms of their known diets, we knew we had a reliable tool. After more laboratory testing, method tweaking and checking, we felt ready to analyse the fossilised tooth enamel of non-primate fauna found in one of the oldest fossil-bearing deposits of South Africa’s Sterkfontein Caves. This deposit, Member 4, formed about 3.4 million years ago, during the Late Pliocene period.

    Again, these analyses gave us the expected results: it was clear at the isotopic level whether we were dealing with the teeth of a herbivore or a carnivore.

    Then we finally sampled seven Australopithecus molars from Member 4 to uncover whether these ancient hominins, which lived and died around the Sterkfontein Caves about 3.4 million years ago, were sinking their teeth into meat or sticking to a largely vegetarian menu.

    By comparing the nitrogen isotope ratios of these early hominins with those of other animals from the same ecosystem – like antelopes, monkeys and carnivores – we found that the isotopic signature of Australopithecus was low, similar to that of herbivores.

    Future plans

    This discovery is just the beginning. We’re now expanding our research to other fossil sites across Africa and Asia, hoping to answer bigger questions. When did meat truly enter the hominin diet? Which species of hominins through our evolution consumed meat? Did the behaviour emerge several times and did it coincide with the rise of larger brains, or marked changes in behaviour, like new stone tool technology? And what does this mean for how we understand the evolutionary path that led to our species?

    – When did our ancestors start to eat meat regularly? Fossilised teeth get us closer to the answer
    – https://theconversation.com/when-did-our-ancestors-start-to-eat-meat-regularly-fossilised-teeth-get-us-closer-to-the-answer-249737

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Nigerian national pleads guilty to operating $3M romance scheme that preyed on elderly, other vulnerable populations

    Source: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

    HOUSTON – A Nigerian national who is in the U.S. illegally pleaded guilty Feb. 28 to multiple criminal charges related to his role in operating a romance scheme that defrauded more than $3 million from citizens nationwide, many of whom were elderly.

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted the multi-year investigation that led to the conviction.

    Darlington Akporugo, a 47-year-old criminal alien from Nigeria, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud; and wire fraud, aiding and abetting.

    “This individual and his co-conspirators preyed on the vulnerability of the elderly and recently widowed to defraud them of their hard-earned life savings,” said ICE Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent in Charge Chad Plantz. “Thanks to the victims who bravely came forward to report this matter to law enforcement and the outstanding relationships that we have with our domestic and law enforcement partners abroad; we were able to expose this reprehensible scheme and hold the criminals involved in it accountable.”

    In his plea, Akporugo admitted to being a central figure in a long-running romance scheme based in Houston that victimized citizens from Chicago to Kentucky. Akporugo worked with others to lure victims through online romances and then induce them to send money to various bank accounts he controlled.

    To further the fraud, Akporugo and his co-conspirators used fake names to contact victims on social media, gain their confidence and then persuade them to invest in non-existent businesses or provide funds for invented personal circumstances.

    As part of his plea, Akporugo admitted to approaching potential victims, primarily on social media sites such as Facebook, and then directing them to send money to either his or his associates’ bank accounts. That money was often then directed overseas.

    In addition to collecting cash and wire transfers, Akpourgo also admitted to having victims open lines of credit in his name and, in one case, purchasing a luxury vehicle for his personal use.

    During the investigation, authorities were able to identify more than 25 victims of the scheme, the majority were either retired or of advanced age.

    Akporugo is scheduled to be sentenced June 6. At that time, he faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a possible $250,000 maximum fine.

    He will remain in custody pending that hearing.

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Carter prosecuted the case.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Economics: Come Experience the Most Natural and Personalised Mobile AI at Galaxy Studio, Gateway

    Source: Samsung

    Get ready to immerse yourself in the future of mobile AI! Samsung is bringing an electrifying and interactive experience to Gateway, Umhlanga with Galaxy Studio, from 28 February – 16 March 2025. This is your exclusive chance to explore the new, ground-breaking Galaxy S25 Series and step into the world of next-generation mobile AI.
    At Galaxy Studio, you’ll be among the first to experience the Galaxy S25 Series – a revolutionary AI-powered mobile companion designed to adapt seamlessly to your life. As per tradition, following the unveiling of a flagship series, Samsung always opens it up at studio for consumers to see it for themselves. Launched on 22 January 2025, the Galaxy S25 Series isn’t just another phone, it is like your personal assistant that learns your habits and routines, making every moment smarter, smoother, and more extraordinary.
    With the all-new One UI 7.0, the Galaxy S25 Series redefines the mobile experience. From personalised interactions to effortless task management, this phone empowers you to elevate your everyday routine. At Galaxy Studio, you’ll witness live demos showcasing how Samsung’s cutting-edge AI technology can transform your life. Watch in awe as the Galaxy S25 Series simplifies tasks, amplifies creativity, and takes your mobile experience to dazzling new heights.
    But that’s not all – Galaxy Studio is packed with exclusive hands-on opportunities. Explore the AI-powered camera features and instantly enhance your photos, capturing moments that are social media-ready. Plus, get ready for an unforgettable experience in the Nightography Booth, where you’ll feel like a DJ at your very own concert or live event, thanks to the Galaxy S25’s incredible camera capabilities.
     

    Galaxy Studio isn’t just about seeing the Galaxy S25 Series in action – it’s about feeling its transformative power. Whether you’re capturing stunning photos, organising your schedule, or discovering how AI can revolutionise your daily life, Galaxy Studio is a space where technology meets imagination.
    Don’t miss out on this one-of-a-kind experience! Avoid FOMO! Visit Galaxy Studio and witness the future of mobile technology.
    Dates: 28 February – 16 March 2025
    Location: Galaxy Studio, Gateway Theatre of Shopping, Umhlanga
    Admission: Free
    Reality TV star, businesswoman and media personality, Jojo Robison, will be making an appearance at the Galaxy Studio on Saturday, 8 March.
    For more information and updates, follow Samsung South Africa on social media – @SamsungmobileSA (X, Instagram), Samsung South Africa (Facebook).

    MIL OSI Economics –

  • MIL-OSI United Nations: At a time of war, nations must stop global order from crumbling: UN rights chief

    Source: United Nations 2

    “Our world is going through a period of turbulence and unpredictability, reflected in growing conflict and divided societies,” Türk told the Human Rights Council.

    “We cannot allow the fundamental global consensus around international norms and institutions, built painstakingly over decades, to crumble before our eyes.”

    The weapons of war

    Presenting his global update covering more than 30 countries, the High Commissioner described as “outrageous” the fact that legal safeguards for non-combatants were being repeatedly ignored.

    “Civilians are deliberately attacked. Sexual violence and famine are used as weapons of war,” Mr. Türk said. “Humanitarian access is denied, while weapons flow across borders and circumvent international sanctions. And humanitarian workers are targeted. In 2024, a record 356 humanitarian workers were killed while providing aid to people in some of the world’s most appalling crises.”

    Unbearable price

    In Sudan, the High Commissioner once again condemned devastating bomb attacks launched in heavily built-up areas with total impunity, by the parties to the conflict.

    All the while, the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe deepens, threatening regional stability, he maintained: “Civilians are paying an unbearable price, in a naked struggle for power and resources. All countries must use their influence to apply pressure on the parties and their allies, to stop the war, embark on an inclusive dialogue, and transition to a civilian-led Government.”

    Ukraine’s people need peace

    Turning to Ukraine, whose future material support from the United States appeared unclear following televised disagreements between Presidents Trump and Zelensky at a White House meeting on Friday, Mr. Türk opposed any peace deal that excluded Ukraine.

    “Three years since the full-scale Russian invasion, people continue to suffer appallingly…Any discussions about ending the war must include Ukrainians and fully respect their human rights. Sustainable peace must be based on the United Nations Charter and international law.”

    Civilian casualties in Ukraine rose by 30 per cent between 2023 and 2024, the High Commissioner continued, as he accused Russia’s armed forces of systematically targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with coordinated strikes, causing widespread disruptions to essential services.

    “Relentless attacks with aerial glide bombs, long-range missiles and drones have placed civilians in a state of constant insecurity and fear,” Mr. Türk noted.

    Ukrainian prisoners also continue to face summary executions and “widespread and systematic torture” by Russian forces, he continued.

    Gaza ceasefire focus

    In the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the UN rights chief insisted that the fragile ceasefire holds in Gaza “and becomes the basis for peace”.

    He also insisted that aid deliveries into Gaza should resume immediately, just as Israel announced a halt to aid flowing into the shattered enclave, having proposed extending the first phase of the ceasefire which ended at the weekend and which would allow Israeli troops to stay in Gaza.

    UN aid chief Tom Fletcher responded with alarm to the Israeli decision, insisting that the ceasefire “must hold”.

    In an online appeal, he added: “International humanitarian law is clear: We must be allowed access to deliver vital lifesaving aid. We can’t roll back the progress of the past 42 days. We need to get aid in and the hostages out.”

    Back in the Council, Mr. Türk explained that the Gaza had been “razed” by constant Israeli bombardment in response to the “horrific” Hamas-led attacks on Israel that sparked the war in October 2023. “Any solution to the cycles of violence must be rooted in human rights, including the right to self-determination, the rule of law and accountability. All hostages must be freed; all those detained arbitrarily must be released; and humanitarian aid into Gaza must resume immediately.”

    West Bank alert

    Reflecting deep concerns by humanitarians and the human rights community about Israeli military raids on Palestinian settlements in the West Bank, the UN High Commissioner insisted that Israel’s “unilateral actions and threats of annexation in the West Bank, in violation of international law, must stop”.

    Mr. Türk also condemned the use of “military weapons and tactics, including tanks and airstrikes, against Palestinians”. Equally worrying was “the destruction and emptying of refugee camps, the expansion of illegal settlements, the severe restrictions on movement and the displacement of tens of thousands of people”.

    DR Congo devastation

    Turning to the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the High Commissioner underscored that entire communities in North and South Kivu had been devastated.

    “In the past five weeks, thousands of people have reportedly been killed during attacks by the M23 armed group, backed by the Rwandan Armed Forces, in intense fighting against the Armed Forces of the DRC and their allies,” the UN rights chief said, pointing to reports of rape, sexual slavery and summary executions.

    “More than half a million people have been forced to flee this year, adding to almost 7.8 million people already displaced in the country,” Mr. Türk said. “The violence must stop, violations by all parties must be investigated, and dialogue must resume.”

    © WFP/Michael Castofas

    More than half a million people have been forced to flee DR Congo this year.

    Deadliest year in Myanmar

    Moving on to the ongoing escalation of violence in Myanmar sparked by the military coup on 1 February 2021, the UN rights chief noted that 2024 was the deadliest year for civilians since the junta takeover.

    “The military ramped up brutal attacks on civilians as their grip on power eroded, with retaliatory airstrikes and artillery shelling of villages and urban areas…and the forcible conscription of thousands of young people,” he said, before calling for the supply of arms and finance to the country’s military’s to be “cut decisively”.

    Haiti spiral

    The UN rights chief also expressed deep concerns about chronic lawlessness and heavily armed clashes in Haiti involving gangs that humanitarians warned last week recruit children as young as eight. More than 5,600 people were killed last year and thousands more were injured or kidnapped, Mr. Türk told the Human Rights Council.

    “Full implementation of the Security Council‘s arms embargo and support to the Multinational Security Support Mission are crucial to resolving this crisis,” he insisted.

    Yemen

    On Yemen, the High Commissioner noted that amid ongoing hostilities, nearly 20 million Yemenis need humanitarian support. Mr. Türk also expressed his outrage at the death of a UN World Food Programme colleague in detention earlier this month. “All 23 UN staff – including eight colleagues from my own Office – who are arbitrarily detained by the Houthis must be released immediately.”

    In a half-hour address to the Council that traditionally highlights the most worrying emergencies in the world and the need to tackle their root causes, the UN rights chief issued a call for greater global solidarity and accountability for crimes as a way to push back against those who would violate fundamental freedoms.

    “We all have a responsibility to act – through our consumption habits, our social media use, and our political and social engagement,” he told the Council’s 47 Member States.

    “We can trace a clear line between the lack of accountability for airstrikes on hospitals in Syria in the 2010s, attacks on healthcare facilities in Yemen, and the destruction of health systems in Gaza and Sudan,” he continued.

    Toys of tech oligarchs

    Equally alarming is the rise of unelected and unregulated “tech oligarchs” who reflect the new global power dynamic, Mr. Türk warned, before urging governments to fulfil their primary purpose of protecting their people from unchecked power.

    Today’s tech oligarchs “have our data: they know where we live, what we do, our genes and our health conditions, our thoughts, our habits, our desires and our fears…And they know how to manipulate us,” the High Commissioner insisted.

    Electioneering tactics

    “I have followed recent election campaigns in Europe, North America and beyond with increasing trepidation. Single-issue soundbites devoid of substance oversimplify complex issues and are often based on scapegoating, disinformation, and dehumanization,” he continued.

    “Dehumanization is a well-worn step towards treating an entire group as outsiders, unworthy of the basic rights we all enjoy. It is a dangerous precursor to hate and violence and must be called out whenever it occurs.”

    UN Human Rights Council/Marie Bambi

    Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, presents his latest report on the obligation to ensure accountability and justice in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

    Toxic influence on gender equality

    The High Commissioner also voiced his concern about the resurgence of toxic ideas about masculinity and efforts to glorify gender stereotypes, especially among young men.

    To blame for this are “misogynistic influencers” with millions of followers on social media who “are hailed as heroes”, Mr. Türk said.

    Online and offline, their ideas push back against gender equality and result in “violence and hateful rhetoric against women, women’s rights defenders, and women politicians”, the High Commissioner continued. 

    In a message of solidarity with people who have been left “feeling alienated and abandoned” by such malign influences, Mr. Türk insisted that the United Nations was by their side. “Your concerns are our concerns, because they are about human rights: to education, to health, to housing, to free speech, and access to justice. Human rights are about people’s daily concerns for their families and their future. We must cherish the values of respect, unity and solidarity; and work together for a safer, more just, more sustainable world. We can and will persevere,” he concluded.

    MIL OSI United Nations News –

  • MIL-OSI: BCMI More Than Doubles Cloud-based Dispatch Footprint

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    REDMOND, Wash., March 03, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In 2024, BCMI Corp. celebrated 10 years in business, and another significant milestone. The technology leader and provider of cloud-based mobile software for concrete and bulk materials producers more than doubled its cloud-based ready-mix dispatch footprint across the U.S.

    Industry-leading companies, beginning with Smith Ready Mix in Valparaiso, Indiana, have adopted BCMI’s cloud-based system, including Miles Sand & Gravel, Geneva Rock and Sunroc (both Clyde Companies subsidiaries), BARD Materials and GCC. These producers have added BCMI’s dispatch as part of the end-to-end software platform that includes extensive operational and customer KPIs, quoting and sales tools, and customer invoicing.

    This year, large vertical materials producers imi and Titan America will implement BCMI’s cloud-based concrete dispatch system, as well as regional leaders Consumers Concrete and Zignego, to further accelerate its expansion.

    “One of the great advantages of BCMI Dispatch is that any change or update from our dispatchers and drivers is instantly shared across our company—and with our customers—through the BCMI mobile apps,” BARD Materials Vice President of Operations Chad Thier says. “BCMI truly partners with producers to shape a concrete dispatch system that leverages the best technology available, ensuring it meets the needs of the industry.”

    The BCMI Dispatch system has the advantage of being cloud-native, meaning it is developed using the most current technology rather than retrofitting older dispatch systems with hardware that must be maintained by producers. BCMI integrates with related systems, such as truck GPS and accounting programs, through API (Application Programming Interface) connections entirely in the cloud. This allows materials producers to choose their own best-in-class solution set to meet their business needs.

    “After an extensive, six-month evaluation, we concluded that BCMI’s combination of current product offerings, plus the opportunity to take part in the continued development of the product, was the best fit for what imi needs to service our customers and our internal teams,” imi President and CEO Pete Lyons says.

    BCMI’s leadership draws on more than 100 years of collective experience in serving the concrete and bulk materials market, making the team uniquely qualified to understand and address the needs of the industry. “We have all experienced the pain of struggling with outdated technology, and it makes us even more passionate about creating better tools for producers and contractors,” BCMI Vice President of Customer Success Janeen O’Dell says. “Things like mobile apps and eTicketing are old news in other industries, and there’s no reason our industry shouldn’t use them to make our day-to-day jobs easier.”

    According to BCMI Co-founder and President Craig Yeack and author of the “Tech Trends” column for Concrete Products magazine, “Our product team is laser focused on innovation, including aggressive research and development of AI tools for materials producers. In the next few years, we’ll see accelerated growth in technology, faster than we’ve seen in decades. We look forward to being the industry’s trusted partner as we navigate these changes together.”

    About BCMI

    BCMI Corp.’s mobile software empowers bulk construction material producers to improve business processes. BCMI’s performance analytics, interactive communication tools and AI-assisted dispatch keep materials producers and contractors aligned with real-time business solutions. For more on our cloud-based BCMI Dispatch, Material Pro and Material Now apps, visit www.bcmicorp.com.

    Media Contact

    Jennifer Jensen, BCMI Media and PR Specialist: Jennifer.jensen@bcmicorp.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI China: Chinese peacekeepers in South Sudan (Wau) complete main supply route maintenance mission 2025-03-03 22:10:05 On February 28, local time, the 15th Chinese Peacekeeping Horizontal Engineering Company to the United Nations Mission in South Sudan completed the road maintenance work for the Kuajok-Lunyaker-Warrap main supply route and the road is now fully open to traffic.

    Source: People’s Republic of China – Ministry of National Defense

      BEIJING, March 3 — On February 28, local time, the 15th Chinese Peacekeeping Horizontal Engineering Company to the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) completed the road maintenance work for the Kuajok-Lunyaker-Warrap main supply route and the road is now fully open to traffic.

      In 21 workdays’ maintenance work, the Chinese peacekeeping contingent dispatched more than 800 troops and more than 380 vehicles and machines and transported more than 2,000 cubic meters of soil. They completed the maintenance work with high standards and demonstrated China’s commitment to peacekeeping career.

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    MIL OSI China News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Who’s my dad? In South Africa that’s a complex question – report tracks the rise of ‘social fathers’

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Wessel Van Den Berg, Research fellow, Stellenbosch University

    The State of South Africa’s Fathers 2024 report is published by the new Tataokhona project at Stellenbosch University. The project focuses on research and interventions related to fathers and fatherhood. This is the third edition of this report, and offers valuable insights into the evolving realities of fatherhood in South Africa. Co-authors Wessel van den Berg, Mandisa Malinga, Kopano Ratele and
    Tawanda Makusha explain why it’s critical to examine the changing role of men in families.

    What were some of the key findings of the report?

    The report presents data from the General Household Survey 2023 and a survey of adult caregivers in South Africa, also done in 2023.

    One of the key findings is that 76% of children in South Africa live with an adult male in the household. This is often overlooked when the media and researchers focus on children’s co-residence with fathers.

    However, fewer children live with their biological fathers than with other men. The percentage of children who live with their biological fathers has dropped from 45.3% in 1996 to 35% in 2023.

    This decline is linked to broader societal factors, including economic instability, migration patterns, and shifts in traditional family structures.

    Never have so few children been recorded as living with their biological fathers, nor have so many lived with other men like uncles, grandfathers, older brothers or mothers’ new partners.

    As researchers, policymakers and other development practitioners, we need to explore the contribution men make in their families, biological or otherwise.

    The case studies and contributions from authors across the country underscore that while physical presence is important, the quality of engagement between the father figure and child is even more crucial.

    Encouraging positive father-child relationships through legal, workplace and social policy changes could help mitigate the known effects of not living together.

    What did the survey reveal about who provides for children?

    Traditionally, fatherhood has been closely linked to financial provision. However, economic hardships and shifting gender roles are reshaping this expectation.

    Co-residence goes down as income goes down. Many fathers, particularly those facing unemployment or economic hardship, struggle to maintain active participation in their children’s lives.

    Many fathers are also forced to migrate to find work.

    Those men who cannot provide do not see any other role for themselves in children’s lives, and so they disengage.

    Data from the State of the World’s Fathers 2023 survey showed that in South Africa 85% of women financially supported their biological children, compared to 80% of men. Most children are supported by both parents, but mothers bear a higher financial burden than fathers.

    Women are also more likely than men to provide for non-biological children (50% vs 44%).

    These figures highlight the growing financial responsibilities shouldered by women and the need to redefine fatherhood beyond economic provision.

    The increasing financial burden on women also reveals deep-seated inequalities in wage distribution and employment opportunities.

    Many fathers who wish to support their children financially face obstacles such as unemployment and precarious work conditions.

    While some men have adapted by taking on caregiving roles, society still puts pressure on them to prioritise financial contribution over direct caregiving.

    This paradox creates stress and identity struggles for many fathers. It reinforces the need for supportive policies like paid parental leave and father-focused caregiving initiatives.



    Read more:
    Men say they are spending more time on household chores, and would like to do more – survey of 17 countries

    What does the survey tell us about ‘social fathers’?

    With only a minority of children living with their biological fathers, social fathers – men who provide care despite not being biologically related to the child – have become increasingly significant. The State of the World’s Fathers 2023 survey found for example that of the men who care for children whom they had not biologically fathered, 51.1% of the men played with the children, 50.2% provided financial support, and 40.2% read books with them.

    The report emphasises that 40% of children reside with men who are not their biological fathers, a trend that has grown since 1996. We believe these men can and should be encouraged to step into the role of social fathers. They include grandfathers, uncles, stepfathers, teachers and community leaders who contribute to children’s emotional and material well-being.

    However, social fathers lack legal recognition and support in South Africa. This makes it harder for them to access resources that could help them provide better care.

    Policymakers and community organisations must recognise and formalise the contributions of social fathers to ensure children receive consistent and supportive care.

    What happens now?

    Many men struggle to find their place in a rapidly evolving society where gender expectations are no longer fixed.

    The rise of feminism and women’s empowerment has rightly expanded opportunities for women, but has left a gap in guiding men towards constructive ways of engaging with these changes.



    Read more:
    Unpaid care work still falls on women: seven steps that could shift the balance

    Additionally, it remains true that more women than men are unemployed. This is primarily due to societal expectations that women should be homemakers or primary caregivers.

    Policies that recognise diverse forms of fatherhood will be essential in fostering positive father-child relationships for future generations.

    Wessel Van Den Berg works for Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice.

    Kopano Ratele is a member of the Psychological Society of South Africa.

    Mandisa Malinga has previously received research funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

    Tawanda Makusha is affiliated with the University of KwaZulu-Natal

    – ref. Who’s my dad? In South Africa that’s a complex question – report tracks the rise of ‘social fathers’ – https://theconversation.com/whos-my-dad-in-south-africa-thats-a-complex-question-report-tracks-the-rise-of-social-fathers-249763

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –