Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Eric Sorensen (IL-17)
MOLINE, IL– As we approach the start of National Crime Prevention Month, Congressman Eric Sorensen (IL-17) is announcing $250,000 for the City of Kewanee to hire two law enforcement officers to increase community policing and crime prevention efforts.
“Our local police departments, especially in our small hometowns, often work under tight budgets with limited resources,” said Sorensen. “And despite these conditions, our brave men and women in law enforcement work around the clock to keep our neighborhoods safe. I am proud to announce this funding for the Kewanee Police Department, so our local police have the tools they need to fight crime and protect our communities. I will always work to bring tax dollars back home to make sure Northwestern Illinois is safe for our neighbors.”
“We are grateful for this grant from the COPS hiring program, which will allow us to expand our community policing efforts without placing additional strain on local budgets,” said Chief Stephen Kijanowski of the Kewanee Police Department. “These funds will also help us address local violent crime and the narcotics issues facing our community, enhancing our public safety initiatives and better serving the residents of Kewanee.”
The $250,000 in funding for the City of Kewanee is coming from the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, which builds trust between police departments and the communities they serve. These grants allow local police departments to hire community policing professionals, develop and test innovative policing strategies, and train local government leaders to best support their police officers and protect their communities.
This past May, Sorensen led a group of 24 of his colleagues in calling on Congress to fully fund the COPS program in direct response to roundtable discussions and meetings he has hosted with law enforcement from across Central and Northwestern Illinois.
Congressman Eric Sorensen serves on the House Committee on Agriculture and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Prior to serving in Congress, Sorensen was a local meteorologist in Rockford and the Quad Cities for nearly 20 years. His district includes Illinois’ Quad Cities, Rockford, Peoria, and Bloomington-Normal.
The governments of Canada and Ontario are investing up to $1.5 million in the new Agricultural Workforce Equity and Diversity Initiative (AWEDI) to help minority groups start and build businesses in the agri-food sector.
Canada and Ontario strengthening entrepreneurial opportunities for under-represented groups in agri-food
September 24, 2024 – Toronto, Ontario – Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
The governments of Canada and Ontario are investing up to $1.5 million in the new Agricultural Workforce Equity and Diversity Initiative (AWEDI) to help minority groups start and build businesses in the agri-food sector.
Funded through the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP), AWEDI provides grants of up to $100,000 to support business ventures led by primary agricultural producers and food processors who are Indigenous peoples, visible minorities, 2SLGBTQI+ people, persons with disabilities, youth, women or members of French linguistic minority communities.
AWEDI is open to applications from organizations, research bodies, municipalities or Indigenous communities. Successful projects will support underrepresented groups in accessing spaces and equipment to grow or process agri-food products, as well as resources to help with financing.
Applications open on October 8, 2024, and will remain open until December 3, 2024.
The Sustainable CAP is a 5-year, $3.5-billion investment by federal, provincial and territorial governments to strengthen competitiveness, innovation, and resiliency of Canada’s agriculture, agri‐food and agri‐based products sector. This includes $1 billion in federal programs and activities and a $2.5-billion commitment that is cost-shared 60% federally and 40% provincially/territorially for programs that are designed and delivered by provinces and territories.
Annie Cullinan Director of Communications Office of the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food annie.cullinan@agr.gc.ca
The governments of Canada and Ontario are investing up to $1.5 million in the new Agricultural Equity and Diversity Initiative (AEDI) to help minority groups start and build businesses in the agri-food sector.
Canada and Ontario strengthen entrepreneurial opportunities for underrepresented groups in the agri-food sector
September 24, 2024 – Toronto, Ontario – Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
The governments of Canada and Ontario are investing up to $1.5 million in the new Agricultural Equity and Diversity Initiative (AEDI) to help minority groups start and build businesses in the agri-food sector.
Funded through the Canadian Sustainable Agriculture Partnership (CSA), IEDSA offers grants of up to $100,000 to support commercial enterprises led by primary agricultural producers and processing businesses who are Indigenous, visible minorities, 2SLGBTQI people, persons with disabilities, youth, women or members of minority Francophone communities.
IEDSA accepts applications from organizations, research organizations, municipalities or Indigenous communities. Successful projects will support underrepresented groups in accessing spaces and equipment to grow or process agri-food products, as well as resources to help them with financing.
The application period begins on October 8, 2024 and will continue until December 3, 2024.
The Canadian Sustainable Agriculture Partnership is a five-year (2023-2028) $3.5 billion investment by the federal, provincial and territorial governments to strengthen the competitiveness, innovation and resilience of Canada’s agriculture, agri-food and agri-based products sector. This includes $1 billion in federal programs and activities, as well as a $2.5 billion commitment of 60% federal and 40% provincial and territorial funding for provincially and territorially created and delivered programs.
Annie CullinanDirector of CommunicationsOffice of the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Foodannie.cullinan@agr.gc.ca
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is a translation. Apologies should the grammar and/or sentence structure not be perfect.
Province Would Face Royalty and Tax Revenue Losses up to $7 Billion, Lost Government Revenues of $43 Billion, and up to 34,000 Job Losses by 2050, According to Independent Report
In its new independent report, the Saskatchewan Economic Impact Assessment Tribunal has found that the federal oil and gas emissions cap and federal Methane 75 regulations would cause substantial economic damage to Saskatchewan.
By 2050, with production caps and methane mandates in place, Saskatchewan’s oil production would fall by between 38 and 52 per cent, the province would face cumulative royalty and tax revenue losses of between $4.8 and $7.1 billion, and total lost government revenues would be up to $43.3 billion, according to the independent Report.
“The Tribunal has, in several cases, relied on the same experts as the federal government and presented undeniable, quantitative data that these two federal mandates would be economically devastating to Saskatchewan,” Justice Minister and Attorney General Bronwyn Eyre said. “These mandates will lead to industrial winners and losers across the country and represent a sweeping constitutional overreach into the province’s exclusive jurisdiction over natural resources. This report arms us with additional, independent evidence to constitutionally challenge the two mandates.”
The Report also found that, with these federal mandates in place, Saskatchewan’s economy would contract by 4.3 per cent by 2030, by 6.4 per cent by 2050, and that there would be a cumulative GDP impact by 2050 of $230 billion. Employment losses by 2050, relative to the status quo, would range from between 12,800 and 34,000 people.
“The Explorers and Producers Association of Canada (EPAC) remains fundamentally opposed to the imposition of a federal emissions cap on Canadian oil and gas production,” EPAC President and CEO Tristan Goodman said. “This is unnecessary and unacceptable given Canadian producers’ ongoing efforts to reduce emissions. A federal emissions cap will introduce further investment uncertainty and has a likelihood of being found unconstitutional as seen in recent Supreme Court decisions. EPAC supports the goal of reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector and we believe this is strictly provincial jurisdiction. We look forward to working with the province of Saskatchewan to achieve their methane emissions reduction target. Federal intervention is not required.”
These two mandates will also not reduce any global emissions, according to the Report, and production cuts in Canada will simply be back-filled by jurisdictions with weaker environmental standards. Between 2015 and 2023, provincially-regulated methane emissions in Saskatchewan fell by two-thirds.
The Economic Impact Assessment Tribunal conducted its analysis and developed this report under the authority of The Saskatchewan First Act, which came into force in September 15, 2023. The Report was released yesterday and can be accessed within the background documents at the bottom of this page.
Additional information about the Economic Impact Assessment Tribunal can be found at:
The Government of Saskatchewan would like to thank the Economic Assessment Tribunal for its independent, in-depth report. Members of the Tribunal are as follows:
• Michael W. Milani (Chair); • Dr. Janice MacKinnon (Vice-Chair); • Kenneth From; • Dr. Stuart Smyth; and • Estella Petersen.
Michael Milani, KC (Chair) is a senior partner (commercial and insolvency) at McDougall Gauley in Regina. Mr. Milani has previously served as Estey Chair in Business Law at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Law, as President of the Law Society and Federation of Law Societies of Canada, and is the current Chair of the Law Reform Commission of Saskatchewan. In a legal capacity, he has undertaken various green energy projects for SaskPower, including negotiating power purchase agreements for wind and solar energy, as well as agreements for the engineering, procurement and construction of combined cycle gas plants.
Dr. Janice MacKinnon (Vice-Chair) is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, member of the Order of Canada, and former Saskatchewan Finance Minister. In 2017, she was appointed to the federal advisory panel on NAFTA and the Environment and, in 2019, was appointed by former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney to chair the Blue Ribbon panel on Alberta’s finances. She is a Professor of fiscal policy at the School of Public Health at the University of Saskatchewan and a senior fellow and member of the National Council at the C.D Howe Institute.
Kenneth From is the former President and CEO of SaskEnergy. He is also a former CEO of the Petroleum Technology Research Centre (PTRC) and the Technical Safety Authority of Saskatchewan (TSASK). Mr. From also previously served as an officer and director of Raven Oil Corporation from 2012-2016 and as President of Prairie Hunter Energy Corporation. A professional engineer, he was President (2003-2004) of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan (APEGS).
Dr. Stuart Smyth is a professor at the University of Saskatchewan in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. His research focuses on sustainability, agriculture and innovation. As U of S Agri-Food Innovation and Sustainability Enhancement Chair, Dr. Smyth has published over 100 academic articles and is recognized as a leading expert on barriers to innovation and regulatory efficiency.
Estella Peterson is an oil sands heavy equipment operator in Fort McMurray, AB. Originally from Saskatchewan and Treaty 4 Cowesess First Nation, Estella is part of Suncor Energy’s Aboriginal Ambassador program and is a freelance contributor, including to The Globe and Mail, on the economic importance of the natural resources sector to Indigenous communities.
Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Tracey Mann (Kansas, 1)
WASHINGTON, D.C.– Today, U.S. Representatives Tracey Mann (KS-01) and Marcy Kaptur (OH-09) alongside Senators Roger Marshall (R-KS) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), introduced the Farmer First Fuel Incentives Act to restrict eligibility for the Clean Fuel Production Credit (45Z) to domestically produced feedstocks and to extend the credit to 2034.The ten-year credit will allow for more certainty as the U.S. ethanol industry builds infrastructure to open new markets for farmers, increase the production of ethanol across the country, and incentivize domestic feedstocks while continuing to support global renewable fuel production made from a wide array of feedstocks.
“In no world should American tax incentives first benefit foreign producers,” said Rep. Mann. “While the use of foreign feedstocks can play an important role in producing domestically manufactured ethanol, biodiesel, renewable diesel, and sustainable aviation fuel, we must not displace harvest in America. Our legislation puts American farmers first by ensuring that American tax credits are incentivizing American-grown products.”
“I joined my colleagues in this important bicameral and bipartisan effort because helping American farmers, producers, and growers goes beyond state and party lines,” said Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (OH-09), senior member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture. ”We must ensure the Clean Fuel Production tax credit is structured in a way that benefits domestic producers, and not one that advantages foreign-produced feedstocks from China or Brazil. Our legislation will extend this credit through 2034 and bolster American energy independence by prioritizing American producers and the production of domestic biofuels.”
“It’s very tough in farm country with high interest rates and low commodity prices, which is exactly why we can’t have a tax policy that will lower commodity prices even more,” said Senator Marshall. “While we support free trade and open markets, we do not believe foreign feedstocks should be incentivized through the hard-earned dollars of U.S. taxpayers to the detriment of American farmers. This legislation puts farmers FIRST to ensure they are the primary beneficiaries of renewable fuel tax incentives and provides businesses a decade of certainty.”
“American tax dollars should support American farmers – not imported feedstocks,” said Senator Brown. “To continue to grow the biofuels industry and open new markets for Ohio farmers, we must stop taxpayer money from subsidizing a surge in Chinese cooking oil or any other foreign feedstock from infiltrating the American market. Our bipartisan bill ensures these investments benefit Ohio farmers and Ohio energy producers.”
The legislation is cosponsored by Representatives James Comer (KY-01), Nikki Budzinski (IL-13), and Don Bacon (NE-02) and Senators Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Deb Fischer (R-NE), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI).
The Farmer First Fuel Incentives Act is supported by Growth Energy, National Oilseed Processors Association, National Corn Growers Association, American Soybean Association, Ohio Corn and Wheat Growers Association, Ohio Soybean Association, Kansas Corn Growers Association, Kansas Soybean Association, Kentucky Soybean Association, Scoular, and Louis Dreyfus Company.
“Our farmers need policies that protect their ability to compete fairly as the United States strives to be a leader in renewable fuels markets,” said Ed Prosser, Senior Vice President at Scoular. “We greatly appreciate Representative Mann and his colleagues for introducing this legislation that helps ensure American agriculture will have a well-deserved seat at the table in the journey to lower the carbon intensity of our energy supply.”
“NOPA commends this bipartisan, bicameral legislative effort which puts U.S fuel producers, U.S. crushers and U.S. farmers first. We thank Senators Brown and Marshall and Representatives Mann and Kaptur for their leadership,” said NOPA President and CEO Kailee Tkacz Buller. “We support free trade and open markets, but do not believe foreign feedstocks should benefit on the backs of U.S. taxpayers to the detriment of U.S. farmers. Without this fix, the 45Z credit will incentivize the use of foreign feedstocks over those grown by U.S. farmers. Our industry has made significant investments to expand U.S. crush capacity by 30 percent and this fix is pivotal to ensuring these investments are delivered.”
“Biofuel production paves a key path for our country to be a clean energy leader, and U.S. farmers who grow the crops going into those biofuels take pride in helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions while supporting the U.S. economy and energy independence,” said ASA President Josh Gackle, a North Dakota soybean farmer. “However, for continued growth of America’s promising biofuels industry, U.S. farmers need the support of a final 45Z rule that prioritizes domestically sourced feedstock.”
“Farmers and bioethanol producers need to know they’ll be able to rely on the 45Z tax credit for more than just the next few years,” said Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor. “This bill gives them the certainty they need to unlock significant investments in their operations and in the rural communities that depend on them. We commend Representatives Mann and Kaptur for introducing this bill and all of our House champions for making a 45Z tax credit extension a top priority as we head into the tax reform process next year.”
“Ensuring American farmers reach maximum profitability and build resiliency to pass down their farms to the next generation should be our top priority,” said Adam York, Kansas Sorghum Producers CEO. “This legislation helps make sure the intended benefits of this program arrive into our rural economies.”
“Corn growers are making every effort to help the airline industry lower its greenhouse gas emissions through the use of corn ethanol,” said Minnesota farmer and NCGA president Harold Wolle. “We are deeply appreciative of these leaders for introducing legislation that establishes requirements for the tax credit that will level the playing field for America’s corn growers.”
“The Farmer First Fuel Incentive Act recognizes the vital role of American agriculture in 45Z,” said Craig Meeker, Chairman of National Sorghum Producers. “This legislation ensures that the guidance is designed and implemented in a farmer-focused manner, supporting domestic clean energy production and stimulating economic growth across rural America.”
“U.S. soybean farmers have been at the forefront of our domestic clean-energy production through the booming biodiesel and renewable diesel industry over the last decade,” said Kaleb Little, CEO, Kansas Soybean Association. “The Farmer First Fuel Incentives Act ensures our Kansas soybean growers maintain access to this vital market sector going forward and strengthens the clean fuel production credit for the future.”
Earlier this month, Representatives Mann and Kaptur led 39 of their colleagues in penning a letter to the U.S. Department of Treasury urging it to expedite the issuance of final guidance for 45Z. Senators Marshall and Brown led a similar letter in the U.S. Senate.
Source: Republic of Taiwan – Ministry of Foreign Affairs
MOFA response to public comments by US Deputy Secretary of State Campbell on UNGA Resolution 2758 and cross-strait peace and stability
Date：2024-09-20
Data Source：Department of North American Affairs
September 20, 2024
The US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on “Great Power Competition in the Indo-Pacific” on September 18. In response to a question concerning the fact that Taiwan’s status was not mentioned in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell agreed, pointing out that China was using the resolution as a diplomatic tool to falsely portray Taiwan’s status as illegitimate and that China was conflating its interpretation with its “one China principle” in order to suppress Taiwan. Deputy Secretary Campbell reaffirmed the unwavering US commitment to Taiwan and the long-standing US efforts to preserve peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, emphasizing that this was a bipartisan consensus.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) welcomes and appreciates that yet another high-level US diplomat has publicly pointed out China’s misrepresentation of UNGA Resolution 2758 and reiterated bipartisan US support for maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. The comments follow remarks made earlier by US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Mark Lambert and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink.
MOFA is pleased that in addition to the United States, like-minded nations including Australia and the Netherlands have adopted friendly resolutions or motions stating that UNGA Resolution 2758 made no reference to Taiwan. MOFA calls on the international community to jointly take concrete actions to refute China’s misrepresentation of the resolution and oppose its spurious claims of there being an international consensus on its “one China principle.” Taiwan will continue to cooperate with the United States and other like-minded countries and together preserve peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and throughout the Indo-Pacific.
Source: United States Senator for New Hampshire Jeanne Shaheen
(Washington, DC) – U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) joined U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) in sending a letter to Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Sandra Thompson urging the Agency to require that new homes with mortgages backed by government-sponsored enterprises, such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae, meet up-to-date building codes for energy efficiency. In their letter, the Senators ask Director Thompson for an updated timeline for a decision, while calling on FHFA to act swiftly in order to improve home energy efficiency and ultimately save Granite State homeowners and renters money.
The Senators wrote, in part: “Aligning new home energy standards with updated model codes will save money for homeowners and renters across the country. HUD and USDA found that the increased initial costs of construction are more than made up for by lower monthly energy costs. […] Beyond these financial benefits, updated codes help save lives by protecting families from the impacts of extreme weather events, particularly utility outages during heat waves and cold snaps. Updated energy codes can also yield better indoor air quality and reduce exposure to pollutants that can have negative health impacts including asthma, heart disease and lung cancer.”
They continued: “This year is an ideal time for FHFA to make these changes. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act provided over $1.2 billion of federal funding to help states and localities update their building codes. Already, multiple state and local governments, as well as HUD and USDA have adopted the updated building codes.”
The Senators concluded: “We urge you to move quickly to adopt modern energy standards for new homes utilizing Enterprise-backed mortgages to align with other federally backed housing construction, and ask you for an update on your timeline for taking this action. These standards will support a stable, efficient housing market by reducing wasted energy, improving health outcomes, and lowering costs for both renters and homeowners across the country.”
The letter was cosigned by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Ed Markey (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Peter Welch (D-VT). This letter is supported by Americans for Financial Reform, Rocky Mountain Institute, and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association.
The full letter text can be found here.
Shaheen has championed work to secure federal investments in clean energy and energy efficiency initiatives and to lower energy costs across New Hampshire, especially by fighting for updated building energy codes standards. Earlier this year, Shaheen sent a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) urging it to require that new homes with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meet up-to-date building codes for energy efficiency. The Senator also recently applauded action by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to adopt updated Minimum Energy Standards for new single and multifamily federally-backed homes.
Shaheen was a lead negotiator of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which made huge investments in clean energy, including $225 million to support the adoption and implementation of updated building energy codes based upon her longstanding bipartisan legislation with Senator Rob Portman. Shaheen also helped secure $1 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act, of which New Hampshire is eligible for nearly $2.5 million to support modern code adoption, implementation, enforcement, training and workforce development. Shaheen recently wrote an op-ed in the Union Leader urging the State of New Hampshire to adopt the latest building energy codes and use this federal funding.
Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman David Scott (GA-13)
WASHINGTON- Today, Congressman David Scott (GA-13), Ranking Member of the House Agriculture Committee, alongside Georgia’s congressional Democrats,Reps.Hank Johnson (GA-04),Nikema Williams (GA-05),Sanford Bishop (GA-02),andLucy McBath (GA-07), sent a letter to State Superintendent Richard Woods urging him to expand and strengthen instruction of African American Studies courses.
“Home to the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement, Georgia’s connection to Black history and culture cannot be understated,” said Congressman David Scott. “While GaDOE should be commended for its recent adoption of social studies diversity course offerings, the lack of standards and materials associated with teaching the Introduction to African American/Black Studies course is deeply concerning. Disparate training levels across dozens of school districts have resulted in of some educators lacking any training or qualification altogether. Superintendent Woods must work with educators, experts, and other important stakeholders to develop stronger standards and expand the number of school districts that offer the course.”
Since 2020, Georgia’s Introduction to African American/Black Studies course has been included in the catalogue of state-funded courses. However, the lack of any standards associated with the course requires school districts to develop their own curriculum and materials, including textbooks, leading to wide discrepancies in rigor and content between school districts. The lack of standards and uniform curriculum, along with a lack of supplemental training for educators, presents a barrier to some districts that lack the resources to develop new curriculum, materials, and supplemental training. Developing standards for the course will lift the burden from school districts to expand and improve instruction of African American Studies courses in Georgia.
Further, in July, Superintendent Woods declined to recommend the Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies course for approval for the 2024-2025 academic year. Instead, he recommended that school districts use an existing course code associated with an existing Introduction to African American/Black Studies class, suggesting that teachers and schools develop their own curriculum for the course. Even though Superintendent Woods ultimately reversed his decision by allowing state funding for the AP African American Studies course, his decision came too late, as some school districts already began instruction for the year. Others were forced to reduce the number of AP African American studies courses they could offer. Superintendent Woods must be fully committed to helping school districts increase the number of AP African American Studies classes offered.
Source: United States House of Representatives – Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Washington, DC — Today, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (OH-09), Congressman Tracey Mann (KS-01), Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Senator Roger Marshall, MD (R-KS), introduced the bicameral and bipartisan Farmer First Fuel Incentives Act requiring the Treasury Department to restrict the eligibility of the 45Z Tax Credit to renewable fuels made only from domestically sourced feedstocks and extending the tax credit to make it a full ten-year credit.
“I joined my colleagues in this important bicameral and bipartisan effort because helping American farmers, producers, and growers goes beyond state and party lines,” said Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (OH-09), senior member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture.” We must ensure the Clean Fuel Production tax credit is structured in a way that benefits domestic producers and not one that advantages foreign-produced feedstocks from China or Brazil. Our legislation will extend this credit through 2034 and bolster American energy independence by prioritizing American producers and the production of domestic biofuels.”
“In no world should American tax incentives first benefit foreign producers,” said Congressman Tracey Mann (KS-01). “While the use of foreign feedstocks can play an important role in producing domestically manufactured ethanol, biodiesel, renewable diesel, and sustainable aviation fuel, we must not displace harvest in America. Our legislation puts American farmers first by ensuring that American tax credits are incentivizing American-grown products.”
“American tax dollars should support American farmers – not imported feedstocks. To continue to grow the biofuels industry and open new markets for Ohio farmers, we must stop taxpayer money from subsidizing a surge in Chinese cooking oil or any other foreign feedstock from infiltrating the American market. Our bipartisan bill ensures these investments benefit Ohio farmers and Ohio energy producers,” Said Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
“It’s very tough in farm country with high interest rates and low commodity prices, which is exactly why we can’t have a tax policy that will lower commodity prices even more. While we support free trade and open markets, we do not believe foreign feedstocks should be incentivized through the hard-earned dollars of US taxpayers to the detriment of American farmers,” said Senator Roger Marshall, MD (R-KS). “This legislation puts farmers FIRST to ensure they are the primary beneficiaries of renewable fuel tax incentives and provides businesses a decade of certainty.”
“The federal clean fuel production tax credit is meant to foster a domestic market for cleaner burning fuels that promote American jobs and energy independence,” said Rusty Goebel, President, Ohio Soybean Association. “Foreign imported feedstocks shouldn’t benefit from American taxpayer investments in this industry. Ohio Soybean farmers support Congresswoman Kaptur’s efforts to ensure Ohio-grown feedstocks aren’t undercut by foreign suppliers.”
“NOPA commends this bipartisan, bicameral legislative effort which puts U.S fuel producers, US crushers and US farmers first. We thank Senators Brown and Marshall and Representatives Mann and Kaptur for their leadership,” said NOPA President and CEO Kailee Tkacz Buller. “We support free trade and open markets but do not believe foreign feedstocks should benefit on the backs of U.S. taxpayers to the detriment of US farmers. Without this fix, the 45Z credit will incentivize the use of foreign feedstocks over those grown by US farmers. Our industry has made significant investments to expand US crush capacity by 30 percent and this fix is pivotal to ensuring these investments are delivered.”
“Corn growers are making every effort to help the airline industry lower its greenhouse gas emissions through the use of corn ethanol,” said Minnesota farmer and NCGA president Harold Wolle. “We are deeply appreciative of these leaders for introducing legislation that establishes requirements for the tax credit that will level the playing field for America’s corn growers.”
“Biofuel production paves a key path for our country to be a clean energy leader, and US farmers who grow the crops going into those biofuels take pride in helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions while supporting the US economy and energy independence,” said ASA President Josh Gackle, a North Dakota soybean farmer. “However, for continued growth of America’s promising biofuels industry, US farmers need the support of a final 45Z rule that prioritizes domestically sourced feedstock.”
“The Farmer First Fuel Incentive Act recognizes the vital role of American agriculture in 45Z. This legislation ensures that the guidance is designed and implemented in a farmer-focused manner, supporting domestic clean energy production and stimulating economic growth across rural America,” said Craig Meeker, Chairman of National Sorghum Producers.
“This important bill sends a strong signal that extending the 45Z credit is going to be a top, bipartisan priority in this Congress and the next,” said Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor. “We applaud all our rural champions for working to give biofuel producers and our farm partners the long-term certainty we need to accelerate innovation in America’s bioeconomy. With a longer runway from Congress, and clear, flexible, and timely guidance from the US Department of the Treasury, we’ll have the pieces in place to unlock billions of dollars in new clean energy investments across rural America,” Emily Skor, CEO of Growth Energy, said.
The 10-year credit will give the ethanol industry the time and financial incentive to build up the infrastructure needed for the US to be less reliant on foreign fuel, open new markets for farmers, and increase ethanol production across the Midwest. However, we recently learned that 45Z has a glaring flaw that needs to be fixed for farmers wanting to sell feedstocks to the biodiesel and renewable diesel industry. If 45Z goes into effect as is, taxpayers will be massively subsidizing Chinese used cooking oil and would all but eliminate the use of homegrown soy or corn oil in renewable diesel.
House cosponsors include: Representatives Don Bacon (NE-02) Nikki Budzinski (IL-13), and Representatives James Comer (KY-01).
Senate cosponsors include: Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Tina Smith (D-MN).
The Farmer First Fuel Incentives Act is supported by Growth Energy, National Oilseed Processors Association, National Corn Growers Association, American Soybean Association, Ohio Corn and Wheat Growers Association, Ohio Soybean Association, Kansas Corn Growers Association, Kansas Soybean Association, Kentucky Soybean Association, Scoular, and Louis Dreyfus Company.
Background:
Prior to introducing this legislation, Congresswoman Kaptur joined Senators Brown and Marshall in a July bipartisan letter they led calling for the US Treasury Department to restrict the eligibility of the 45Z Tax Credit to renewable fuels made only from domestically-sourced feedstocks, like Kansas soybean oil and corn oil. You may click here to read Senator Brown and Marshall’s full letter. Representatives Kaptur and Mann led 39 House colleagues in a subsequent letter September. A similar letter calling for 45z to be restricted to domestic feedstocks was sent by the American Farm Bureau Federation, American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers Association, and National Farmers Union to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and US Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young.
President, Secretary-General, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
“The best way to predict the future is to build it.” It is a truth worth remembering, especially when political division, climate change, war, hunger, and disease seem to overshadow our effort.
We have the tools to deal with these challenges. We have the knowledge, the technology, the financial means, the diplomacy and the robust international institutions.
The IAEA serves its 180 Member States with the lifesaving and lifeaffirming tools of nuclear science and technology. These contribute directly to the SDGs.
Health comes first. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 we jumped into action, harnessing our equipment and knowledge for quick and reliable testing against COVID with the portable RT-PCR machines, or “labs in a suitcase”.
We launched what would become the largest emergency operation in the history of IAEA to nearly 130 States. In so doing, we reached tens of millions of people. For some countries these kits were the first, and sometimes the only equipment they had to conduct reliable testing against COVID-19.
Drawing on this and earlier experiencessupporting the fight against Ebola, avian influenza and Zika, we launched – in that same year – the Zoonotic Disease Integrated Action (ZODIAC). Under ZODIAC we have trained people from more than 95 countries in dealing with zoonotic diseases. Laboratories in developing countries have received equipment for 3 serology and molecular diagnostic or genetic sequencing. Many of these labs are now being used to combat Mpox.
The IAEA has more than 6 decades of experience in radiotherapy and medical imaging. But today the cancer crisis is hitting low and middleincome countries particularly hard and I am determined to make a greater impact in partnership with our Member States. That is why we launched Rays of Hope: Cancer Care for All at the African Union Summit in February 2022, with firm support from the World Health Organization (WHO). Africa is where the cancer care gap is the starkest: more than 20 African nations lack even a single radiotherapy machine. So far, 86 countries have reached out to the IAEA for support under Rays of Hope and concrete actions have been initiated in more than 30 States.
Under our new initiative, NUTEC: NUclear TEchnology for Controlling Plastic Pollution, 86 States around the world are participating in marine microplastic monitoring using nuclear and isotopic tracing techniques. This will help them to put in place better-informed policies that combat the plastic pollution threatening the ocean, its plants and creatures and therefore also the communities that rely on them for their livelihoods. Some 39 States are participating in plastic recycling using radiation technology, four of which are progressing towards establishing pilot-scale plants. This will allow them to reduce plastic waste and advance towards a circular economy. The Global Marine Monitoring Network continues to grow with 99 States now benefiting from capacity building efforts.
Atoms4Food was launched by the IAEA and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in October 2023. It offers tailor-made approaches in 4 Food and Agriculture, which for years has been the number 1 area of support sought by our Member States. Atoms4Foods supports countries in using innovative nuclear techniques to enhance agricultural productivity, reduce food losses, ensure food safety, improve nutrition, and adapt to the challenges of climate change. This supports farmers as well as the fight against deadly malnutrition.
There is no development without energy. Nuclear power provides about a quarter of the world’s low-carbon electricity. Much more is needed if we are to meet the climate goals set out on the Paris Agreement. In their historic first Global Stocktake, approved at COP28 in Dubai last year, the signatory countries to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change called for accelerating the deployment of low-emission energy technologies including nuclear power. The Pact for the Future adopted yesterday, in Action 26 reaffirmed the inalienable right of all countries to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination, in conformity with their respective obligations.
Today, in addition to the 415 nuclear power reactors operating in 31 countries there are 62 reactors under construction in 15 countries, most of them in Asia. The IAEA is assisting States, many of them developing countries, either with enlarging their civilian nuclear programs, or with safely embarking on them. We are working with industry and regulators on small modular reactors (SMRs) which will make more affordable the price of entry to the nuclear energy club.
The IAEA is also playing an important role in maintenance of 5 international peace and security.
Mandated by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), we conduct nuclear safeguards, making sure the increased amount of nuclear material around the world does not result in the secret proliferation of nuclear weapons. There is material for thousands of nuclear warheads in the world. Thanks to the robust international safeguards regime and our inspection system, who never stopped even during the COVID pandemic, the number of nuclear weapon States around the world is far fewer than had been feared before the IAEA was established and the NPT came into force.
The IAEA assists States in the creation and implementation of nuclearweapon-free zones, which already cover vast regions of the world. These are important steps towards a world without nuclear weapons.
Our work in Iran, Syria, other countries of the Middle East, and on different continents, contributes to international stability through nonproliferation and through the peaceful uses of nuclear technology.
Since February 2022 a large-scale conventional conflict has raged in a country with a large civilian nuclear program. Ukraine used to generate more than half its electricity from nuclear power plants. From the first months of the war, the IAEA has focused on assisting Ukraine in preventing a radiological or nuclear accident, which could have a serious transborder impact. Today, the IAEA has advisory and assistance missions stationed at all five of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, including Zaporizhzhia, which is located right at the front line. Following months 6 of negotiations and consultations, on 30 May 2023 at the UN Security Council I outlined five concrete principles to help ensure nuclear safety and security at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya NPP. It received strong support from the Members of the Council.
The IAEA continues to monitor the safe discharge of water from the Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Station and engages in consultations with neighbouring and coastal countries with strong interest in the process. Our independent analysis and the data we publish relating to the discharge offer facts that dispel misunderstandings and fears about the process.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I firmly believe in supporting the ability of everyone, regardless of gender, to fully benefit and contribute to the IAEA’s work.
Conviction requires action. When I began my tenure as the IAEA’s Director General five years ago, one of my very first actions was to set a goal for gender parity by 2025 and to put in place the policies to achieve a more diverse workforce.
Five years ago, women represented less than 30% of the Agency. Today, they have surpassed 48%.
Mindful of the need to continue helping future generations, I also launched the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship Programme (MSCFP) in 2020. It drives diversity as well as scientific and technological innovation by encouraging women to pursue a career in the nuclear field. Since its launch, hundreds of women from over 120 countries have been awarded fellowships with generous stipends. They have studied in more than 70 7 countries and have also benefited from internships in many areas of the field. Our follow-up program, named after the scientist Lise Meitner, empowers early- and mid-career through career-enhancing opportunities like site visits.
The IAEA is a key multilateral player to make the Pact of the Future a reality. Thank you.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.—At 9:30AM today, Governor DeSantis was joined by Kevin Guthrie, Executive Director for the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM), for a press conference at the State Emergency Operations Center to provide updates on Tropical Storm Helene. Governor DeSantis issued Executive Order 24-209 on September 24, updating EO 24-208 and declaring a state of emergency for 61 counties, which allows for state officials to make critical resources available to communities ahead of any potential storm impacts.
As of 11AM ET, Tropical Storm Helene officially formed over the Northwestern Caribbean Sea.
Watches and warnings in effect include:
Hurricane Watch: Bay, Calhoun, Charlotte, Coastal Collier, DeSoto, Gulf, Hardee, inland Hillsborough, Lake, Lee, inland Manatee, eastern Marion Mainland Monroe and Middle Keys (Monroe County), Orange, Osceola, Polk inland Sarasota, Seminole, and Sumter counties
Tropical Storm Watch: Citrus, eastern Columbia, Dixie, Franklin, Gadsden, Gilchrist, Hernando, Coastal Hillsborough, Jefferson, Liberty, Leon, Levy, Coastal Manatee, western Marion, Pasco, Pinellas, Coastal Sarasota, Suwannee, Taylor and Wakulla counties
Floridians are encouraged to know their risks from hurricane hazards and prepare for potential impacts from Tropical Storm Helene. To learn more, residents can visit FloridaDisaster.org/Guide.
Counties have begun their preparation efforts including measures like sandbag stations. For updates on county resources available visit FloridaDisaster.org/Counties for a list of all 67 county emergency management contacts.
State Preparedness Efforts
The Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) activated the State Emergency Operations Center to a Level 1 on Tuesday, September 24 and is leading coordination efforts for the State Emergency Response Team.
FDEM is hosting twice-daily calls with all 67 counties to identify needs and to ensure the state is prepared to respond quickly and efficiently.
Additionally, FDEM is coordinating with state agencies, non-governmental organizations, and private sector partners to facilitate ongoing resource requests for counties, including requests for water, generators and support personnel.
Nearly 500 missions are being facilitated by the State Emergency Response Team to assist counties in their preparation efforts. These missions accomplish vital tasks like prestaging response resources, protecting critical infrastructure facilities like hospitals and utility stations, and coordinating personnel statewide.
The Florida State Guard (FSG) has prepared the following:
250+ Soldiers ready to deploy.
10 shallow water vessel boat teams
7 flat-bottom-flood rescue skiffs
2 amphibious rescue vehicles
12 UTV’s
15 Cut and toss crews
7 search and rescue teams
1 UH-60 Blackhawk for daytime aerial assessment and logistics missions
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) is making plans to ensure continuity of operations in several critical areas including Missing Endangered Persons Information Clearinghouse and the Watch Desk.
FDLE logistics teams are moving and staging assets.
FDLE is identifying squads for deployment and staffing for local emergency operations centers.
FDLE’s mutual aid team is at the State Emergency Operations Center coordinating law enforcement missions.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) has readied high-water vehicles and all other storm response resources statewide so they may be rapidly deployed to assist Floridians in need in the event of damage or flooding.
The FWC is fully integrated into the State Emergency Operations Center, and local FWC law enforcement representatives are coordinating closely with county and city emergency operations centers.
FWC officers are ready to deploy and respond with a variety of specialized equipment as necessary, such as:
Airboats
Shallow draft boats
ATVs/Side-by-sides
Larger platform vessels
Four-wheel vehicles
FWC Special Operations Group (SOG) teams will serve as reconnaissance units for the State EOC and report on damage after the storm has made landfall.
FWC Aviation Section has been placed on standby and has readied all appropriate aircraft for potential deployment for EOC aerial assistance, reconnaissance, and post-storm damage assessments when needed.
The Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) is monitoring the storm and preparing mitigation measures, including:
Mobilizing evacuation assets
Locating areas of evacuation
Establishing liaisons in our local county and municipal EOCs for storm assistance
The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) offices and facilities are finalizing storm preparations to ensure the safety and security of staff and youth.
These actions include fueling all vehicles, moving vehicles in low-lying and flood-prone areas to higher ground, testing and ensuring adequate fuel supplies for generators in the event of loss of power, and ensuring food, medicine, and emergency supplies are stocked and ready.
The Florida Department of State has been monitoring the storm for potential impacts and making preparations to secure historical properties.
The Florida Department of State, Division of Elections has been monitoring the storm and has been providing updates and information to Supervisors of Elections about potential impacts and resources available to their offices.
All Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) 7 Districts, Central Office, and FDOT’s Turnpike Enterprise initiated statewide internal preparedness conference calls beginning Monday, September 23, which continue daily.
FDOT continues close coordination with State EOC officials and partners.
FDOT team members have begun staffing the State EOC.
Responding to county requests for personnel and assets.
FDOT Statewide Preparedness Efforts Include:
667 team members working in offices, and EOCs conducting pre-storm preparations.
490 team members working in the field conducting pre-storm preparations.
193 pieces of heavy equipment being used for pre-storm preparations.
164 team members staged for cut and toss operations
90 bridge inspectors staged for deployment
28 team members staged for UAV (drone) deployment
20 large pumps staged
634 generators staged to assist with traffic signal power
4 ITS trailers staged.
Clearing shoulders in preparation for potential Emergency Should Use (ESU).
Currently analyzing flooding vulnerabilities for major roadways and bridges.
Inspecting and clearing drainage systems, monitoring flood-prone and currently saturated areas, and pre-positioning pumps as appropriate.
Securing high mast lighting, maintenance yards, active construction projects, rest areas/welcome centers, service plazas, and weigh stations.
Howard Frankland Bridge barges and cranes anticipated to be fully secured by Wednesday, 9/25
Replenishing fuel reserves, checking generator readiness, and pre-positioning assets as appropriate.
Completing repairs on malfunctioning vehicles and equipment in preparation for deployment.
Initiated communication with modal partners – seaports, airports, railroads, transit, and spaceports. All partners are currently in monitoring posture.
Staging ITS trailers, as well as drone teams and equipment are being prepped and ready to deploy as needed.
FDOT encourages drivers to download the FL511 app or visit FL511.com for road/bridge closures and potential detours that may be activated. Remember to always follow the direction of local law enforcement and emergency personnel.
Seaports are open and preparing for storm.
Airports are open and monitoring the storm.
Railroads are open and monitoring the storm.
Transit agencies are open and monitoring the storm.
Spaceport partners are open and monitoring the storm.
The Florida Department of Veterans’ Affairs (FDVA) has alerted the home administrators of its nine State Veterans’ Homes of the approach of the coming storm. They are implementing their hurricane preparation checklists.
FDVA’s facilities have main generators in case of loss of power.
FDVA is in contact with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs leadership in Florida to coordinate potential clinic closure announcements.
Volunteer Florida has begun the following preparation efforts:
Daily Coordination calls with Florida Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters (VOAD);
Identifying partner capabilities, needs and gaps;
Ongoing coordination efforts with Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT); and
Identifying pre-staging locations of flood/cleanup kits, hygiene kits and tools.
Key Messaging to Partners:
Emphasizing the importance of “Cash, Confirm, Connect” strategy.
Promoting volunteer opportunities through Volunteer Connect.
Encouraging documentation of all donated resources and Volunteer hours.
Current rate of volunteer hours in the state of Florida is $31.61.
Florida Department of Management Services (FDMS) are working to identify potential evacuation shelter sites for special needs and pet friendly evacuees as far east as Lake City and west as Panama City.
FDMS identified a specific location to land helicopters and staff to potentially COOP from the EOC to Escambia County
FDMS is making early preparations with their vendors and have commenced for commodities as well as services.
Health and Human Services
The Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD) is hosting calls with regional leadership and partners to provide storm information and determine any anticipated unmet needs.
APD is preparing policy documentation for anticipated storm event actions and providing regional staff with curfew letters for providers in potential counties with issued curfews.
The Florida Department of Health’s (DOH) Office of Communications is distributing information on social media platforms regarding emergency health topics, including flood water safety, special needs shelters, boil water notices and more.
DOH and the Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) sent information regarding early prescription refills permitted under Executive Order 24-209. This information was sent to the public, health insurers, managed care organizations, pharmacy benefit managers, pharmacy chains and health care providers.
DOH is deploying over 130 emergency response vehicles. Staging is currently in Leon and Osceola counties.
The Pinellas County WIC office will close at 12:00 p.m. on 09/24/2024 and plan to re-open on 09/26/2024.
DOH’s Healthy Start program is reaching out to coalitions and providers located in areas of potential impact to ensure continuity of care for clients. Additionally, Healthy Start is alerting clients of potential weather impacts and connecting them to resources.
DOH’s Bureau of Women, Infant and Children (WIC) is alerting coordinators in areas of potential impact and preparing for remote operations, if needed.
DOH’s Bureau of Childcare Food is alerting providers in areas of potential impact and having them prepare for grab-and-go meals for clients post-landfall.
The Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) has been in communication with health care facilities as they are evaluating any potential evacuation plans.
AHCA will hold and participate in provider calls for TS9 preparation ahead of landfall. As of 10am today there are 4 facilities (3 ALFs and 1 nursing home) reporting that they are evacuating.
E-PLUS update:
34 of the 41 (83%) counties in the EO have access to E-PLUS
Outreach is being conducted for counties with no access
Monitoring of the system will ramp up today
ENS Subscribers were notified of Special Needs Shelters Encounters that they may receive
Infrastructure, Roads and State Closures
The Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) is Relocating FHP command bus from Jacksonville to Washington County for staging for post-landfall use due to the State EOC possibly being in the storm’s path.
Communication established with Troop Commander’s in the potential impacted areas.
FHP is staffing ESF-16 with four (4) sworn members and one (1) non-sworn member effective today 7:00 a.m.
FHP high-water rescue vehicles are prepared for use.
FHP is preparing high-water rescue vehicles.
Florida Highway Patrol’s Quick Reaction Force teams consisting of more than 120 members statewide stand ready to provide immediate response.
FHP remains in close communication with law enforcement and transportation partners and stands ready to assist with any potential impacts across the state.
FLHSMV issued Emergency Order 24-05, which: waives specific requirements for commercial motor vehicles providing emergency relief; and waives the replacement fees for driver’s license and identification credentials, vehicle registrations and titles, vessel registrations and titles and temporary parking permits for impacted individuals.
The Department of Children and Families (DCF) is preparing for Tropical Storm Helene and has secured supplies should the Hope Bus need to be deployed.
DCF is working with the Community-Based Care Lead Agencies to contact foster families and group home providers to ensure preparedness.
The State Mental Health Treatment Facilities have activated their disaster preparation plans and are assessing facility readiness.
DCF has begun contacting adult protective services clients to assess any needs and to ensure they have a plan in place.
DCF has begun contacting Continuums of Care, licensed child care facilities, and licensed Substance Use Disorder treatment facilities to ensure they are prepared.
DCF’s behavioral health staff and the Managing Entities stand ready to deploy behavioral health resources, as needed.
Through ESF 6, DCF is making preliminary preparations for staffing shelters, delivering emergency supplies, and directing generators to critical human services infrastructure.
The Department of Elder Affairs (DOEA) contacted all our Area Agencies on Aging partners and received the following updates:
Elder Options (PSA 3)
Staff have initiated call-downs to clients to assess their needs.
Providers have ordered emergency meals in case meal sites close.
You Thrive Florida meal sites in Hernando, Lake, and Sumter counties will be closed on Thursday and Friday, and clients will receive shelf-stable meals.
ElderSource (PSA 4)
Staff have initiated call-downs to clients to assess their needs.
Area Agency on Aging of Pasco-Pinellas, Inc. (PSA 5)
Staff have initiated call-downs to clients to assess their needs.
Clients who require assistance with registering for the special needs registry are receiving assistance.
Senior Connection Center (PSA 6)
Staff have initiated call-downs to clients to assess their needs.
Shelf-stable meals are being provided to individuals who express a need in case meal delivery services are disrupted later this week.
Area Agency on Aging for Southwest Florida, Inc. (PSA 8)
Staff have initiated call-downs to clients to assess their needs.
The Florida Department of Education (FDOE) is contacting all school districts to assess needs in preparation for Tropical Storm Helene. For more information on school closures, visit https://www.fldoe.org/em-response/storm-info.stml.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is working with Florida’s Water/Wastewater Agency Response Network, the Florida Rural Water Association and other response agencies to ensure preparations are underway to support drinking and wastewater facilities ahead of the anticipated heavy rains.
All significant hazardous waste facilities in potentially affected counties are being notified to ensure all pre-storm preparations are being made.
DEP has completed pre-storm beach surveys in all shoreline counties and staff are beginning to develop their post-storm response plan.
Florida’s water management districts are engaging to engage local governments and drainage operators throughout the state and are available to provide technical and other support, including deploying temporary pumps to alleviate localized flooding. As part of standard operations, DEP and Florida’s water management districts continue to monitor water systems and river levels as the storm’ develops.
DEP published a storm updates webpage to keep state park visitors updated of closures: FloridaStateParks.org/StormUpdates. Visitors with existing camping and cabin reservations at closed parks have been notified of their reservation status.
Resources for Employees, Businesses and Consumer
The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) has organized Emergency Response Teams across 13 offices statewide, who are ready to deploy once it is safe to complete damage assessments and disaster inspections of licensed establishments.
DBPR has begun preparing personnel and securing and preparing fleet and resources ahead of potential impacts. DBPR is positioned to initiate continuity of operations protocols in all offices statewide.
Today, DBPR has proactively communicated with more than 137,000 restaurant and lodging licensees to provide storm preparation and food safety resources.
DBPR encourages Florida’s licensed contractors who provide post-storm construction-related services to register with its Florida Disaster Contractors Network at DCNOnline.org.
FloridaCommerce is communicating and coordinating with private sector partners, encouraging them to review their emergency plans for their businesses and prepare their employees in advance of the weather event.
Updates on business closures and business resources are consistently being updated at FloridaDisaster.biz/CurrentDisasterUpdates.
CareerSource Florida hosted a call with 21 Local Workforce Development Boards and 38 Community Action Agencies across the state to prepare teams to assist local employees and employers after the weather event. To find your local career center visit careersourceflorida.com.
FloridaCommerce is working with private sector partner, the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, to assist with sheltering needs in advance of the storm.
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) is coordinating with Florida’s ports and fuel industry partners to ensure adequate fuel supplies are available across Florida, as well as with Florida’s agricultural partners to ensure producers have adequate resources and support.
The Florida Forest Service is staging equipment, like high-water vehicles, to support recovery operations.
The Insurance Commissioner Yaworsky of the Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) has begun calling property and casualty insurance companies with consumers in the projected path of Tropical Storm Helene and directed insurers to be prepared to implement their disaster claims-handling procedures and be able to provide prompt and efficient claims-handling service to impacted policyholders.
Insurers have been put on notice that the OIR is monitoring for appropriate and timely claims handling, and reminded of OIR’s fine authority for noncompliance.
The OIR, in coordination with the Florida Department of Health (DOH), sent information regarding early prescription refills permitted under Executive Order 24-208. This information was sent to the public, health insurers, managed care organizations, pharmacy benefit managers, pharmacy chains, and health care providers.
The OIR’s IMT has been activated.
Follow FDEM on X, Instagram, and Facebook for updates and visit FloridaDisaster.org/Updates for information relating to Tropical Storm Helene.
Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Joe Neguse (D-Co 2)
Founder and Co-Chair of the Bipartisan Wildfire Caucus announces proposals to support communities impacted by the wildfire crisis.
Washington, D.C. — Today, House Assistant Minority Leader Joe Neguse, founder and Co-Chair of the Bipartisan Wildfire Caucus, unveiled a series of impactful reforms aimed at improving wildfire prevention, mitigation, and management in affected communities. The bills are derived from recommendations put forth by the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, and consist of the bipartisan Cross-Boundary Wildfire Solutions Act, the Wildfire Coordination Act, and the Wildfire Risk Evaluation Act. The entire legislative package is co-led by Congressman Josh Harder (D-CA). Reps. Young Kim (R-CA) and Marc Molinaro (R-NY) also co-lead the Cross-Boundary Wildfire Solutions Act, and Rep. Marc Molinaro additionally co-leads the Wildfire Risk Evaluation Act.
“Today, as wildfires continue to ravage communities across America, I’m proud to be joined by a bipartisan coalition of Members in introducing a series of bills that will implement urgent new approaches to addressing this growing challenge. These initiatives are rooted in the non-partisan work of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, and take important steps to mitigate against the impact of wildfires in our communities. This package will ultimately invest in wildfire science and the overall resilience of our communities to reduce the future threat of these disasters.” said Assistant Leader Joe Neguse.
“We’re in the middle of a wildfire crisis and we can’t afford to wait to tackle this threat,” said Rep. Josh Harder. “This isn’t a partisan political issue – fires and their toxic smoke affect everyone. America’s top firefighters and wildfire experts came together to tell us what they need to tackle the wildfire crisis and the package of bipartisan bills we’re introducing today are in direct response to the needs of our firefighters. They endure hellish conditions to keep us safe and they deserve our full support. Our families and our communities are counting on us to get this done.”
“As we introduce this bill, firefighters are working around the clock to contain the Airport fire on federal land in the Cleveland National Forest in Trabuco Canyon and surrounding communities. We also saw earlier this week how a fire miles away can negatively impact the air quality in our area,” said Rep. Young Kim, co-lead of the Cross-Boundary Wildfire Solutions Act. “Reducing barriers to wildfire mitigation can save lives. The Cross Boundary Wildfire Solutions Act aims to bridge any barriers to wildfire mitigation and ensure our first responders can do their jobs as effectively as possible. I am proud to co-lead this bipartisan, commonsense effort with Reps. Neguse, Harder, and Molinaro, and I will keep doing all I can to keep our communities safe and support first responders.”
“As recent wildfires to the North have demonstrated, wildfires pose an ongoing threat to Upstate New York communities and our legislation mitigates these risks by ensuring wildfire prevention and response is effective and efficient. I’m proud to partner with my colleagues on these crucial steps to identifying gaps and improvements in wildfire management and strengthening federal agency interaction to improve wildfire preparedness,” said Rep. Marc Molinaro.
As wildfires continue to devastate communities nationwide, the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, created as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, has been tasked with bringing together federal agencies, state, local, and Tribal governments, as well as representatives from the private sector to come up with solutions for best addressing this crisis. Co-chaired by the Departments of Agriculture, the Interior, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency this commission unites a rare diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and expertise, including several members from Colorado
Last year, the Commision submitted their report to Congress: “ON FIRE: The Report of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission,” which included strategies to improve aerial firefighting efforts and meet equipment needs through 2030. Based on this report, the bills introduced by Assistant Leader Neguse, include the reforms outlined below:
The Cross-Boundary Wildfire Solutions Act, co-led by Reps. Josh Harder (D-CA), Young Kim (R-CA), and Marc Molinaro (R-NY) will help inform recommendations for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of wildfire mitigation by identifying gaps and opportunities in current federal rules and regulations and supporting increased collaboration across agencies and land boundaries.
The Wildfire Coordination Act, co-led by Rep. Josh Harder (D-CA), establishes an advisory board composed of members from various federal, State, local, Tribal, and non-federal partners that will be responsible for coordinating federal wildfire research, translating it into practical applications, and developing future research.
The Wildfire Risk Evaluation Act, co-led by Reps. Josh Harder (D-CA) and Marc Molinaro (R-NY) requires a comprehensive review of the wildfire landscape in the United States every four years, outlining the changes in environments, assessing wildfire management challenges, and evaluating the intersection of wildfires and public health. This federal review will help inform the development of long-term strategies to enhance wildfire preparedness and response and strengthen interagency coordination.
Find a one-pager on the wildfire legislative package here.
Find endorsements and quotes of support here.
Background
Assistant Leader Neguse has made tackling the wildfire crisis and improving working conditions for federal firefighters a consequential issue for his office since first being elected to Congress in 2018. Earlier this week, Neguse helped to host a Special Order Hour where he called for Congress to enact permanent pay increases for federal wildland firefighters. He also recently partnered with Reps. Josh Harder (D-CA) and Scott Franklin (R-FL) in introducing a landmark piece of legislation to improve fire readiness through the implementation of a first-of-its-kind approach to modernizing how the United States combats the wildfire crisis.
The Colorado Congressman has also shown continued support for cross-boundary collaborative efforts, including by leading his colleagues in a letter to House Appropriators on the importance of supporting the work being conducted by the Southwest Ecological Restoration Institute to help restore and reimagine fire-adapted forest landscapes. Neguse has also spoken to the work being conducted by Colorado State University’s Colorado Forest Restoration Institute (CFRI).
On 3 October, the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development will elect its fourth Vice-Chair. Members will also attend a workshop devoted to food price inflation, and discuss the Commission Communication on force majeure and exceptional circumstances in the CAP legislation.
The government meeting took place today in a unique format. In the public part of the meeting, the ministers presented reports on the activities of their ministries in connection with the flood. El primer minister Donald Tusk announced that this formula will be in force during the next government meetings. Later in the meeting, the Council of Ministers adopted a draft act amending the Act on special solutions related to removing the effects of floods. Tomorrow the government will present information on its activities in the Sejm. In the afternoon, the head of government went to a meeting of the crisis staff in Wrocław. Concrete actions Today’s government meeting was devoted to the situation in southwestern Poland after the flood. In the public part, Prime Minister Donald Tusk asked ministers to present the activities of their ministries and propose specific solutions. “My intention is that each government meeting – in this dramatic time of flood and post-flood reconstruction – should begin with a specific report that should reach people immediately,” explained the head of government. The second part of the meeting of the Council of Ministers was devoted to the draft act amending the act on special solutions related to removing the effects of floods. “Para bromear 100 pages of amendments that will improve the existing law; they will make assistance easier and more flexible,” announced Donald Tusk. The government will be able to secure – together with European funds – up to PLN 23 billion for the “Reconstruction Plus” program. “It was very important for us to provide financing for aid and then reconstruction for the coming months and years – because some projects will last for many years,” the Prime Minister said. The government remains directly involved in supervising activities in the areas affected by the disaster – a meeting of the crisis staff will be held in Wrocław this afternoon. Los dos ministros se multiplican Internal Affairs and Administration The first information during the meeting of the Council of Ministers was presented by the Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration. Tomasz Siemoniak emphasized that the State Fire Service and the army are currently focusing on two goals. The first is to ensure safety in connection with the peak wave on the Odra River. “We are moving forces and resources, moving helicopters and various types of equipment, so that we have forces and resources in all places of danger – especially backwaters, seepage through embankments or water pouring through embankments in some places” – reported the head of the Ministry of Interior and Administration. The second priority is to support residents in restoring normal functioning in the affected municipalities. “Here we do not reduce our commitment in any way. As for the forces of the Ministry of Interior and Administration, the Bromear couple approximately 25,000. professional firefighters, volunteer firefighters and policemen,” said Tomasz Siemoniak. The police continue to ensure the safety of residents of flooded areas, including: guarding their property against looters, running mobile posts and providing psychological support. The Central Office for Combating Cybercrime is also carrying out intensified activities. It focuses primarily on the fight against disinformation and the practice of conducting false collections. “I am asking you to follow our announcements carefully. Please check carefully whether this is a fake collection. This is what we are trying to eliminate,” the Minister of Interior and Administration emphasized the importance of the problem. The Ministry of Interior and Administration cooperates with voivodes in the field of paying benefits to the injured. Nearly 20,000 families have already received such support. The aid is also organized by the Government Agency of Strategic Reserves, which has released funds in the amount of PLN 12 million and provides, among others, temporary housing. Ministrosdos of National Defense Prime Minister of National Defense Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz reminded that from the very beginning, all the armed forces of the Republic of Poland were involved in the fight against the flood: land forces, air forces, navy, special forces and Territorial Defense Forces. “The lines of effort of the army: help and evacuation of the population, taking care of life and health – the most important thing is para bromear. The second thing is securing the embankments, strengthening them as the wave moves. The third issue is the tidying up of the area – matters related to cleaning, unblocking communication routes,” the Minister of National Defense listed the activities of the services subordinated to him. The army also got involved, among others: in the organization of the field hospital in Nysa and the disinfection process. On Monday, September 23, the Feniks military operation began. “We immediately launched another operation – Operation Phoenix, aimed at reconstruction, returning to normality. In fact, it is about raising the level of reconstruction to an even better infrastructure than what was destroyed,” announced the head of the Ministry of Defense. The operation is scheduled at least until the end of the year. Soldiers will be present in areas at risk and affected by flooding until the effects of the flood are removed. The cost of Operation Feniks is estimated at approximately PLN 175 million. Our NATO and EU partners offer their help, for example by sending engineering teams to rebuild roads and bridges. “Para bromear is an expression of solidarity that Poland has always shown to countries in need,” noted the Minister of National Defense. El primer ministro Donald Tusk thanked for the information about offers of international assistance. “Good comes back in different situations, in different forms. We helped the Turks, we helped the Swedes not so long ago… The Greeks, of course, with forest fires. Today, the Swedes are sending us dehumidifiers, the Turks and Germans want to build bridges…” Poland will definitely benefit from the offer of help wherever it is useful. Ministrosdos of Digitization Primer Ministro y Ministro of Digitization Krzysztof Gawkowski presented, among others: actions his ministry took to launch satellite communications. 160 Starlink terminals were handed over to the State Fire Service, and 70 terminales – to the Police. The Ministry of Digitization also cooperates with mobile network operators to provide residents of disaster-affected areas with access to mobile networks. “We have gone from several tens of thousands of people cut off from the mobile network to less than a thousand” – político Krzysztof Gawkowski. Audit activities were commissioned to develop solutions that will avoid disconnection in similar situations in the future. The ministry cooperates with the Police in the fight against disinformation. Recently, increased hostile actions have been recorded on the Russian and Belarusian sides. 80-90% of this false content is removed as soon as it appears. Another important action is to launch flood alerts in the MObywatel application. Thanks to this, residents of individual voivodeships can quickly obtain information about the situation in the region. Citizens are also provided with information by the government-created website podz2024.gov.pl. Together with Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the Minister of Digitization decided to donate 16,000 laptops to the affected areas to be used by children. Ministrosdos Infraestructura El ministro Dariusz Klimczak announced that all roads in Lower Silesia have already been made passable. The situation is worse in the Opole Voivodeship. The head of the ministry reported, among others, from activities aimed at rebuilding the bridge in Głuchołazy. The section of the Kłodzko Główny – Kłodzko Miasto railway route is still impassable. “We anticipate that we will clear traffic on this section by September 30,” Dariusz Klimczak reported the good news. The railway organizes detours on some sections. We appeal to travelers to
analyze the information provided by carriers. The head of the Ministry of Infrastructure provided detailed data on alarm and warning states, meteorological and hydrological warnings and the condition of reservoirs. He paid particular attention to hydrological warnings against third-degree floods for the Lubusz, West Pomeranian, Lower Silesian and Greater Poland voivodeships. Ministrosdos of Finance El ministro Andrzej Domański reminded that his ministry had secured PLN 2 billion in the state budget for the implementation of the most urgent aid tasks related to combating the effects of the flood and was working to increase this amount. “We regularly issue decisions activating funds for voivodes, including the payment of flood benefits. We are also working together with the local government to provide direct assistance to the affected municipalities. We have, among other things, funds at our disposal from the reserve in the amount of PLN 738 million. The decision on the division of this reserve will be made together with the local government,” said Andrzej Domański. They can count on support, among others: borrowers whose mortgage obligation will be taken over by the state for 12 months, as well as entrepreneurs – it is possible, for example, to apply for a waiver of tax liabilities. Ministros dos Funds and Regional Policy The Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy, in accordance with the Prime Minister’s instructions, carried out a comprehensive review of the Cohesion Funds. “Up to several billion zlotys can be transferred for reconstruction and resilience purposes,” informed Minister Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz. The ministry she manages is creating a new priority within the Cohesion Funds. Dedicated to Bromea Sobre rebuilding in flooded areas and at the same time building resilience to such events. “These will be funds for energy infrastructure, water and sewage infrastructure, road infrastructure, but also funds for private beneficiaries, supporting budget funds for the reconstruction of houses that were destroyed during the flood,” said the Minister of Funds and Regional Policy. The process of redirecting funds is consulted with local government officials from flood regions. Ministry of Climate and Environment Led by Minister Paulina Hennig-Kloska, the ministry clima observes, among others, the situation of environmental infrastructure and the state of groundwater. The State Geological Service has introduced a state of hydrogeological threat for the period from September 17 to 30 for the Lower Silesian and Opole voivodeships and the southern parts of the Lubuskie and Greater Poland voivodeships. The Ministry of Climate and Environment directed resources and forces to post-flood areas, thanks to which the number of households without access to electricity significantly decreased. “1,738 customers remain without electricity. At its peak there were almost 80,000 households. The biggest problem in this respect is still the Lower Silesian Voivodeship,” said Paulina Hennig-Kloska. At the request of the Ministry of Climate and Environment, the Council of Ministers adopted an amendment to the regulation on the state of natural disaster, which is intended to facilitate the removal of waste from areas affected by flooding. The ministry also launched subsidies for local governments for the purchase of, among others, aggregates, pump, dryers. Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk, the Minister of Family, Labor and Social Policy, reminded what the activities of her ministry focus on. “While the ministries and services directly involved in the fight against the element are putting a stop to it, we at the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy have been looking from the very beginning where the wave is already receding, where the water is receding and where the people of the flooded areas need immediate, urgent social assistance and financial assistance” – emphasized Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk. The total funds paid for these benefits are 100 million 409 thousand. PLN. This number is still growing. The Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy has facilitated access to aid by simplifying the form for flood victims. The application may be submitted orally, and the entire procedure works according to the so-called one window. Social workers often come to injured people themselves. El primer ministro Donald Tusk thanked Minister Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk for the initiative to introduce paid leave for those who clean the homes of their loved ones. “A couple of pretty obvious help. Everyone who gets involved and devotes their time, is not at work, but helps their loved ones and family in drying, cleaning, pumping water, etc., will be able to count on state support,” assured the Prime Minister. A provision on this form of assistance will be included in the draft bill developed by the government. Minister of Health Izabela Leszczyna announced that the main task of her ministry is to provide residents of flooded areas with access to medical services. Ministrosdos has launched 3 hotlines. “One, the general one, where the patient can find out where the nearest clinic is, where the nearest pharmacy that has not been flooded is; where to go for help. And two more hotlines that concern people in mental health crisis – separately for adults and separately for children and adolescents,” explained Izabela Leszczyna. Psychological and psychiatric help also reaches flood victims through the mobile center. The Minister of Health thanked the employees of all hospitals and clinics who are showing great commitment during the crisis. The hospital in Nysa is at the stage of drying and disinfection. “There is great determination of the employees of the local community, the starosta of Nysa, to open this hospital. Both the Ministry of Health and the National Health Fund absolutely support these efforts,” emphasized the head of the ministry. The State Sanitary Inspection focuses on collecting water samples, conducting laboratory tests and issuing disinfectants. Anyone can call the district sanitary and epidemiological station to ask for water testing or help with disinfection. Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Adam Nowak, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, informed that according to data collected by the Restructuring Agency, 4,318 farmers who had a registered farm number were affected by the flood. “In accordance with the Prime Minister’s instruction to ensure that this assistance is quick and well-addressed, the first program will be support of approximately PLN 5,000 for a hectare of field containing unharvested agricultural produce, unharvested cereals – mainly corn, partly also soybeans, corn, potatoes and sugar beets” – Adam Nowak presented one of the proposals to help farmers. The ministry will also support farmers, among others: ensuring the possibility of remission of rents for arable land, exemption and remission of social security contributions in KRUS, and compensation for cereals and other agricultural produce that came into contact with flood waters. Another solution is quick advance payments for direct payments to farmers from flood-affected areas. The Minister of Agriculture, Czesław Siekierski, requested the European Commission to activate the crisis reserve at the disposal of the Commissioner for Agriculture, and also asked voivodes for support in initiating the work of estimating commissions. Ministrosdos of National Education Thanks to the determination of school principals and teachers, currently only 63 institutions have suspended classes. Remote teaching is conducted in 9 schools. “In no case is the safety of the educational course of children and young people at risk at this time. All exams and all activities will take place as planned,” assured Barbara Nowacka, the Minister of National Education. Affected schools have formal and legal options to organize classes in other places. The Ministry of Education has prepared a number of supports for those affected. “To meet
the needs reported by teachers and parents, we organize green schools for children from flood areas. There is a special website at zielonaszkoly.gov.pl with a 24-hour hotline where you can report schools that need help and appropriate assistance. Currently, nearly 850 people have registered – students from schools in flood areas – and are ready to leave,” said Barbara Nowacka. The Ministry plans to extend the program until the holidays. There is a special telephone line of the Ministry of National Education for psychological support. More than 40 psychologists provide assistance around the clock. The ministry, headed by Barbara Nowacka, also coordinates the “Schools for Schools” project, under which willing school communities in the country can support students and institutions from flood-affected areas. Ministros dos Sportu i Turystyki El Ministro Sportu i Turystyki Sławomir Nitras presented information on the forms of support prepared by his ministry. The Ministry will allocate funds for the reconstruction of sports infrastructure, especially school facilities, as well as public and tourist facilities – tourist trails and parks. 50 millones de was secured to support tourist institutions and enterprises that suffered losses due to the cancellation of their stay or the impossibility of carrying it out. “We have secured 2 million PLN in the tourist budget for a program to promote Lower Silesia as a safe place for organizing tourism,” declared Sławomir Nitras. The resort will also support sports clubs. The government’s plans for the coming days. Today, the Prime Minister will take part in a meeting of the crisis staff in Wrocław. During Wednesday’s session of the Sejm, the government will present information on actions in the flood-affected areas. On Thursday, the first reading of the special act that was discussed by the Council of Ministers should take place in the Sejm. . So I am asking for full mobilization,” the Prime Minister asked the politicians. The head of government thanked the heads of ministries for urgently preparing legislative projects and announced the next meeting of the Council of Ministers, which will be held next Saturday.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mireille Rebeiz, Chair of Middle East Studies & Associate Professor of Francophone & Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Dickinson College
Israeli soldiers in armored vehicles drive through a Lebanese village in 1982.Bryn Colton/Getty Images
Their fear, echoed by many onlookers, is that Israel will accompany the airstrikes with something that has the potential to have far worse consequences: a ground invasion of south Lebanon.
The rational behind such a move, from the Israeli government’s perspective, is that a ground offensive may be its best chance to push Hezbollah fighters beyond the Litani River in the middle of the country. This would achieve an Israeli war goal of securing its northern borders and allowing an estimated 60,000 residents who have been forced to flee northern Israel to go back to their homes.
Irrespective of motive, a ground invasion and potential occupation is more than wild speculation. Israel has placed thousands of soldiers on standby close to the Lebanon border for such an eventuality.
Nor is such a move without precedent.
As a scholar of Lebanese history, I know Israel and Lebanon have been here before. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in the middle of the latter’s civil war, imposing a siege on the capital Beirut. The results were catastrophic for the whole region. Not only did the ground invasion result in the death of thousands of civilians, the occupation of Lebanon plunged an already fragile nation into lasting political and economic chaos and led to the birth of Hezbollah, the very group that threatens northern Israel today.
Refuge and armed resistance
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 had its roots in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, much as the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel does today.
The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was accompanied by the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” for the Palestinians. In the violent birth pangs of a Jewish state on land inhabited by, among others, Arab populations with deep ancestral ties to villages, more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled.
Many refugees entered Lebanon, where in 1964 the Palestine Liberation Organization was born. By the mid-1970s, the armed resistance group had recruited and trained over 20,000 fighters who actively participated in launching attacks on Israel from Lebanese soil.
By 1982, Lebanon was already seven years into its civil war, with violence flaring between Lebanese Christians and Lebanese and Palestinian Muslims. On June 6, 1982, Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, a future leader of the country, launched Operation Peace for Galilee and invaded Lebanon with the purpose of eliminating the PLO.
More than 40,000 Israeli troops with hundreds of tanks entered Lebanon from three points: by land across the border into south Lebanon; by sea from the coast of Sidon; and by air as the Israeli forces bombed the Beqaa Valley, Beirut and its Palestinian refugee camps.
For two months, Beirut was under siege, with water and electricity cut off. As a result of the heavy bombardment and lack of access to basic needs, an estimated 19,000 Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian civilians and combatants died, of which 5,500 were civilians from West Beirut.
The Lebanese authorities appealed to the United States, France, Italy and the United Kingdom for help. These countries formed the multinational peacekeeping force, which was designed to restore peace in Lebanon, assist the Lebanese armed forces and evacuate PLO fighters to Tunisia.
By August 1982, the multinational force had successfully relocated PLO fighters and began pulling out of Lebanon. They were called back, however, as violence flared.
After the assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel on Sept. 14, 1982, the Christian Phalangist militia entered the two Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and killed over 2,000 Palestinian civilians. The Israeli government later set up the Kahan Commission of Inquiry to look into the killings, which concluded that Israel was indirectly responsible for the massacres.
The birth of Hezbollah
All of this history remains relevant to the current situation in the region. Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon, its siege on Beirut and the massacres that followed all led to the birth of Hezbollah.
While members of Lebanon’s marginalized Shiite community in the south had long sought to mobilize through pan-Arab political parties and militias, it was Israel’s invasion that galvanized members of the community to ultimately create Hezbollah in 1985. As former Israeli Defense Minister and Prime Minister Ehud Barak noted in a 2006 interview: “It was our presence there that created Hezbollah.”
From 1982 onward, Americans and other Westerners became a target. In the following decade, more than 80 Americans and Europeans were taken hostage by Hezbollah fighters. Some were tortured for months; others died in custody.
And on Oct. 23, 1983, a terrorist attack targeted the American barracks in Beirut, killing over 300 people, including 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers. Minutes later, a second suicide attack killed 58 French paratroopers. The Islamic jihad claimed responsibility for the two attacks; some of its members are thought to be among those who officially founded Hezbollah in February 1985.
Aiding Hezbollah recruitment
Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon failed to accomplish its goals of stemming attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon. If anything, it had the opposite effect by turning many Lebanese against Israel and creating the conditions in which Hezbollah could recruit.
Although Israel retreated from Beirut in August 1982, it continued to occupy south Lebanon until 2000. During that period it unlawfully detained many Lebanese suspected of resisting the Israeli occupation. Some were detained without charges in inhumane conditions, while others were illegally transferred into Israel.
The debris at the site of an overnight Israeli strike in the southern Lebanese village of Akbiyeh on Sept. 24, 2024. Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP via Getty Images
With such a backdrop, Hezbollah’s legitimacy in the eyes of many Lebanese grew – as did its support. So much so that in 1989, at the end of the Lebanese civil war, the authorities signed an agreement that, although not referencing Hezbollah directly, asserted Lebanon’s right to resist the Israeli occupation in the south.
This clause was interpreted by Hezbollah as legitimizing its armed fight against occupation.
After occupation ended in 2000, Hezbollah had to reinvent its role, claiming that it would continue fighting against Israel until the liberation of the disputed Shebaa Farms, the Golan Heights and occupied Palestine.
Until Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, there had been hopes that decades of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel could be on the cusp of turning. In October 2022, Lebanon and Israel signed a maritime border agreement brokered by the U.S – interpreted as the beginning of normalizing relations between two countries technically at war.
But the magnitude of the human crisis in Gaza and the series of events that followed in Lebanon have ended such hopes for now. Hezbollah’s vow of solidarity with Hamas has resulted in a running series of tit-for-tat attacks with Israel that have escalated over the past year.
The attack using booby-trapped pagers that targeted Hezbollah fighters and killed several civilians across Lebanon on Sept. 17, 2024, has set off a chain of events that have now seen nearly 500 Lebanese killed and Hezbollah extend the geographical scope of its missile attacks in Israel. Its long-range ballistic missiles can reach 250-300 kilometers (155-186 miles) and have reached Haifa and the city’s Ramat David Airbase.
The next step in this deadly escalation could well be a ground invasion. But in 1982, such an operation resulted only in catastrophic results for all concerned – and set in place the conditions for decades of hostilities across the Lebanon-Israel border. A similar offensive today would almost certainly have similar results – especially for the people of Lebanon.
Mireille Rebeiz is affiliated with American Red Cross.
Source: United States Senator for Kansas Roger Marshall
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. introduced the bicameral and bipartisan Farmer First Fuel Incentives Act requiring the Treasury Department to restrict the eligibility of the 45Z Tax Credit to renewable fuels made only from domestically sourced feedstocks and extending the tax credit to make it a full ten-year credit. This bill is co-led with Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) with companion legislation introduced by Representatives Mann (R-KS-01) and Kaptur (D-OH-09) in the House of Representatives. Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and Tina Smith (D-MN) also cosponsored the legislation.
The 10-year credit will give the ethanol industry the time and financial incentive to build up the infrastructure needed for the U.S. to be less reliant on foreign fuel, open new markets for farmers, and increase ethanol production across the Midwest. However, we recently learned that 45Z has a glaring flaw that needs to be fixed for farmers wanting to sell feedstocks to the biodiesel and renewable diesel industry. If 45Z goes into effect as is, taxpayers will be massively subsidizing Chinese used cooking oil and would all but eliminate the use of homegrown soy or corn oil in renewable diesel.
“It’s very tough in farm country with high interest rates and low commodity prices, which is exactly why we can’t have a tax policy that will lower commodity prices even more. While we support free trade and open markets, we do not believe foreign feedstocks should be incentivized through the hard-earned dollars of U.S. taxpayers to the detriment of American farmers,” said Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-KS). “This legislation puts farmers FIRST to ensure they are the primary beneficiaries of renewable fuel tax incentives and provides businesses a decade of certainty.”
“American tax dollars should support American farmers – not imported feedstocks. To continue to grow the biofuels industry and open new markets for Ohio farmers, we must stop taxpayer money from subsidizing a surge in Chinese cooking oil or any other foreign feedstock from infiltrating the American market. Our bipartisan bill ensures these investments benefit Ohio farmers and Ohio energy producers.” Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said.
“In no world should American tax incentives benefit foreign producers,” said Congressman Tracey Mann (R-KS-01). “While the use of foreign feedstocks can play an important role in producing domestically manufactured ethanol, biodiesel, renewable diesel, and sustainable aviation fuel, we must not displace harvest in America. Our legislation puts American farmers first by ensuring that American tax credits are incentivizing American-grown products.”
“I joined my colleagues in this important bicameral and bipartisan effort because helping American farmers, producers, and growers goes beyond state and party lines,” said Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (OH-09), senior member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture.” We must ensure the Clean Fuel Production tax credit is structured in a way that benefits domestic producers and not one that advantages foreign-produced feedstocks from China or Brazil. Our legislation will extend this credit through 2034 and bolster American energy independence by prioritizing American producers and the production of domestic biofuels.”
“U.S. soybean farmers have been at the forefront of our domestic clean-energy production through the booming biodiesel and renewable diesel industry over the last decade. The Farmer First Fuel Incentives Act ensures our Kansas soybean growers maintain access to this vital market sector going forward and strengthens the clean fuel production credit for the future,” Kaleb Little, Kansas Soybean Association CEO, said.
“We appreciate the efforts of Senator Marshall and his colleagues on this bill to ensure imported feedstocks do not receive tax credits funded by American taxpayers in the 45Z program for Sustainable Aviation Fuel. Companies have a right to import feedstocks from foreign countries, but those foreign producers should not receive tax credits funded by U.S. taxpayers,” said Kansas Corn Growers Association CEO Josh Roe.
“Ensuring American farmers reach maximum profitability and build resiliency to pass down their farms to the next generation should be our top priority,” said Adam York, Kansas Sorghum Producers CEO. “This legislation helps make sure the intended benefits of this program arrive into our rural economies.”
“NOPA commends this bipartisan, bicameral legislative effort which puts U.S fuel producers, U.S. crushers and U.S. farmers first. We thank Senators Brown and Marshall and Representatives Mann and Kaptur for their leadership,” said NOPA President and CEO Kailee Tkacz Buller. “We support free trade and open markets but do not believe foreign feedstocks should benefit on the backs of U.S. taxpayers to the detriment of U.S. farmers. Without this fix, the 45Z credit will incentivize the use of foreign feedstocks over those grown by U.S. farmers. Our industry has made significant investments to expand U.S. crush capacity by 30 percent and this fix is pivotal to ensuring these investments are delivered.”
“Corn growers are making every effort to help the airline industry lower its greenhouse gas emissions through the use of corn ethanol,” said Minnesota farmer and NCGA president Harold Wolle. “We are deeply appreciative of these leaders for introducing legislation that establishes requirements for the tax credit that will level the playing field for America’s corn growers.”
“Biofuel production paves a key path for our country to be a clean energy leader, and U.S. farmers who grow the crops going into those biofuels take pride in helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions while supporting the U.S. economy and energy independence,” said ASA President Josh Gackle, a North Dakota soybean farmer. “However, for continued growth of America’s promising biofuels industry, U.S. farmers need the support of a final 45Z rule that prioritizes domestically sourced feedstock.”
“The Farmer First Fuel Incentive Act recognizes the vital role of American agriculture in 45Z. This legislation ensures that the guidance is designed and implemented in a farmer-focused manner, supporting domestic clean energy production and stimulating economic growth across rural America,” Craig Meeker, Chairman of National Sorghum Producers, said.
“This important bill sends a strong signal that extending the 45Z credit is going to be a top, bipartisan priority in this Congress and the next,” said Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor. “We applaud Senators Brown, Marshall, and all our rural champions for working to give biofuel producers and our farm partners the long-term certainty we need to accelerate innovation in America’s bioeconomy. With a longer runway from Congress, and clear, flexible, and timely guidance from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, we’ll have the pieces in place to unlock billions of dollars in new clean energy investments across rural America,” Emily Skor, CEO of Growth Energy, said.
Background:
Prior to introducing this legislation, Senator Roger Marshall also led a bipartisan letter calling for the U.S. Treasury Department to restrict the eligibility of the 45Z Tax Credit to renewable fuels made only from domestically-sourced feedstocks, like Kansas soybean oil and corn oil. You may click HERE to read Senator Marshall’s full letter.
Representatives Mann and Kaptur led a similar letter in the House.
A similar letter calling for 45z to be restricted to domestic feedstocks was sent by the American Farm Bureau Federation, American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers Association, and National Farmers Union to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young.
Source: United States Senator for Alabama Tommy Tuberville
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senators Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and Katie Britt (R-AL) joined U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and 41 bicameral Republican colleagues in signing a letter urging President Biden and Vice President Harris to work with Congress to root out abuses in the unaccompanied alien children (UAC) program and stop the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) cover-up of its gross mismanagement of the program. As an example, HHS has failed to comply with two out of every three Department of Homeland Security (DHS) subpoenas and other information requests issued amid its investigation into more than 100 identified suspicious UAC sponsors.
“As a result of your open-borders policies, overseen by Vice President Harris, who was tasked with ‘stemming the migration’ at our border with Mexico, more than 500,000 unaccompanied alien children (UACs) have crossed the southwest border without a parent or guardian to provide care since you took office, a massive increase when compared to previous administrations. These UACs often experience horrible sexual, physical, and emotional abuse on the journey and are victims of cartel trafficking and exploitation, a business that surged an estimated 2,500 percent from the Trump Administration to the middle of your term in 2022,” wrote the Senators.
U.S. Senators Tuberville, Britt, and Grassley were joined by U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mike Braun (R-IN), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Steve Daines (R-MT), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Josh Hawley (R-MO), John Hoeven (R-ND), Ron Johnson (R-WI), John Kennedy (R-LA), James Lankford (R-OK), Mike Lee (R-UT), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Jim Risch (R-ID), Rick Scott (R-FL), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), John Thune (R-SD), and Roger Wicker (R-MS) in signing the letter.
Additional co-signers in the House include Representatives Cliff Bentz (R-OR-02), Dan Bishop (R-NC-08), Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05), Ben Cline (R-VA-06), Russell Fry (R-SC-07), Matt Gaetz (R-FL-01), Harriet Hageman (R-WY-At-Large), Wesley Hunt (R-TX-38), Jim Jordan (R-OH-04), Laurel Lee (R-FL-15), Tom McClintock (R-CA-05), Barry Moore (R-AL-02), Chip Roy (R-TX-21), Michael Rulli (R-OH-06), and Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI-05).
Read the full letter below or here.
“President Biden and Vice President Harris:
As a result of your open-borders policies, overseen by Vice President Harris, who was tasked with “stemming the migration” at our border with Mexico, more than 500,000 unaccompanied alien children (UACs) have crossed the southwest border without a parent or guardian to provide care since you took office, a massive increase when compared to previous administrations. These UACs often experience horrible sexual, physical, and emotional abuse on the journey and are victims of cartel trafficking and exploitation, a business that surged an estimated 2,500 percent from the Trump Administration to the middle of your term in 2022. Sadly, the suffering these children endure does not end at the border. Your Administration also fails them when they arrive in the United States by rushing them out of the custody of your Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) into the hands of unvetted sponsors who often continue to exploit and abuse them.
Even as the trafficking business and the number of children entering the U.S. surged, HHS ORR cut back significantly on background checks and vetting procedures to speed up the process, despite knowing children were being trafficked through HHS ORR’s UAC program. Your Administration likewise continued Vice President Harris’s longtime priority of cutting back on information sharing between HHS ORR and law enforcement related to unaccompanied children and sponsors. When the Trump Administration implemented a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to provide for robust information sharing between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and HHS ORR, then-Senator Harris called this attempt to protect children and communities “outrageous.” She also introduced legislation in response to the Trump MOA that slashed funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement by $220 million. Her bill was so extreme it failed to allow HHS information to be used by DHS for immigration enforcement even for potential sponsors and household members with convictions or pending charges of child abuse, sexual assault, child pornography, or any other crime. Even House Democrats considered Harris’s approach too radical and added these exceptions to counteract the extreme nature of her legislative proposal. Their approach, unlike Harris’s, allowed HHS information to be used to deport child predators and those convicted of serious felonies. Given her stated policy priorities, it is no wonder your Administration later revoked the Trump Administration’s MOA, seriously hampering the work of law enforcement, and promulgated a final rule enshrining the bar on sharing such information with law enforcement officials.
Your Administration further stripped Customs and Border Protection officials of their ability to conduct familial DNA testing, as was implemented by the Trump Administration to verify adults’ claims that they are related to children they bring across the border. This made the smuggling and trafficking of these kids that much easier. Early into your term, your Administration also canceled protections the Trump Administration proposed to provide post-release services for all children placed with sponsors, including in-person visits and extended follow-up after placement. These protections would have helped ensure children were safe. Instead, the actions of your Administration have been disastrous and now, HHS ORR is actively attempting to cover up the results of its egregious decisions. We call upon you to put an end to that cover-up.
When Senator Grassley and Senator Cassidy, ranking members of the Senate Budget Committee and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, asked HHS ORR contractors and grantees whether they took necessary steps to protect children, HHS obstructed those inquiries, directing the entities not to respond. This included Southwest Key, which Senator Grassley asked, among other things, about its vetting of staff before they have access to minors. The Department of Justice has since sued Southwest Key for turning a blind eye to nearly a decade of child rape and sexual abuse by its staff. During this same time, HHS ORR provided Southwest Key with more than $3 billion to house UACs. These contractors and grantees receive large sums of taxpayer dollars, a lucrative business that has boomed during your Administration. Yet HHS ORR told them not to answer Congress when it asked whether basic protections were afforded to these kids. This is completely unacceptable.
At the same time, since early 2023, the House Judiciary Committee has sought information on the total number of UACs HHS ORR has lost contact with after placement during your Administration. According to the New York Times, as of February 2023, ORR had been unable to contact at least 85,000 UACs after placement with sponsors, or roughly 34 percent of total UACs released up to that point in your term. Applying the 34 percent figure to the most up-to-date number of 432,938 UACs the Administration has released to sponsors, we estimate ORR has been unable to contact nearly 150,000 UACs through Safety and Well-being calls after their release. When confronted by the House Judiciary Committee with an estimate based on the Times’s findings, ORR did not dispute it. Although the House Judiciary Committee twice subpoenaed HHS for internal agency data relating to the total number of UACs with whom it has lost contact after placement, HHS has refused to provide the subpoenaed data.
Unfortunately, the cover-up does not end there. Recently, DHS informed Senator Grassley’s office that HHS ORR has not sufficiently complied with two out of every three subpoenas and other information requests that resulted from his referral of possible child trafficking rings across the U.S. to DHS in January. By not supplying the information law enforcement requested, ORR denied Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents critical information, including the last known addresses of children and sponsors and the identity of other household members. In part because of HHS ORR’s lack of cooperation, DHS has so far only been able to locate less than four percent of sponsors identified as investigative targets, and a similarly small number of UACs.
At a recent Senate roundtable forum, “The Exploitation Crisis: How the U.S. Government is Failing to Protect Migrant Children from Trafficking and Abuse,” senators and members of the public heard from a panel with direct knowledge of this crisis. What the witnesses told the oversight panel was shocking. For example, HHS retaliated against one of the witnesses, Ms. Tara Lee Rodas, after she blew the whistle and tried to stop the placement of young children with a household in Ohio connected to the violent MS-13 gang. In addition, witnesses described how HHS and its contractors prioritized UAC placement speed over UAC safety by failing to verify the legitimacy of identity documents, failing to obtain criminal history from the countries of origin of UACs and sponsors, and failing to conduct legally required home studies for UACs who had endured sexual or other abuse. Other whistleblowers continue to come forward with similar information. Congress has the right to obtain information necessary to conduct oversight of these widespread failures to protect the lives of children without HHS standing in the way.
HHS’s failure to ensure UACs are in appropriate placements and to adequately vet sponsors is harmful not only to the UACs, but also to American citizens. As the Attorney General under the Trump Administration recognized, the UAC program has for years suffered from exploitation by criminals, including “gang members who come to this country as wolves in sheep[’s] clothing” and “use th[e UAC] program as a means by which to recruit new members.” As the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight has shown, under Secretary Becerra’s leadership, HHS has ignored the potential criminality and gang affiliation of UACs.
Indeed, as revealed in the House Judiciary Committee’s May 2023 interim report, in May 2022, HHS ORR released to a sponsor a UAC with a previous arrest record for “illicit association with MS13.” That UAC, released by your Administration, went on to brutally assault and murder 20-year-old American citizen Kayla Hamilton. Incredibly, HHS noted on several occasions to the House Judiciary Committee its focus on protecting the privacy of Kayla’s murderer. Although local police quickly identified Walter Javier Martinez as the primary suspect in the murder and expressed their concern about the threat he posed to society, according to new investigative reporting, Martinez was placed in a Maryland foster home with other children and enrolled in high school. Later, while in custody for murdering Kayla, the alien authored a letter in which he “admitted to committing [four] murders, [two] rapes, and additional other crimes.” Martinez has since been sentenced to more than 70 years in prison.
Despite having released to a sponsor a UAC with gang tattoos and a history of “illicit association” with MS-13, HHS told the House Judiciary Committee that it does not have a policy to refer known or suspected gang members to the Justice Department for investigation or, where appropriate, prosecution. At the same time, ORR Director Robin Dunn Marcos, the HHS official in charge of the UAC program, admitted that, while HHS sometimes contacts the consulate or embassy of a UAC’s country of origin or last habitual residence to verify some documents or claimed familial relationships, HHS does not even request UACs’ criminal records. Troublingly, HHS has also admitted that it does not currently have any secure facilities “in-network”—that is, facilities designed for the secure placement of UACs who pose a danger to themselves or others or who have been determined to have a criminal record.
An August 2024 House Judiciary Committee report highlighted yet another case of UAC criminality, detailing how Juan Carlos Garcia Rodriguez, a UAC from Guatemala released by your Administration, horrifically assaulted and murdered 11-year-old Maria Gonzalez. Maria’s father found “his daughter’s body wrapped in a trash bag and stuffed in a laundry basket that was put beneath her bed.” Garcia Rodriguez was encountered by Border Patrol after entering the U.S. illegally in El Paso in January 2023, smuggled to the U.S. border by a “guide” paid for by his parents. Despite being overheard commenting about his desire to run away while in HHS custody, HHS placed Garcia Rodriguez with an unrelated adult sponsor who had twice previously sponsored unrelated UACs. Unsurprisingly, shortly after the Biden-Harris Administration’s release of Garcia Rodriguez, he became one of the estimated 150,000 UACs with whom HHS has lost contact. Just months after HHS lost contact with Garcia Rodriguez, he ran away from his sponsor. Not long after his 18th birthday, and mere months after his release from HHS custody, Garcia Rodriguez, brutally assaulted and murdered Maria.
This is not a partisan issue. It can and should bring us together, as we try to protect Americans and UACs placed in HHS ORR custody alike. Your Administration must make changes to its policies and procedures for UACs to end this public safety crisis. It must also take urgent steps to provide information to law enforcement and Congress, to reveal the crisis’s full scope. We request that you immediately instruct HHS Secretary Becerra to take urgent steps to this end: HHS must provide access to the UAC Portal, HHS’s system of record for UACs, to federal law enforcement, HHS’s Inspector General, and Congress, allowing them to quickly conduct investigations and oversee the UAC placement program, and to analyze data regarding suspicious UAC placements; it must fully cooperate with DHS’s HSI and other federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies seeking to locate children and investigate trafficking, smuggling, and other forms of child exploitation; and it must thoroughly respond to congressional oversight requests and instruct HHS’s contractors and grantees to do the same.
HHS must stop its cover-up and cooperate with law enforcement and Congress to end this crisis and protect unaccompanied children and the American people. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely,”
BACKGROUND:
More than 500,000 unaccompanied migrant children have crossed the southwest border under the Biden-Harris administration, while cartel trafficking activity surged an estimated 2,500 percent. Amid this crisis, the lawmakers note the Biden-Harris administration limited background checks for sponsors of unaccompanied children, cut back on familial DNA testing at the border, and decreased information sharing with law enforcement.
In December 2023, Senators Tuberville and Britt joined Senator Grassley and 36 colleagues in calling on HHS ORR to overhaul its harmful and deficient policies regarding the treatment of unaccompanied alien children in the U.S.
Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, and HELP Committees.
Source: United States Senator for Alabama Tommy Tuberville
In violation of USMCA, the Mexican President has repeatedly threatened to declare an American company’s property as a “Protected Natural Area” to unjustifiably seize their assets
WASHINGTON – Yesterday,U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) joined U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and colleagues in introducing the Defending American Property Abroad Act, legislation to impose retaliatory prohibitions that deter and punish any Western Hemisphere nation that unlawfully seizes American assets. This legislation responds to ongoing efforts by the Government of Mexico to seize a deep-water port owned by Alabama-based Vulcan Materials Company, which is a flagrant violation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) governing trade between the two nations.
Specifically, this legislation would prohibit vessels from entering a U.S. port if they had previously used a port, land, or infrastructure that had been illegally seized from a U.S. entity by a foreign nation in the Western Hemisphere. It also requires the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to identify and ban illegally seized ports from U.S. trade and requires the United States Trade Representative to report to Congress on how such expropriations would be addressed during the upcoming review of the USMCA, scheduled for 2026.
“For more than a year, Mexican President López Obrador has continued to show undue aggression toward American businesses, primarily Alabama’s Vulcan Materials,” said Senator Tuberville. “The continued escalation against Vulcan’s operation in Mexico is a disgrace to the longstanding trade agreement between our two countries that has been in place for 30 years. The Biden-Harris administration has refused to stand up to President López Obrador’s threats, which is why it’s time for Congress to take action and urgently move this legislation to ensure this doesn’t happen to more American companies under a new Mexican president.”
U.S. Senators Tuberville and Hagerty were joined by U.S. Senators John Barrasso (R-WY), Katie Britt (R-AL), Ted Budd (R-NC), and Tim Kaine (D-VA) in co-sponsoring the legislation.
Full text of the bill can be found here.
BACKGROUND:
In May 2022, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) abruptly shut down Vulcan’s operations with false claims that the firm was violating its contract, and since then the Mexican Government, under AMLO’s direction, has waged an unceasing pressure campaign against Vulcan, including multiple lawsuits and, at times, sending military and law enforcement to its facility in Quintana Roo, Mexico. Last month, AMLO announced that he is pushing to designate the port and mine a “Protected Natural Area.”
The Alabama delegation has been united in advocating for Vulcan in its ongoing dispute with Mexico. Earlier this year, Senators Tuberville, Britt, Hagerty, and Kaine sent a letter to Alicia Bárcena, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, urging her to take action regarding the Mexican government’s mistreatment of Vulcan Materials Company.
Last year, the Alabama delegation met with Mexico’s Ambassador to the U.S. Moctezuma to advocate for Vulcan. In 2022, Senator Tuberville sent a letter with former Senator Richard Shelby and eight other U.S. senators calling on the Biden-Harris administration to discourage Mexican aggression against American companies with investments or operations in Mexico.
Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, and HELP Committees.
Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare organizes the National Conference on Implementing Digital Public Infrastructure under the Digital Agriculture Mission in New Delhi today Conference aims to discuss the implementation of DPI in continuation of the Centre-State collaboration to integrate digital technologies in agriculture
Posted On: 24 SEP 2024 7:41PM by PIB Delhi
The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare (MoA&FW), Government of India, organized the National Conference on Implementing Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) under the Digital Agriculture Mission in New Delhi today. The conference aimed to discuss the implementation of DPI in continuation of the Centre-State collaboration to integrate digital technologies in agriculture, focusing on the implementation of components of the Digital Agriculture Mission such as Agri Stack, Krishi DSS, soil profile mapping and others to streamline service delivery and enhance the efficiency of agricultural schemes. Senior officials from all parts of the country attended the conference. It was a crucial platform for addressing technical and administrative reforms required to implement the farmer registry, avail the Special Central Assistance (SCA) Scheme funds and synergise national effort with state-level implementations.
The conference began with a formal inaugural session, where Secretary (DA&FW), Shri Devesh Chaturvedi presented an overview of the Digital Agriculture Mission and the Special Central Assistance (SCA) Scheme, highlighting the government’s vision to revolutionize agriculture through technology enablement. This was followed by a presentation by Secretary Department of Land Resources, Shri Manoj Joshi discussing the synergy between land reforms, the Farmer Registry and the role of States in implementing these reforms.
The unveiling of the Guidelines of Digital Agriculture Mission and SCA for Farmer Registry implementation and the Farmer Registry Handbook marked a significant milestone for the sustainability of digital agriculture initiatives, signalling a commitment by the Government of India to provide technical and financial support to the States.
Key Sessions and Discussions:
Throughout the day, a series of interactive sessions were convened, fostering vibrant discussion that delved deep into the multifaceted landscape of digital agriculture initiatives such as Farmer Registry implementation, Digital Crop Survey etc. These session discussions served as an invaluable platform for stakeholders to exchange perspectives, insights, and experiences, shedding light on the states’ issues and challenges in nurturing a farmer-centric technology ecosystem. The Centre and the States discussed the issues, clarified their doubts and discussed solutions encouraging seamless collaboration between the Centre and the States-
The session featured an insightful presentation on implementing Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and the SCA scheme funds to states on Farmer Registry implementation by Dr Pramod Kumar Meherda, Addl. Secretary (Digital), DoA&FW.
Smt. Varsha Joshi, Addl Secretary, Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying, spoke about implementing Live Stack (DPI for livestock and animal husbandry sector), while Shri Sagar Mehra, Jt. Secretary (Do Fisheries) provided a vision for Aqua Stack (DPI for the fisheries sector) and integrated digital solutions in fisheries.
Session II
The second session consisted of a context-setting presentation by Shri Rajeev Chawla, Chief Knowledge Officer and Advisor, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare, Govt. of India.
The second session consisted of 3 panel discussions-
The first-panel discussion was on the State Farmer Registry implementation as part of Agri Stack, chaired by Shri Devesh Chaturvedi, Secretary (DA&FW), with participation from senior Central and State officers.
Dr Pramod Meherda, Additional Secretary, Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, chaired the second panel discussion with states. The session delved into challenges and opportunities in integrating Farmer Registries, Digital Crop Surveys, and Supporting Registries for enhanced service delivery, data accuracy, and addressing gaps in existing systems.
The second session included a context setting by Smt. Ruchika Gupta, Advisor (DA), Department of Agriculture, on the adoption of Support Registers.
The third discussion focused on the issues in implementing the Digital Crop Survey (DCS) taken by CKO&A and Advisor (DA). The issues were discussed in detail, and solutions were presented to the states.
Technical Discussions:
The event concluded with technical discussions led by the Agri Stack Technical Team, emphasizing the operational details and future roadmap for advancing DPI across the agricultural value chain.
The conference not only facilitated in-depth deliberations on the potential of digital technologies but also underscored the role of Digital Public Infrastructure in achieving the goals of the Digital India Mission.
Shri Ravi Ranjan Singh, Director (DA), delivered the Vote of Thanks.
Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare organizes the National Conference on Implementing Digital Public Infrastructure under the Digital Agriculture Mission in New Delhi today Conference aims to discuss the implementation of DPI in continuation of the Centre-State collaboration to integrate digital technologies in agriculture
Posted On: 24 SEP 2024 7:41PM by PIB Delhi
The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare (MoA&FW), Government of India, organized the National Conference on Implementing Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) under the Digital Agriculture Mission in New Delhi today. The conference aimed to discuss the implementation of DPI in continuation of the Centre-State collaboration to integrate digital technologies in agriculture, focusing on the implementation of components of the Digital Agriculture Mission such as Agri Stack, Krishi DSS, soil profile mapping and others to streamline service delivery and enhance the efficiency of agricultural schemes. Senior officials from all parts of the country attended the conference. It was a crucial platform for addressing technical and administrative reforms required to implement the farmer registry, avail the Special Central Assistance (SCA) Scheme funds and synergise national effort with state-level implementations.
The conference began with a formal inaugural session, where Secretary (DA&FW), Shri Devesh Chaturvedi presented an overview of the Digital Agriculture Mission and the Special Central Assistance (SCA) Scheme, highlighting the government’s vision to revolutionize agriculture through technology enablement. This was followed by a presentation by Secretary Department of Land Resources, Shri Manoj Joshi discussing the synergy between land reforms, the Farmer Registry and the role of States in implementing these reforms.
The unveiling of the Guidelines of Digital Agriculture Mission and SCA for Farmer Registry implementation and the Farmer Registry Handbook marked a significant milestone for the sustainability of digital agriculture initiatives, signalling a commitment by the Government of India to provide technical and financial support to the States.
Key Sessions and Discussions:
Throughout the day, a series of interactive sessions were convened, fostering vibrant discussion that delved deep into the multifaceted landscape of digital agriculture initiatives such as Farmer Registry implementation, Digital Crop Survey etc. These session discussions served as an invaluable platform for stakeholders to exchange perspectives, insights, and experiences, shedding light on the states’ issues and challenges in nurturing a farmer-centric technology ecosystem. The Centre and the States discussed the issues, clarified their doubts and discussed solutions encouraging seamless collaboration between the Centre and the States-
The session featured an insightful presentation on implementing Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and the SCA scheme funds to states on Farmer Registry implementation by Dr Pramod Kumar Meherda, Addl. Secretary (Digital), DoA&FW.
Smt. Varsha Joshi, Addl Secretary, Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying, spoke about implementing Live Stack (DPI for livestock and animal husbandry sector), while Shri Sagar Mehra, Jt. Secretary (Do Fisheries) provided a vision for Aqua Stack (DPI for the fisheries sector) and integrated digital solutions in fisheries.
Session II
The second session consisted of a context-setting presentation by Shri Rajeev Chawla, Chief Knowledge Officer and Advisor, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare, Govt. of India.
The second session consisted of 3 panel discussions-
The first-panel discussion was on the State Farmer Registry implementation as part of Agri Stack, chaired by Shri Devesh Chaturvedi, Secretary (DA&FW), with participation from senior Central and State officers.
Dr Pramod Meherda, Additional Secretary, Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, chaired the second panel discussion with states. The session delved into challenges and opportunities in integrating Farmer Registries, Digital Crop Surveys, and Supporting Registries for enhanced service delivery, data accuracy, and addressing gaps in existing systems.
The second session included a context setting by Smt. Ruchika Gupta, Advisor (DA), Department of Agriculture, on the adoption of Support Registers.
The third discussion focused on the issues in implementing the Digital Crop Survey (DCS) taken by CKO&A and Advisor (DA). The issues were discussed in detail, and solutions were presented to the states.
Technical Discussions:
The event concluded with technical discussions led by the Agri Stack Technical Team, emphasizing the operational details and future roadmap for advancing DPI across the agricultural value chain.
The conference not only facilitated in-depth deliberations on the potential of digital technologies but also underscored the role of Digital Public Infrastructure in achieving the goals of the Digital India Mission.
Shri Ravi Ranjan Singh, Director (DA), delivered the Vote of Thanks.
Union Minister Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan starts a series of dialogues with farmers and farmers’ organizations in Delhi today As discussions starts with different farmer organizations, I meets today around 50 farmer leaders: Shri Shivraj Singh
We have received many suggestions from farmers, we will try our best to solve these suggestions by working out: Shri Chouhan
A lot of research has been done on stubble management, there is no need to burn stubble after cutting the stubble, it becomes wealth instead of waste: Union Minister
Posted On: 24 SEP 2024 5:22PM by PIB Delhi
Union Minister for Agriculture, Farmers’ Welfare and Rural Development Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan started a series of dialogues with farmers and farmers’ organizations in Delhi today. Chouhan stated, as I have said before, agriculture is the backbone of India’s economy and farmers are its soul and serving farmers is like worshiping God for us. He said that last time when I was discussing the achievements of 100 days, I decided that I will start a series of meetings with farmers or farmer organizations every Tuesday because many times we do not understand the problems while sitting in the office. It is our duty to directly communicate with those who have problems, discuss them and if any issue comes up, solve it. Officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) were also present during the dialogue.
Union Minister Shri Chouhan said that continuous work is being done under the leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi for the overall development of the agriculture sector. Many schemes related to agriculture have been implemented in the last 10 years and this sequence is continuing. So far, 7 major schemes have been approved in the first 100 days of the third term of the Modi government. The central government will spend Rs 15 thousand crore on these schemes, which will benefit the farmers. Rs 2817 crore will be given for the Digital Agriculture Mission and agricultural reforms will continue through technology. Decisions are being taken in the interest of farmers and the country; efforts are being made to solve their problems by sitting together with the farmers.
Shri Shivraj Singh said that today I have started talking to different farmer organizations. Today I met about 50 farmer leaders, we have received many suggestions from them, some of them are related to the price of crops and some are about the crop insurance scheme. Some suggestions are also about the problem of stray animals and the losses caused by them. He said that many suggestions have also come about which decisions should be taken when the new crop arrives.
He has said that he will sit with the officials and work out all the suggestions seriously and after working out, he will try his best to do whatever is possible. We will leave no stone unturned for the welfare of the farmers and their upliftment. He further said that discussions have been held with the farmers’ organizations in a cordial atmosphere and the farmers have praised many decisions of the Modi government.
The Union Minister said that we will sit with the team of officials and work out all the suggestions and after working out we will try our best to do whatever is possible. He said that discussions have been held with the farmers’ organizations in a cordial atmosphere and the farmers have praised many decisions of the Modi government.
He said that the import duty on palm oil has been increased to 27.5%, minimum export price has been removed from Basmati, export duty on onion has been reduced from 40% to 20%, the government will buy all tur, urad and masoor etc. Many recent decisions were appreciated by farmers.
Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that the dialogue we have started with the farmers has won everyone’s heart and this dialogue will continue. We will talk to our own farmers and will also try to solve their problems honestly.
Regarding stubble management, he further said that a lot of research has been done, machines have also been made, stubble will not have to be burnt after cutting the stubble, it becomes wealth instead of waste. We will make better use of it and we will try to convince the farmers by creating awareness.
Headline: ‘A cloud over Bukidnon forest’ – the Lumad indigenous rights struggle in Mindanao – Analysis published with permission of PMC
THE MOOD in the chapel on the outskirts of Malaybalay, capital of Bukidnon province was somber. Six datu (chiefs) and several delegates of the indigenous tribal Lumad people of the region were airing their concerns about a controversial New Zealand-backed $5.7 million forestry aid project for the Philippines. Ironically, less than 100 metres away, in a derelict building nestling amid a plantation of benguet pines on land earmarked for the project, were living about 80 “squatters” who in a sense symbolised the problem at the root of the scheme. Squatters would be the term used by some New Zealand officials and their technical advisers. But it was hardly appropriate, and reflected the insensitivity to many of the social and economic problems in the province. The homeless people belonged to the Bukidnon Free Farmers and Agricultural Labourers’ Organisation, or Buffalo, as it was generally known. Their story was one of injustice, victimisation and harassment, only too common in the Philippines.
The opening two paragraphs of Chapter 14 in David Robie’s 2014 book Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific (Auckland: Little Island Press) summarising his investigation in 1989/1990 into the the controversial $6 million New Zealand forestry aid programme in Bukidnon province, Mindanao, Philippines with a series of articles published in The Dominion and the NZ Listener and other publications.
RESEARCH: David Robie: THE MOOD in the chapel on the outskirts of Malaybalay, capital of Bukidnon province was somber. Six datu (chiefs) and several delegates of the indigenous tribal Lumad people of the region were airing their concerns about a controversial New Zealand-backed $5.7 million forestry aid project for the Philippines.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
“Squatters” on their ancestral tribal land in 1989. Conrado Dumindin (second from right rear) and other Lumads in Bukidnon Forest, Mindanao, Philippines.
(16) A cloud over Bukidnon [forest]. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324273184_A_cloud_over_Bukidnon_forest [accessed Apr 07 2018]. Image: David Robie
Secretary Dr. Abhilaksh Likhi reviews institute research and development in drone application for fisheries management in ICAR-CIFRI, Kolkata today Drone based application should reach to the fish farmers for wider utilisation: Dr. Abhilaksh Likhi
Secretary Dr. Likhi witnesses demonstration of Drone Technology in Fisheries Application at ICAR – Central lnland Fisheries Research Institute
Posted On: 24 SEP 2024 3:24PM by PIB Delhi
Secretary, Department of Fisheries, Government of India Dr. Abhilaksh Likhi visited ICAR- Central lnland Fisheries Research Institute (CIFRI), Kolkata today for reviewing the institute research and development in drone application for fisheries management. Scientists, State fisheries official, Fishermen and fisherwomen attended the event. During presentation senior officers from fisheries department from states, ministry of civil aviation, NAFED, NCDC, NERMARC, SFAC, retailers, start-ups, fisheries subordinate offices, State Government officials, FFPOs, cooperatives etc. are invited to join through virtual conference.
During the drone demonstration, Dr. Abhilaksh Likhi actively interacted with the fish farmers and fishers, listening to their experiences, success stories and the challenges they face in their daily operations. This interaction provided valuable insights into how modern technology, like drones, can address their needs, improve efficiency, and enhance productivity in the fisheries sector, while also offering a platform for them to voice their aspirations and concerns.
Speaking on the occasion, the Secretary said that pilot project undertaken by ICAR-CIFRI will open new horizon in fisheries section by providing an effective and promising alternative for transporting fresh fish with less time and minimum human involvement while minimizing stress to the fish. The research and development on fish transportation using drone technology with private partnership would also enable consumers and farmers to have better hygienic fresh fish in the supply chain system, he added.
Dr. Likhi said that Pradhan Mantri Matsya Samridhi Sah Yojana (PM-MKSSY) with an outlay of Rs 6000 crore was approved in February 2024 which aims to support formalization of the unorganized fisheries sector by creating a National Fisheries Digital Platform (NFDP) for providing work-based identifies, fish farmers, fish vendors including the fisheries sector microenterprises and small enterprises by 2025. PM-MKSSY, through NFDP, will also facilitate access and incentivize uptake of institutional credit, purchase of aquaculture insurance, strengthen co-operatives to become FFPOs, adoption of traceability, performance grant for adoption of practices that will bring in value-chain efficiencies and safety and quality assurance and job creation, the Secretary added.
The Secretary urged the ICAR-CIFRI and other stakeholders to take step for making these drone based applications reach to the fish farmers and ensure that all can have access to it. He also asked the Fisheries Department to document all these valuable demonstrations and send to the the Ministry so that they can be utilized for creating awareness among the fish farmers across the country.
In the review meeting, Director, ICAR-CIFRI Dr. B. K. Das elaborately presented the institute achievements and progress made in drone-based technologies. Presentation on application of Drone Technology in fisheries was also made by a start-up.
Different drone-based technologies viz. sprayer drone, feed broadcast drone and cargo delivery drone were demonstrated by ICAR-CIFRI and star-up companies among more than 100 fishermen and fisherwomen. The pilot project undertaken by ICAR-CIFRI will open new horizon in fisheries section by providing an effective and promising alternative for transporting fresh fish with less time and minimum human involvement while minimizing stress to the fish. The research and development on fish transportation using drone technology with private partnership would also enable consumers and farmers to have better hygienic fresh fish in the supply chain system.
In Indian fisheries sector, the monitoring and management of aquatic resources faces numerous challenges that hinder effective and sustainable planning for the conservation of aquatic resources. Though the farming system is reforming every day to keep pace with the ever-increasing evolution of modern technologies, the systematic fish transportation for economical utilization of the landed fish lacks the proper scientific methodology, time efficiency and cost-effective means since it is an essential prerequisite for the appropriate development of our fishing and fish processing industries. The long time required for transportation over long distances from remote catch areas and the lack of handling and preservation can cause irreparable damage to the fish and even death, which incurs low market prices and huge losses to farmers.
In recent times, modern technology such as drone has tremendous potential to deliver vital goods to remote locations, overcoming access barriers and enabling faster delivery. To explore the potential of drone technology in the fishery sector, the Department of Fisheries, Govt. of India assigned a pilot project on “Developing drone technology for live fish transport” to ICAR-CIFRI. The project will be carried out by ICAR-Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute (CIFRI), Kolkata aiming to design and develop a 100 kg payload drone carrying live fish up to 10 km.
MOFA response to public comments by US Deputy Secretary of State Campbell on UNGA Resolution 2758 and cross-strait peace and stability
Date：2024-09-20 Data Source：Department of North American Affairs
September 20, 2024
The US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on “Great Power Competition in the Indo-Pacific” on September 18. In response to a question concerning the fact that Taiwan’s status was not mentioned in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell agreed, pointing out that China was using the resolution as a diplomatic tool to falsely portray Taiwan’s status as illegitimate and that China was conflating its interpretation with its “one China principle” in order to suppress Taiwan. Deputy Secretary Campbell reaffirmed the unwavering US commitment to Taiwan and the long-standing US efforts to preserve peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, emphasizing that this was a bipartisan consensus.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) welcomes and appreciates that yet another high-level US diplomat has publicly pointed out China’s misrepresentation of UNGA Resolution 2758 and reiterated bipartisan US support for maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. The comments follow remarks made earlier by US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Mark Lambert and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink.
MOFA is pleased that in addition to the United States, like-minded nations including Australia and the Netherlands have adopted friendly resolutions or motions stating that UNGA Resolution 2758 made no reference to Taiwan. MOFA calls on the international community to jointly take concrete actions to refute China’s misrepresentation of the resolution and oppose its spurious claims of there being an international consensus on its “one China principle.” Taiwan will continue to cooperate with the United States and other like-minded countries and together preserve peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and throughout the Indo-Pacific.
Posted on Sep 23, 2024 in Latest Department News, Newsroom
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
ʻOIHANA MAHIʻAI
JOSH GREEN, M.D. GOVERNOR
KIAʻĀINA
SHARON HURD CHAIRPERSON
HAWAI`I BOARD OF AGRICULTURE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NR24-28
September 21, 2024
COCONUT RHINOCEROS BEETLE FOUND IN WAIKOLOA TRAP
HONOLULU – A single coconut rhinoceros beetle (CRB) has been found in a trap this week by the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture (HDOA) during routine monitoring in Waikoloa on Hawai‘i Island. This is the first detection of CRB on the island since October 2023 when a Waikoloa resident reported finding a total of six grubs (larvae) in a decaying palm tree stump. The trap that the CRB was found in this week is located about 200 yards from the earlier detection.
HDOA set 30 traps around Waikoloa and has been conducting routine monitoring with the assistance of volunteer area residents. The Big Island Invasive Species Committee has set additional traps, as has the University of Hawai‘i, whose traps have cameras that allow real-time monitoring.
The pheromone traps are used for early detection of infestations. The traps do not attract all CRB in the area and are not effective as an eradication method. Surveillance for CRB has been ongoing on all islands, including traps at airports, harbors and other strategic locations.
HDOA and CRB Response teams are now focusing on eradication efforts in the area where the beetle was found. Initial surveys in the immediate area did not detect obvious signs of CRB damage in palm trees.
“CRB surveillance on Hawai‘i Island has been ongoing and early detection is key to prevent the establishment of breeding populations,” said Sharon Hurd, chairperson of the Hawai‘i Board of Agriculture. “We ask everyone to keep an eye out for CRB, especially in their compost and mulch piles which are major breeding grounds of the beetle.”
Residents on all islands are asked to be vigilant when purchasing mulch, compost and soil products, and to inspect bags for evidence of entry holes. An adult beetle is about 2-inches long, all black and has a single horn on its head. CRB grubs live in decomposing plant and animal waste. Adult CRB prefer to feed on coconut and other larger palms and are a major threat to the health of these plants.
Residents may go to the CRB Response website at: https://www.crbhawaii.org/ to learn more about how to detect the signs of CRB damage and how to identify CRB life stages. Reports of possible CRB infestation may also be made to the state’s toll-free Pest Hotline at (808) 643-PEST (7378).
The CRB is a large scarab beetle that was first detected on O‘ahu in 2013. The beetle has since been detected in many neighborhoods on O‘ahu and was detected on Kaua‘i in May 2023, where collaborative eradication efforts continue. CRB grubs were found in Kīhei, Maui, in November 2023, but have not been detected on the island since.
CRB is a serious pest of palm trees, primarily coconut palms, as the adult beetles bore into the crowns of the palms to feed on the trees’ sap. New unopened fronds are damaged in this way and when fully opened, may break and fall unexpectedly. If CRB kill or damage the growing point of the palm, the tree may die. Secondary fungal or bacterial pathogens may also attack the wounds caused by CRB, thereby killing the tree as well. Tree mortality after CRB attack has been reported to be anywhere from 10 percent to 50 percent. Dead trees then become a safety hazard as they may fall unexpectedly after the trunk rots, potentially resulting in bodily injury or property damage.
CRB is a major pest of palms in India, the Philippines, Palau, Fiji, Wallis and Futuna, Nukunono, American and Western Samoa and Guam. It is still not known exactly how the beetles arrived in Hawai‘i.
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Media Contact: Janelle Saneishi, Public Information Officer Hawaiʻi Department of Agriculture Phone: 808-973-9560 Cell: 808-341-5528 [email protected] http://hdoa.hawaii.gov
Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) is the latest business to join the growing lineup of private sector companies backing AgriZeroNZ, alongside government, to get emissions reduction tools into Kiwi farmers’ hands sooner.
Announcing the new shareholder today, Hon Todd McClay, Minister for Agriculture & Trade, confirmed the government would match BNZ’s $4 million investment, boosting AgriZeroNZ’s funds by $8milllion to total $191 million.
BNZ joins The a2 Milk Company, ANZ Bank New Zealand, ANZCO Foods, ASB Bank, Fonterra, Rabobank, Ravensdown, Silver Fern Farms and Synlait with a combined 50% shareholding of the joint venture (JV). With the government’s increased investment, it owns the remaining half through the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI).
AgriZeroNZ Board Chair, Sir Brian Roche KNZM, says this provides a welcome boost in funds to achieve the JV’s ambition and maintain the multibillion-dollar agricultural export trade.
“I’m pleased more of the private sector is joining us to help get practical tools into farmers’ hands.
“New Zealand farmers are highly efficient producers of milk and meat for the world, but global companies that pay a premium for these products – such as McDonald’s, Nestlé, Danone, Tesco and Sainsbury’s – are all pushing deep into their supply chain for emissions reduction, with ambitious scope 3 targets.
“These customers want to see more progress and we need to act now, or we risk losing these high-end customers and potentially breaching trade agreements. Further to this, competitor markets with more intensive farms are getting access to new tools to reduce emissions so they could take our place in supplying these customers.
“There is a very real and very disruptive risk to our agricultural sector from the need to reduce emissions but there is also an opportunity to stay among the most efficient producers in the world if we can get the right tools to our farmers.
“We’re confident that with our ambition, expertise, and increasing reach through the private sector, we’ll have 2-3 tools in widespread use by 2030.”
Sir Brian Roche KNZM, AgriZeroNZ Board Chair, says the JV Is confident it will have 2-3 tools in widespread use by 2030
BNZ CEO Dan Huggins says the bank is pleased to support AgriZeroNZ and partner with government and some of the country’s largest primary sector businesses to back its farming customers by investing in tools to help reduce emissions and maintain New Zealand’s competitive advantage in agriculture.
“BNZ has a long history of banking New Zealand farmers, and over that time we have worked alongside our farming customers as they have continually adapted and innovated to meet changing market dynamics.
“This public-private partnership approach to addressing on farm emissions continues that tradition, helping to ensure New Zealand maintains a resilient and productive agricultural sector into the future,” he says.
Dan Huggins, BNZ CEO, says it is investing in tools to help reduce emissions and maintain New Zealand’s competitive advantage in agriculture.
AgriZeroNZ is a world-first public-private partnership with an ambition to ensure all farmers in Aotearoa New Zealand have equitable access to affordable, effective solutions to reduce biogenic methane and nitrous oxide emissions, supporting a 30% reduction by 2030 and drive towards ‘near zero’ by 2040.
Since being established in February 2023, the JV has committed more than $29M across 10 high impact opportunities to bring emissions reduction solutions to market for Kiwi farmers. This includes a methane-inhibiting bolus, novel probiotics, methane vaccine development, and low emissions pasture.
It recently raised $18million from The a2 Milk Company, ANZ Bank New Zealand and ASB Bank becoming shareholders in April, with their funding also matched by government.
AgriZeroNZ has over 77 potential investment opportunities on its radar for review as it continues scanning the globe for solutions which could work on New Zealand farms, to invest and drive development towards a pasture-based solution. It is also working with officials to clarify the regulatory pathway in New Zealand for tools to be used on-farm.
Te Whanganui ā Tara (Wellington’s) skyline is evolving as Bank of New Zealand’s (BNZ) 15-storey new home in the central city – BNZ Place – today officially opened its doors to colleagues and customers.
Under construction since 2020, the architecturally designed building, occupies a full city block on the corner of Whitmore Street and Customhouse Quay, and was officially opened by Finance Minister Nicola Willis at a special event this morning.
CEO Dan Huggins says the striking new building reflects BNZ’s longstanding commitment to the capital city.
“BNZ has been proudly serving Wellington’s communities for 160 years, and BNZ Place not only reflects our commitment to the city but also our vision for the future. We’re thrilled that we are able to share this vibrant and innovative space with our customers, colleagues, and the people of Wellington.”
Designed to be modern and resilient, the building’s unique shape and structural design was informed by extensive research, including wind tunnel testing and seismic hazard assessments. The new headquarters represents a fresh start after the former BNZ building on Waterloo Quay was demolished in 2019, one of several buildings deemed irreparable after the Kaikōura earthquake in 2016.
BNZ Place offers a branch and customer service centre for retail and business banking and a public café on the ground floor. As New Zealand’s largest business bank, BNZ’s Partner Centre offers BNZ business customers state-of-the-art meeting rooms and office space with views of Wellington’s harbour which can be booked and utilised at no cost.
Newcrest Director Lincoln Fraser says, “We are proud to welcome BNZ’s customers and colleagues into their new Wellington home at the completion of what has been an exciting and highly collaborative project. The Newcrest and BNZ project teams have worked closely together to deliver a landmark building with market leading resilience and energy efficiency.”
BNZ Place at 1 Whitmore Street combines sustainability and innovation, aiming for a 5-star green rating with features like high-performance solar control glass and energy-efficient systems, supported by base isolation and a structural steel diagrid. Efficient floorplates, a double-height high entry lobby, inter-floor stairs, a rooftop courtyard, and panoramic views contribute to the state-of-the-art facility.
The design, development and internal fitout of the building also provided an opportunity for BNZ to support its business customers, with Studio Pacific Architecture, Vidak, Alaska Construction, Europlan, and Egmont Dixon all contributing to the build. In addition, the bank collaborated with another BNZ customer, Maxwell Rodgers, using their sustainably sourced wool fabrics to re-upholster and up-cycle furniture from the bank’s previous office, reducing waste to landfill.
“BNZ Place firmly cements our commitment to the capital, and we look forward to welcoming everyone to our new home,” Mr Huggins says.
Tracing BNZ’s roots in Wellington
BNZ’s history in Wellington began in 1862 with temporary offices on Willis Street. Over the years, BNZ has been a pioneer in architectural innovation, from the first drive-in bank in New Zealand to the construction of the Aon Centre in Wellington in the 1980s, the tallest building in New Zealand at the time of construction.
The bank’s architectural legacy includes the innovative use of reclaimed land for its early headquarters, the 1901 building designed by Thomas Turnbull, the purpose-built BNZ Centre in 1985, and the transition to a 5-star green building on the Wellington waterfront.
A brief history
In 1862, BNZ purchased a triangular section on reclaimed land with a frontage along Lambton and Customhouse Quay. The architect was William Mason of Dunedin. The location of the entrance door was later moved due to Wellington’s high winds.
Wellington 1863 building. Cnr Lambton and Customhouse Quay.
Wellington 1863 building. Cnr Lambton and Customhouse Quay. Photograph taken 1878 and shows the relocation of the main doorway.
Wellington premises built in 1901 (before removal of parapet) c.1920
Wellington Branch premises 1901 (after parapet removed) photo taken 1978.
In 1899, the earlier bank and adjoining Brandon Building were demolished to be replaced with a larger building following the subsequent purchasing of an additional 4 sections of land.
Since 1901, three other buildings on the block bounded by Lambton and Customhouse Quays and Hunter Street were purchased and occupied by various departments of BNZ’s Headquarters.
In 1985, the purpose built BNZ Centre was opened across the road. An underground tunnel linked the Old Bank and the New ‘Black Tower’. At the time of its construction, it was the tallest building in NZ (replaced by the BNZ Tower when that opened in Auckland in 1986). It remained the tallest building in Wellington until the opening of the Majestic Centre in 1991.
BNZ Centre, Wellington 1984
In 2009 BNZ moved out of the BNZ Centre and leased a purpose-built office building located on the Wellington waterfront, referred to as ‘Harbour Quays’. Owned by Centre Port, this building was a 5-star green building, later achieving 6 start for the interior fitout. Following the November 2016 earthquake, the building remained empty with BNZ staff re-located into temporary office sites around the Wellington CBD. The building has since been demolished.
BNZ colleagues from The Terrace, Spark Central and Ricoh House are now reunited at BNZ Place, Wellington. A branch, community centre and collaborative workplace will co-exist in the same building in the heart of Wellington’s CBD.
TOPEKA—Applicants who successfully passed the Kansas bar examination will be sworn in as Kansas attorneys at 9:30 a.m. Friday, September 27, in Topeka.
The ceremony will take place at The Beacon at 420 SW 9th St.
New attorneys can choose to be sworn in during the ceremony Friday or at another time by a state or federal judge.
Chief Justice Marla Luckert will preside over the Supreme Court, and District Judge Toby Crouse will represent the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas.
Doug Shima, clerk of the Kansas appellate courts, will administer the state oath. Traci Anderson, a clerk from the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, will administer the federal oath.
New attorneys
New attorneys eligible to be sworn in, listed alphabetically by county, are:
Barton
Clarissa Noelle Ratzlaff, Great Bend Jack Leander Roenne, Great Bend
Butler
Hayley Ann Koontz, Benton
Cherokee
Addison Alese Tucker, Galena
Cowley
John Michael Taylor, Atlanta Christin Dunnell Smith, Winfield
Douglas
Madisyn Dianne Schmitz, Eudora Michael Aaron Archer, Lawrence Elm P. Beck, Lawrence Damien James Burger, Lawrence Chad Josiah Cook, Lawrence Jackson Scott de la Garza, Lawrence Rosston Joseph Eubank, Lawrence Anna Christine Hedstrom, Lawrence James Andrew Henderson, Lawrence Natalie Alison Jabben, Lawrence Carter Michael Jones, Lawrence Makaylah Lynn Jones, Lawrence Jared James Lenz, Lawrence Sarah Kathryn Lynch-Chaput, Lawrence Jillian Elizabeth Roy, Lawrence Isabela Guadalupe Solorio, Lawrence Collin Winslow Studer, Lawrence Chloe Ann Thompson, Lawrence Trace Lee Tobin, Lawrence Elijah Jeffrey Waugh, Lawrence Hudson David Weaver, Lawrence
Ellis
Brianna Kay Brin, Hays
Ford
Nichole Marie Byer, Dodge City
Harvey
Destiny Dawn Denney, Newton
Johnson
Mandi Michelle Abbott, Leawood Megan Elizabeth Gannon, Leawood Madisen Kate Hane, Leawood Benjamin Richard Baker, Lenexa Annie Elizabeth Birney, Lenexa Drew Elizabeth Davis, Lenexa Juliana Mare Herrera, Lenexa Emily Hope O’Donnell, Lenexa Samuel Alejandro Sketers, Lenexa Lucas Ryan Zoller, Lenexa Cinthia Terrazas, Mission Dilini Lankachandra, Mission Hills Madeline Lizette Ames, Olathe Tristin Andrieu Lewis Dierking, Olathe Isaiah Cole Eaton, Olathe Morgan Renee Hood, Olathe Kelsey Danielle Saunders, Olathe Lindsay Marie Barash, Overland Park Brooke Ashton Brownlee, Overland Park Cody Von Byrd, Overland Park Wangxue Deng, Overland Park Makenzie Ryan Fankhauser, Overland Park Emily Rosalyn Featherston, Overland Park Jamie Elizabeth Gallagher, Overland Park Richard Ryan Love, Overland Park Alden John Vogel, Overland Park Molly Sue Wackerly, Overland Park Tiffany Lauren Wylde, Overland Park Caitlin Daly McPartland, Prairie Village Julea Miranda Pina, Prairie Village Elizabeth Grace Rohr, Prairie Village Monica Sandu, Prairie Village Andrew Dean McLandsborough, Roeland Park Caroline Maria Rene McCord, Shawnee Nicholas Christopher Kaechele, Spring Hill Caitlin Alyse Kremer, Spring Hill
Leavenworth
Angelique Joeann Margve, Basehor
Lyon
Nickolas Reid Velo, Emporia
Pottawatomie
Daniel Mark Frazier, Saint Marys Margaret Elizabeth Shermoen, Wamego
Riley
Carolo Dionicio Gonzalex, Manhattan Joseph Logan Hoover, Manhattan Candice Lea Wilson, Manhattan
Saline
Emma Rose Dipota, Salina William David Strommen, Salina
Sedgwick
Michael Dee Vinson, Derby Michael Roy Van Deest, Maize Gabrielle Christine Altenor, Wichita Joel Geoffrey Amend, Wichita Leslie Nichole Anderson, Wichita Cameron Joseph Edens, Wichita Brooke Stanton Flucke, Wichita Baron Jack Hoy, Wichita Sophia Ana Padgett, Wichita Caitlin Corrine Riffer, Wichita Makaela Breanne Stevens, Wichita Ethan John Ward, Wichita
Shawnee
Joshua Nolan Becker, Topeka Loretta Anne Caballero, Topeka Jacob Wendell Cibulka, Topeka Kiley Jan-Elizabeth Deain, Topeka Andrew Zachary Foreman, Topeka Edgar Fuentes, Topeka Quinn McLean Hughes, Topeka William Elliot Woody Naeger, Topeka Dylan James Pryor, Topeka Jacob Christian Alexander Reaves, Topeka Carly Paige Steward, Topeka Megan Kristine Walden, Topeka Gabriel Reece Walker, Topeka
Wyandotte
Olivia Leigh Banes, Bonner Springs Bailey Hannah Baker, Kansas City
_______________
Arizona
Noel Kenmadu Ahaneku, Maricopa Chance Matthew Berndt, Phoenix
Colorado
Emily Jean Marie McCurley, Larkspur
Florida
Bryna Rachelle Faimon, Pensacola
Iowa
Spencer Ray Mitchell, University Heights
Missouri
Samantha LeAnn Mishler, Independence Kevin Christopher Birzer, Kansas City Austin Marcus Polina, Kansas City Brien Charles Stonebreaker, Kansas City Vincent Cyrus Amiri, Kearney Kyleigh Jo Rupe, Lee’s Summit
New York
Rebecca Rachel Halff, New York
Oklahoma
Paige Elizabeth Harding, Afton
South Carolina
Zachary Christian Freeman, Aiken
Virginia
Cody Grant Hoagland, Concord Alisha Deanna Mehdi, Herndon
This post originally appeared on theTransform with Google Cloud blog. It was first published April 12, 2024; last updated with new use cases September 24, 2024.
Since generative AI first captured the world’s attention, there’s been a vigorous discussion about what, exactly, the new technology is best used for. While we all enjoyed those early funny chats and witty limericks, we’ve quickly discovered that many of the biggest AI opportunities are clearly in the enterprise, government, and with exciting new companies.
When we first published this post during Google Cloud Next ‘24, we showcased 101 of the best use cases out of the hundreds featured across the event. Now, we’re adding another 84 to the list as customers across the globe continue to put generative AI to work.
[If you’ve visited this post in the past, you can find the newest use cases listed at the top of each section.]
In a matter of months, organizations have gone from AI helping answer questions, to AI making predictions, to generative AI agents. What makes AI agents unique is that they can take actions to achieve specific goals, whether that’s guiding a shopper to the perfect pair of shoes, helping an employee looking for the right health benefits, or supporting nursing staff with smoother patient hand-offs during shifts changes.
In our work with customers, we keep hearing that their teams are increasingly focused on improving productivity, automating processes, and modernizing the customer experience. These aims are now being achieved through the AI agents they’re developing in six key areas: customer service; employee empowerment; code creation; data analysis; cybersecurity; and creative ideation and production.
Hundreds of Google Cloud customers have now put AI agents and gen-AI solutions into production throughout their businesses and the world — with many seeing a tangible return on investment. They have come to rely on Google Cloud technologies that include our AI infrastructure, Gemini models, Vertex AI platform, Google Workspace, and Google Distributed Cloud.
Here’s a snapshot of how 185 of these industry leaders are putting AI to use today, creating real-world use cases that will transform tomorrow.
Customer agents
Similar to great sales and service people, customer agents are able to listen carefully, understand your needs, and recommend the right products and services. They work seamlessly across channels including the web, mobile, and point of sale, and can be integrated into product experiences with voice and video.
1.Alaska Airlines is developing natural language search, providing travelers with a conversational experience powered by AI that’s akin to interacting with a knowledgeable travel agent. This chatbot aims to streamline travel booking, enhance customer experience, and reinforce brand identity.
2. Bennie Health uses Vertex AI to power its innovative employee health benefits platform, providing actionable insights and streamlining data management in order to enhance efficiency and decision-making for employees and HR teams.
3. Beyond 12, a tech-enabled nonprofit focused on student empowerment, has developed an AI-powered college coach to offer scalable coaching to first-generation students that’s available over text, app, and the web.
4. CareerVillage is building an app called Coach to empower job seekers, especially underrepresented youth, in their career preparedness; already featuring 35 career development activities, the aim is to have more than 100 by next year.
5. Character.ai built its realistic conversational chat platform using the full stack of Google Cloud AI services, including for model training and daily operations, allowing it to manage terabytes of conversations each day without interruption.
6. Click Therapeutics develops prescription digital therapeutics designed to treat disease. Its Clinical Operations team leverages Gemini for Google Workspace to transform complex operations data into actionable insights, so they can quickly pinpoint ways to streamline the patient experience in clinical trials.
7. Formula E can now summarize a two-hour long race commentary into a 2-minute podcast in any language, incorporating driver data and ongoing seasonal storylines.
8. General Motors’ OnStar has been augmented with new AI features, including a virtual assistant powered by Google Cloud’s conversational AI technologies that are better able to recognize the speaker’s intent.
9. Gojek, an Indonesia-based super app, launched “Dira by GoTo AI,” a Bahasa Indonesia AI-powered voice assistant integrated into their GoPay service, allowing customers to use voice command to eliminate typing and scrolling, and complete tasks like bill payments and money transfers with fewer steps.
10. GroupBy, an ecommerce service provider, developed an AI-first Search and Discovery Platform powered by Vertex AI Search for Retail. This solution is meticulously designed to optimize revenue, strengthen brand loyalty, and drive sales growth for B2C and B2B retailers.
11. Hotelplan Suisse built a chatbot trained on the business’s travel expertise to answer customer inquiries in real-time, and, following that success, it plans to use gen AI to create travel content.
12. Justicia Lab is developing an AI-powered assistant that will simplify legal processes for asylum seekers and immigrants; by uploading a picture from a legal letter or document, users can extract valuable information and then receive personalized guidance and next steps.
13. Mercado Libre has incorporated semantic search into its digital shopping platforms, using AI embeddings from the Vertex AI Agent Builder, which greatly improved product recommendations and discoverability for more than 200 million consumers across Latin America.
14. Motorola’s Moto AI leverages Gemini and Imagen to help smartphone users unlock new levels of productivity, creativity, and enjoyment with features such as conversation summaries, notification digests, image creation, and natural language search — all with reliable responses grounded in Google Search.
15. mRelief has built an SMS-accessible AI chatbot to simplify the application process for the SNAP food assistance program in the U.S., featuring easy-to-understand eligibility information and direct assistance within minutes rather than days.
16. Personal AI offers a “personal language model” using only the data of one individual or brand and allowing them to control and own how it is used. Built on your own data, facts, and opinions, it creates a responsive and interactive messaging experience that helps people be more productive and deepen relationships.
17. PODS worked with the advertising agency Tombras to create the “World’s Smartest Billboard” using Gemini — a campaign on its trucks that could adapt to each neighborhood in New York City, changing in real-time based on data. It hit all 299 neighborhoods in just 29 hours, creating more than 6,000 unique headlines.
18. Quora developed Poe, its own generative AI platform for people to discover and chat with AI-powered bots, including Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, Meta’s Llama, and Mistral’s Large 2 — many of which are hosted on Google Cloud’s purpose-built AI infrastructure.
19. ScottsMiracle-Gro built an AI agent on Vertex AI to provide tailored gardening advice and product recommendations for consumers.
20. Snap has deployed the multimodal capability of Gemini within its “My AI” chatbot and has since seen over 2.5-times as much engagement within Snapping to My AI in the United States.
21. Tabiya has built a conversational interface, Compass, that helps young people find employment opportunities; the platform asks questions and requests information, drawing out skills and experiences and matching those to appropriate roles.
22. Telecom Italia (TIM) implemented a Google-powered voice agent to address many customer calls, increasing efficiency by 20%.
23. UPS Capital launched DeliveryDefense Address Confidence, which uses machine learning and UPS data to provide a confidence score for shippers to help them determine the likelihood of a successful delivery.
24. Volkswagen of America built a virtual assistant in the myVW app, where drivers can explore their owners’ manuals and ask questions, such as, “How do I change a flat tire?” or “What does this digital cockpit indicator light mean?” Users can also use Gemini’s multimodal capabilities to see helpful information and context on indicator lights simply by pointing their smartphone cameras at the dashboard.
25. ADT is building a customer agent to help its millions of customers select, order, and set up their home security.
26. Alaska Airlines is developing a personalized travel search experience using advanced AI techniques, creating hyper-personalized recommendations that engage customers early and foster loyalty through AI-generated content.
27. Best Buy is using Gemini to launch a generative AI-powered virtual assistant this summer that can troubleshoot product issues, reschedule order deliveries, manage Geek Squad subscriptions, and more; in-store and digital customer-service associates are also gaining gen-AI tools to better serve customers anywhere they need help.
28. The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority is using Vertex AI to modernize transportation operations for a smoother, more efficient journey.
29. Etsy uses Vertex AI training to optimize their search recommendations and ads models, delivering better listing suggestions to buyers and helping sellers grow their businesses.
30. IHG Hotels & Resorts is building a generative AI-powered chatbot to help guests easily plan their next vacation directly in the IHG One Rewards mobile app.
31. ING Bank aims to offer a superior customer experience and has developed a gen-AI chatbot for workers to enhance self-service capabilities and improve answer quality on customer queries.
32. Magalu, one of Brazil’s largest retailers, has put customer service at the center of its AI strategy, including using Vertex AI to create “Lu’s Brain” to power an interactive conversational agent for Lu, Magalu’s popular brand persona (the 3D bot has more than 14 million followers between TikTok and Instagram).
33. Mercedes Benz will infuse e-commerce capabilities into its online storefront with a gen AI-powered smart sales assistant. Mercedes also plans to expand its use of Google Cloud AI in its call centers and is using Vertex AI and Gemini to personalize marketing campaigns.
34. Oppo/OnePlus is incorporating Gemini models and Google Cloud AI into their phones to deliver innovative customer experiences, including news and audio recording summaries, AI toolbox, and more.
35. Samsung is deploying Gemini Pro and Imagen 2 to their Galaxy S24 smartphones so users can take advantage of amazing features like text summarization, organization, and magical image editing.
36. The Minnesota Division of Driver and Vehicle Services helps non-English speakers get licenses and other services with two-way real-time translation.
37. Pepperdine University has students and faculty who speak many languages, and with Gemini in Google Meet, they can benefit from real-time translated captioning and notes.
38. Sutherland, a leading digital transformation company, is focused on bringing together human expertise and AI, including boosting its client-facing teams by automatically surfacing suggested responses and automating insights in real time.
39. Target uses Google Cloud to power AI solutions on the Target app and Target.com, including personalized Target Circle offers and Starbucks at Drive Up, their curbside pickup solution.
40. Tokopedia, an Indonesian ecommerce leader, is using Vertex AI to improve data quality, increasing unique products being sold by 5%.
41. US News saw a double-digit impact in key metrics like click-through rate, time spent on page, and traffic volume to its pages after implementing Vertex AI Search.
42-45. IntesaSanpaolo, MacquarieBank, and Scotiabank are exploring the potential of gen AI to transform the way we live, work, bank, and invest — particularly how the new technology can boost productivity and operational efficiency in banking.
Employee agents
Employee agents help workers be more productive and collaborate better together. These agents can streamline processes, manage repetitive tasks, answer employee questions, as well as edit and translate critical communications.
46. 2bots offers technology solutions, such as chatbots and virtual agents, built with Google Cloud’s AI solutions; these intelligent chatbots and content generation tools are transforming the way companies interact with their customers.
47. Augment is building an AI personal assistant that offers enhanced note-taking and collects information across your apps, including calendar, email, texts, and social media, so users can more quickly and easily find personal information and keep their lives organized.
48. Bayes Impact builds AI products to support nonprofits, and its flagship product, CaseAI, is a digital case manager that integrates with an NGO’s current system to add smart features to draft action plans tailored to a beneficiary’s unique history; caseworkers have saved 25 hours of work per week on average.
49. Bell Canada has built customizable contact center solutions for its business customers that offer AI-powered agents to address callers, and Agent Assist, which listens when a human agent is on, offering suggestions and sentiment analysis. AI has contributed $20 million in savings across customer operations.
50. Best Buy can generate conversation summaries in real time using Contact Center AI, allowing live agents to give their full attention to understanding and supporting customers, resulting in a 30-to-90-second reduction in average call time and after-call work. Both customers and agents have cited improved satisfaction.
51. Camanchaca, a Chilean seafood company, took only six weeks to develop Elon, a virtual assistant that aims to provide more efficient customer service through digital channels, enhancing Camanchaca’s customer interactions.
52. Certify OS is automating credentialing, licensing, and monitoring of medical providers for healthcare networks, relieving the burden of time-consuming and often siloed information.
53. Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs widely uses Gemini for Google Workspace, estimating that employees are saving an average five hours per week just with AI capabilities in Gmail. Gemini is also streamlining time-consuming, manual processes through uses like AI-generated transcriptions and auto-formatting of pharmaceutical lab results or FDA compliance documentation.
54. Dun & Bradstreet built an email-generation tool with Gemini that helps sellers create tailored, personalized communications to prospects and customers for its research services. The company also developed intelligent search capabilities to help users with complex queries like, “Find me all the companies in this area with a high ESG rating.”
55. England’s Football Association is training Vertex AI on the FA’s historical and current scouting reports so they can be transformed into concise summaries, helping national teams discover future talent.
56. Fireflies.ai can transcribe, summarize, and analyze meetings, recordings, and other voice conversations to save time and improve collaboration and information sharing across teams.
57. Fluna, a Pan-African digital services company, has automated the analysis and drafting of legal agreements using Vertex AI, Document AI, and Gemini 1.5 Pro, achieving an accuracy of 92% in data extraction while ensuring security and reliability for sensitive information.
58. Hemominas, Brazil’s largest blood bank, partnered with Xertica to develop an omnichannel chatbot for donor search and scheduling, streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency. The AI solution has the potential to save half-a-million lives annually by attracting more donors and optimizing blood supply management.
59. Hiscox used BigQuery and Vertex AI to create the first AI-enhanced lead underwriting model for insurers, automating and accelerating the quoting for complex risks from three days down to a few minutes.
60. LiveX AI delivers AI Agents that swiftly enhance product education, boost customer conversion, reduce churn, and provide personalized customer support, with the goal of offering everyone a seamless VIP experience across their customer journey.
61. Opportunity@Work is applying gen AI to scale a suite of software tools and APIs that help employers identify “STAR” job candidates — “skilled through alternative routes” such as community college, military service, and on-the-job experience — helping fill roles in a tight market and expand opportunities.
62. QuantumMetric has introduced Felix AI, powered by Gemini Pro, to simplify digital analytics and decision making. Felix AI automatically summarizes a user’s web or mobile session and consolidates the moments that matter most into short, readable summaries for customer service workers.
63. Randstad, a large HR services and talent provider, is using Gemini for Workspace across its organization to transform its work culture, leading to a more culturally diverse and inclusive workplace that’s seen a double-digit reduction in sick days.
64. Sprinklr built Sprinklr AI+ into its unified customer experience management platform, giving brands gen-AI capabilities for customer service, insights, social media management, and marketing that has enterprise-grade governance, security, and data privacy built-in.
65. Thomson Reuters added Gemini Pro to its suite of large language models approved for employee use; with its 2-million-token context window, Gemini makes some tasks as much as 10-times faster to process and can process entire documents in context.
66. Warner Bros. Discovery built an AI captioning tool with Vertex AI and saw a 50% reduction in overall costs, and an 80% reduction in the time it takes to manually caption a file without the use of machine learning.
67. The U.S. Air Force built a new proof-of-concept portal for searching, browsing, and reading e-published PDFs — all within a 90-day deadline that leveraged the prebuilt tools and speed of Vertex AI Search and Conversation.
68. Avery Dennison empowered their employees with generative AI to enable secure, flexible, and borderless collaboration for enhanced productivity to drive growth.
69. Bank of New York Mellon built a virtual assistant to help employees find relevant information and answers to their questions.
70. Bayer is building a radiology platform that will assist radiologists with data analysis, intelligent search, and to create documents that meet healthcare requirements needed for regulatory approval. The bioscience company is also harnessing BigQuery and Vertex AI to develop additional digital medical solutions and drugs more efficiently.
71. Bristol Myers Squibb is transforming its document processes for clinical trials using Vertex AI and Google Workspace. Now, documentation that took scientists weeks now gets to a first draft in minutes.
72. BenchSci develops generative AI solutions empowering scientists to understand complex connections in biological research, saving them time and financial resources and ultimately bringing new medicine to patients faster.
73. Cintas is using Vertex AI Search to develop an internal knowledge center for customer service and sales teams to easily find key information.
74. Covered California, the state’s healthcare marketplace, is using Document AI to help improve the consumer and employee experience by automating parts of the documentation and verification process when residents apply for coverage.
75. Dasa, the largest medical diagnostics company in Brazil, is helping physicians detect relevant findings in test results more quickly.
76. DaVita leverages DocAI and Healthcare NLP to transform kidney care, including analyzing medical records, uncovering critical patient insights, and reducing errors. AI enables physicians to focus on personalized care, resulting in significant improvements in healthcare delivery.
77. Discover Financial helps their 10,000 contact center representatives to search and synthesize information across detailed policies and procedures during calls.
78. HCA Healthcare is testing Cati, a virtual AI caregiver assistant that helps to ensure continuity of care when one caregiver shift ends and another begins. They are also using gen AI to improve workflows on time-consuming tasks, such as clinical documentation, so physicians and nurses can focus more on patient care.
79. The Home Depot has built an application called Sidekick, which helps store associates manage inventory and keep shelves stocked; notably, vision models help associates prioritize which actions to take.
80. Los Angeles Rams are utilizing AI across the board from content analysis to player scouting.
81. McDonald’s will leverage data, AI, and edge technologies across its thousands of restaurants to implement innovation faster and to enhance employee and customer experiences.
82. Pennymac, a leading US-based national mortgage lender, is using Gemini across several teams including HR, where Gemini in Docs, Sheets, Slides and Gmail is helping them accelerate recruiting, hiring, and new employee onboarding.
83. Robert Bosch, the world’s largest automotive supplier, revolutionizes marketing through gen AI-powered solutions, streamlining processes, optimizing resource allocation, and maximizing efficiency across 100+ decentralized departments.
84. Symphony, the communications platform for the financial services industry, uses Vertex AI to help finance and trading teams collaborate across multiple asset classes.
85. Uber is using AI agents to help employees be more productive, save time, and be even more effective at work. For customer service representatives, they’ve launched new tools that summarize communications with users and can even surface context from previous interactions, so front-line staff can be more helpful and effective.
86. The U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs is using AI at the edge to improve cancer detection for service members and veterans. The Augmented Reality Microscope (ARM) is deployed at remote military treatment facilities around the world. The prototype device is helping pathologists find cancer faster and with better accuracy.
87. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has improved the quality and efficiency of their patent and trademark examination process by implementing AI-driven technologies.
88. Verizon is using generative AI to help teams in network operations and customer experience get the answers they need faster.
89. Victoria’s Secret is testing AI-powered agents to help their in-store associates find information about product availability, inventory, and fitting and sizing tips, so they can better tailor recommendations to customers.
90. Vodafone uses Vertex AI to search and understand specific commercial terms and conditions across more than 10,000 contracts with more than 800 communications operators
91. WellSky is integrating Google Cloud’s healthcare and Vertex AI capabilities to reduce the time spent completing documentation outside work hours.
92. Woolworths, the leading retailer in Australia, boosts employees’ confidence in communications with “Help me write” across Google Workspace products for more than 10,000 administrative employees. It’s also using Gemini to create next-generation promotions, as well as for quickly assisting customer service reps in summarizing all previous customer interactions in real time.
93-97. Box, Typeface, Glean, CitiBank, and Securiti AI discuss developing AI-powered apps across the enterprise, with measurable returns on investment for marketing, financial services, and HR use cases.
98-99. Highmark Health and Freenome join Bristol Myers Squibb to explore how AI can improve efficiency and innovation across care delivery, drug discovery, clinical trial planning, and bringing medicines to market.
Code agents
Code agents are helping developers and product teams to design, create, and operate applications faster and better, and to ramp up on new languages and code bases. Many organizations are already seeing double-digit gains in productivity, leading to faster deployment and cleaner, clearer code.
100. Labelbox has built a fully managed AI model evaluation solution directly integrated into the Vertex AI platform, allowing Google Cloud users to seamlessly launch human evaluation jobs and set specific criteria for evaluation, such as question-answering and summarization; this eases and accelerates the ability to deploy human-in-the-loop AI systems with higher levels of trust and authority.
101. Leroy Merlin, a global home improvement retailer, developed its Pull Request Analyzer using Vertex AI. This generative AI solution summarizes code changes, helping developers understand projects faster and improve code review efficiency.
102. Linear, a product development platform, built Similar Issues, a feature that uses AI to detect and prevent duplicate or overlapping tickets and ensures cleaner and more accurate data representation.
103. Magic is building a developer platform with a 100-million-token context window, so organizations can upload extremely large code bases and more easily query and build on them using gen AI assistance.
104. Pinecone provides infrastructure for developers to build accurate, secure, and scalable AI applications, allowing companies to easily ground gen AI apps in their proprietary data for use in AI search, retrieval-augmented generation, coding agents, and more.
105. Regnology built its Ticket-to-Code Writer tool with Gemini 1.5 Pro to automate the conversion of bug tickets into actionable code, significantly streamlining the software development process.
106. Weights & Biases, a creator of AI tools for developers, created W&B Weave, a lightweight toolkit to track, evaluate, and debug gen AI applications built with Gemini, so teams can confidently go from demo to production.
107. Capgemini has been using Code Assist to improve software engineering productivity, quality, security, and developer experience, with early results showing workload gains for coding and more stable code quality.
108. Commerzbank is enhancing developer efficiency through Code Assist’s robust security and compliance features.
109. Quantiphi saw developer productivity gains of more than 30% during their Code Assist pilot.
110. Replit developers will get access to Google Cloud infrastructure, services, and foundation models via Ghostwriter, Replit’s software development AI, while Google Cloud and Workspace developers will get access to Replit’s collaborative code editing platform.
111. Seattle Children’s hospital is using AI to boost data engineering productivity and accelerate development.
112. Turing is customizing Gemini Code Assist on their private codebase, empowering their developers with highly personalized and contextually relevant coding suggestions that have increased productivity around 30 percent and made day-to-day coding more enjoyable.
113. Wayfair piloted Code Assist, and those developers with the code agent were able to set up their environments 55 percent faster than before, there was a 48 percent increase in code performance during unit testing, and 60 percent of developers reported that they were able to focus on more satisfying work.
Data agents
Data agents are like having knowledgeable data analysts and researchers at your fingertips. They can help answer questions about internal and external sources, synthesize research, develop new models — and, best of all, help find the questions we haven’t even thought to ask yet, and then help get the answers.
114. 180Seguros is powering its data management platform for employees with Google Cloud AI and BigQuery to improve operational metric tracking, allowing for 3X faster query times.
115. Addy AI is helping mortgage lenders and banks automate their lending processes with custom AI models trained on Vertex AI. For example, the platform can extract loan opportunity details from lengthy email threads with numerous attachments.
116. Bayer Crop Science has developed Climate FieldView, a comprehensive agricultural platform with more than 250 layers of data and billions of data points; AI-powered recommendations allow farmers to design and monitor their fields for greater yields and efficient fertilization, with the added benefit of reduced carbon emissions.
117. CME Group is building a first-of-its-kind cloud-based commodities trading platform with AI tools built-in, offering CME’s trading customers access to deeper insights and smarter trades as well as rapid experimentation on new trading strategies that won’t interrupt existing trade flows.
118. Digits is developing next-gen accounting software for startups and small businesses; using AI-driven bookkeeping, expense management, and financial analysis, Digits enables business owners to achieve financial clarity and focus on growth.
119. Elanco, a leader in animal health, has implemented a gen AI framework supporting critical business processes, such as Pharmacovigilance, Customer Orders, and Clinical Insights. The framework, powered by Vertex AI and Gemini, has resulted in an estimated ROI of $1.9 million since launching last year.
120. Full Fact, a UK-based nonprofit working in 18 countries to combat misinformation, is now using gen AI to actively monitor stories so its 30 fact-checking partner organizations can focus on addressing specific claims and harmful information.
121. Fullstory, a digital behavioral data platform, is building the ability to analyze and summarize user behavior on a site to create more informed and enriching chatbot experiences; responses are more relevant and accurate, ultimately improving virtual agent performance and customer experience
122. GamudaBerhad, a Malaysian infrastructure and property management company, has integrated a Gemini-powered conversational agent into its cloud-based Tunnel Insight platform, providing faster information and insights during construction projects.
123. IntelligenciaAI is using AI models to research novel new drugs, relying on Google Cloud’s AI-optimized infrastructure to deliver scalable research that is accurate and transparent to meet the stringent needs of medicine.
124. IPRally built a custom machine-learning platform that uses natural language processing on the text of more than 120 million global patent documents, creating an accurate, easily searchable database that adds more than 200,000 new sources a week.
125. Ipsos built a data analysis tool for its teams of market researchers, eliminating the need for time-consuming requests to data analysts, which is powered by Gemini 1.5 Pro and Flash models as well as Grounding with Google Search to enhance real-world accuracy from contemporaneous Search information.
126. Materiom, a startup researching zero-waste, bio-based alternatives to fossil-fuel-made products like plastics, is creating a gen AI tool that enables entrepreneurs to develop novel compostable materials with broad applications; AI offers faster research and information gathering to speed up the development process.
127. Mendel has built a clinical AI system designed to break down the longstanding silos in medical data, boosting accuracy, accessibility, and ultimately patient health outcomes.
128. NeuroPace, a medical device company, built a solution to quickly identify effective epilepsy treatment options best suited to different patients; by analyzing brainwave patterns, it can find similar patients and apply successful therapies, streamlining personalized care.
129. NotCo, a Chilean food tech company, partnered with Eleven Solutions to develop a conversational AI chatbot powered by Gemini; the chatbot has revolutionized data access, allowing employees to instantly query their SAP system and gain real-time insights for faster, data-driven decision-making.
130. SURA Investments, the largest asset manager in Latin America, developed an AI-based analysis model for employees that allows them to better understand customer needs and improve customer experience and satisfaction.
131. AI21 Labs offers a BigQuery integration called Contextual Answers that allows users to query data conversationally and get high-quality answers quickly.
132. Anthropic has partnered with Google Cloud to offer its family of Claude 3 models on Vertex AI — providing organizations with more model options for intelligence, speed, cost-efficiency, and vision for enterprise use cases.
133. The Asteroid Institute is using AI to discover hidden asteroids in existing astronomical data. This is a major focus for astronomers researching the evolution of the Solar System, investors and businesses hoping to fly missions to asteroids, and for all of us who want to prevent future large asteroid impacts on Earth.
134. Contextual is working with Google Cloud to offer enterprises fully customizable, trustworthy, privacy-aware AI grounded in internal knowledge bases.
135. Cox 2M, the commercial IoT division of Cox Communications, is able to make smarter, faster business decisions using AI-powered analytics.
136. Essential AI, a developer of enterprise AI solutions, is using Google Cloud’s AI-optimized TPU v5p accelerator chips to train its own AI models.
137. Generali Italia, Italy’s largest insurance provider, used Vertex AI to build a model evaluation pipeline that helps ML teams quickly evaluate performance and deploy models.
138. Globo, one of Brazil’s largest media networks, is using Service Extensions and Media CDN to fight piracy during live events by blocking pirated streams in real time.
139. Golden State Warriors are using AI to improve the fan experience content in their Chase Center app.
140. Hugging Face is collaborating with Google across open science, open source, cloud, and hardware to enable companies to build their own AI with the latest open models from Hugging Face and Google Cloud hardware and software.
141. Kakao Brain, part of Korean technology company Kakao Group, has built a large-scale AI language model that is the largest Korean language-specific LLM in the market, with 66 billion parameters. They’ve also developed a text-to-image generator called Karlo.
142. Mayo Clinic has given thousands of its scientific researchers access to 50 petabytes worth of clinical data through Vertex AI search, accelerating information retrieval across multiple languages.
143. McLaren Racing is using Google AI to get up-to-the-millisecond insights during races and training to gain a competitive edge.
144. Mercado Libre is testing BigQuery and Looker to optimize capacity planning and reservations with delivery carriers and airlines to fulfill shipments faster.
145. Mistral AI will use Google Cloud’s AI-optimized infrastructure, to further test, build, and scale up its LLMs, all while benefiting from Google Cloud’s security and privacy standards.
146. MSCI uses machine learning with Vertex AI, BigQuery and Cloud Run to enrich its datasets to help our clients gain insight into around 1 million asset locations to help manage climate-related risks.
147. NewsCorp is using Vertex AI to help search data across 30,000 sources and 2.5 billion news articles updated daily.
148. Orange operates in 26 countries where local data must be kept in each country. They are using AI on Google Distributed Cloud to improve network performance and deliver super-responsive translation capabilities.
149. Spotify leveraged Dataflow for large-scale generation of ML podcast previews, and they plan to keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with data engineering and data science to build better experiences for their customers and creators.
150. UPS is building a digital twin of its entire distribution network, so both workers and customers can see where their packages are at any time.
151. Workday is using natural language processing in Vertex Search and Conversation to make data insights more accessible for technical and non-technical users alike.
152. Woven — Toyota‘s investment in the future of mobility — is partnering with Google to leverage vast amounts of data and AI to enable autonomous driving, supported by thousands of ML workloads on Google Cloud’s AI Hypercomputer. This has resulted in resulting in 50% total-cost-of-ownership savings to support automated driving.
152-153. Broward County, Florida, and Southern California Edison are using geospatial capabilities and AI to improve infrastructure planning and monitoring, generate new insights, and create regional resilience for communities facing climate challenges today and tomorrow.
154-155. Kinaxis and Dematic are building data-driven supply chains to address logistics use cases including scenario modeling, planning, operations management, and automation.
156-157. NOAA and USAID are among the U.S. government agencies using Google Cloud AI to unlock critical data insights to streamline operations and improve mission outcomes — all with an emphasis on responsible AI.
Security agents
Security agents assist security operations by radically increasing the speed of investigations, automating monitoring and response for greater vigilance and compliance controls. They can also help guard data and models from cyberattacks, such as malicious prompt injection.
158. Apex Fintech is using Gemini in Security to accelerate the writing of complex threat detections from hours to a matter of seconds.
159. Exabeam has built a generative AI copilot for security analysts into its New-Scale Security Operations Platform.
160. Fiserv, a developer of financial services technology, can now summarize threats, find answers, and detect, validate, and respond to security events faster with the Gemini in Security Operations platform.
161. NetRise developed Trace to provide software supply chain security by introducing AI-powered intent-driven searches; these allow users to search their assets based on the underlying motives or purposes behind the code and configurations, rather than solely relying on signature-based methods.
162. Palo Alto Networks is using Gemini to create a grounded AI assistant for 24/7 security platform support in order to improve agent efficiency and response time; grounding the assistant in organizational data and security protocols has greatly improved the accuracy of responses.
163. BBVA uses AI in Google SecOps to detect, investigate, and respond to security threats with more accuracy, speed, and scale. The platform now surfaces critical security data in seconds, when it previously took minutes or even hours, and delivers highly automated responses.
164. Behavox is using Google Cloud technology and LLMs to provide industry leading regulatory compliance and front office solutions for financial institutions globally.
165. Charles Schwab has integrated their own intelligence into the AI-powered Google SecOps, so analysts can better prioritize work and respond to threats.
166. Fiserv’s security operations engineers create detections and playbooks with much less effort, while analysts get answers more quickly.
167. Grupo Boticário, one of the largest beauty retail and cosmetics companies in Brazil, employs real-time security models to prevent fraud and to detect and respond to issues.
168. Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex XSIAM, the AI-driven security operations platform, is built on more than a decade of expertise in machine-learning models and the most comprehensive, rich, and diverse data store in the industry. Backed by Google’s advanced cloud infrastructure and advanced AI services, including BigQuery and Gemini models, the combination delivers global scale and near real-time protection across all cybersecurity offerings.
169. Pfizer can now aggregate cybersecurity data sources, cutting analysis times from days to seconds.
Creative agents
Creative agents can expand your organization with the best design and production skills, working across images, slides, and exploring concepts with workers. Many organizations are building agents for their marketing teams, audio and video production teams, and all the creative people that can use a hand. With creative agents, anyone can become a designer, artist, or producer.
170. AdoreMe marketers write differentiated product descriptions in one hour, a tedious task which used to take 30-40 hours a month thanks to Gemini for Google Workspace.
171. Globo, the largest media group in Latin America, is using Google Cloud’s AI to hyper-personalize content for its streaming users, and create a better experience for spectators.
172. Higgsfield.ai built a number of text-to-video apps for consumers, including Diffuse 2.0, which can combine users photos, videos, and texts through AI models to create more realistic avatars.
173. Jasper trains its suite of creativity-, writing-, and marketing-focused AI models on Google’s AI infrastructure, delivering on-brand, data-optimized assets faster and at scale to teams large and small.
174. Puma is using Imagen to customize product photos on its website, saving time and ensuring they are locally relevant across markets; PUMA India has already seen a 10% increase in click through rate.
175. RadissonHotel Group personalized its advertising at scale in collaboration with Accenture and using Vertex AI and Gemini models, training them on extensive datasets stored in BigQuery; ad teams saw productivity rise around 50% while revenue increased from AI-powered campaigns by more than 20%
176. SquareEnix is using customer data to develop AI-optimized marketing assets to keep its gamers engaged, sharing personalized emails suited to each player’s preferences, leading to a 20% increase in email opens and a 10% increased retention rate.
177. Urmobo, a mobile-device management platform, created a virtual agent, Odin, that significantly improved user experience and reduced support tickets by enabling clients to interact with the platform using natural language.
178. The World Bank is developing a tool to extract key information from research literature on the causal impact of development interventions, with the ultimate goal to empower decision-makers to allocate the $220B in annual aid and trillions in annual impact investing more effectively.
179. Belk ECommerce is using generative AI to craft better product descriptions, a necessary yet time-consuming task for digital retails that has often been done manually.
180. Canva is using Vertex AI to power its Magic Design for Video, helping users skip tedious editing steps while creating shareable and engaging videos in a matter of seconds.
181. Carrefour used Vertex AI to deploy Carrefour Marketing Studio in just five weeks — an innovative solution to streamline the creation of dynamic campaigns across various social networks. In just a few clicks, marketers can build ultra-personalized campaigns to deliver customers advertising that they care about.
182. Major League Baseball continues to innovate its Statcast platform, so teams, broadcasters, and fans have access to live in-game insights.
183. Paramount currently relies on manual processes to create the essential metadata and video summaries used across its Paramount+ platform for showcasing content and creating personalized experiences for viewers. VertexAI Text Bison is now helping to streamline this process.
184. Procter & Gamble used Imagen to develop an internal gen AI platform to accelerate the creation of photo-realistic images and creative assets, giving marketing teams more time to focus on high-level planning and delivering superior experiences for its consumers.
185. WPP will integrate Google Cloud’s gen AI capabilities into its intelligent marketing operating system, called WPP Open, which empowers its people and clients to deliver new levels of personalization, creativity, and efficiency. This includes the use of Gemini 1.5 Pro models to supercharge both the accuracy and speed of content performance predictions.
To find even more customers using our AI tools to build agents and solutions for their most important enterprise projects, visit the Google Cloud customer hub.