Source: Moscow Government – Government of Moscow –
All utility systems, residential buildings, municipal facilities, equipment and machinery are ready for the autumn-winter period. The Moscow Government has considered the issue of the readiness of the capital’s housing stock and housing and communal facilities for the autumn-winter season of 2024/2025.
Preparations for the heating season for 74 thousand buildings, including 34.6 thousand residential buildings, 8.4 thousand social facilities and 30.8 thousand economic facilities, were carried out from May to August.
City services carried out preventive inspections and necessary repairs of engineering systems and equipment of boiler houses, central heating stations, large energy facilities, engineering networks of heat, gas, water and electricity supply.
The existing power reserves allow for a stable and uninterrupted supply of energy resources to consumers, as well as to meet the needs of promising city programs and infrastructure projects.
In case of possible failures and damage to utility networks, 1,093 emergency teams, 1,229 units of specialized equipment, as well as backup sources of electricity and heat supply have been prepared.
The required amount of road cleaning, engineering and other specialized equipment, as well as small mechanization tools, will be used to maintain urban areas and facilities. Snow will be disposed of at 51 stationary snow melting points.
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Please note; This information is raw content directly from the information source. It is accurate to what the source is stating and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
https://vvv.mos.ru/major/themes/11819050/
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is a translation. Apologies should the grammar and or sentence structure not be perfect.
Source: Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht – In English
The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority BaFin warns consumers against offers on website esx-gruppe.com. According to information available to BaFin, financial and investment services are being provided on this website without the required authorisation.
Anyone conducting banking business or providing financial or investment services in Germany may do so only with authorisation from BaFin. However, some companies offer these services without the required authorisation. Information on whether companies have been authorised by BaFin can be found in BaFin’s database of companies.
The information provided by BaFin is based on section 37 (4) of the German BankingAct (Kreditwesengesetz – KWG).
Please be aware:
BaFin, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt – BKA) and the German state criminal police offices (Landeskriminalämter) recommend that consumers seeking to invest money online should exercise the utmost caution and do the necessary research beforehand in order to identify fraud attempts at an early stage.
This is a summary of what was said by Leni Kinzli, spokesperson for WFP Sudan (speaking from Nairobi) to whom quoted text may be attributed – at a press briefing In Geneva today.
Nairobi/Geneva: The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is in a race against time to save lives in war-torn Sudan, as 1.5 million people across the country either face famine or are at risk of famine. Without urgent assistance, hundreds of thousands of people could die.
WFP is working tirelessly to get aid into the hands of people who are facing starvation, and we are saving thousands of lives every single day in Sudan. So far this year, we’ve supported 5.4 million people with life-saving food and nutrition assistance. As we speak, we are urgently getting basic staple foods into the hands of 180,000 people facing famine in Zamzam camp. Vulnerable communities are receiving a package of wheat flour, lentils, oil and salt.
Meanwhile in Khartoum, WFP is supporting community kitchens to provide around 175,000 hot meals daily. We’ve also just started in-kind food distributions for around 155,000 people in Karrari and Omdurman where people will receive two-month rations. Around 16,000 people in the metropolitan area received mobile money transfers in July and August, with a higher number planned for this month. WFP has also launched self-registration pilots to expand mobile money transfers to North and South Darfur, South Kordofan, and Gezira State.
WFP is taking advantage of the reopening of the Adre border from Chad into the conflict-rattled Darfur region. Trucks carrying vital food and nutrition supplies are crossing that border most days, despite facing delays due to flooded seasonal rivers and muddy road conditions where aid convoys are getting stuck. Since Adre reopened one month ago, we’ve transported 2,800 metric tonnes of food supplies into Darfur region via this route, enough aid for over 250,000 people. Of that, over 100,000 people in risk of famine areas in West Darfur have so far received emergency food and nutrition supplies.
Even though we are doing everything we can – it’s just a drop in the ocean compared to the needs, not just in Sudan but regionally. Across Sudan, South Sudan and Chad, around 36 million people have been pushed into hunger because of the ongoing war.
I was recently in Adre, Chad – where around 800,000 people have fled to. After enduring unimaginable violence, they are only met with hunger and destitution. Despite receiving food assistance, many are struggling to get by, eating once a day if they are lucky. Like a teenage girl I met called Thuraya who lost both her parents and is solely responsible for her younger siblings, sometimes only able to offer them water instead of a meal. If that is the situation for people in a comparably safe and stable place – it is hard to imagine what people facing famine or at risk of famine in Sudan are going through. I did get a glimpse from the stories I heard of women who had recently fled from ‘risk of famine’ areas. Women like Nadjua. Nadjua, along with other new arrivals, risked their lives to get to safety in Chad because there was nothing left to eat, and all their crops had been destroyed by floods. Others said they could not farm because it was too unsafe to go their fields. Health and nutrition workers in the camp told me that over half of their malnutrition cases in the camp were new arrivals coming from risk of famine areas in Sudan.
It is people like Thuraya and Nadjua – who are among tens of millions bearing the brunt of the brutal war in Sudan – that world leaders need to pay attention to. It is for them that they need to step up for during the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week. WFP and other aid agencies cannot tackle these challenges alone. We are doing everything we can, but we cannot stop widespread starvation and hunger-related deaths without the support and attention of the international community, too.
World leaders need to give this humanitarian catastrophe the attention it requires. That attention then needs to be translated into concerted diplomatic efforts – at the highest levels – to push for a humanitarian ceasefire and ultimately an end the conflict. We also need the international community to step up in demanding that the warring parties guarantee safe and unfettered humanitarian access and adhere to international humanitarian law. Lastly, we need a surge in funding to address the extraordinary level of need – over $600 million in coming six months, to provide urgent aid to people in the most severe levels of hunger across the region. We would require even more to help everyone who needs it.
For over 500 days the Sudanese people have been bearing the brunt of this war, feeling forgotten and abandoned by the world. They are still holding on to hope that one day they can return to their lives. Together, we owe it to the Sudanese people to step up collective action and prevent mass-scale starvation. The hopes of the Sudanese people, their future, are riding on what we do next. We cannot let them down.
# # #
The United Nations World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.
A digital euro would be a digital form of central bank money, specifically the euro. It could be used by the general public in much the same way as cash, only in virtual form. Alongside cash, the Eurosystem would thus supply households with an additional form of central bank money that can be used quickly, easily and securely.
Helmut Schlesinger turns 100 on 4 September, an anniversary that adds a wholly new numerical dimension to the honorary title of former Bundesbank President. Helmut Schlesinger is certainly no stranger to accolades celebrating his milestone birthdays. The “Börsen-Zeitung”, for one, marked his 80th birthday by writing that his name is synonymous with the pursuit of monetary stability, in a reference to the Bundesbank’s particular culture of stability, in which Mr Schlesinger’s thinking and attitudes resonate to this day. Mr Schlesinger’s presidency marked the pinnacle of over 41 years at the Bundesbank and in pursuit of a stable currency. He is rightly regarded as one of the most influential Bundesbankers of all time. The “Börsen-Zeitung” once dubbed him a home-grown product of the Bundesbank, a description that I like a lot. It wrote that Helmut Schlesinger embodied an exceptional period of monetary history, which came to an end as it were with the transition to the euro, characterised, on balance, by the continuity of success. During the 1950s and 1960s, in the early days of the Deutsche Mark, Mr Schlesinger followed an unusually steep career as a Bundesbank civil servant, culminating in him heading the Economics and Statistics Department. It was a time in which West Germany was experiencing the economic miracle. Under the fixed exchange rate regime, the Bundesbank led the money and credit sector out of planning and currency reform until it was finally opened and liberalised in 1958. Over the entire period, the Bundesbank succeeded in keeping the Deutsche Mark stable. In 1972, Mr Schlesinger was appointed to the Bundesbank’s Directorate and became its chief economist. The circumstances of the time required a complete realignment of monetary policy: the Bretton Woods exchange rate system teetered and finally collapsed in 1973. Western Europe’s exchange rates entered a new equilibrium – first in the European exchange rate arrangement, then in the European Monetary System (EMS). In economic terms, the 1970s were dominated by oil crises and rising unemployment. The combination of high inflation and a stagnant economy led to a new term being coined: stagflation. At that time, the Bundesbank was the first central bank to introduce monetary targeting. Mr Schlesinger played a key role in translating monetarist theory into a monetary policy strategy. He always saw the importance of explaining monetary policy, in personal contributions and in the Bundesbank’s Monthly Report, which he edited meticulously and with a sure sense of style. Many at the Bundesbank will remember the notes he made in pencil – he preferred an HB, or medium, hardness grade. As a monetary policymaker, however, some considered him a hard pencil lead, his argumentation consistent, but never simplistic. Time and again, he demonstrated the interaction between economic analysis, theoretical monetary concepts, political decision-making and historical change. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Deutsche Mark proved one of the world’s most stable currencies. Mr Schlesinger, who was made Vice-President in 1980, was regarded as the “conscience of stability policy”. US Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III is once said to have accused Schlesinger of seeing inflation under every pebble. This period saw the Deutsche Mark evolve into the anchor currency of the EMS. In 1991, Schlesinger was promoted from Vice-President to President – for a tumultuous 26 months. The Bundesbank used interest rate hikes in a bid to bring down the inflation caused by German reunification. Its stubborn high-interest-rate policy met with criticism within Germany and elsewhere. Many of the EMS partner countries likewise blamed the Bundesbank for the currency crises and rounds of depreciation of 1992‑93. When the United Kingdom was forced to withdraw from the EMS in 1992, UK politicians and the British media levelled serious accusations at Mr Schlesinger. Yet he was never a narrow-minded monetary policy nationalist; he followed a clear monetary compass. When Mr Schlesinger, a passionate hillwalker, was asked on a Himalayan tour about the importance of the oldest Buddhist mantra om mani padme hum, he is said to have answered: keep the money supply tight. Nowadays, the monetary targeting he introduced and that proved so successful back then has a different role to play. The structure of the economy has changed fundamentally. Mr Schlesinger himself always underscored that monetary policy strategy had to be adapted to structural change if it was to maintain monetary stability. Another of Mr Schlesinger’s insights also remains as true now as it was then: Stable money not only needs stability-oriented policies from both the government and the central bank. Business, employers and trade unions, and consumers also need to behave appropriately – what you might call a culture of stability. He established this culture of stability not just within the Bundesbank, but throughout west German society and later German society as a whole. It is a culture that is an obligation to all of his successors in the office of Bundesbank President. As the fifth in this line, I am honoured to offer my felicitations: heartfelt congratulations on your 100th birthday, Helmut Schlesinger!
Sun Yuning, deputy head of China’s General Administration of Customs, is under disciplinary and supervisory investigation for suspected severe violations of Party discipline and the law, an official statement said Tuesday. Sun, also a member of the Party committee of the administration, is being investigated by the Communist Party of China Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Commission of Supervision, according to the statement.
A digital euro would be a digital form of central bank money, specifically the euro. It could be used by the general public in much the same way as cash, only in virtual form. Alongside cash, the Eurosystem would thus supply households with an additional form of central bank money that can be used quickly, easily and securely.
An undated file photo shows the entrance to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce in Beijing, capital of China. [Photo/Xinhua]
China’s Ministry of Commerce said Tuesday that it will probe into PVH Corp. of the United States under the unreliable entity list framework for suspected discriminatory measures and other practices violating market trading principles regarding Xinjiang-related products.
The U.S. company is suspected of boycotting cotton products from China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region without any factual basis, which seriously undermined the legitimate rights and interests of relevant Chinese enterprises, and jeopardized China’s sovereignty, security and development interests, said the ministry.
A staff member walks past the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in Shenzhen, south China’s Guangdong province, Sept. 21, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]
Chinese stocks rallied on Tuesday, fueled by a package of stimulus measures announced on the same day.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index was up 4.15% to 2,863.13 points, and the Shenzhen Component Index closed 4.36% higher at 8,435.7 points.
China’s central bank, top securities regulator and financial regulator earlier in the day announced a raft of monetary stimulus, property market support and capital market strengthening measures to support the country’s high-quality economic development at a press conference.
The country will cut the reserve requirement ratio, lower mortgage rates on existing home loans, and create new monetary policy tools to support the stock market, among others.
These policies, which exceed market expectations, will boost market confidence, stimulate the vitality of market entities, stabilize credit levels, and enhance the sustainability of financial support for the real economy, said Wen Bin, chief economist at China Minsheng Bank.
Gains are seen across the board on the two bourses, with shares related to steel and coal leading the surge.
The combined turnover of stocks covered by the two indices stood at 974.8 billion yuan (about $138.25 billion), up from 551 billion yuan recorded on the previous trading day.
The ChiNext Index, tracking China’s Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, surged 5.54% to close at 1,615.32 points Tuesday.
Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region
Following are the opening remarks by the Secretary for Justice, Mr Paul Lam, SC, at the forum titled Hong Kong: The Common Law Gateway for Vietnamese Businesses to China and Beyond in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, today (September 24):Vice President Vo (Vice President of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry Mr Vo Tan Thanh), distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, Good afternoon, xin chào buổi trưa. Firstly, a very warm welcome, a very big thank you to all of you joining our forum this afternoon co-organised by the Department of Justice of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Singapore and the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The theme of today’s forum is “Hong Kong: The Common Law Gateway for Vietnamese Businesses to China and Beyond”. In my opening remarks, I simply wish to try to answer two questions, two very obvious questions that I suppose you have in mind. Firstly, who we are; secondly, why are we here. For the purpose of this forum, I have a very big delegation consisting not simply of government lawyers from my Department. The Department of Justice of Hong Kong is in fact quite similar to the Ministry of Justice in Vietnam. So, a lot of people would think I will be responsible for criminal prosecutions, giving advice to the Government. But perhaps not so well known is that, it is also one of my duties to promote legal services in Hong Kong to friends outside the jurisdiction. Apart from my colleagues from the Department of Justice, I am very fortunate to have the support of about 15 legal practitioners from Hong Kong. They are very experienced legal practitioners specialised in different areas. And in fact we have all together, if I recall correctly, six supporting organisations. And you can tell from the nature of the organisations to have some idea as to who these legal practitioners are representing. We have representatives from the two legal professional bodies in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Bar Association and the Law Society of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, we still adopt the British system, we still have a divided legal profession. We have barristers who go to the courts to do advocacy work, and then we have solicitors handling all sorts of legal matters from non-contentious commercial matters to dispute resolution. So the representatives from two legal professional bodies, and then we have representatives from the main arbitration institutions in Hong Kong, including the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, HKIAC, which is the main arbitration institute in Hong Kong. We also have the South China International Arbitration Center (Hong Kong), which is also a very important institution. And then we have the AALCO, Asian African Legal Consultative Organization, with a regional arbitration centre in Hong Kong. We also have a representative from eBRAM which provides electronic services, not just for dispute resolution, but also for deal making. So from looking at the nature of these organisations, I hope you will be convinced that we have a wide spectrum of legal practitioners who are going to share their experiences and their knowledge about Hong Kong legal services to you in due course. Having told you very briefly who we are, the second question perhaps is even more relevant and important: Why are we here? What do we aim to achieve in the next couple of hours? We have two hours for the forum. We decided to share with you some of the things about Hong Kong which you may be interested in for the two hours. And I believe many of you will join our dinner after the forum, so it will be around four hours. A lot can be achieved within four hours. As I said earlier, I come across this question quite often. People wonder, in my capacity as the Secretary for Justice, I should be responsible for legal matters. It is not really my responsibility to promote trade and finance. I am not a minister of commerce. So what on earth am I doing here? To answer this very pertinent question, I think we should remind ourselves of the very close relationship between Vietnam and Hong Kong. I think we have to set the scene, we have to put things in context first. As a matter of fact. I am sure you would agree that Hong Kong and Vietnam share very close ties both as a matter of history and also at present. Now we are in the beautiful city of Ho Chi Minh City. Ho Chi Minh is the founding father of Vietnam, and I am sure you would remember that Mr Ho Chi Minh actually founded the Communist Party of Vietnam in Hong Kong in the early 1930s. I had a very quick chat with Vice President Vo just a moment ago. He reminded me that in the last century, from the 60s, 70s, all the way up to 90s, a lot of trade concerning Vietnam actually went through Hong Kong for a lot of reasons. And then fast forward, what is the position as at today? At the moment, I think there are more than 7 000 Vietnamese settling in Hong Kong, because I attended the national day celebration held by the Consul-General of Vietnam last week, so I got all the figures. There are more than 7 000 Vietnamese settling in Hong Kong. We have a lot of good Vietnam restaurants. I like the pho and banh mi. But more than that, we have roads and streets in Hong Kong named after places in Vietnam. We have the Saigon Street, Hanoi Road, so on and so forth. Last October, the Hong Kong Government has relaxed some immigration regulations, and as a result, it is much easier and convenient for Vietnamese talent to come to work in Hong Kong. In addition, the criteria for taking multiple visas, either as tourists or on business, have also been relaxed. And a little bit closer to today, about two months ago, the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Government came to Vietnam. I think he held a forum exactly in this particular venue. On that occasion, I was told that altogether 22 co-operation agreements have been signed between business people in Ho Chi Minh City and Hong Kong, covering a wide range of areas. And you look at the figures, look at the statistics, Vietnam is Hong Kong’s second-largest trading partner within ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries. I don’t remember the exact figures, but the amount is huge. And in terms of direct investment in Vietnam, the Vice President also confirmed to me that Hong Kong ranks among the top five. So plainly, if you put the matter in context, the relationship between Vietnam and Hong Kong has always been very close. And we look to the future. The Permanent Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam actually paid a visit to Hong Kong about two weeks ago to attend the Belt and Road Summit. And he gave a very inspiring speech touching upon the relationship between Vietnam and Hong Kong. He mentioned the development plan of “Two Corridors, One Belt”, which is a very important development plan of Vietnam. He said he is hoping that we can connect the Vietnamese “Two Corridors, One Belt” plan with the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China. So these two plans actually can have a sort of very good synergy. So this is the background that I would like to remind ourselves. But still you might think, well, I haven’t answered the very pertinent question yet, because so far I did not mention the word “law” very often. So how is legal service, how are lawyers in Hong Kong relevant to what I have said to the future relationship between the jurisdictions? I think the answer must be obvious, because most of you are very successful, very influential business people in Vietnam, and most of you will be engaged in international commercial investment transactions. And you must recognise that no matter how much you hate lawyers, in particular the fees that they are charging you, lawyers are indispensable from the moment you decided to set up a business in a foreign place to the point you have to negotiate or conclude a contract with a foreign party; when it comes to how to manage your risk when you set up a business in a particular place, including: should I be concerned about the labour law there, tax or whatsoever; and in the im
portant event that you run into dispute with your business partner or other people that clearly you will require legal service to assist you to resolve dispute. So the point that I wish to make is that, in the whole business cycle, I would use the analogy “from cradle to grave” but need to be more precise in the context from the inception of a business to the termination, to the point when you rip your profit from your joint venture, at each and every stage, legal service would be indispensable. But that still doesn’t answer the question. Assuming legal service is indispensable, obviously you have to consider who should I instruct? Legal services of which jurisdiction would be to my advantage, would serve my best interest? Now, here comes the ultimate objective of today’s event. I am hoping that after four hours, you will be convinced that Hong Kong will be your best choice. I am not suggesting that Hong Kong is the only choice because the choice is yours, but I am assisting you to make an informed choice. We will be trying our best to persuade you that among all the options, Hong Kong is the best choice. Why? Because Hong Kong is a common law gateway for Vietnamese businesses to China and beyond. This is my short answer. We do have a long answer, but I am afraid that the long answer is not going to be given by me. It is going to be provided by my eminent friends coming from Hong Kong. They will speak from their own area of practices, from their experiences to substantiate the point that I wish to make. And of course, after they share their experiences and what they wish to tell you, at dinner time, I am hoping that most of you would join the dinner, I will have the chance to speak to you again, just to do my closing submission. I will wait for your verdict at the end of your dinner. On this note, I hope you all have a very enjoyable afternoon and a very fruitful afternoon. And I hope that I will be able to convince you, because the duty of a lawyer is to convince people. I will be failing my duty if I am unsuccessful in this respect. I need your support and I am very optimistic because I have very good friends with me doing the job together with me. Thank you very much.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
HONG KONG, Sept. 24 — China’s research vessel Deep Sea No. 1, carrying manned submersible Jiaolong, received a warm welcome Tuesday in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the first time they visited the city.
The vessel is on a home-bound voyage after completing a scientific mission in the Western Pacific Ocean. During their two-day stay in Hong Kong, scientists on board will give lectures to Hong Kong students and hold a number of international seminars to share the results of this scientific expedition.
Warner Cheuk, deputy chief secretary for administration of the HKSAR government, said that the visits ahead of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China fully demonstrated the central government’s care and support for Hong Kong’s marine scientific research development and ecological conservation.
It is hoped that this event will inspire more young people in Hong Kong to engage in deep-sea research and make planet Earth a better place to live in, he said.
Wu Changbin, director of China Ocean Mineral Resources R&D Association, congratulated the successful completion of the Western Pacific international voyage scientific expedition, saying that this voyage not only enhanced China’s scientific understanding of deep-sea biodiversity and ecosystems but also contributed important scientific data to global marine scientific research.
The scientific expedition team of Chinese and foreign scientists set sail on Aug. 10 from Qingdao, east China’s Shandong Province, and made a total of 18 dives in the Western Pacific. It was the first time that foreign scientists have carried out deep-sea scientific research on Jiaolong.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
BEIJING, Sept. 24 — China has improved its obesity treatment guidelines for private medical institutions as soaring obesity rates threaten the health of people of all ages.
According to a 2020 report from the National Health Commission (NHC), 34.3 percent of the country’s adults were overweight and 16.4 percent were obese. Research predicts that overweight and obesity rates among Chinese adults could reach 65.3 percent by 2030.
Chinese minors are also facing significant weight challenges. Currently, about 19 percent of people aged 6 to 17 and 10.4 percent of children under 6 are overweight or obese.
As treatment options for obesity grow more diverse, more and more patients are turning to health care providers for professional treatment plans. Medication, surgical intervention and lifestyle changes are some of these options.
A new initiative has seen the establishment of a weight management center to offer expert guidance to private health care facilities that provide weight loss services, aiming to enhance their ability to diagnose and treat obesity.
Obesity is regarded as a significant trigger for a variety of chronic diseases, including diabetes and cancer. It is a major obstacle to realizing China’s long-term health goals, such as raising the nation’s average life expectancy to 79 by 2030, as proposed in the country’s Outline of Healthy China 2030.
To combat the rising obesity rates, China has introduced a series of initiatives aimed at raising public awareness of weight management and the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
In February, the NHC released a set of dietary guidelines to offer advice on food choices and provide recipes tailored to various dietary habits across different regions of China.
Members of the UConn community and the general public are invited to join in a bipartisan conversation about fostering civic and democratic engagement at The Dodd Center for Human Rights at UConn Storrs on Thursday, September 26, 2024, when Congress to Campus comes to UConn.
The flagship program of the nonprofit organization FMC – a bipartisan, voluntary alliance of former U.S. Senators and Representatives who advocate for representative democracy at home and abroad – Congress to Campus offers a unique civic educational experience by engaging honest dialogue with bipartisan teams of former members of Congress, congressional staff, and American diplomats.
“We know from our own work at UConn on programs like Democracy and Dialogues just how powerful it can be to engage in meaningful and civil discussion on the most critical issues we, as a society, are facing,” says James Waller, the inaugural Christopher J. Dodd Chair in Human Rights Practice at UConn and director of Dodd Human Rights Impact Programs, which is hosting the Congress to Campus event.
“We hope that this event will showcase how civil discourse, and even disagreement, can be a productive and healthy part of our democracy,” Waller says.
Congress to Campus sessions have been held on 183 campuses in 43 states and seven countries, reaching more than 57,000 students in the last 10 years alone.
Loretta Sanchez (contributed photo)
UConn’s Congress to Campus event will feature a discussion with the Honorable Loretta Sanchez (D-CA, 1997-2017), a former senior member of the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees; and the Honorable Fred Upton (R-MI, 1987-2023), a former chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and top Republican leader of the Subcommittee on Energy.
Their discussion will be moderated by NBC Connecticut anchor and reporter Amber Diaz ’11 (CLAS), and UConn President Radenka Maric will deliver welcoming remarks
While visiting UConn, Reps. Sanchez and Upton will also engage with members of the broader community in a series of workshops small group discussions, keynotes, and classroom visits on topics including civil discourse, messaging and disinformation, democracy and human rights, and participation and inclusion.
The event is co-sponsored by UConn’s Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, School of Public Policy, Department of Political Science, Undergraduate Student Government, Department of Residential Life, Community Outreach, Office of Outreach and Engagement, and the Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work.
Fred Upton (contributed photo)
It’s supported by Citizen Travelers, the nonpartisan civic engagement initiative of Travelers.
“We’re so grateful for our many partners on this event, and we hope students as well as members of our UConn community and the greater public will join us for this important conversation,” says Waller.
The Dodd Center is home to robust academic programs and innovative external engagement in human rights, including the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, its Dodd Human Rights Impact Programs, the University Archives and Special Collections, and the Center for Judaic and Contemporary Jewish Life.
The outreach and engagement arm of human rights at UConn, Dodd Human Rights Impact works to develop and support programs and initiatives that seek to directly impact local and global communities by helping them meet their human rights challenges.
Space is limited. Please click here to register for this event.
For more information about Dodd Impact, visithumanrights.uconn.edu/dodd-impact-programs.
Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region
Public urged to stay vigilant against dengue fever and other mosquito-borne diseases during holidays Public urged to stay vigilant against dengue fever and other mosquito-borne diseases during holidays ******************************************************************************************
With the approach of the National Day holiday, the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health today (September 24) appealed to members of the public who intend to travel to stay alert to the situation of mosquito-borne diseases in their destinations. In view of the recent increase in dengue fever (DF) activity in neighbouring areas, the CHP specifically reminded members of the public to adopt necessary anti-mosquito precautions to guard against the disease when travelling abroad. From September 1 to yesterday (September 23), the CHP recorded 12 imported DF cases; the patients had been to Guangdong Province (4), India (3), Nepal (2), the Philippines (2) and Malaysia (1) during the incubation period. The CHP has been closely monitoring the latest DF situation in neighbouring and overseas areas. DF is endemic in many tropical and subtropical areas of the world. The latest surveillance data showed that there was a significant increase in DF cases noted in some places in Asia compared to the same period last year. According to information from the Singapore Ministry of Health, a total of 11 847 DF cases have been recorded from January to September 14 this year, which is higher when compared to 6 755 cases recorded in the same period in 2023. In addition, Malaysia has recorded 98 442 cases from January to September 7 this year, which was a 19.3 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2023. According to the Health Commission of Guangdong Province, the number of DF cases recorded in Guangdong Province in the past three months has been increasing, with 233 and 1 220 cases in July and August 2024 respectively. Most of the cases were locally acquired infection. Information from the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention further showed that more than 1 400 DF local cases have been recorded in September (as of September 15), with the highest numbers of cases recorded in Foshan, Guangzhou and Zhongshan. According to the World Health Organization, the global incidence of DF has markedly increased over the past two decades, posing a substantial public health challenge. In 2023, ongoing transmissions, combined with an unexpected spike in DF cases, had resulted in close to a historic high of over 6.5 million cases, and more than 7 300 dengue-related deaths reported in over 80 countries/territories. Since the beginning of 2024, the Americas, including Brazil, Argentina and Peru, have recorded over 11 million cases, a record number. Detailed information on the latest DF situation in Hong Kong, as well as neighbouring and overseas countries and areas, has been uploaded to the CHP website (www.chp.gov.hk/files/pdf/df_imported_cases_and_overseas_figures_eng.pdf). A spokesman for the CHP urged members of the public to stay vigilant and adopt appropriate anti-mosquito measures during their travel to prevent DF, as well as other mosquito-borne diseases including Japanese encephalitis, zika virus infection, malaria, etc. The CHP spokesman reiterated that members of the public should follow stringent anti-mosquito measures when travelling. When travelling to areas where vector-borne diseases are common, they may consider to arrange travel health consultation with a doctor at least six weeks before the journey for risk assessment during which the need for any vaccinations, chemoprophylaxis and vector preventive measures will be determined. The following measures on mosquito control could reduce the chance of acquiring mosquito-borne disease during travel:
Wear loose, light-coloured, long-sleeved tops and trousers; Use DEET-containing insect repellent on exposed parts of the body and clothing. For details about the use of insect repellents and the key points to be observed, please refer to ‘Tips for using insect repellents’; and When engaging in outdoor activities, avoid using fragrant cosmetics or skin care products, re-apply insect repellents according to instructions, and apply insect repellents after sunscreen if both are used.
“Returned travellers should consult a doctor promptly if developing symptoms such as fever, respiratory symptoms, rash or painful swelling, and inform the doctor of their travel history for prompt diagnosis and treatment,” the spokesman added. The CHP will continue to monitor the local and overseas situation of infectious diseases and provide the latest information to members of the public in a timely manner for a better understanding of the development of infectious diseases and preparation on precautionary works. For more information, please refer to the CHP website on GAS infection (www.chp.gov.hk/en/healthtopics/content/24/107780.html), DF (www.chp.gov.hk/en/healthtopics/content/24/19.html) and travel health service (www.travelhealth.gov.hk).
Ends/Tuesday, September 24, 2024Issued at HKT 20:00
Source: United Kingdom UK House of Lords (video statements)
Overhaul inquiries to make them more efficient and effective, says House of Lords committee in new report.
Public inquiries are set up to consider incidents of major public concern, such as the Grenfell Tower fire, the Post Office Horizon scandal and the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Statutory Inquiries Committee has been considering the way these inquiries work. In its new report it found inefficiencies leading to delays and unnecessary costs. It calls on the government to conduct a major overhaul, including supporting an independent body responsible for following up on recommendations and ensuring that those accepted by the government are implemented.
Find out more and read the report in full https://ukparliament.shorthandstories.com/statutory-inquiries-lords-report/index.html?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=statutory-inquiries-report&utm_content=lords-youtube-channel
#HouseOfLords #PublicInquiries
Catch-up on House of Lords business:
Watch live events: https://parliamentlive.tv/Lords
Read the latest news: https://www.parliament.uk/lords/
Stay up to date with the House of Lords on social media:
Secretary-General of ASEAN, Dr. Kao Kim Hourn, today addressed the China-ASEAN Silk Road E-commerce Open Cooperation Promotion Event in Nanning, China. In his remarks, Dr. Kao emphasized three key areas where ASEAN and China can collaborate to unlock the full potential of e-commerce, including: building on existing digital transformation initiatives, maximizing the benefits of RCEP and ACFTA 3.0, and encouraging greater collaboration between major e-commerce platform to empower MSMEs.
Download the full remarks here.
The post Secretary-General of ASEAN opens the China-ASEAN Silk Road E-commerce Open Cooperation Promotion Event appeared first on ASEAN Main Portal.
A digital euro would be a digital form of central bank money, specifically the euro. It could be used by the general public in much the same way as cash, only in virtual form. Alongside cash, the Eurosystem would thus supply households with an additional form of central bank money that can be used quickly, easily and securely.
Source: State University Higher School of Economics – State University Higher School of Economics –
The first project of the new season at the HSE ART GALLERY on Pionerka will continue the cycle of paired solo exhibitions of “teachers and students” of the HSE School of Design. This time, the main characters will be the head of the profile “Modern Painting” and its graduates – Vladimir Potapov and Sasha Podgorodskaya.
The format of double solo exhibitions allows, firstly, to present a cross-section of the most significant works of young authors created during their years of study, and secondly, to compare the perspectives of students and their teachers.
The title of Vladimir Potapov’s project, “The Duration of Decay,” refers to the artist’s personal exhibition, “The Moment of Decay,” in the Art Ru Agency space in 2011. For him, this was not only his first solo project in Moscow, but also his first attempt to go beyond the classical painting convention of “canvas and oil.” The exhibition allowed him to chart a path and showed prospects for finding practical answers to the question, “Is painting alive today?”
The various stages of this journey are reflected in the exhibition at HSE ART GALLERY. The works on display belong to different series created by Potapov from 2012 to 2022. This range allows us to cover the author’s wide range of tools and radically different methods that have developed over the course of a decade.
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Please note; This information is raw content directly from the information source. It is accurate to what the source is stating and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Source: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe – OSCE
Headline: The OSCE Mission to BiH Donates Specialized Equipment to Police K9 Units across the country
The OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina has donated specialized equipment to K9 police units. (OSCE) Photo details
The OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina (Mission) has donated today specialized equipment to K9 police units across the country. The donation includes essential work gear and is part of the Mission’s project on Addressing Security and Safety Risks of Illegal Possession, Misuse, and Trafficking of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) and their Ammunition in Bosnia and Herzegovina. K9 units will receive muzzles, Kevlar suits, training sleeves, scent detection boxes, specialized SALW suitcases, alpinist equipment for dogs as well as a scent detection carousel, altogether worth approximately EUR 70,000
The equipment will increase the weapons and explosives detection capacities of various agencies across BiH, including the BiH Border Police, the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA), the Police of Brčko District BiH, the Republika Srpska Ministry of Interior, the Federal Police Administration, as well as the Ministries of Interior of the Tuzla Canton, Una-Sana Canton, and Zenica-Doboj Canton.
“We are proud to be able to provide this gear to our partners across the country. It will significantly enhance the ability of police K9 units to detect concealed weapons, ammunition, and explosives,” said Ambassador Brian Aggeler, Head of the OSCE Mission to BiH. “This donation would not have been possible if it were not for our international partners and the support that they have provided to the Project. Through our joint efforts we can help BiH address serious security threats and increases safety for all citizens,” he added.
Mlađen Božović, Chief of Cabinet of the Minister of Security, expressed his satisfaction with the ongoing efforts to equip police agencies, enhancing their operational capabilities in the fight against illegal arms trade. He stated that: “These criminal activities present an increasing security challenge for all countries. Police agencies must adapt by continually strengthening their capacity to detect illegal weapons and disrupt smuggling routes. Preventing the illegal arms trade remains a top priority for the Ministry of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our goal is to enhance security and prevent criminal activities related to weapons by curbing smuggling, both in the region and across the European Union member states.”
The OSCE Mission to BiH remains committed to support authorities at all levels in mitigating security risks posed by the illegal possession, misuse, and trafficking of SALW and their ammunition. By this commitment, the Mission contributes to creating a safer and more secure environment for all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The multi-year project: Addressing Security and Safety Risks of Illegal Possession, Misuse, and Trafficking of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) and their Ammunition in Bosnia and Herzegovina is implemented by the Mission thanks to the generous support provided by Austria, the Czech Republic, the European Union, Germany, France, Liechtenstein, Norway, Slovakia, Türkiye, and the United States.
Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, International Energy Agency, and Facts Global Energy
The United States is the world’s largest exporter of motor gasoline (finished gasoline plus gasoline blending components), supplying over 16% of total global exports. U.S. motor gasoline exports in 2023 averaged 900,000 barrels per day (b/d), equivalent to about 10% of domestic consumption and enough to fill up the tanks of over 1.5 million SUVs per day, assuming an average tank size of 24 gallons. Other large gasoline exporters, including Singapore and the Netherlands, have never exceeded 700,000 b/d in gasoline exports. China and India have both added significant refining capacity since 2010 and have also increased gasoline exports.
The United States was a net importer of motor gasoline for over a half century from 1961 to 2015. However, that trend changed during the past decade. The high volume of motor gasoline exports in recent years reflects longer trends in increasing U.S. exports of refined products in general, which set records in 2022 and 2023. The growth in U.S. refined product exports reflects several factors, including generally increasing refinery capacity from 2010 to 2023 and rising production from existing refineries through increased utilization. Much of the increase in refinery capacity has led to higher motor gasoline yields because of added light crude oil processing units that process increasing volumes of light tight oil produced by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Finally, although refinery capacity has grown, U.S. consumption of gasoline has not, making more gasoline available for export. Motor gasoline consumption in 2023 was flat compared with 2010 (and 0.4 million b/d less than its peak in 2018).
Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration
Motor gasoline accounts for the third-largest share of U.S. refined product exports, behind propane and distillate fuel oil. Unlike propane, which is primarily exported to Asia, the majority of U.S. motor gasoline exports (over 500,000 b/d) go to Mexico, with the remainder going primarily to Central American and South American countries. Over 90% of U.S. gasoline exports came from the U.S. Gulf Coast (PADD 3).
With effect from Monday, 2 September 2024, Dr Sabine Mauderer was appointed Vice-President of the Deutsche Bundesbank. Furthermore, Lutz Lienenkämper and Michael Theurer joined the Bundesbank’s Executive Board. The responsibilities within the Executive Board have therefore been reallocated. The following reallocation of responsibilities comes into effect immediately. President Dr Joachim Nagel Economics Directorate for Board and International Affairs Communications Strategy and Innovation Legal Services Deputy President Dr Sabine Mauderer Markets Controlling, Accounting and Organisation Sustainability Burkhard Balz Cash management Digital Euro Payments and Settlement Systems Centre for International Central Bank Dialogue Lutz Lienenkämper Human Resources Internal audit Compliance Michael Theurer Banking and Financial Supervision Financial Stability N.N. Information Technology Data and Statistics Risk Control Research Responsibilities within the unallocated area have been temporarily assigned to Dr Joachim Nagel (Risk Control and Research Centre), Dr Sabine Mauderer (Data and Statistics) and Burkhard Balz (Information Technology).
Harbour Grace RCMP is continuing to investigate a collision that occurred between two vehicles on the Veterans Memorial Highway on the evening of September 20, 2024.
Shortly before 7:15 p.m. on Friday, police received a report of the collision that occurred on the highway near Tilton. A truck towing a utility trailer crossed over the centre line and collided with an oncoming SUV. Two of the three occupants of the truck fled the scene on foot. The third occupant was located with serious injuries at the scene. The two occupants of the SUV received non-life-threatening injuries. All three individuals were transported to Carbonear General Hospital.
RCMP Police Service Dog (PSD) Marlow and her handler were engaged and, while approaching the scene of the collision, observed a man in a wooded area on the side of the highway. The man, who had serious injuries, was identified as one of the occupants from the truck and was arrested for leaving the scene of the collision. He was transported to the hospital for treatment of serious injuries and was released from police custody.
The third occupant of the truck was tracked by PSD Marlow and her handler from the scene of the collision to a business in Spaniards Bay. Officers learned that the man had departed the business prior to their arrival. Efforts are underway for his arrest.
A quantity of suspected cocaine, as well as numerous prescription pills, were located and seized from inside the truck.
The investigation is continuing with charges pending.
RCMP NL continues to fulfill its mandate to protect public safety, enforce the law, and ensure the delivery of priority policing services in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Two youths have been charged following an assault with a weapon in St. George.
On September 16, 2024, at approximately 8:50 p.m., the St George RCMP Detachment responded to a report of an assault on Portage Street, in St. George. When police arrived on scene, they found a 43-year-old male victim. The man was transported to hospital with what were believed to be serious, but non-life-threatening injuries.
Shortly after, police were able to identify two youths of interest. The first youth was arrested September 17, 2024, and the second youth was arrested on September 18, 2024.
On September 19, 2024, the two youths appeared in Saint John Provincial Youth Court, and were charged with aggravated assault. They were both later released on conditions and are expected to return to court at a later date.
Police are asking anyone who may have witnessed the assault to contact the St. George RCMP at 506-755-1130. Information can also be provided anonymously through Crime Stoppers by calling 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), by downloading the secure P3 Mobile App, or by Secure Web Tips atwww.crimenb.ca.
Source: Africa Press Organisation – English (2) – Report:
NEW YORK, United States of America, September 24, 2024/APO Group/ —
The African Development Bank (www.AfDB.org) has urged Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and other development partners to scale up innovative partnerships and initiatives to build peace and security in Africa, home to eleven of the world’s most conflict-affected states.
Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade, African Development Bank Vice-President for Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery Complex led the charge during a session held September 21, on the sidelines of the 79th Assembly of the United Nations titled: Investing in Prevention: Scaling up Peace – A Call to Action for DFIs.
Over the last 20 years, the level of global conflict has escalated, with one-fifth of Africa’s population residing in conflict affected areas, affecting the future of the world’s fastest-growing continent.
“Our goal today is very clear. We would like to mobilise institutions to prioritise peace building and through innovative partnerships and new financial mechanisms. This is a call for action.” Akin-Olugbade said in opening remarks.
The New Agenda for Peace, which is at center stage of the UN’s Summit of the Future, highlights how different actors, including DFIs can serve as peace agents, and emphasises the role of partnerships, especially in the context of fragile and conflict affected countries, urging increased political and financial mobilisation to prevent conflicts.
The effect of three decades of a devastating civil war in Mozambique are still evident, Amilcar Tivane, Mozambique’s Vice-Minister of Economy and Finance told participants, stressing the need for prevention.
The Mozambique government has learned innovative solutions to deal with the root causes of conflict and to address lingering security challenges in northern Mozambique such as terrorism and insurgency. What has worked is a resilience building strategy together with partnerships, Tivane said. The country is also launching a new initiative for peace for the reconstruction of affected tourism areas
« We have learned that prevention is critical, » he said. « Sometimes its difficult (for governments) to acknowledge that the social dimensions could have a significant impact.»
Issa Faye, Director General of the Islamic Development Bank ( IsDB) said his institution’s blend of ordinary and concessional financing has been key to the successful financial support for 32 fragile African countries out of the 52 they support.
The IsDB have aided thousands of refugees through programmes to address skills gap, training and education, combining economic empowerment and food security.
Faye underlined Islamic financing as a concept framing a lot of the institution’s programmes and stressed the need to find alternative financing which is dedicated, responsive and resilient.
Risk perception, another major constraint to financing peace initiatives in Africa, was the subject of Pradeep Kurukulasuriya, the Executive Secretary of the UN Capital Development Fund (UN CDF), submission. He offered a concrete example of successful de-risking of a peace initiative in Burundi.
« UN DCRF works to de-risk so that larger streams of finance can flow from the larger and more established institutions, » he said.
Since 2021, UNCDF has been working in collaboration with the UN Peacebuilding Fund and the Government of Burundi to address interconnected and transnational root-causes of instability and nature loss in the Kibara National Park and surrounding buffer zones. The joint initiative with several partners including UNESCO, uses a unique blended finance approach.
Peace finance needs new a lens
Itonde Kakoma, President of Interpeace said a new paradigm approach, which moved away from the donor focus and instead sees development partners investing in peace investment hubs and creating a pipeline of peace positive projects, is much needed.
He said the need to connect development finance and peace building while leveraging the private sector to build peace, safety and social cohesion between communities living in complex environments, was more imperative than ever.
« We have a conviction that the Sustainable Development Goals can be unlocked by peace finance, » Kakoma said.
Other participants such as Elizabeth Spehar, Assistant Secretary General, United Nations Peacebuilding Support stressed the importance of inclusion and the role of DFI’s such as the African Development Bank.
“We need the economic might of the DFI’s. We have to work on this together,” she said.
Spehar paid tribute to the African Development Bank which emphasizes peace and security as public goods in its new Ten-year strategy (2024-2033). The Bank’s joint pilot project in Central African Republic with UNHCR has the UN “working with communities on the peace part and the African Development Bank working on the employment part,” Spehar said.
The Bank has been on the forefront of systematically addressing issues of fragility in Africa and has built up over 20 years of experience in building Africa’s resilience by providing intellectual leadership and dedicated financial instruments, such as the Transition Support Facility, which mobilizes additional resources for affected countries. The Bank’s Private Sector Credit Enhancement Facility allows it to do more private investments in these riskier markets.
The audience also heard from the g7+, Asian Development Bank, Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (CSPPS), the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Aswan Forum, UNHCR, and the African Union Peace Fund whose Director Dagmawit Moges spoke of the institution’s reforms and the importance of governance.
“We’ve gone beyond theory and talk. We at the African Development Bank are interested in strengthening partnerships. We are not going to work in silos. We are looking forward to continuing this discussion at COP 29 and at the Africa Resilience Forum next year,” Akin-Olugbade said.
It’s been less than six months since Google Cloud Next, and the pace of innovation across industries has been nothing short of extraordinary. We’re proud of our AI leadership and differentiation as we continue pushing the technology frontier for our customers. From launching more powerful versions of Gemini 1.5 Pro, to rolling out general availability for Gemini Flash and Imagen 3, to investing in our Vertex AI platform, our teams have been building off the product momentum of Next. And all of this innovation is driving incredible use of our products.
Today, as part of our Gemini at Work global event, we are showcasing nearly 50 new customer stories from organizations around the world to highlight just how impactful generative AI can be when you put it to work at scale — including Pods, Snap, Volkswagen US, Warner Bros. Discovery and many others. We’re inspired by what customers are building and excited by how quickly they’ve been able to move ideas from experimentation into production with our Vertex AI platform. We’re also seeing major boosts in productivity through Gemini for Google Workspace, with customers saving an average of 105 minutes per user, per week, according to our recent study of enterprise customers.
They can access and customize the best foundation models from both Google and the industry, including Gemini. We are the only Cloud provider to offer widely-used first-party, third-party, and open models. Enterprises want to choose a platform that gives them choice.
They can create sophisticated gen AI agents and experiences faster with our single, integrated development platform, Vertex AI. It sits on top of our world-class infrastructure and is the only unified platform that lets customers discover and access models, tune and augment models, and create, ground, deploy, and manage AI agents and experiences.
They can be more productive with our AI agents. We offer Gemini for Google Cloud and Gemini for Google Workspace, as well as purpose-built agents for Customer Engagement and Search. Customers are really appreciating these packaged agents, in addition to building their own.
They are deploying models with confidence, with the most comprehensive approach to grounding in enterprise truth. This significantly improves response accuracy and completeness, and lets them control their brand voice and customer experience.
Six types of AI agents
We continue to see customers and partners benefiting from AI agents — intelligent systems that go beyond simple chat and predictions, to proactively take actions. What makes AI agents unique is they help achieve specific goals, whether that’s guiding a shopper to the perfect pair of shoes, helping an employee look for the right health benefits, or supporting nursing staff with smoother patient hand-offs during shift changes. We see AI agents centering around six use cases:
Customer agents help make great recommendations
Customer agents work seamlessly across channels including the web, mobile, and point of sale, and can be integrated into product experiences with voice and video.
Bell Canada pioneered using digital agents to provide self-service — improving customer experience and delivering $20 million in cost savings.
Best Buy resolves issues up to 90 seconds faster using automated call summarization.
GoTo Group launched Dira, a Bahasa Indonesia AI-powered voice assistant integrated into their GoPay fintech app. Customers use voice commands and complete tasks like bill payments and money transfers with fewer steps. Check out a live demo of the app from GoTo in this video.
ScottsMiracle-Gro built an AI agent on Google Cloud Vertex AI to provide tailored gardening advice and product recommendations.
Snap deployed the multimodal capability of Gemini within their “My AI” chatbot and has since seen over 2.5x as much engagement within Snapping to My AI in the United States.
10:25
Telecom Italia (TIM) implemented a Google-powered voice agent to address many customer calls, increasing efficiency by 20%.
UPS Capital uses an agent built on Google Cloud technology to analyze package movements, insurance claims, and address data in real time to identify anomalies.
Volkswagen US 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 multi-modal capabilities to see helpful information and context on indicator lights simply by pointing their smartphone cameras at their dashboards. Watch how the myVW app works in this demo.
We continue to build on this momentum with our own packaged agents. For example, today we are announcing Customer Engagement Suite with Google AI, an end-to-end application that combines the rich features of our leading Contact Center AI solution with the latest gen AI capabilities.
This new solution offers four key benefits:
Omnichannel features, so you can orchestrate consistent customer experiences across web, mobile, voice, email, and apps with a single platform.
Multimodal approach, so your customers can use text, voice, and images.
Rule-based controls AND generative AI so you can address a broad range of issues that may come up from your customers. For instance, a customer speaking with a bank representative may have to verify their identity through a specific set of verification questions. At the same time, they may ask the bank: “Tell me what’s the best mortgage offering for me? Can you compare it across the products you offer?” The first requires a deterministic flow. The second requires a generative flow.
Grounding to provide the highest levels of accuracy
All of this can be connected with any customer service application — whether it’s a SaaS application like Salesforce, Servicenow, SAP, Dynamics, or Oracle — or an on-premise app.
Employee agents help workers collaborate and get more done
Employee agents can streamline processes, manage repetitive tasks, answer employee questions, as well as edit and translate critical communications.
Click Therapeutics develops prescription digital therapeutics designed to treat disease. Their 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.
Dun & Bradstreet built an email-generation tool with Gemini that helps sellers create tailored, personalized communications to prospects and customers for its research services. They 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.”
Elanco, a world leader in animal health, has implemented a gen AI framework, powered by Vertex AI and Gemini, to support critical business processes, such as Pharmacovigilance, Customer Orders, and Clinical Insights. This has resulted in an estimated ROI of $1.9 million since launching last year.
Randstad is using Gemini for Google Workspace to enhance our relationships internally and externally with candidates, making them more efficient and giving them time back to focus on the human aspect of their work.
10:25
SURA Investments, the largest Asset Manager in Latin America, developed a gen AI-powered analysis model for employees built on Google Cloud that allows them to better understand customer needs. It has already improved sentiment analysis on more than 90% of calls and delivered a 10-point increase in customer satisfaction.
Thomson Reuters added Gemini Pro to its suite of large language models (LLM). The 2 million token context window makes some skills as much as 10x times faster to process and unlocks the ability to create new skills that require the LLM to process entire documents in context
The employee agents we deliver through Gemini for Google Workspace, our leading collaboration and productivity tools, are helping customers get more done, with greater confidence and in less time. In a recent survey of our enterprise customers using Gemini, we found they save an average of 105 minutes per user, per week. And it’s not just about getting more done, but getting it done really well — 75% of daily Gemini for Workspace users say it improves the quality of their work.
To help more people boost productivity with AI, we’re making the Gemini app with enterprise-grade data protection available as part of existing Google Workspace subscriptions. Starting next month, customers will have a round-the-clock brainstorming partner, research assistant, and more, to help where they need it most.
Data agents help you do research and data analysis more effectively
Data agents 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 get the answers.
Bayer’s Crop Science team developed a Field Answers application built on Vertex AI to make critical, timely decisions in the field, contributing to more sustainable and efficient farming.
The CME Group is building a first-of-its-kind cloud-based commodities trading platform with Google Cloud’s 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
Hiscox, one of the oldest syndicates in Lloyd’s of London, used BigQuery and Vertex AI to create the first AI-enhanced lead underwriting model, automating quoting for complex risks, from three days down to a few minutes.
Ipsos, a multinational market research firm, built a data analysis tool grounded in Google Search for its market researchers, eliminating the need for time-consuming requests to analysts.
Intelligencia AI, a healthcare technology company, uses Cloud SQL for Postgres for the data infrastructure that powers its AI-driven drug development predictions, enabling the company to deliver accurate and transparent results to customers, while reducing overhead.
NeuroPace, a medical device company, built a solution using Google Cloud gen AI technologies, to quickly identify effective epilepsy treatment options. By analyzing brainwave patterns, they can find similar patients and apply successful therapies faster.
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.
10:25
Security agents significantly increase the speed of investigations
Security agents automate monitoring and response for greater vigilance and compliance controls. They can also help guard data and models from cyberattacks, such as malicious prompt injection.
Apex Fintech has accelerated the creation of complex threat detections, reducing the time required from hours to mere seconds with Google SecOps.
Certify OS is working with Google Cloud to automate credentialing, licensing, and monitoring of medical providers for healthcare networks, relieving the burden of time-consuming and often siloed information.
Fiserv is working with Gemini in Security Operations to summarize threats, find answers, and detect, validate, and respond to security events faster.
NetRise‘s “Trace” product is enabling AI-powered semantic search — built using Google Cloud gen AI — in the software supply chain.
Creative agents can help everyone build design, artistic or production skills
Creative agents can empower organizations with the best design and production skills, working across images, slides, and more. Many businesses are building agents alongside their marketing teams, audio and video production teams, and creative teams to help explore and build creative concepts.
Formula E is using Google Cloud gen AI to summarize two-hour-long race commentary into a two-minute podcast in any language, using driver data and ongoing seasonal storylines.
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.
PODS, working with advertising agency Tombras, used Gemini to create the “World’s Smartest Billboard,” a campaign on their trucks that could adapt to each neighborhood in New York City. The ads used live feeds of data so they updated in real-time hitting all 299 neighborhoods in just 29 hours creating more than 6,000 headlines.
10:25
PUMA is using Imagen to customize product photos on their website, saving time and ensuring they are locally relevant. Puma India has already seen a 10% increase in click-through rate, and they share how they did it in this demo.
Radisson Hotel Group worked with Accenture and Google Cloud to use Vertex AI and Gemini models to personalize its advertising at scale by training AI models on extensive datasets stored in BigQuery; ad teams saw productivity rise 50% while revenue increased from AI-powered campaigns by more than 20%.
Google’s open platform drives more momentum with partners and customers
The success of AI depends on an open platform that offers choice, is easy to integrate with existing systems, and is supported by a broad ecosystem. Google Cloud works closely with important partners, like Accenture and Deloitte, who report more than 45% of their Google Cloud gen AI projects have moved from proof of concept to production. In addition, expanded partnerships and dedicated Google Cloud centers of excellence with Accenture, BCG, Cognizant, Deloitte, HCLTech, KPMG, McKinsey, PwC, and Wipro have spurred thousands of successful projects. This collaborative ecosystem is the key to unlocking AI’s true potential. At Google Cloud, we truly value our partnership with this ecosystem, which is vital to helping our entire industry in its transformation — from systems updates to organizational change management to an overall mindset shift.
We’re inspired by the ingenuity and speed with which our customers are embracing gen AI. And we continue to work hard to partner with customers to help them deliver real business value in the form of incremental leads, conversions, sales, and profits. We’re committed to taking a bold and responsible approach to make AI helpful for everyone, helping organizations of all sizes solve real-world challenges in entirely new ways.
This is the new way to cloud. It’s a journey we’re on together with all of you — our customers and partners — all around the world.
MSF suspended outreach activities in Yei, Central Equatoria state, South Sudan, after a critical security incident.
MSF cannot resume activities until the safety of our staff is assured.
Juba – Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has suspended all outreach activities in Yei, in Central Equatoria state, South Sudan, until further notice, following a critical security incident involving MSF staff and staff from a partner organisation on Friday, 20 September 2024. We strongly condemns this attack against health workers in an area where people already face difficulty accessing healthcare.
“We are deeply shocked by this unacceptable attack on the provision of neutral and impartial humanitarian assistance for communities in need,” says Iqbal Huda, MSF’s Head of Mission in South Sudan. “As a result of the attack, our outreach movements and activities to communities surrounding Yei and Morobo have been suspended until we can have concrete guarantees that medical humanitarian services and lifesaving work can continue unhindered in the area.”
At approximately 3 pm on Friday, two clearly marked MSF vehicles were coming back to the town of Yei from an outreach activity, when along the road unknown armed men forced our staff to disembark from their vehicles at gunpoint, while looting MSF and the staff’s personal belongings. The armed men then forcibly took an MSF staff member and a staff member of a partner organisation to the bush, while letting the two remaining MSF staff members, the drivers, proceed with their vehicles.
While the two abducted staff were safely released 24 hours later, this is the third attack on humanitarian organisations occurring around Yei in three months, pointing to a systematic attack on the provision of humanitarian aid. Until the safety of MSF activities and staff are assured, MSF cannot guarantee resumption of activities in the area.
The real victims of these incidents are the most vulnerable people living in underserved areas, as MSF is the only provider of healthcare services in this area outside of Yei town.
“Attacks against humanitarians and healthcare workers are unacceptable and they directly affect the provision of healthcare for communities who desperately need it. We call on all armed groups to uphold their responsibilities under international humanitarian law and respect the provision of humanitarian assistance,” says Huda.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been working in the region that today constitutes the Republic of South Sudan since 1983. In Yei, MSF offers primary healthcare services by supporting four Ministry of Health facilities, delivering outpatient consultations, routine vaccinations, and maternal and child healthcare. MSF also conducts mobile clinics and provides community-based healthcare through the Boma Health Initiative programme in the area.
In South Sudan, MSF teams provide a range of services including general healthcare, mental healthcare and specialist hospital care. Our mobile teams also provide health assistance to displaced people and remote communities in six of the country’s 10 states and in two administrative areas. In addition to responding to emergencies and disease outbreaks, we also carry out preventative activities, such as vaccination campaigns, seasonal malaria chemo-prevention, safe drinking water and distribution of non-food items.
You could also be interested in
Palestine
Access to medical care at risk in West Bank as Israeli incursions intensify
Press Release5 Sep 2024
Gaza-Israel war
With Al-Aqsa hospital under threat, MSF opens field hospital in central Gaza
Press Release28 Aug 2024
South Sudan
Action needed on HIV and tuberculosis amid South Sudan’s crises
South Africa is set to experience a mix of warm and cool temperatures in the coming days, with a significant drop in temperatures and even light snowfall expected later this month, according to the South African Weather Service (SAWS).
This after the weekend’s freezing temperatures and snowfall in some parts of the country caused havoc on the roads, resulting in one fatality.
Forecaster at the South African Weather Service (SAWS) Lehlogonolo Thobela provided an outlook for the week ahead, highlighting warm conditions across much of the country.
“Today we are expecting just warm temperatures over the central parts, ranging between 26 and 30 degrees Celsius, that’s on average in the Northern Cape province.
“In Gauteng, the weather will be cooler in the south but warm in the northern areas, with maximum temperatures reaching about 25 degrees in the north and about 24 to 22 degrees over the southern parts,” Thobela said.
The Eastern Cape will experience varied conditions, with cool weather in the northeastern parts but warmer and even hot temperatures in the south.
“It will be quite cool over most parts of the northeastern parts of the Eastern Cape but warm over most of the province and hot over the southern parts,” Thobela explained.
The Western Cape, meanwhile, will see cooler conditions in the west but warmer weather in the east.
“Just warm temperatures are expected across the country,” Thobela said.
Looking ahead to Wednesday, Thobela forecasted hot temperatures in the Lowveld of Mpumalanga, with highs of 34 degrees Celsius, and similarly warm to hot conditions in Limpopo.
“It will be warm over most parts of the country, with maximums between 25 and 30 degrees over the central parts,” he noted.
He said that cooler weather will persist in the Western Cape, especially along the west coast, where temperatures are expected to reach a maximum of 22 degrees.
The heat is set to continue through the week, especially in Limpopo and the northern parts of KwaZulu-Natal, with hot conditions predicted for the 26th and 27th of September.
“It will be hot over most parts of Limpopo on the 26th and 27th,” Thobela said.
Central regions like the Free State, North West, and Gauteng will remain warm during this period.
However, a significant temperature drop is expected later in the month, starting on the 29th of September.
“It will be cold over the southern parts, and the Western Cape will be very cold, with maximums ranging between 10 and 14 degrees Celsius,” Thobela said.
The Eastern Cape will remain cool, with colder conditions in the central and southwestern parts.
On the 30th of September, cold conditions will spread to KwaZulu-Natal and parts of the Free State.
“There is some light snow expected over the highland areas of the Eastern Cape, as well as the southwestern parts of KwaZulu-Natal and the border of Lesotho, between the 30th [of September] and the 1st of October,” Thobela revealed, though he assured that the snowfall would be light.
The cold snap will extend to the escarpment of Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal on the 1st of October, with temperatures starting to recover by the 2nd.
South Africans are advised to prepare for fluctuating temperatures and possible snow in high-lying areas over the next week. – SAnews.gov.za
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.
Sri Lanka has sworn in 55-year-old leftist politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake as its new president. There was no clear winner after the first round of votes from Saturday’s election had been counted. But Dissanayake, who is commonly known by his initials AKD, emerged victorious after a count of the second-choice votes.
His election is something of a watershed. It was the first time since Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948 that the presidential race was decided by a second round of counting after either of the top two candidates failed to win the mandatory 50% of the vote. And it was also the only time that voters have elected a candidate who does not belong to the country’s traditional ruling elite.
Sri Lanka has long been held in the tight grip of a handful of powerful political families. The Rajapaksa dynasty, for example, had dominated Sri Lankan politics for well over two decades before mass protests over a severe economic crisis unseated the country’s leader, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in 2022.
AKD’s campaign rhetoric centred largely around corruption as the key culprit in the economic woes facing the country. Previous governments have been linked not only to corruption, but also to human rights abuses and the military’s encroachment on the civilian space. Persuaded by his logic of openness and transformation, voters saw AKD as an opportunity to change Sri Lanka’s stale political system.
Following his election, AKD declared in characteristic Marxian mode: “This victory belongs to all of us.” Assuaging the demands of the masses for change will be a priority.
Voters have chosen a new president for the first time since mass protests unseated Sri Lanka’s leader in 2022. Color Collector / Shutterstock
AKD comes from a strong leftwing ideological background. He leads a political outfit called the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP), which is by no means a heavyweight party. It has only three members in the country’s 225-member parliament, and does not come with an attractive pedigree.
The JVP is seen in Sri Lanka as a fringe reactionary party due to its involvement in violent insurrections and targeted assassinations that left thousands dead in the 1980s. Given Sri Lanka’s fractious ethno-nationalist politics, how the JVP and its new national leader carry the masses forward on a national regeneration project would be anybody’s guess.
But AKD has shown himself to be aware of the underlying tensions in the country and, since becoming the JVP’s leader in 2008, has apologised for the party’s past violence. In his swearing-in speech, AKD declared: “We need to establish a new clean political culture … We will do the utmost to win back the people’s respect and trust in the political system.”
The road ahead
There are several critical challenges that AKD needs to face head on – the most important of which concerns the country’s failing economy. After all, it was acute economic hardship that drove the citizenry to vote for political change.
In the past, a substantial portion of whatever Sri Lanka managed to procure through its two main sources of income, tourism and remittances sent home by citizens living abroad, went towards settling its external debts. However, these earnings were hit badly by the pandemic and the country’s economic woes spiralled out of control.
The rate of inflation soared and dwindling reserves of foreign currency resulted in acute shortages of essential goods and services. Then, in May 2022, Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time in its history.
This scenario quickly led to a national emergency. Faced with the most devastating economic crisis since independence, a countrywide uprising (colloquially known as the aragalaya) ousted Gotabaya Rajapaksa from office.
The removal of Rajapaksa secured an uneasy peace, and things have since tentatively improved on the economic front. Ranil Wickremesinghe took over as the interim president in 2022 and his administration managed to secure a loan worth US$3 billion (£2.2 billion) from the International Monetary Fund.
The economy now appears to be on a slow path of recovery. It is expected to grow in 2024 for the first time in three years, supported by a narrower trade deficit and growing remittances.
Sri Lanka’s interim president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has congratulated Dissanayake on winning the election. Ruwan Walpola / Shutterstock
AKD is aware of the enormity of the burden he carries. As he admitted while accepting the role of president: “I have said before that I am not a magician – I am an ordinary citizen. There are things I know and don’t know. My aim is to gather those with the knowledge and skills to help lift this country.”
His pro-working class and anti-political elite campaigning without doubt made AKD popular among youth, and helped him secure victory. But his ideology may well be at odds with the foreign lenders who have kept the economy afloat for past two decades.
Sri Lanka’s new president faces a precarious balancing act to satisfy both a population high on hopes of populist subsidies and the demands of external lenders to tighten the country’s belts.
Amalendu Misra is a recipient of British Academy and Nuffield Foundation Fellowships.