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Category: Americas

  • MIL-OSI Global: GOP lawmakers eye SNAP cuts, which would scale back benefits that help low-income people buy food at a time of high food prices

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Tracy Roof, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Richmond

    A shopper who gets SNAP benefits shops for groceries at a supermarket in Bellflower, Calif., on Feb. 13, 2023. AP Photo/Allison Dinner

    Congress may soon consider whether to cut spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the main way the government helps low-income Americans put food on the table. The Conversation U.S. asked Tracy Roof, a political scientist who has researched the history of government nutrition programs, to explain what’s going on and why the effort to reduce spending on SNAP benefits, which can be used to purchase groceries, could falter.

    Why does it look like the federal government may cut SNAP spending?

    Conservative critics of SNAP believe that the U.S. spends too much on the program, which cost the federal government US$100 billion in the 2024 fiscal year.

    Federal spending on SNAP, however, has been falling since it peaked at $119 billion in 2022, before extra pandemic-related benefits ended.

    Some Republican lawmakers are calling for new changes that would cut spending on the program.

    Is there a SNAP budget?

    No.

    Today, SNAP helps nearly 42 million people put food on the table, including 1 in 5 children. Americans can usually qualify for SNAP benefits if their income is under 130% of the federal poverty line. In 2025, that would be $41,795 for a family of four and they have limited savings. Some eligibility guidelines can vary by state.

    The rules are complex. Most adults under the age of 60 are subject to work requirements if they are “able-bodied” and not caring for a child or incapacitated adult. If adults between the ages of 18 and 54 don’t log at least 20 hours of work or another approved activity, their benefits can be cut off. Immigrants without authorization to reside in the U.S. aren’t eligible for SNAP.

    Despite those restrictions on who can get SNAP benefits, there is no set limit to what the federal government can spend on the program. As more people become eligible due to their low incomes and therefore obtain benefits during economic downturns, this spending automatically increases. When the economy improves, it usually declines.

    States administer the program under federal government guidelines. The federal government covers the full cost of benefits low-income people receive through the program, but the states cover roughly half of the administrative costs.

    How can the federal government try to cut SNAP spending?

    There are two main paths to program cuts.

    One is through the farm bill, a legislative package Congress typically renews every four or five years that sets policies for SNAP and programs that support farmers’ incomes. The most recent farm bill expired in 2023. Congress has passed multiple one-year extensions on the measure because lawmakers have been unable to pass a new one.

    The latest extension will expire on Sept. 30, 2025.

    The other option is through the so-called budget reconciliation process underway in Congress. Right now, the primary Republican plan calls for extending $4.5 trillion in tax cuts passed in the first Trump administration and making up to $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade.

    The House took the first step in this process by narrowly passing a budget blueprint on Feb. 25. This plan requires the House Agriculture Committee to cut $230 billion in spending over 10 years. While it does not force the committee to cut SNAP specifically, the program accounts for $1 trillion of the $1.3 trillion spent over a decade that the committee oversees – leaving few alternatives.

    What kinds of changes might cut costs?

    Most Republicans appear to favor changing how benefits are calculated and imposing stricter work requirements.

    Today, the value of SNAP benefits that participants in the program can get are calculated based on the “thrifty food plan,” a blueprint for a low-cost, nutritionally adequate diet. A family of four, for example, can get benefits of up to $939 a month if they have no income.

    The Biden administration updated that plan in 2021 in a way that increased monthly SNAP benefits by 23%, not counting the short-term pandemic adjustments to the program. Republican lawmakers want to prevent future changes to the thrifty food plan that might again sharply increase benefits.

    Another proposal would roll back the 2021 change in the thrifty food plan. This would cut current benefits and save $274 billion over a decade. One hitch is that House Agriculture Committee Chair G.T. Thompson has promised no cuts to monthly SNAP benefits.

    Many Republicans would like to stiffen the work requirements by requiring work of recipients who are up to age 65 or are the parents of children who are more than six years old. They also could limit the ability of states to make exceptions in places that don’t have enough jobs.

    Other options include limiting states’ flexibility to offer benefits to people with incomes that are a little higher than 130% of the federal poverty level, capping the monthly benefit for larger households to the amount available to a family of six, and shifting more of the program’s costs to the states.

    Other proposals would crack down on fraud and benefit overpayments. Those steps would be likely to achieve a tiny fraction of the spending reductions the GOP seeks.

    How popular do you think these changes would be?

    The food insecurity rate, which reflects the number of people who worry about getting enough to eat or who report skipping meals or buying less nutritious food because of costs, has been high in recent years. Polls show most Americans support increasing SNAP benefits, not cutting them.

    Angry constituents have recently turned out to protest potential benefit cuts to programs such as Medicaid and SNAP at town hall meetings held by members of Congress.

    Food prices are climbing, and there are growing concerns that a recession could be around the corner. As in earlier downturns, that would probably mean that more people would be eligible for SNAP benefits.

    Food banks, already struggling to meet demand and facing federal spending cuts, have warned they will not be able to fill gaps caused by reduced SNAP spending or new limits on benefits.

    What are some of the obstacles in the way of huge cuts?

    Getting the House and the Senate to agree on a budget bill that curbs SNAP spending will be very tricky, to say the least.

    Republicans have a very small majority in the House and they would need almost every vote. There are seven House Republicans from areas where over 20% of all residents get SNAP benefits, making it hard for them to vote for changes that would reduce or restrict the program’s scale.

    Other House Republicans, especially those expressing concerns about the national debt, are likely to insist that this spending be cut. It is unclear who will win this tug-of-war.

    There’s another complication. If substantial SNAP cuts are made in the current budget process, it could make reaching a compromise on a new farm bill even harder than it’s been in recent years. And while the budget can be passed without any votes from Democrats in Congress, the farm bill will require some bipartisan support.

    Tracy Roof has previously received funding from Virginia Humanities and several foundations associated with presidential archives to study the history of the food stamp program.

    – ref. GOP lawmakers eye SNAP cuts, which would scale back benefits that help low-income people buy food at a time of high food prices – https://theconversation.com/gop-lawmakers-eye-snap-cuts-which-would-scale-back-benefits-that-help-low-income-people-buy-food-at-a-time-of-high-food-prices-208556

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: America the secular? What a changing religious landscape means for US politics

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By David Campbell, Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy, University of Notre Dame

    Conventional wisdom about nonreligious Americans’ voting misses some important distinctions. Sarah Rice/Getty Images

    After climbing for decades, the percentage of Americans with no religion has leveled off. For the past few years, the share of adults who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” has stood at about 29%, according to a major study the Pew Research Center released Feb. 26, 2025.

    But this hardly means that the “nones,” or their impact on American life, are going away. In fact, their sheer size makes it likely that they will increase in political prominence.

    It will presumably come as no surprise that many secular voters lean to the political left. It may, however, be surprising to learn that a fairly large number of nonreligious voters supported President Donald Trump in the 2020 and 2024 elections.

    If the above paragraph is a head-scratcher, that is because “nonreligious” and “secular” are often treated as two ways of saying the same thing. But as political scientists who study religion – and the lack thereof – we have found that there is a fundamental difference between the two. While conventional wisdom holds that religious voters are Republicans and nonreligious voters are Democrats, the reality is more complicated.

    Nonreligious vs. secular

    So, what is the difference between people who are nonreligious vs. those who are secular?

    The nonreligious tend to define themselves by what they are not: for example, not belonging to a religion, not attending worship services, not believing in God. In our surveys, many people without a religious affiliation do not cite any particular worldview or philosophy when asked what guides their life.

    Secular people, on the other hand, define themselves by what they are: someone who has embraced a humanistic and even scientific worldview. That is, when asked about where they find truth, they turn to sources such as science and philosophy instead of scripture and religious teachings. Often, they identify as atheist, agnostic or humanist.

    There are secular people, however, who also embrace some aspects of faith. Religiosity and secularity are not in a zero-sum relationship: more of one does not necessarily mean less of the other. In our research, we found many cases of people who belong to a religious congregation yet have a secular worldview: This describes many Jews, mainline Protestants and even Catholics, for example.

    4 groups

    To get a better sense of Americans’ views, for over a decade we have worked on developing questions to identify people with a secular outlook, while also asking about religious commitment, such as how often someone attends services. Our findings culminated in the 2021 book “Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics.”

    Based on the results, we can divide the U.S. population into four groups: Religionists, Nonreligionists, Secularists and Religious Secularists.

    The Religionists category includes people of all faiths. At 41%, this is the largest group in the United States, but they do not form a majority.

    Secularists make up 27% of the population – larger than the percentage of any single religious tradition. Evangelical Christians, for example, are 23% of the U.S. population, according to Pew, and Catholics are 19%.

    Another 14% of Americans are what we call Religious Secularists: people who identify with and participate in a religious community, yet have a secular worldview. They might attend worship services but consider their religion more as an expression of their culture than a source of teachings to inform their daily decision-making. Some Religious Secularists may describe themselves as agnostic or even atheist.

    Finally, 18% of Americans are Nonreligionists: These are people we described above as not having any religion in their lives, but neither do they have a secular worldview. They are defined by what they are not, not what they are.

    Political views

    These four groups vary in whether they are politically engaged – and if so, whom they support.

    In our book about America’s “secular surge” we used data from a nationwide survey in 2017. In 2021, we conducted a second wave of that survey.

    According to data from that survey that we analyzed for this article, Religionists and Secularists are about equally likely to get involved in politics: roughly 30% of both groups reported doing something political in the past 12 months, such as attending a rally, volunteering for a candidate or donating money. Nonreligionists were much less likely: only 17%.

    In fact, no matter the form of civic engagement – voting, volunteering – Nonreligionists were consistently the least likely to be involved. Only 30% of Nonreligionists report belonging to any sort of club or organization, while for the rest of the population, it is closer to 50%.

    In the same 2021 survey, we asked people to rate various politicians on a 0-100 scale, with a higher number meaning a more positive view.

    On average, Religionists rated Trump a 61, the highest of the four groups; Secularists give him the lowest score, at 14. Nonreligionists gave Trump 47 points.

    It would be wrong, however, to call the Nonreligionists an ideologically conservative group.

    Consider their ratings of Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with the Democratic Party but describes himself as a democratic socialist. For three of the groups, support for Sanders was the mirror opposite of their feelings toward Trump, a Republican. Secularists, for instance, gave the Vermont senator a relatively high score of 66, on average; Religionists’ feelings toward him are much cooler, at 32 points.

    By contrast, Nonreligionists gave a nearly identical rating to Trump and Sanders. Given that the two men are at opposite ideological poles, how could Nonreligionists rate them the same? We suspect it is because both figures challenge the status quo.

    In 2024, the Trump campaign worked to mobilize “low-propensity voters”: political jargon for people with the low levels of civic engagement often found among Nonreligionists. Not only are they politically disengaged, they are the most likely to combine being young, male, white and without a college degree.

    A ‘secular left’?

    Secularists, too, are disproportionately young and white. But in other ways they are very different from Nonreligionists. Secularists typically have a college degree and are evenly balanced between women and men. Typically, they are also liberal and highly engaged in politics.

    So how will they shape American politics? The answer may depend on whether Secularists cohere into a movement – a secular left to parallel the religious right.

    Today, highly religious conservatives are a vocal group within American politics, the core of the Republican Party. A generation ago, however, they were a disparate group of people from different Christian denominations, from Baptists to Pentecostals. Many of the religious groups that now march in common cause once had sharp disagreements.

    It remains to be seen whether secular voters will organize in a similar way. Either way, it is safe to say America’s religious composition has changed significantly.

    Don’t assume, however, that a turn away from religion necessarily means a sharp turn toward the political left. We’d caution that the story is more complicated. For now, secular voters lean to the left – but nonreligious voters are up for grabs.

    David Campbell and Geoffrey Layman received funding from the National Science Foundation.

    Geoffrey C. Layman and David E. Campbell received funding from the National Science Foundation.

    – ref. America the secular? What a changing religious landscape means for US politics – https://theconversation.com/america-the-secular-what-a-changing-religious-landscape-means-for-us-politics-249892

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Land reparations are possible − and over 225 US communities are already working to make amends for slavery and colonization

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sara Safransky, Associate Professor, Department of Human and Organizational Development, Vanderbilt University

    Ever since the United States government’s unfulfilled promise of giving every newly freed Black American “40 acres and a mule” after the Civil War, descendants of the enslaved have repeatedly proposed the idea of redistributing land to redress the nation’s legacies of slavery.

    Land-based reparations are also a form of redress for the territorial theft of colonialism.

    Around the world, politicians tend to dismiss calls for such initiatives as wishful thinking at best and discrimination at worst. Or else, they are swatted away as too complex to implement, legally and practically.

    Yet our research shows a growing number of municipalities and communities across the U.S. are quietly taking up the charge.

    We are geographers who since 2021 have been documenting and analyzing over 225 examples of reparative programs underway in U.S. cities, states and regions. Notably, over half of them center land return.

    These efforts show how working locally to grapple with the complexity of land-based reparations is a necessary and feasible part of the nation’s healing process.

    The Evanston effect

    Evanston, Illinois, launched the country’s first publicly funded housing reparations program in 2019.

    In its current form, Evanston’s Restorative Housing Program has provided disbursements to more than 200 recipients. All are Black residents of Evanston or direct descendants of residents who experienced housing discrimination between 1919 and 1969. Benefits include down payment assistance and mortgage assistance as well as funds to make home repairs and improvements.

    The goal is to redress the harm Evanston caused during these 50-plus years of racial discrimination in public schools, hospitals, buses and segregated residential zoning. During that same period, banks in Evanston, as in other U.S. cities, also refused to give Black residents mortgages, credit or insurance for homes in white neighborhoods.

    “I always said you can keep the mule,” program beneficiary Ron Butler told NBC News in 2024. “Give me the 40 acres in Evanston.”

    Reparations that focus on land, housing and property are about more than making amends for centuries of racial discrimination. They help to restore people’s self-determination, autonomy and freedom.

    Following Evanston’s lead, in 2021 a group of 11 U.S. mayors created Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity, a coalition committed to developing pilot reparations programs. Members include Los Angeles, Austin and Asheville.

    The cities act as sites to generate ideas about how reparation initiatives could be scaled up nationally. Each mayor is advised by committees made up of representatives from local Black-led organizations.

    Colonial reparations

    In recent years the city of Eureka, in Northern California, has been returning some territory to its Native inhabitants.

    Indigenous people often call this process rematriation; it’s part of a broader effort to restore sovereignty and sacred relationships to their ancestral lands.

    In 2019, after years of petitioning by members of the Wiyot people, the Eureka City Council returned 200 acres of Tuluwat Island, a 280-acre island in Humboldt Bay where European settlers in 1860 massacred about 200 Wiyot women and children.

    “It’s a sovereignty issue, a self-governance issue,” said Wiyot tribal administrator Michelle Vassel in a November 2023 radio interview.

    Minneapolis’ sale of city lots to the Red Lake Nation for $1 in 2023 is another example of how city governments can make amends for past Indigenous displacement and removal. Plans to develop the low-cost lots include a cultural center for Red Lake people, an opioid treatment center and potentially housing.

    The Red Lake Reservation once included 3.3 million acres. The 1889 Dawes Act forced the Red Lake Band to cede all but 300,000 acres. The federal government later returned some land, but today the reservation is still only a quarter of its original size.

    Reparations are critical to racial equity

    These initiatives may sound like a drop in the bucket considering the vast harms committed over centuries of slavery and colonization. Yet they prove that governments can craft targeted, achievable and meaningful policies to address colonialism and enslavement.

    The state of Minnesota transferred Upper Sioux Agency State Park back to the Dakota people in 2023 in an effort to make amends for a war and historic slaughter there.
    AP Photo/Trisha Ahmed

    They also tackle a frequent critique of reparations, which is that slavery and colonialism happened centuries ago. Yet their effects continue to harm Black and Native communities generations later. Today, white households in the U.S. have roughly nine times the wealth of typical Black households.

    One explanation for this racial disparity is that Black households earn 20% less than their white counterparts. But a more meaningful driver is what scholars call the “intergenerational transmission chain” – that is, the role that gifts and inheritance play in wealth generation.

    That’s why reparations – with both land and money – are so critical to creating racial equity.

    Still, reparations programs do raise a host of complex, practical questions. Which kinds of historic racial injustice take priority, and what form should repair take? Who qualifies for the benefits?

    Community-based land reparations

    Reparations don’t have to come from the government.

    In recent years, more than a hundred community-based organizations across the U.S. have introduced their own initiatives to redistribute land and wealth to make amends for past injustices.

    Makoce Ikikcupi, in the Minnesota River Valley, is a community reparations program led by Dakota peoples. Since 2009, the group has been collecting funds to buy back portions of the Dakota homeland. One revenue source is voluntary contributions from descendants of Europeans who colonized that land. This fundraising strategy is sometimes called “real rent” or “back rent.”

    The group purchased its first 21-acre parcel of land in 2019, where it is building traditional earth lodges, with plans for several self-sustaining Dakota villages.

    “We consider our donation…‘back rent,’” reads the testimony of one monthly contributor, Josina Manu, on the group’s webpage. He calls the reclamation of Dakota land a “vital” step “towards creating a just world.”

    Fair compensation for eminent domain

    Many communities are also working together to repair the legacies of anti-Black racism.

    In the 1960s, the city of Athens, Georgia, used eminent domain to build dormitories for the University of Georgia. Paying below market value, it demolished an entire Black neighborhood called Linnentown.

    In early 2021, following petitioning from former Linnentown residents who’d lost their homes, the City Council unanimously passed a resolution recognizing their neighborhood’s destruction as “an act of institutionalized white racism and terrorism resulting in intergenerational Black poverty.”

    Because Georgia law prohibits government entities from making payments to individuals, a community group stepped in to organize compensation.

    The result is Athens Reparations Action, a coalition of churches and community organizations. Formed in 2021, it had raised $120,000 by 2024 to distribute among the 10 families who are Linnentown survivors and descendants.

    Backlash

    Our research also tracks legal challenges to the reparations initiatives we are studying.

    Conservative groups such as Judicial Watch have filed dozens of retaliatory lawsuits against several of them, including Evanston’s Restorative Housing Program. A 2024 class action complaint alleges that the program discriminates based on race, violating the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

    These legal challenges are part of the broader front of conservative-led assaults on voting rights, affirmative action and critical race theory. Like reparations, all are efforts to grapple with the U.S.’s historical mistreatment of Black, Indigenous and other people of color.

    Attacking those initiatives is an attempt to preserve what scholar Laura Pulido calls “white innocence.” We expect more of them under a second Trump term already defined by its assault on antidiscrimination policies and programs.

    So far, none of Trump’s decrees has targeted reparations specifically. For now, reparations are still legal and constitutional – and possible.

    Sara Safransky has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies, however, I have not received funding from these organizations for the research project discussed in this article. The only grant I’ve received to fund this research is an internal grant from Vanderbilt University.

    Elsa Noterman has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the British Academy. However, I have not received funding from these organizations for the research project discussed in this article. The only grant I have received to fund this research is an internal grant from Queen Mary University of London.

    Madeleine Lewis has received research funding from the Society for Community Research and Action. However, that funding is not related to the research project mentioned in the article.

    – ref. Land reparations are possible − and over 225 US communities are already working to make amends for slavery and colonization – https://theconversation.com/land-reparations-are-possible-and-over-225-us-communities-are-already-working-to-make-amends-for-slavery-and-colonization-246106

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Video: What path will you choose?

    Source: US Army (video statements)

    : 75th Ranger Regiment

    About the U.S. Army:

    The Army Mission – our purpose – remains constant: To deploy, fight and win our nation’s wars by providing ready, prompt & sustained land dominance by Army forces across the full spectrum of conflict as part of the joint force.

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    Visit: spr.ly/6001igl5L

    Connect with the U.S. Army online:
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    #USArmy #Soldiers #Military #Shorts

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT6ji1qNxRY

    MIL OSI Video –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Jay Bhattacharya Begins Tenure as 18th Director of the National Institutes of Health

    Source: US Department of Health and Human Services – 2

    News Release
    Tuesday, April 1, 2025

    Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., took office today as the 18th Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). President Trump nominated Dr. Bhattacharya for the position on Nov. 26, 2024, and the U.S. Senate confirmed him on March 25, 2025.
    As Director, Dr. Bhattacharya will oversee the nation’s medical research agency. Dr. Bhattacharya will play an instrumental role in shaping the agency’s activities and outlook and ensuring they align with the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission.
    “Under Dr. Bhattacharya’s leadership, NIH will restore its commitment to gold-standard science,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “I’m excited to work with Dr. Bhattacharya to ensure NIH research aligns with our Administration’s priorities — especially tackling the chronic disease epidemic and helping to Make America Healthy Again.”
    “Chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity continue to cause poor health outcomes in every community across the United States. Novel biomedical discoveries that enhance health and lengthen life are more vital than ever to our country’s future,” said Dr. Bhattacharya. “As NIH Director, I will build on the agency’s long and illustrious history of supporting breakthroughs in biology and medicine by fostering gold-standard research and innovation to address the chronic disease crisis.”
    A renowned doctor, researcher and health economist, Dr. Bhattacharya held a tenured professorship in the medical school at Stanford University in California. Dr. Bhattacharya’s research has focused on population aging and chronic disease, particularly on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. During the pandemic, Dr. Bhattacharya coauthored the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for opening schools and lifting lockdowns while better protecting older populations who were most vulnerable to the disease. 
    Encouraging different perspectives will be central to Dr. Bhattacharya’s approach to leading NIH as part of his larger mission to restore public trust in science. Alongside Secretary Kennedy, he will champion innovative, cutting-edge research that fuels near-term solutions for patients while balancing investments in basic science.
    Dr. Bhattacharya earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Stanford University. He then completed medical school and earned a Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University. He replaces Matthew J. Memoli, M.D., who has served ably as the Acting NIH Director since Jan. 22, 2025.
    About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
    NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health®
    ###

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Strengthening Connecticut Farms with Risk Management Training and Tools

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    In 2024, extreme rain events left farmers devastated as they surveyed their flooded fields, witnessing the destruction of their crops, time, and financial investments. The sheer volume of rainfall made damage prevention nearly impossible, wiping out expected revenue and threatening livelihoods.

    UConn Extension professionals, working alongside farmers and partner agencies, provided critical support before and after the floods, helping to strengthen resilience. Their ongoing efforts focus on developing resources and tools to ensure Connecticut’s agricultural industry and food supply remain vibrant and sustainable.

    “Operating a financially viable farm can be incredibly challenging, and so our goal is to take advantage of current technologies, such as smart phones, and use those as tools to help farmers reduce their risk,” says Amy Harder, associate dean for Extension.

    Farm businesses face a wide range of risks, from unpredictable weather to volatile markets. To help farmers navigate these challenges, UConn Extension, located within UConn’s College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources (CAHNR), has developed new resources, including two innovative apps, that provide real-time support. A new online farm risk management course also offers comprehensive strategies to help farmers safeguard their operations and build resilience in an ever-changing industry.

    An App for That

    Crop insurance provides financial security if an extreme weather event or insect infestation ruins the crop before it can be harvested and sold. Mary Concklin and Joseph Bonelli are emeriti UConn Extension professionals working on the farm risk management program through a USDA grant.

    “We developed the crop insurance notification app to help farmers report on time and maintain their coverage,” Concklin says. “This tool ensures farmers receive timely notifications—via text message or email—at least 30 days before a policy deadline, with an additional reminder one to two weeks before. It helps busy farmers stay on top of important dates and avoid lapses in coverage.”

    Missing a deadline could mean losing coverage, which can have severe financial consequences. This app serves as an essential reminder for farmers managing multiple responsibilities.

    Another innovative tool is the market pricing app, designed to collect real-time data from farmers’ markets and provide valuable insights for agricultural agencies.

    The market pricing app collects data from farmers’ markets to provide accurate pricing information to USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA), the Farm Service Agency (FSA), and the Connecticut Department of Agriculture (DoAg). Unlike self-reported data, this app ensures consistency and accuracy by requiring university or government agencies to collect the information. “The summarized pricing data can help farmers understand market trends, price their products competitively, and make informed decisions about future crop production,” Bonelli says. “It’s useful for both short-term sales strategies and long-term business planning.”

    Student employees are visiting farmers’ markets throughout the state to enter the pricing data. Then, Bonelli and Concklin can analyze the data and distribute it to the partner agencies. Farmers can access the summarized data, providing insights into pricing trends and helping farmers make better business decisions.

    A Holistic Approach to Farm Risk Management

    To complement these tools, UConn Extension also launched an online course focused on farm risk management. This course provides farmers with strategies to identify, assess, and mitigate risks associated with agriculture. The course is appropriate for farmers at all experience levels. “The course consists of 12 modules covering topics like crop insurance, farm financial management, climate adaptation strategies, and general farm insurance. The goal is to provide farmers with a range of tools to reduce risk and improve long-term sustainability,” Concklin says.

    Participants learn at their own pace in the asynchronous course, taking the modules they need or are interested in. It includes assessments and offers a certificate of completion, which may be useful for professional development or demonstrating additional education in farm management. More importantly, it provides effective strategies for farm risk management that farmers can immediately apply to their operations.

    The course and apps were developed in response to listening sessions with farmers.

    Beyond technology, Bonelli and Concklin encourage farmers to engage with additional resources to enhance their knowledge. Farmers should attend field days, talk to their neighbors, and stay connected with industry experts.

    “No single tool has all the answers; we encourage deeper engagement with UConn Extension specialists and other experts,” says Bonelli. “Whether it’s an online course, an app, or direct conversations, farmers benefit from a multi-faceted approach to managing risk.”

    This work is funded in partnership by USDA, Risk Management Agency, under award numbers RMA23CPT0013448 and RMA24CPT0013928.

    This work relates to CAHNR’s Strategic Vision area focused on Ensuring a Vibrant and Sustainable Agricultural Industry and Food Supply.

    Follow UConn CAHNR on social media

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Mansfield Is Updating Its 10-Year Plan, and These Sophomores Want the UConn Community to Help

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    We encounter surveys all the time.

    On the bottom of a purchase receipt. While scrolling through social media feeds. On flyers with QR codes, and inside official-looking letters that show up in mailboxes.

    But how often do you actually take one of those surveys?

    What incentives would encourage you to take a survey?

    And would it be enough just knowing that your feedback on a survey could help shape the direction of a community or even an entire town – like the one that you live in, or work in, each and every day?

    A group of sophomores from the Innovation House Learning Community at UConn are hoping that a mix of incentives, outreach, enthusiasm, and good old-fashioned civic mindedness will encourage members of the UConn community to take a survey that will do just that: help shape the direction of the Connecticut town that UConn Storrs calls home.

    ‘Our Strategic Plan’

    “Anyone who thinks people will respond to a survey vastly, vastly overestimates,” says Michael Stankov ’17 (CLAS) ’18 MS, an environmental planner and inland wetlands agent for the town of Mansfield. “People don’t like surveys. They don’t do them.”

    But if you can effectively encourage people to take them, surveys still represent a good way to get valuable information and feedback from a large number of people.

    Mansfield Tomorrow is the town of Mansfield’s 10-year strategic plan.

    Which is why Stankov and his supervisor, Jennifer Kaufman – Mansfield’s director of planning and development – have spent a good portion of the past six months developing, promoting, and encouraging participation in a town-wide survey to help support the 2025 update to Mansfield’s plan of conservation and development.

    “Every town in Connecticut needs to update their plan of conservation and development, and that has to be done every 10 years,” explains Kaufman. “In Mansfield, our plan of conservation and development also serves as our strategic plan. Not only does it include items such as land use, where we want to grow, and what we want to preserve, it also includes other things, like budgetary considerations for our town council.”

    Mansfield’s last strategic plan, developed in 2015, is a wide-ranging 458-page document known as Mansfield Tomorrow, and it lays out priorities for the town that range from the amenities that influence people choosing to live in Mansfield to the economic and physical development of the community.

    The 2025 plan isn’t meant to be a complete rewrite, but rather an update that reflects changes in priorities and strategies that will naturally occur over the course of a decade, Kaufman says. An ad hoc committee as well as three working groups have been active since last fall, garnering feedback from the Mansfield community to help contribute to the update.

    “We have the town-wide survey that we’ve sent out,” Kaufman says. “We’ve done a mailing to everyone that has a mailbox in town. We’re having a public workshop. We’re going to the Senior Center for pop-up events. I’m going to the library’s story time, the library’s game night. We’re going to be doing door-to-door door hangers.

    “So, we feel like we’ve got the town’s community engagement, the town’s people.”

    But the engagement they haven’t really been able to get?

    It’s from UConn.

    ‘Very Intentional’

    In the fall of 2025, UConn Storrs will house an estimated 13,800 students, Kaufman explains, and under census guidelines, those students residing on campus at UConn are considered Mansfield residents.

    “In addition, besides people who are living in on-campus housing, we have about 4,000 students who live in the community in apartments, in single-family homes, and in condos,” she says. “So, the UConn population, while they only live in our town for four years, they’re a key part of the population. And they’re not necessarily plugged in to come to a town meeting, or they may not be using our library, or coming to our Mansfield Community Center, or going to the Senior Center.”

    And even beyond the students who live on and around the Storrs campus, there are thousands of additional members of the UConn community – including faculty and staff – who commute to Mansfield; who visit the downtown area; who enjoy Mansfield restaurants or frequent Mansfield businesses; or who make use of Mansfield’s parks, trails, and recreation services.

    The town wants to hear from those people, too.

    “It’s all too easy to fragment our lives into – ‘I live in a town and that’s the only town that I should have input in,’” says Stankov. “But we live in communities that are complex and that cross lots of towns, so we need to hear what people who don’t just live and pay taxes here want, because that helps us understand how to provide more services for more people.”

    But while UConn represents more than half Mansfield’s population, engagement from UConn in the 2015 strategic planning process wasn’t what Kaufman and Stankov would hope, and they want to change that this time around.

    “We’re trying to be very intentional about our outreach to the UConn population,” Kaufman says. “We need to kind of crack that nut of how we can reach out to the UConn community.”

    “Because of our weak penetration of the UConn bubble in 2015, we’ve really doubled down on trying to make sure that we understand what folks at UConn are thinking of,” says Stankov.

    But how do you get busy students – not to mention faculty and staff, who might not even live in town – to pay attention to and take a municipal survey?

    That’s where 18 undergraduates from Innovation House are playing an important part.

    ‘What Students Think’

    Innovation House is a multidisciplinary community that brings together entrepreneurial-minded students and offers mentorship opportunities and exposure to programs that help support entrepreneurship.

    That multidisciplinary nature is what drew Alishia Thompson ’27 (SFA), a digital media and design student from Putnam, to the community.

    “I wanted a mix of a bunch of different people from different majors and schools in the University and from all sorts of different backgrounds,” Thompson says.

    Michael Bossi ’27 (BUS), a business management major from Bristol, was drawn to the community through an interest in innovation and entrepreneurship.

    “I love thinking strategically about business and really just any kind of problem that you have to think critically to solve,” Bossi says. “That’s just always what’s been fun to me. That’s why I went into business management in the first place as well, and that led me to the Innovation House this past year.”

    For Carter Gay ’27 (CLAS), a double major in mathematics and physics from Canton, Innovation House seemed to align with his interests.

    Mansfield’s strategic plan sets out the town’s vision for not just conservation and development but for all of the municipality’s priorities.

    “You get to be part of a community of people, and they all live on the same floor,” Gay says. “I thought that was kind of cool. In the building where the housing is, there’s a maker’s space in the bottom, that’s pretty cool.”

    Despite their difference in majors, the three students – and many of their fellow sophomores in Innovation House – have something in common beyond their interest in innovation.

    None of them had ever really thought much about municipal planning.

    Last year, the Werth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation took over responsibility for the Innovation House Learning Community. Kathy Rocha, the institute’s associate director, and Katie Britt, it’s director of leadership development, co-teach a required course with the community’s sophomore class that’s focused on the design thinking process – ideation, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

    “The plan for this semester was to come up with a project based in our area, in the Mansfield area, that the students could work on creatively to solve a problem,” says Rocha. “We didn’t know what the problem was, but it was a general idea.

    “I was talking with David Ouimette, and I told him about this, and he asked me if I had ever met Jennifer Kaufman. And I hadn’t. He said you should reach out to her.”

    So, she did.

    “Kathy made contact with me at the beginning of the semester,” says Kaufman, “and she said, ‘Hey, I want to work on a project for the town.’ And we said, ‘This is great.’”

    As the semester has progressed, Stankov has visited the class a few times, taking feedback from the students about how they thought the Mansfield Tomorrow survey might be improved, and learning about and helping them refine their plans for how to engage with other member of the UConn community encourage participation in the survey.

    “The goal is to figure out what students think about the surrounding area, whether that be that there’s not enough stores, not enough shops, or there’s not enough housing, there’s not enough public walkways, that sort of thing,” says Gay. “How we can develop the area better, not only to suit the needs of everybody, but really to help UConn students?”

    ‘Our Whole Story’

    The students, who divided themselves into teams focused on each different UConn demographic – students, faculty, and staff – have developed creative plans utilizing their diverse experiences and skills in order to engage the UConn community on Mansfield’s behalf.

    With the ideation phase of their project complete, they’ll soon be shifting into action, putting flyers around campus and asking their own professors and the University staff they work with to complete the survey, which is online and only takes five-to-10 minutes, before working on broader outreach to faculty and staff.

    In addition to the gift-card giveaways that the town has for anyone who completes the survey, some student-only incentives will be on offer as well, including a UConn jersey, a basketball signed by Coach Auriemma, and gift cards to Barnes & Noble.

    And, they’ll be out on campus on April 1 and 2 offering free cookies to any student who takes the survey.

    Conn sophomores in the Innovation House will be sharing flyers around campus at events detailing incentives for students to complete the Mansfield Tomorrow survey.

    “We all agreed that, if there’s one thing we know that can get college students to participate in things, it’s free food,” Thompson says.

    Every response, says Bossi, adds to crucial data that the town needs to help guide its decision-making.

    “Our goal is to help the town of Mansfield, really, and more measurable in our class is to get as many responses as possible,” Bossi says. “My goal is to shoot for the stars with the amount of responses we can get – I want thousands of responses on that survey, from every demographic.”

    Thousands of responses might be a lofty goal, says Stankov – hundreds might be more realistic. For Kaufman, their overarching aim is to strike a balance between understanding the needs of the UConn community and building a plan that addresses the whole of Mansfield’s population.

    “We value the UConn community – we, personally, have great relationships with people at UConn, like Nathan Fuerst, John Armstrong, and Phil Hunt – and I think the town and the University, over the past few years, have really done a great job in working together,” Kaufman says. “We know that UConn students make up over half of our residents, and so we are, again, being intentional so that we’ll be able to tell that as just a part of our whole story.”

    ‘Such An Impact’

    Though it’s unlikely that most of the Innovation House students – including Bossi, Gay, and Thompson – will go on to pursue a career in municipal planning, the learning opportunities from this project go far beyond any future plans, explains Rocha.

    “It’s about creative thinking,” she says. “They’re working on collaboration with each other, as well as with the town of Mansfield. Adaptability – they’ve had to be very flexible in what they’re doing. And then finally, it’s the execution, the project management, and that’s the one that students really don’t often get a chance to do.

    “They get into all of this stuff, and then putting together the plan and seeing the plan through –that’s a big one.”

    That aspect of the project hasn’t been lost on Thompson, the digital media and design major.

    “While I’m not necessarily going to be a municipal planner in my future, there’s still a lot of skills and aspects of this that are really critical for a job in the DMD department, especially in the animation field,” Thompson says. “Animation is all about collaboration, communication, and teamwork and, in some cases, leadership as well. This project and this program, that we’re trying to – it is literally asking for all of those skills.”

    For Gay, the math and physics major, and for Bossi, the business management major, participating in the project has given them a new empathy for the work that town officials are doing and a new appreciation for the role that they get to play in the process.

    “I think it’s really meaningful, because it’s something real,” Gay says. “In a lot of classes, you’ll do something like this, and it’ll be a ‘mock’ something, not real. But this is legitimate, real-world. And the town really just wants information on how they can improve and help make things better.”

    “I can even see myself skipping out on a survey like this,” says Bossi. “But I really, truly do mean – from the bottom of my heart – that this whole project is done with very good intentions. We aren’t seeking a financial gain; we’re just seeking to help the place that houses all of our students. Mansfield houses UConn, and taking just five minutes or less to fill out a survey can make such an impact.”

    All members of the UConn Storrs community – students, faculty, and staff, regardless of town of residence – are encouraged to contribute to Mansfield’s strategic planning by completing the Mansfield Tomorrow survey at MansfieldTomorrow.org.

    UConn students are invited to join the Innovation House class on Fairfield Way on April 1, 2025, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., and in the Student Union on April 2, 2025, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., to take the Mansfield Tomorrow survey, get a free cookie, and be entered for a chance to win a raffle prize.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Combination immunotherapy shrank a variety of metastatic gastrointestinal cancers

    Source: US Department of Health and Human Services – 2

    News Release
    Tuesday, April 1, 2025

    NIH trial shows new form of TIL therapy effective against colon, rectum, pancreas, and bile duct tumors.

    A new form of tumor infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy, a form of personalized cancer immunotherapy, dramatically improved the treatment’s effectiveness in patients with metastatic gastrointestinal cancers, according to results of a clinical trial led by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The findings, published April 1, 2025 in Nature Medicine, offer hope that this therapy could be used to treat a variety of solid tumors, which has so far eluded researchers developing cell-based therapies.
    This form of therapy involves identifying and selecting immune cells (TILs) that are found in the tumor that specifically recognize and attack a patient’s tumor cells. Next, scientists grow those TILs into large quantities in the laboratory before they are finally administered to the patient.
    Patients in the clinical trial, who had a variety of gastrointestinal tumors, also received the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to help further boost their immune response. The result was nearly 24% of patients treated with selected TILs plus pembrolizumab had a substantial reduction in the size of their tumors, compared with 7.7% of patients who received selected TILs without pembrolizumab. Patients treated with TILs that had not been selected for anti-tumor activity had no tumor shrinkage.
    “We’re seeing the first extension of cellular therapy with TILs into the common solid cancers,” said Steven A. Rosenberg, M.D., Ph.D., the study’s lead investigator at NIH’s National Cancer Institute. “We see a little crack in the solid wall of cancer by using cell-based immunotherapy for the common solid cancers, and we think we have ways to open that crack even further.”
    The clinical trial included 91 patients with metastatic gastrointestinal cancers—including esophageal, stomach, pancreatic, colon, and rectal cancers—that had worsened despite a median of four prior treatment regimens. In the pilot phase of the trial, 18 patients were treated with TILs that had not been selected for anti-tumor activity, and there were no objective responses (tumor shrinkage of at least 30% is considered an objective response). In the second phase, 39 patients were treated with selected TIL therapy, and three (7.7%) had objective responses.
    In the third phase, 34 patients received pembrolizumab immediately before selected TIL therapy to prevent the newly introduced immune cells from becoming inactivated by the patient’s own immune system. This group had the best response, with 8 of 34 (23.5%) patients experiencing an objective response. All 91 patients had also received standard chemotherapy and high-dose interleukin-2 before the TIL therapy.
    In the trial’s second and third phases, objective responses were seen in multiple types of gastrointestinal cancers, including cancers of the colon, rectum, pancreas, and bile duct. Responses lasted between 8 months and more than 5.8 years in the group that received selected TIL therapy alone, and between 4 months and 3.5 years in the group that received selected TIL therapy and pembrolizumab. Serious side effects occurred in 30% of patients treated with selected TILs.
    The researchers are now developing methods to identify TILs that recognize multiple, specific proteins within a tumor, known as neoantigens, to help increase the number of patients who respond to selected TIL therapy with pembrolizumab.
    TIL therapy, developed in the late 1980s by Dr. Rosenberg and his colleagues at NIH, uses an individual’s own TILs to fight their tumor cells. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first TIL therapy for a solid cancer, lifileucel (Amtagvi), for treating advanced melanoma.
    The new study was co-led by Dr. Rosenberg and NCI investigators Frank J. Lowery, Ph.D., and Stephanie L. Goff, M.D.
    About the National Cancer Institute (NCI): NCI leads the National Cancer Program and NIH’s efforts to dramatically reduce the prevalence of cancer and improve the lives of people with cancer. NCI supports a wide range of cancer research and training extramurally through grants and contracts. NCI’s intramural research program conducts innovative, transdisciplinary basic, translational, clinical, and epidemiological research on the causes of cancer, avenues for prevention, risk prediction, early detection, and treatment, including research at the NIH Clinical Center—the world’s largest research hospital. Learn more about the intramural research done in NCI’s Center for Cancer Research. For more information about cancer, please visit the NCI website at cancer.gov or call NCI’s contact center at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).
    About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
    NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health®
    ###

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: PennDOT Secretary Carroll to Hold Virtual REAL ID Update

    Source: US State of Pennsylvania

    April 01, 2025 – Harrisburg, PA

    ADVISORY – PennDOT Secretary Carroll to Hold Virtual REAL ID Update

    PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll will hold a virtual media update on REAL ID. This will be the first in a series of virtual updates to be held regularly in the weeks leading up to the start of federal enforcement on May 7. The updates will be streamed live on PACast and the PennDOT Facebook page. A PACast with audio and video will also be available after the event.

    The media is invited to email questions for the Secretary to address at the briefing. Questions should be emailed to dotcomm@pa.gov by 11:00 AM TODAY, April 1.

    WHO:
    PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll

    WHEN:
    Tuesday, April 1 at 1:00 PM

    PUBLIC LIVESTREAMS:
    pacast.com/live/penndot
    Facebook.com/PennsylvaniaDepartmentofTransportation

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Canada a 51st state? Here’s how American annexation could actually favour Canada

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Felix Arndt, Professor and John F. Wood Chair in Entrepreneurship, University of Guelph

    When United States President Donald Trump first floated the idea of annexing Canada, many observers rolled their eyes. The common assumption was that this proposal, like much of Trump’s bombast, amounted to little more than a fleeting soundbite.

    Yet, amid continuing public remarks about Canada becoming the 51st state and suggestions of genuine intent, the idea has become part of a broader conversation about North America’s future.

    The idea of the U.S. merging with Canada outright has not been received well in Canada, especially because Trump’s threats have been accompanied by economic warfare aimed at forcing Canada into submission. After all, the U.S. already has 50 states. Canada, with its population of about 40 million and its immense geographic size, would be an outsized “51st” by any comparison.

    But any serious analysis of this proposition quickly reveals that annexation would be far more complicated — and far less one-sided — than the label “51st state.”

    Our analysis is premised on an assumption that the U.S. remains a democratic system that has not turned into a pseudo-monarchy, in keeping with a Trump social media post in early February proclaiming “long live the King.”

    The most important takeaway from our analysis is that a unified country would need to inaugurate a new president and Parliament. The path towards the integration of the countries would have to start with closer economic integration, not the alienation currently in place.

    A multi-state reality

    As we argue in our newest self-published book Make America Greater? A Scenario of a Friendly Canada-U.S. Merger, Canada would not simply become part of the U.S. as a single state under the provisions of the American Constitution.

    Based on population and the distribution of power in U.S. Congress, Canada’s 10 provinces and three northern territories would almost certainly be carved into multiple states, perhaps nine or more.

    This is no small detail.

    America’s unique electoral arithmetic grants each state two senators, while seats in the House of Representatives depend on population size. With around 40 million new citizens, a unified North America would reshape the balance of power in both the Senate and the House.



    Read more:
    Canada as a 51st state? Republicans would never win another general election

    Critically, the new country formed via unification might end up looking far more like Canada than many Americans imagine.

    Why? Canadian voters lean more centrist — or even centre-left — than the average American does. Over time, that could tilt congressional priorities in favour of policies reflecting Canada’s taste for universal health care, stricter gun control and robust social welfare.

    The longstanding political tug-of-war in the U.S. could see its centre of gravity shift, likely to the chagrin of some more conservative segments of the existing union.

    Tariffs, politics and tensions

    Officials on both sides of the border are already locked in a dance of retaliatory tariffs.

    Each new measure escalates anxieties, threatening to derail one of the world’s largest bilateral trading relationships.

    Some might argue that if tariffs are putting negative pressures on the economy and roiling the markets, perhaps deeper integration — or even full-blown unification — could serve as a release valve. But the path towards a friendly merger is best taken step-by-step and starts with stronger economic integration, not alienation.



    Read more:
    Canada’s response to Trump’s tariffs was strategic, but there is room for improvement

    Forging a genuine union goes well beyond removing trade barriers. Canada and the U.S. differ on far more than just economics: from bilingualism laws to gun regulations, from health care to environmental policy, the two countries embody contrasting visions of how society should function.

    Canadians would expect to preserve elements of their social contract that many regard as superior to American norms — particularly their single-payer health-care system and comparatively strict firearms restrictions.

    A process genuinely aimed at integrating the two countries would take this into account. It would extend the United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal further to strengthen economic integration, elevate the rights of French and Spanish speakers in the U.S. in order to signal compatible cultural values and extend Medicare to show an appreciation of the common denominators of the two societies.

    Trump’s current rhetoric, however, does not seem to indicate a genuine desire for a unification.

    Why a merger could favour Canada

    As surprising as it seems, our analysis suggests that a unified North America could lean Canada’s way over time.

    Even if the American Electoral College were reimagined — or scrapped — Canadian provinces transformed into states would wield significant power, influencing everything from budget allocations to Supreme Court appointments.



    Read more:
    As Joe Biden becomes president, here’s an easy proposal for Electoral College reform

    What’s more, cultural convergence has an asymmetrical pull. Younger Americans show a growing appetite for social safety nets, while Canadians remain broadly wedded to their publicly funded health-care model.

    Over a few election cycles, these forces could converge into a more expansive welfare regime, something that would astonish traditional conservatives across the current 50 states.

    A combined North America would boast one of the largest economies on Earth, including abundant natural resources and technological innovation.

    The promise of frictionless trade, a single currency and vast internal markets might delight big business and certain multinational interests. Yet the path would be fraught.

    Constitutional arrangements, Indigenous rights, linguistic protections and environmental regulations — all areas in which Canadian norms diverge significantly from American precedents — would have to be reconciled.

    Canadians, proud of their universal healthcare, progressive climate policies and lower rates of gun violence, would worry about being subsumed by a more rambunctious, militarized neighbour. Americans, meanwhile, would fear they would be forced to adopt new taxes and policies at odds with their historic emphasis on individual freedoms.

    A country more closely resembling Canada

    Regardless of whether Trump’s annexation talk proves more than just bluster, the notion of a friendly U.S.–Canada merger invites reflection. It reminds us that North America’s two largest nations remain economically interlocked and geographically co-located, though culturally distinct.

    With tariffs in place and cross-border tensions mounting, creative solutions are worth examining, even if a merger can — at best — be seen as a long-term vision.

    A genuine offer of a merger would require that Canadians to be assured that if such a union did transpire, their voices might echo far more loudly than expected in the halls of Washington, D.C.

    And Americans — facing shifting demographics and changing societal values — may discover that the annexation Trump initiated could bring surprises that tilt the new country much closer to its northern neighbour’s ideals than to the status quo below the 49th parallel.

    Felix Arndt is an author of a book referred to in this article.

    Barak Aharonson is an author of a book with a similar topic.

    – ref. Canada a 51st state? Here’s how American annexation could actually favour Canada – https://theconversation.com/canada-a-51st-state-heres-how-american-annexation-could-actually-favour-canada-251547

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Cannabis retail expansion in Canada came with only a small uptick in the number of consumers

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Michael J. Armstrong, Associate Professor, Operations Research, Brock University

    Ever since recreational cannabis was legalized across Canada in 2018, researchers have been studying what that decision changed for Canadians.

    We’ve learned, for example, that some patients immediately left the medical cannabis system, presumably to use recreational products instead. Conversely, legalization appeared to have no effect on Canadian alcohol sales.

    We’ve similarly seen how cannabis retailing has evolved since it became legal.

    Retailers suffered from product shortages during legalization’s first six months, but steadily expanded soon after. Canada went from having some 210 stores in April 2019 to 3,500 in April 2023. The ensuing competition pushed prices down 28 per cent during that period.

    Meanwhile, provincial governments have tried various regulatory approaches. Some initially restricted the number of stores to avoid tempting non-users. Québec still has 10 times fewer stores per capita than Ontario does as a result. Other provinces have set minimum prices to discourage people from overindulging. For example, Ontario won’t let wholesale prices drop below $2.28 per gram.

    These developments in business and government policy prompted my latest research. I wanted to understand what effect retail expansion had on cannabis use. To do this, I analyzed consumer responses on government surveys collected between 2019 to 2023. I then compared these responses to the recreational cannabis consumer price index and the numbers of licensed stores in each province.

    Did Canadians consume cannabis more widely, more frequently and at younger ages as it became more accessible and affordable? The answer was mostly no.

    More women and older adult consumers

    The percentage of men who used cannabis stayed around 28 per cent between 2019 and 2023 — despite retailers’ massive store growth and notable price cuts.

    But usage did grow slightly among women — rising from 21 per cent in 2019 to 23 per cent in 2023. My analysis suggests this was related to the increasing affordability of cannabis, not its retail convenience. More women consumed cannabis when prices fell, not when more shops opened.

    A similar contrast appeared between younger and older adults. Cannabis use among Canadians aged 25 and over crept upward from 21 to 23 per cent. That increase again seemed related to falling prices rather than expanding stores. Meanwhile, usage among those aged 16 to 24 varied year-to-year, but remained around 46 per cent.

    The average age of first-time use consequently rose from 19.2 in 2019 to 20.8 years old in 2023. This finding also seemed correlated with both falling prices and expanding stores.

    Same frequency, more edibles

    One thing that didn’t change much was frequency of use. About one-quarter of cannabis consumers used it five or more days per week in both 2019 and 2023.

    However, their product preferences shifted. The percentage who smoked dried cannabis decreased while the percentage of consumers who consumed edibles increased. Some consumers used both types of products, or used other products entirely — such as vapes. Both changes seemed related to prices rather than the number of retail stores. Consumers seemingly traded-up from basic dried cannabis to processed edibles as prices fell.

    So overall, Canada’s substantial retail developments came with only modest usage growth.

    The apparent relationships between usage and price might partly be coincidental. Product selection and quality also improved, so they likely contributed too. But falling prices do seem to be a plausible explanation for the increased cannabis consumption that was seen.

    The lack of relationship between stores and usage might seem surprising. After all, Canada experienced a 16-fold explosion in stores between 2019 and 2023. But this finding correlates with what my previous research found; it showed that between 2018 and 2020, there was a similar non-relationship between retail expansion of cannabis stores and usage.



    Read more:
    Cannabis store openings in Canada only slightly affected the number of users

    So, perhaps the main effect of retail stores was to draw existing users away from illegal dealers, rather than to tempt new ones.

    I suspect retailers probably influenced usage somewhat in their local neighbourhoods. For example, someone who walked by a new store daily on their way to work might have decided to try cannabis. But this effect would have been too small to appear in province-level measurements.

    Price restriction

    The findings from my study suggests some tentative lessons for regulators.

    If opening more stores has minimal impact on usage, there’s little need to limit their numbers. Provinces don’t need to ration store licenses, and municipalities (like Markham and Oakville in Ontario) don’t need to ban them.

    But since price declines tempt more consumers, it’s important for policymakers to prevent prices from getting too low.

    Other countries who are considering legalizing cannabis may want to consider these points, too.

    For example, medical cannabis use is surging in Australia, much like it was in Canada a decade ago. And Australia’s Green Party is campaigning for recreational legalization in the upcoming federal election. If that election produces a coalition government, legalization might be on its agenda. They could look at our policies and hopefully improve on them.

    Meanwhile in Germany, the previous government legalized recreational use, but not sales. So, Germans must grow their own plants or join a club that does. Commercial products are sold only through the country’s medical cannabis system. Unsurprisingly, medical use is soaring there. Based on what my research suggests, Germany will likely see similar usage growth, whether it allows stores or not. But allowing stores would mean consumers could buy products from licensed sources instead of illicit dealers.

    Canada’s cannabis legalization was controversial at the time. But some Canadians say it has become a memorable part of Justin Trudeau’s complicated legacy. Now that he’s no longer prime minister, that’s something he and his biographers can contemplate.

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

    – ref. Cannabis retail expansion in Canada came with only a small uptick in the number of consumers – https://theconversation.com/cannabis-retail-expansion-in-canada-came-with-only-a-small-uptick-in-the-number-of-consumers-252008

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI: LeddarTech Enters Into Further Amendments to Credit Facility and Bridge Financing Offer and Announces Receipt of Nasdaq Deficiency Notice

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    QUEBEC CITY, Canada, April 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — LeddarTech® Holdings Inc. (“LeddarTech”) (Nasdaq: LDTC), an automotive software company that provides patented disruptive AI-powered low-level sensor fusion and perception software technology, LeddarVision™, today announced that it has entered into:

    • a seventeenth amending agreement (the “Seventeenth Amending Agreement”) with Fédération des caisses Desjardins du Québec (“Desjardins”) with respect to the amended and restated financing offer dated as of April 5, 2023 (the “Desjardins Credit Facility”), pursuant to which Desjardins has agreed to, among other things, (i) temporarily postpone payment of interest for the months of July through December 2024 until the earlier of (x) the date of the final disbursement of one or several equity investments in the borrower for minimum gross proceeds amount of US$35,000,000 in the aggregate (the “Short-Term Outside Date”), and (y) May 23, 2025; and (ii) decrease the minimum cash covenant under the Desjardins Credit Facility to C$1,800,000;
    • a fifth amending agreement (the “Fifth Amending Agreement”) with the initial bridge lenders and certain members of management and the board of directors (collectively, the “Bridge Lenders”) with respect to the bridge financing offer dated as of August 16, 2024 (the “Bridge Financing Offer”) pursuant to which the Bridge Lenders have agreed to, among other things, extend the maturity of the bridge loan to the earlier of (x) May 23, 2025 and (y) the business day following the Short-Term Outside Date.

    The Seventeenth Amending Agreement to the Desjardins Credit Facility and the Fifth Amending Agreement to the Bridge Financing Offer also provide that LeddarTech must initiate and produce a plan at the satisfaction of Desjardins and the other initial Bridge Lenders regarding a refinancing, recapitalization or any suitable transaction (the “Plan”). LeddarTech continues to fully consider all potential sources of financing and/or other alternatives. There is no certainty that LeddarTech will be able to raise additional funds and there can be no assurance that LeddarTech will be successful in pursuing and implementing any such alternatives (including the Plan), nor any assurance as to the outcome or timing of any such alternatives.

    In addition, the Seventeenth Amending Agreement to the Desjardins Credit Facility provides for a monthly payment by LeddarTech to Desjardins of C$125,000, which monthly fee is earned and payable on the first day of each month, until the Short-Term Outside Date, which must occur on or prior to May 23, 2025. The payment of the monthly fees applicable for the month of August 2024 and for the months up until (and including) January 2025 is postponed to the earlier of (x) the Short-Term Outside Date and (y) May 23, 2025.

    The foregoing descriptions of the Seventeenth Amending Agreement to the Desjardins Credit Facility and the Fifth Amending Agreement to the Bridge Financing Offer do not purport to be complete and are qualified in their entirety by reference to such amendments, copies of which will be filed under LeddarTech’s SEDAR+ and EDGAR profiles at www.sedarplus.ca and www.sec.gov, respectively.

    Receipt of Nasdaq Deficiency Notice

    LeddarTech also announces that it has received a letter from the Listing Qualifications Department of the Nasdaq Stock Market LLC indicating that, based upon the closing bid price of LeddarTech’s common shares for the 30 consecutive business day period from February 14, 2025 to March 28, 2025, LeddarTech did not comply with the minimum market value of listed securities (“MVLS”) of US$35,000,000 (the “Listing Requirement”). The letter also indicated that LeddarTech will be afforded a period of 180 calendar days to regain compliance.

    LeddarTech intends to actively monitor the MVLS of its common shares and will evaluate available options to regain compliance with the Listing Requirement. However, there can be no assurance that LeddarTech will be able to regain compliance with such Listing Requirement or maintain compliance with any of the other Nasdaq Capital Market continued listing requirements. Readers should also refer to the press release issued by LeddarTech on March 21, 2025 with respect to the non-compliance with the minimum bid price of US$1.00 per share required for continued listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market.

    The letter has no immediate effect on the listing of LeddarTech’s common shares, which will continue to be listed and traded on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol “LDTC,” subject to LeddarTech’s compliance with the other continued listing requirements of the Nasdaq Capital Market.

    The foregoing also should be read in conjunction with the disclosures set forth in LeddarTech’s Report of Foreign Private Issuer on Form 6-K as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and under LeddarTech’s SEDAR+ profile on the date hereof, and LeddarTech’s Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended September 30, 2024 as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and under LeddarTech’s SEDAR+ profile on December 26, 2024, including the disclosures set forth under “Item 3.D – Key Information – Risk Factors” contained therein.

    About LeddarTech

    A global software company founded in 2007 and headquartered in Quebec City with additional R&D centers in Montreal and Tel Aviv, Israel, LeddarTech develops and provides comprehensive AI-based low-level sensor fusion and perception software solutions that enable the deployment of ADAS, autonomous driving (AD) and parking applications. LeddarTech’s automotive-grade software applies advanced AI and computer vision algorithms to generate accurate 3D models of the environment to achieve better decision making and safer navigation. This high-performance, scalable, cost-effective technology is available to OEMs and Tier 1-2 suppliers to efficiently implement automotive and off-road vehicle ADAS solutions.

    LeddarTech is responsible for several remote-sensing innovations, with over 170 patent applications (87 granted) that enhance ADAS, AD and parking capabilities. Better awareness around the vehicle is critical in making global mobility safer, more efficient, sustainable and affordable: this is what drives LeddarTech to seek to become the most widely adopted sensor fusion and perception software solution.

    Additional information about LeddarTech is accessible at www.leddartech.com and on LinkedIn, Twitter (X), Facebook and YouTube.

    Forward-Looking Statements

    Certain statements contained in this Press Release may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (which forward-looking statements also include forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws), including, but not limited to, statements relating to LeddarTech’s anticipated strategy, future operations, prospects, objectives and financial projections and other financial metrics. Forward-looking statements generally include statements that are predictive in nature and depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, and include words such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “would,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “plan,” “likely,” “believe,” “estimate,” “project,” “intend” and other similar expressions among others. Statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on current beliefs and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results could differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement as a result of various factors, including, without limitation: (i) our ability to continue to maintain compliance with Nasdaq continued listing standards following our transfer to the Nasdaq Capital Market; (ii) our ability to timely access sufficient capital and financing on favorable terms or at all; (iii) our ability to maintain compliance with our debt covenants, including our ability to enter into any forbearance agreements, waivers or amendments with, or obtain other relief from, our lenders as needed; (iv) discussions regarding potential alternatives relating to refinancing, recapitalization or any suitable transaction (including the Plan); (v) our ability to execute on our business model, achieve design wins and generate meaningful revenue; (vi) our ability to successfully commercialize our product offering at scale, whether through the collaboration agreement with Texas Instruments, a collaboration with a Tier 2 supplier or otherwise; (vii) changes in our strategy, future operations, financial position, estimated revenues and losses, projected costs and plans; (viii) changes in general economic and/or industry-specific conditions; (ix) our ability to retain, attract and hire key personnel; (x) potential adverse changes to relationships with our customers, employees, suppliers or other parties; (xi) legislative, regulatory and economic developments; (xii) the outcome of any known and unknown litigation and regulatory proceedings; (xiii) unpredictability and severity of catastrophic events, including, but not limited to, acts of terrorism, outbreak of war or hostilities and any epidemic, pandemic or disease outbreak, as well as management’s response to any of the aforementioned factors; and (xiv) other risk factors as detailed from time to time in LeddarTech’s reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), including the risk factors contained in LeddarTech’s Form 20-F filed with the SEC. The foregoing list of important factors is not exhaustive. Except as required by applicable law, LeddarTech does not undertake any obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement, or to make any other forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

    Contact:
    Chris Stewart, Chief Financial Officer, LeddarTech Holdings Inc.

    Tel.: + 1-514-427-0858, chris.stewart@leddartech.com

    Leddar, LeddarTech, LeddarVision, LeddarSP, VAYADrive, VayaVision and related logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of LeddarTech Holdings Inc. and its subsidiaries. All other brands, product names and marks are or may be trademarks or registered trademarks used to identify products or services of their respective owners.

    LeddarTech Holdings Inc. is a public company listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “LDTC.”

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT IN SHIPBUILDING CLUSTERS

    Source: Government of India

    Posted On: 01 APR 2025 3:28PM by PIB Delhi

    The various steps taken to upgrade and modernise the shipbuilding sectors across India and the shipbuilding are as under:

    (i). Ministry has amended the Shipbuilding Financial Assistance Policy(SBFAP) guidelines on 29.01.2025 to encourage more participation in the shipbuilding activities.

    (ii). The Government, in November, 2021, has released Standard Tug Designs of five variants for use by Major Ports for procurement of tugs to be built in Indian Shipyards.

    (iii). To promote indigenous shipbuilding, the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways on 20.09.2023 has revised the hierarchy of Right of First Refusal (RoFR) to be followed in any kind of charter of a vessel which is undertaken through a tender process. The revised hierarchy of RoFR is:

    (1) Indian built, Indian flagged and Indian owned

    (2) Indian built, Indian flagged and Indian IFSCA owned

    (3) Foreign built, Indian flagged and Indian owned

    (4) Foreign built, Indian flagged and Indian IFSCA owned

    (5) Indian built, foreign flagged and foreign owned

     

    (iv) Ministry of Ports, Shipping & Waterways has launched the Green Tug Transition Programme (GTTP) which aims to reduce carbon emissions and minimize environmental impact by encouraging adoption of environmentally sustainable tugboat operations.

    (v) Government has launched the Harit Nauka guidelines for inland vessels which aim to promote the adoption of greener technologies in inland waterway vessels.

    (vi). Government of India vide Gazette Notification No. 112 dated April 13, 2016 has included ‘Shipyards’ in the updated Harmonized Master List of Infrastructure Sub-sectors.

    (vii). In order to promote indigenous shipbuilding, Government has issued guidelines on 19.05.2016 for evaluating and awarding tenders for new shipbuilding orders floated by government departments or agencies including public sector undertakings for acquisition of any type of vessel(s) used by them for Governmental purposes or for their own use. Whenever acquisition of a vessel(s) is undertaken through tendering route, the qualified Indian Shipyards will have a “Right of First Refusal” to enable them to match the evaluated lowest price offered by the foreign shipyard which is aimed at increasing ship building activities in Indian shipyards.

    Further, the Government entities dealing with ship building and ship-owning are advised to ensure local content as per the Government of India Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017. As per this Order, procurement of ships of less than ₹200 crores is required to be from Indian shipyards.

    (viii) Government of India, in the budget speech, 2025, has made following announcements:

    • The Shipbuilding Financial Assistance Policy will be revamped to address cost disadvantages. This will also include Credit Notes for shipbreaking in Indian yards to promote the circular economy.

    · Large ships above a specified size will be included in the infrastructure harmonized master list (HML).

    · Shipbuilding Clusters will be facilitated to increase the range, categories and capacity of ships. This will include additional infrastructure facilities, skilling and technology to develop the entire ecosystem.

    · For long-term financing for the maritime industry, a Maritime Development Fund with a corpus of Rs. 25,000 crores will be set up. This will be for distributed support and promoting competition. This will have up to 49 per cent contribution by the Government, and the balance will be mobilized from ports and private sector.

    · To continue the exemption of Basic Customs Duty (BCD) on raw materials, components, consumables or parts for the manufacture of ships for another ten years.

    Cochin Shipyard Limited, a PSU under the administrative control of MoPSW, has signed important active Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with international parties and the details of which are as given below:

    Fincantieri, Italy: On October 27, 2020, CSL signed an MoU with Fincantieri, Italy, to collaborate on design, shipbuilding, ship repair, and marine equipment manufacturing, as well as training and skill development.

    IHC Holland BV: On November 26, 2020, CSL signed an MoU with Dredging Corporation of India (DCI) and IHC Holland BV to facilitate the construction of IHC-designed Trailing

    Suction Hopper Dredgers (TSHDs) for DCI in India.

    Robert Allan Limited, Canada: CSL entered into an MoU with Robert Allan Limited, Canada, on February 26, 2021, for design and consultancy services related to tugs, inland vessels, harbor crafts, and specialized vessels.

    Seatrium LeTourneau: CSL signed an MoU with Seatrium LeTourneau, a division of Seatrium Offshore Technology (SOT), on November 20, 2024 for the development and execution of Jack-Up Rig projects in India under the ‘Make in India’.

    Shipbuilding financial assistance policy with a financial outlay of 4000 crore was amended in August 2023, to include flat 30% Financial Assistance for vessels where main propulsion is achieved by means of green fuels such as Methanol/ Ammonia / Hydrogen fuel cells etc. This amendment also included ‘flat 20% Financial Assistance for vessels fitted with fully electric or hybrid propulsion. Under this scheme, 78.23 crore has been disbursed towards construction and delivery of hybrid vessels, till date.

    This information was given by the Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Shri Sarbananda Sonowal in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

    *****

    GDH/HR/SJ

    (Release ID: 2117250) Visitor Counter : 108

    MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Sols 4495-4497: Yawn, Perched, and Rollin’

    Source: NASA

    Written by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems
    Earth planning date: Friday, March 28, 2025
    Womp, womp. Another SRAP (Slip Risk Assessment Process) issue due to wheels being perched on these massive layered sulfate rocks. With our winter power constraints as tight as they are, though, keeping the arm stowed freed up more time to check some lines off our rover’s weekend list. To do: SAM activity to exercise Oven 2 (check!), Navcam 360-degree “phase function” sky movie to monitor scattering of Martian clouds (check!), APXS atmospheric measurements of argon (check!), ChemCam passive sky measurements of oxygen (check!), and a drive of about 50 meters (about 164 feet) to the southwest (check!). Curiosity gets busy on the weekends so us PULs can do some lounging. 
    On the Mastcam team, we’ve been pretty busy in the layered sulfate unit. The rocks are rippled, layered, fractured, and surrounded by sandy troughs. Where did it all come from? What current and past processes are at play in this area? This weekend we’re collecting 70 images to help figure that out. ChemCam is helping by collecting chemistry measurements of the lowest block in this Navcam image, with two targets close by aptly named “Solana Beach” and “Del Mar.” To help conserve power, we’ve been trying to parallelize our activities as much as possible. Recently this means Mastcam has been taking images while ChemCam undergoes “TEC Cooling” to get as cold as possible before using their laser. 
    We’re all hoping the arm can come back from vacation next week.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Discovery Alert: Four Little Planets, One Big Step

    Source: NASA

    Four rocky planets much smaller than Earth orbit Barnard’s Star, the next closest to ours after the three-star Alpha Centauri system. Barnard’s is the nearest single star.

    Barnard’s Star, six light-years away, is notorious among astronomers for a history of false planet detections. But with the help of high-precision technology, the latest discovery — a family of four — appears to be solidly confirmed. The tiny size of the planets is also remarkable: Capturing evidence of small worlds at great distance is a tall order, even using state-of-the-art instruments and observational techniques.

    Watching for wobbles in the light from a star is one of the leading methods for detecting exoplanets — planets orbiting other stars. This “radial velocity” technique tracks subtle shifts in the spectrum of starlight caused by the gravity of a planet pulling its star back and forth as the planet orbits. But tiny planets pose a major challenge: the smaller the planet, the smaller the pull. These four are each between about a fifth and a third as massive as Earth. Stars also are known to jitter and quake, creating background “noise” that potentially could swamp the comparatively quiet signals from smaller, orbiting worlds.
    Astronomers measure the back-and-forth shifting of starlight in meters per second; in this case the radial velocity signals from all four planets amount to faint whispers — from 0.2 to 0.5 meters per second (a person walks at about 1 meter per second). But the noise from stellar activity is nearly 10 times larger at roughly 2 meters per second.
    How to separate planet signals from stellar noise? The astronomers made detailed mathematical models of Barnard’s Star’s quakes and jitters, allowing them to recognize and remove those signals from the data collected from the star.
    The new paper confirming the four tiny worlds — labeled b, c, d, and e — relies on data from MAROON-X, an “extreme precision” radial velocity instrument attached to the Gemini Telescope on the Maunakea mountaintop in Hawaii. It confirms the detection of the “b” planet, made with previous data from ESPRESSO, a radial velocity instrument attached to the Very Large Telescope in Chile. And the new work reveals three new sibling planets in the same system.

    These planets orbit their red-dwarf star much too closely to be habitable. The closest planet’s “year” lasts a little more than two days; for the farthest planet, it’s is just shy of seven days. That likely makes them too hot to support life. Yet their detection bodes well in the search for life beyond Earth. Scientists say small, rocky planets like ours are probably the best places to look for evidence of life as we know it. But so far they’ve been the most difficult to detect and characterize. High-precision radial velocity measurements, combined with more sharply focused techniques for extracting data, could open new windows into habitable, potentially life-bearing worlds.
    Barnard’s star was discovered in 1916 by Edward Emerson Barnard, a pioneering astrophotographer.

    An international team of scientists led by Ritvik Basant of the University of Chicago published their paper on the discovery, “Four Sub-Earth Planets Orbiting Barnard’s Star from MAROON-X and ESPRESSO,” in the science journal, “The Astrophysical Journal Letters,” in March 2025. The planets were entered into the NASA Exoplanet Archive on March 13, 2025.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: ARMD Solicitations (ULI Proposals Invited)

    Source: NASA

    This ARMD solicitations page compiles the opportunities to collaborate with NASA’s aeronautical innovators and/or contribute to their research to enable new and improved air transportation systems. A summary of available opportunities with key dates requiring action are listed first. More information about each opportunity is detailed lower on this page.
    University Leadership InitiativeStep-A proposals due by June 26, 2025.
    University Student Research ChallengeProposals for Cycle 3 are due by June 26, 2025.

    Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Response Operations
    GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
    Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Response Operations is using this request for information to identify technologies that address current challenges facing the wildland firefighting community. NASA is seeking information on data collection, airborne connectivity and communications solutions, unmanned aircraft systems traffic management, aircraft operations and autonomy, and more. This will support development of a partnership strategy for future collaborative demonstrations.
    Interested parties were requested to respond to this notice with an information package no later than 4 pm ET, October 15, 2023, that shall be submitted via https://nari.arc.nasa.gov/acero-rfi. Any proprietary information must be clearly marked. Submissions will be accepted only from United States companies.
    View the full RFI Announcement here.

    Advanced Air Mobility Mission
    GENERAL ADVANCED AIR MOBILITYANNOUNCEMENT OF REQUEST FOR INFORMATIONThis request for information (RFI) is being used to gather market research for NASA to make informed decisions regarding potential partnership strategies and future research to enable Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). NASA is seeking information from public, private, and academic organizations to determine technical needs and community interests that may lead to future solicitations regarding AAM research and development.
    This particular RFI is just one avenue of multiple planned opportunities for formal feedback on or participation in NASA’s AAM Mission-related efforts to develop these requirements and help enable AAM. 
    The respond by date for this RFI closed on Feb. 1, 2025, at 6 p.m. EST.
    View the full RFI announcement here.

    NASA Research Opportunities in Aeronautics
    NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) uses the NASA Research Announcement (NRA) process to solicit proposals for foundational research in areas where ARMD seeks to enhance its core capabilities.
    Competition for NRA awards is open to both academia and industry.
    The current open solicitation for ARMD Research Opportunities is ROA-2023 and ROA-2024.
    Here is some general information to know about the NRA process.

    NRA solicitations are released by NASA Headquarters through the Web-based NASA Solicitation and Proposal Integrated Review and Evaluation System (NSPIRES).
    All NRA technical work is defined and managed by project teams within these four programs: Advanced Air Vehicles Program, Airspace Operations and Safety Program, Integrated Aviation Systems Program, and Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program.
    NRA awards originate from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, Ames Research Center in California, Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, and Armstrong Flight Research Center in California.
    Competition for NRA awards is full and open.
    Participation is open to all categories of organizations, including educational institutions, industry, and nonprofits.
    Any updates or amendments to an NRA is posted on the appropriate NSPIRES web pages as noted in the Amendments detailed below.
    ARMD sends notifications of NRA updates through the NSPIRES email system. In order to receive these email notifications, you must be a Registered User of NSPIRES. However, note that NASA is not responsible for inadvertently failing to provide notification of a future NRA. Parties are responsible for regularly checking the NSPIRES website for updated NRAs.

    ROA-2024 NRA Amendments

    Amendment 1
    (Full text here.)
    Amendment 1 to the NASA ARMD Research Opportunities in Aeronautics (ROA) 2024 NRA has been posted on the NSPIRES web site at https://nspires.nasaprs.com.
    The announcement solicits proposals from accredited U.S. institutions for research training grants to begin the academic year. This NOFO is designed to support independently conceived research projects by highly qualified graduate students, in disciplines needed to help advance NASA’s mission, thus affording these students the opportunity to directly contribute to advancements in STEM-related areas of study. AAVP Fellowship Opportunities are focused on innovation and the generation of measurable research results that contribute to NASA’s current and future science and technology goals.
    Research proposals are sought to address key challenges provided in Elements of Appendix A.8.
    Notices of Intent (NOIs) are not required.
    A budget breakdown for each proposal is required, detailing the allocation of the award funds by year. The budget document may adhere to any format or template provided by the applicant’s institution.
    Proposals were due by April 30, 2024, at 5 PM ET.

    Amendment 2UPDATED ON MARCH 31, 2025
    (Full text here.)
    University Leadership Initiative (ULI) provides the opportunity for university teams to exercise technical and organizational leadership in proposing unique technical challenges in aeronautics, defining multi-disciplinary solutions, establishing peer review mechanisms, and applying innovative teaming strategies to strengthen the research impact.
    Research proposals are sought in six ULI topic areas in Appendix D.4.
    Topic 1: Safe, Efficient Growth in Global Operations (Strategic Thrust 1)
    Topic 2: Innovation in Commercial High-Speed Aircraft (Strategic Thrust 2)
    Topic 3: Ultra-Efficient Subsonic Transports (Strategic Thrust 3)
    Topic 4: Safe, Quiet, and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles (Strategic Thrust 4)
    Topic 5: In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance (Strategic Thrust 5)
    Topic 6: Assured Autonomy for Aviation Transformation (Strategic Thrust 6)
    This NRA will utilize a two-step proposal submission and evaluation process. The initial step is a short mandatory Step-A proposal, which is due June 26, 2025. Those offerors submitting the most highly rated Step-A proposals will be invited to submit a Step-B proposal. All proposals must be submitted electronically through NSPIRES at https://nspires.nasaprs.com. An Applicant’s Workshop will be held on Thursday April 30, 2025; 1:00-3:00 p.m. ET (https://uli.arc.nasa.gov/applicants-workshops/workshop9) (Page will be live closer to the event.)
    An interested partners list for this ULI is at https://uli.arc.nasa.gov/partners. To be listed as an interested lead or partner, please send electronic mail to hq-univpartnerships@mail.nasa.gov with “ULI Partnerships” in the subject line and include the information required for the table in that web page.

    Amendment 3
    (Full text here)
    Commercial Supersonic Technology seeks proposals for a fuel injector design concept and fabrication for testing at NASA Glenn Research Center.
    The proposal for the fuel injector design aims to establish current state-of-the-art in low NOx supersonic cruise while meeting reasonable landing take-off NOx emissions. The technology application timeline is targeted for a supersonic aircraft with entry into service in the 2035+ timeframe.
    These efforts are in alignment with activities in the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate as outlined in the NASA Aeronautics Strategic Implementation Plan, specifically Strategic Thrust 2: Innovation in Commercial High-Speed Aircraft.
    Proposals were due by May 31, 2024 at 5 pm EDT.

    Amendment 4UPDATED ON JANUARY 16, 2025
    (Full text here)
    University Student Research Challenge seeks to challenge students to propose new ideas/concepts that are relevant to NASA Aeronautics.  USRC will provide students, from accredited U.S. colleges or universities, with grants for their projects and with the challenge of raising cost share funds through a crowdfunding campaign.  The process of creating and implementing a crowdfunding campaign acts as a teaching accelerator – requiring students to act like entrepreneurs and raise awareness about their research among the public.
    The solicitation goal can be accomplished through project ideas such as advancing the design, developing technology or capabilities in support of aviation, by demonstrating a novel concept, or enabling advancement of aeronautics-related technologies.
    Notices of Intent are not required for this solicitation.
    Proposals for Cycle 3 are due June 26, 2025.
    Proposals can also be submitted later and evaluated in the second and third cycles.
    The USRC Q&A/Info Session and Proposal Workshop will be held on the days/times below. Please join us on TEAMS using the Meeting Link, or call in via +1 256-715-9946,,317928116#.

    USRC Cycle
    Information Session/Q&A Date
    Proposal Due Date

    Cycle 1
    Sept. 20, 2024 at 2 pm ET
    Nov. 7, 2024

    Cycle 2
    Jan. 27, 2025 at 2 pm ET
    March 13, 2025

    Cycle 3
    May 12, 2024 at 2 pm ET
    June 26, 2025

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Last Day to Apply for FEMA Individual Assistance and SBA Disaster Loans

    Source: US Federal Emergency Management Agency 2

    strong>LOS ANGELES – Today is the last day to apply for FEMA disaster assistance and U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) low-interest disaster loans for homeowners, renters, nonprofits and businesses impacted by the January wildfires in Los Angeles County. 
    The deadline for FEMA Individual Assistance and SBA disaster loans is tonight at 11:59 P.M. PT, Monday, March 31.
    Apply for FEMA Individual Assistance: 

    Online at DisasterAssistance.gov (fastest option).
    On the FEMA App (available at the Apple App Store or Google Play).
    On the FEMA Helpline at 1-800-621-3362. If you use a relay service, give FEMA your number for that service. Assistance is available in multiple languages. Lines are open Sunday–Saturday, from 4 a.m.- 10 p.m. Pacific Time.
    Visit a Disaster Recovery Center (DRC). To find a DRC near you, visit the DRC Locator. Addresses are also listed below:

    UCLA Research Park West 10850 West Pico Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90064 Open Mon. – Sat.: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
    Altadena Disaster Recovery Center540 West Woodbury Rd. Altadena, CA 91001 Open Mon. – Sat.: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

    For an American Sign Language video on how to apply, visit FEMA Accessible: Three Ways to Register for FEMA Disaster Assistance
    Apply for an SBA Low-Interest Disaster Loan:

    Online at sba.gov/disaster
    At SBA’s Customer Service Center at 1-800-659-2955. People who are deaf, hard of hearing or have a speech disability may dial 711 to access telecommunications relay services.
    By emailing DisasterCustomerService@sba.gov, where you can get information or request a loan application.
    At a Disaster Recovery Center or Business Recovery Center, where you can submit a completed application, or SBA representatives can help you apply. To find a BRC near you, go to Appointment.sba.gov.

    Applications for disaster loans may be submitted online using the MySBA Loan Portal at https://lending.sba.gov or other locally announced locations.

    The Right of Entry (ROE) form deadline has been extended – submit an ROE form to LA County by April 15: 

    Follow FEMA online, on X @FEMA or @FEMAEspanol, on FEMA’s Facebook page or Espanol page and at FEMA’s YouTube account. For preparedness information follow the Ready Campaign on X at @Ready.gov, on Instagram @Ready.gov or on the Ready Facebook page.
    California is committed to supporting residents impacted by the Los Angeles Hurricane-Force Firestorm as they navigate the recovery process. Visit CA.gov/LAFires for up-to-date information on disaster recovery programs, important deadlines, and how to apply for assistance.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: NASA Trains for Orion Water Recovery Ahead of Artemis II Launch

    Source: NASA

    Preparations for NASA’s next Artemis flight recently took to the seas as a joint NASA and Department of Defense team, led by NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program, spent a week aboard the USS Somerset off the coast of California practicing procedures for recovering the Artemis II spacecraft and crew.
    Following successful completion of Underway Recovery Test-12 (URT-12) on Monday, NASA’s Landing and Recovery team and their Defense Department counterparts are certified to recover the Orion spacecraft as part of the upcoming Artemis II test flight that will send NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, as well as CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day journey around the Moon.  
    “This will be NASA’s first crewed mission to the Moon under the Artemis program,” said Lili Villarreal, the landing and recovery director for Artemis II. “A lot of practice led up to this week’s event, and seeing everything come together at sea gives me great confidence that the air, water, ground, and medical support teams are ready to safely recover the spacecraft and the crew for this historic mission.”

    Once Orion reenters Earth’s atmosphere, the capsule will keep the crew safe as it slows from nearly 25,000 mph to about 325 mph. Then its system of 11 parachutes will deploy in a precise sequence to slow the capsule and crew to a relatively gentle 20 mph for splashdown off the coast of California. From the time it enters Earth’s atmosphere, the Artemis II spacecraft will fly 1,775 nautical miles to its landing spot in the Pacific Ocean. This direct approach allows NASA to control the amount of time the spacecraft will spend in extremely high temperature ranges.
    The Artemis II astronauts trained during URT-11 in February 2024, when they donned Orion Crew Survival System suits and practiced a range of recovery operations at sea using the Crew Module Test Article, a stand -in for their spacecraft.
    For the 12th training exercise, NASA astronauts Deniz Burnham and Andre Douglas, along with ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano, did the same, moving from the simulated crew module to USS Somerset, with helicopters, a team of Navy divers in small boats, NASA’s open water lead – a technical expert and lead design engineer for all open water operations – as well as Navy and NASA medical teams rehearsing different recovery scenarios.

    “Allowing astronauts to participate when they are not directly involved in a mission gives them valuable experience by exposing them to a lot of different scenarios,” said Glover, who will pilot Artemis II. “Learning about different systems and working with ground control teams also broadens their skillsets and prepares them for future roles. It also allows astronauts like me who are assigned to the mission to experience other roles – in this case, I am serving in the role of Joe Acaba, Chief of the Astronaut Office.” 

    As the astronauts arrive safely at the ship for medical checkouts, recovery teams focus on returning the spacecraft and its auxiliary ground support hardware to the amphibious transport dock.
    Navy divers attach a connection collar to the spacecraft and an additional line to a pneumatic winch inside the USS Somerset’s well deck, allowing joint NASA and Navy teams to tow Orion toward the ship. A team of sailors and NASA recovery personnel inside the ship manually pull some of the lines to help align Orion with its stand, which will secure the spacecraft for its trip to the shore. Following a safe and precise recovery, sailors will drain the well deck of water, and the ship will make its way back to Naval Base San Diego.
    The Artemis II test flight will confirm the foundational systems and hardware needed for human deep space exploration, taking another step toward missions on the lunar surface and helping the agency prepare for human missions to Mars.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Vertical Lift Technology at NASA Ames Research Center

    Source: NASA

    1 Min Read

    Vertical Lift Technology at NASA Ames Research Center

    Revolutionary Vertical Lift project rendering of eVTOL vehicle landing at vertiport during sunset.

    Credits:
    NASA

    The Aeromechanics Office at NASA’s Ames Research Center focuses on advancing vertical lift aircraft, including eVTOLs, through research and development in areas like acoustics, aeromechanics, and flight dynamics, aiming to improve safety and efficiency of future air transportation. 

    Read more about the Aeromechanics Office at NASA Ames

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Attorney General Alan Wilson reminds everyone to call 811 before you digRead More

    Source: US State of South Carolina

    (COLUMBIA, S.C.) – Attorney General Alan Wilson reminds everyone that April is National Safe Digging Month and to call or log in to www.SC811.com before you dig. It’s the law, and it’s not just for contractors and utilities. No job is too small or too big.  Even common do-it-yourself projects—such as planting a garden, installing a mailbox, or setting up a fence—can pose risks, as many utilities are buried just inches below the surface.

    811 is the national number designated by the Federal Communications Commission to help protect do-it-yourselfers, landscapers, and contractors from unintentionally hitting underground utility lines while working on projects that involve digging.

    Damage to utilities can disrupt services to your neighborhood or job site, and can even be deadly, especially in the case of damage to gas or electric lines. Liability of tens of thousands of dollars can arise when a utility must repair the damage. Additionally, the Attorney General has the authority to levy fines for violations of the South Carolina Underground Damage Prevention Act. See S.C. Code Ann. § 58-36-120.

    To have underground utilities located before a project, you can call in a locate notice request by dialing 811. You can also use the online ticket entry system, Exactix, at https://exactix.sc811.com . The online ticket entry system can be easily accessed from your computer or cell phone to place a locate notice request. It only takes about two minutes to enter a locate notice request when using Exactix. Locate notice requests need to be made three full business days before work begins.

    SC811 offers an online training program available at https://sc811.com/education-outreach/online-training/. So, before you plant flowers around your mailbox or start a project that involves digging, contact SC811! Visit www.SC811.com for more information about safe digging practices in South Carolina. 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Local and Mainland Egg Prices Comparable in Latest Data for Honolulu

    Source: US State of Hawaii

    Local and Mainland Egg Prices Comparable in Latest Data for Honolulu

    Posted on Mar 31, 2025 in Main

    March 31, 2025
    NR25-07

    HONOLULU – The price of local and mainland eggs in Honolulu rose significantly in the first quarter of this year. However, the price between local and mainland eggs was comparable, according to latest statistics from the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture (HDOA), Market Analysis and News Branch (MANB).

    Since Jan. 1, 2025, egg prices rose by 20% for local eggs, with a median price of $9.51 per dozen, while the price for imported mainland eggs rose 30% to $9.46, just a few cents difference.

    Hawai‘i still pays significantly higher prices than the rest of the U.S., which averages at $4.90 per dozen. The increase in the price of mainland eggs can be mainly attributed to the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) which has impacted egg production across the continental U.S.

    January 2025, HDOA released data that indicated that between 2021 and 2024, the price for a dozen locally produced eggs rose by 28.4% from $6.91 to $8.87 while the price of imported mainland eggs increased by 51.8% from $5.50 to $8.35. The data collected between 2023 and 2024 show that local egg prices rose by 2.7% while mainland eggs prices rose by 6.2%.

    “While the increasing price of all eggs is a concern for everyone, it is good to see that local eggs are able to be very competitive in the marketplace,” said Sharon Hurd, chairperson of the Hawai‘i Board of Agriculture. “Of course, the added benefit of locally produced eggs is that they are fresher and we hope that everyone will choose local when available and support our local producers.”

    While HPAI was detected in two locations on O‘ahu in early November 2024, no further detections of the virus have been confirmed and no Hawai‘i egg production facilities have been involved. HDOA continues to work with the local poultry industry to keep HPAI from infecting flocks.

    # # #

    Statistics on Egg Prices, Quarter 1, 2025
    Statistics on Egg Prices, December 2021-2024

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: State Seeks Bids For Modernizing Financial System

    Source: US State of Hawaii

    State Seeks Bids For Modernizing Financial System

    Posted on Mar 31, 2025 in Main

    FAMIS software on computer screen

    The State of Hawaiʻi Department of Accounting and General Services (DAGS) published a request for proposals (RFP) to support the Enterprise Financial System (EFS) Project on March 31, 2025. The RFP outlines the requirements for potential bidders to be selected as the software provider and system integrator to support the new EFS—a $68 million overhaul of the aging financial data system that drives the state’s economy.

    “This is the single most transformative modernization effort in Hawaiʻi,” said Gov. Josh Green, M.D. “Everyone in our state is impacted by this software – from employees who receive a check, to SNAP benefits and tax refunds, to our state vendors and departments with federal grants.”

    DAGS’ Director and Comptroller Keith Regan gave a sense of how wide-reaching the state’s accounting functions are. “When you consider the volume of transactions processed by the State’s accounting system, it is equivalent to the state’s gross domestic product (GDP) of $76.5 billion in 2023. More than 900,000 transactions are run through the system every year which puts into perspective the incredibly important task of ensuring we have a system that meets the organization’s and the public’s needs,” he pointed out.

    The Hawaii Financial Accounting and Management Information System (FAMIS), the State’s current financial system, has relied on largely unchanged accounting processes codified by the Legislature since the 1920s. At 55 years old, FAMIS is considered antiquated, costly to maintain, and inefficient, putting State operations at high risk in the event of a major system failure. A modernized system will greatly enhance the efficiency of infrastructure critical to state operations, saving taxpayer dollars and enabling public servants to better serve constituents.

    Efforts to implement the EFS Project were previously initiated in 2020 and 2015, and are now moving forward with renewed focus and commitment. “We’ve learned many lessons from our previous efforts. Accounting and fiscal operations are now taking lead roles in the management of this project. We are reengineering the way we operate, which requires a significant investment of time and effort on the people-side of our organization. Change of this magnitude is not easy, but involving those who will ultimately have to live and breathe this new system will be critical to the success of this project. We are grateful for the support of Governor Green and the legislature as we move forward with this significant modernization effort,” said Regan.

    Once the solicitation process concludes and a system integrator is selected, the project team will work in tandem with the newly selected vendor on the next phases of implementing the new financial system.

    More on this project at https://ags.hawaii.gov/efs/.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI United Nations: Global Assessment Report (GAR) 2025

    Source: UNISDR Disaster Risk Reduction

    Disasters, pandemics, and other shocks are becoming more frequent, more intense, and more unpredictable. At the same time, the costs of responding and rebuilding are rising faster than many countries can manage. To avoid falling deeper into debt and disruption, we need a new kind of financial system, one that is ready before the crisis starts, and flexible enough to support recovery after.

    This section explores how governments, businesses, and financial institutions can work together to build that system. It looks at how public and private money can be combined to fund resilience, how better data and regulation can reduce risk, and how financial tools, from insurance to social protection, can help people and economies bounce back stronger.

    Each part offers practical ways to shift from a system that reacts to disasters, to one that plans, protects, and invests in long-term resilience.

    5.1 Scaling Up Blended Finance

    Most countries do not have enough public money to meet their growing disaster and climate risks. But private investors are often hesitant to put money into high-risk areas. Blended finance helps solve this problem by using public or development funding to reduce risk and attract private capital.

    Platforms like GAIA (Global Action on Investment for Adaptation <<https://www.greenclimate.fund/project/fp223>>) aim to make this easier. [add link] GAIA works to bring governments, private investors, and communities together to support projects that reduce disaster risk, protect ecosystems, and build long-term resilience. These platforms make it easier to fund solutions in places that need them most, but that investors might otherwise avoid.

    Blended finance is not just about funding projects. It is about changing how and where money flows, so that resilience becomes part of every investment decision.

    5.2 Corporate Climate Risk Disclosures

    Businesses face growing risks from climate change and disasters, but many still do not fully understand or report them. This creates blind spots for investors, insurers, and regulators. One important step is to make climate risk disclosure part of standard business reporting.

    Mandatory reporting systems, like those being adopted in the European Union and other regions, help companies identify their exposure to climate risks. This includes physical risks, like floods or heatwaves, and financial risks, such as supply chain disruptions or energy price shocks.

    When risks are made visible, businesses are more likely to act early. Investors can make better decisions, and regulators can help reduce systemic financial risks across the economy.

    5.3 Expanding Regional Insurance Mechanisms

    For many small or vulnerable countries, the cost of disasters is too big to manage alone. Regional insurance pools allow countries to share the risk and access quick funding after a shock. These systems are especially useful for small island states and low-income countries with limited financial reserves.

    Two leading examples are: [links to those initiatives in the web]

    These mechanisms help countries access payouts quickly after hurricanes, earthquakes, or floods. This reduces pressure on public budgets and speeds up recovery. Countries pay into the pool, and when disaster strikes, they get fast, rules-based support. Check how regional insurance helped Dominica recover more quickly from one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the Caribbean.

    Case study: [CCRIF payout after Hurricane Maria in Dominica]

    5.4. Unlocking Green Resilience Bonds

    Green bonds are already used to fund projects that reduce emissions or support clean energy. But they can also support disaster resilience. When these bonds include components like flood protection, climate-smart agriculture, or heat-resilient infrastructure, they become powerful tools for long-term risk reduction.

    Some governments and financial institutions are now designing green resilience bonds that combine climate and disaster goals. These bonds allow investors to support both environmental and social outcomes.

    For example, Costa Rica issued green bonds with a focus on nature-based solutions and climate adaptation. These projects aim to both cut emissions and reduce the impacts of floods and droughts.

    Case study: [Costa Rica’s green bond program]

    5.5. Adaptive Social Protection for Disaster Recovery

    Social protection systems, like cash transfers, food assistance, or public works programs, can be powerful tools for resilience, especially when they are flexible. When designed to scale up during shocks, they can protect people from falling into poverty after a disaster.

    This is called adaptive social protection. It links disaster early warning systems with financial systems that can respond quickly to changing needs. For example, a drought warning might trigger extra cash support for farmers before their crops fail.

    Like in the Philippines, a national social protection program was adapted to respond to typhoon impacts. It helped deliver assistance more quickly and reach the most vulnerable communities during emergencies.

    Case study: [Philippines’ shock-responsive social protection system]

    5.6. How Central Banks Can Support Resilience Finance

    Central banks play a key role in keeping economies stable. As climate risks grow, they can also help make financial systems more resilient. This means looking at how disasters affect inflation, lending, and investment flows, and adjusting policies to support preparedness.

    Central banks can include disaster and climate risks in their stress tests and financial supervision. They can also support green finance guidelines, invest in resilience bonds, or offer incentives for banks that support risk reduction projects.

    Bangladesh’s central bank created a special refinancing scheme to support solar energy, flood-resilient housing, and climate-smart farming. This shows how monetary policy can support resilience at the local level.

    Case study: [Bangladesh Bank’s green refinancing program]

    MIL OSI United Nations News –

  • MIL-OSI United Nations: Sint Maarten Trust Fund

    Source: UNISDR Disaster Risk Reduction

    Mission

    In 2017, Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated the island of Sint Maarten. The World Bank estimated the damages and losses caused by Hurricane Irma to Sint Maarten to be $2.73 billion. Ninety percent of all infrastructure was affected, with tourism-the country’s biggest industry taking a huge hit. 

    Due to Sint Maarten’s location and dependence on tourism, it is highly vulnerable to natural disasters, which may happen more frequently due to climate change. Sint Maarten needs to be prepared. 

    The Sint Maarten Reconstruction, Recovery and Resilience Trust Fund was launched in April 2018 as a tripartite partnership between the government of the Netherlands, government of Sint Maarten, and the World Bank to help the country rebuild stronger and more sustainably to support longer-term development priorities. 

    The current fund portfolio is US$519 million, with recipient-executed projects addressing the country’s most critical needs-strengthening institutions, building capacity, making infrastructure climate-resilient, and improving social and economic cohesion.

    MIL OSI United Nations News –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Kos Samaras on polls and the people who’ll decide this election

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

    The demography that makes up the Australian electorate is changing and as voters desert the major parties polls are becoming harder to read.

    Kos Samaras is a director of the political consultancy firm Redbridge, which undertakes both quantitative research and focus groups. Samaras now views campaigns from the outside but in the past, as a former Labor Party official, he’s experienced them from the insisde too.

    On the state on the polls he says,

    They’re going to switch around a bit, but we are seeing some trends now that are quite obvious, and that is the consolidation of the Labor primary [vote]. Labor has been successful in bringing back some of those people that did move away from them to minor parties over the last 18 months in some key areas around the country.

    On why Labor is doing better compared to the Coalition, Samaras says Labor starting early was key,

    That’s why it’s important that when you are running a campaign, you must start very early and you must start before the writ is issued and that [is] why Labor has been in that space aggressively now for some time. And this is where I think Dutton and his team have really missed the mark. They’ve waited until the writ to start their campaign. They’ve allowed a vacuum to be created. Labor has filled it with their narrative and their story and their mission, and it’s bearing fruit.

    On the Trump effect and how that will play in this election, Samaras says Dutton should try to distance himself from the US president,

    We do think that the Trump factor is having an impact, and we could see that in other countries as well. Canada is a really good example of that.

    It’s hard for Labor to convince Australians that Dutton is like Trump, but Dutton has throughout this campaign made some errors, particularly on issues around dual citizenship, cuts to the public service. These policies just kind of remind people that he’s not Trump, because he’s an established player, but he does have some element to him that is similar and that can only hurt him.

    Now that Gen X and the millennials have overtaken the baby boomers as voters, Samaras say of these younger voters,

    They want the system turned on its head. They actually want to see significant reform, and at the moment, they’re just getting band-aids, and that’s fundamentally the problem. Now they may indeed a portion of them eventually just vote for one or the other of the major parties and there will be a number of them that do that. But I wouldn’t exactly describe that as enthusiastic support.

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

    – ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Kos Samaras on polls and the people who’ll decide this election – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-kos-samaras-on-polls-and-the-people-wholl-decide-this-election-253531

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: The U.S.-Africa Energy Forum (USAEF) Partners with Welligence to Empower United States (U.S.) Investors in Africa’s Energy Landscape

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

    HOUSTON, United States of America, April 1, 2025/APO Group/ —

    The U.S.-Africa Energy Forum (USAEF) is proud to announce its strategic partnership with Welligence, a leading provider of energy research and advisory services, to connect U.S. investors with Africa’s most promising energy opportunities.

    As a trusted advisor with deep expertise in African energy markets, Welligence brings its extensive knowledge of the continent’s oil, gas and LNG sectors to support U.S. companies in navigating Africa’s evolving energy landscape. The partnership reinforces USAEF’s mission to facilitate high-value engagements between American stakeholders and African energy leaders, while also cementing its position as a data-driven event.

    Welligence has a strong presence in Africa, providing critical insights and data on oil and gas reserves and infrastructure developments across key African markets. Their research and advisory work have supported numerous energy projects, helping investors assess risk, identify opportunities and optimize investment strategies. With a focus on providing accurate and actionable intelligence, Welligence’s partnership with USAEF will ensure U.S. investors have the information and connections they need to make informed decisions about Africa’s dynamic energy sector.

    Data-driven exploration has become a central element in Africa’s energy transformation. By using advanced seismic data, exploration techniques and predictive modeling, Africa’s leading exploration markets are enhancing their ability to identify untapped reserves and yield new discoveries. In 2025, Angola is launching a limited public tender featuring 10 offshore blocks in the Kwanza and Benguela basins, with the National Agency for Oil, Gas & Biofuels committed to strengthening sub-surface data across both mature and frontier fields through additional 2D and 3D seismic data. Serving as Africa’s largest crude oil producer, Libya recently launched its 2025 bid round covering 22 on- and offshore concessions across the Murzuq and Ghadames basins. The Republic of Congo is similarly expanding its licensing opportunities with promising exploration areas in its coastal basin. These licensing rounds and more will be a core feature of USAEF, which will showcase the latest data-driven exploration developments and foster strategic partnerships in Africa’s growing energy sector.

    In its 2024 exploration roundup, Welligence highlighted several key upstream developments in sub-Saharan Africa, including Namibia’s Mopane discovery, the largest of the year, which requires further appraisal drilling to refine its liquid-to-gas split. Other notable discoveries include the Calao discovery in Ivory Coast – estimated at around 500 million barrels of oil equivalent – and Enigma and Mangetti in Namibia, both of which are under 500 million barrels and require further appraisal drilling. According to Welligence, additional developments to watch include TotalEnergies’ Niamou Marine-1 exploration well offshore Congo, ExxonMobil’s Arcturus wildcat in the deepwater Namibe Basin in Angola, and Apus Energy’s Atum prospect in deepwater Guinea-Bissau.

    USAEF serves as the leading platform for driving U.S.-Africa energy investment, connecting American investors with high-growth opportunities across the continent. Through this collaboration, USAEF and Welligence will provide unparalleled access to critical energy projects, from oil and gas exploration to large-scale renewable initiatives. As global energy strategies evolve, Welligence’s expertise will be key in guiding U.S. companies toward impactful, profitable projects within Africa’s dynamic energy landscape.

    “Welligence’s extensive knowledge of Africa’s energy markets and its role in providing strategic insights aligns perfectly with USAEF’s goal to bridge the gap between U.S. investors and Africa’s growing energy opportunities,” said James Chester, CEO of Energy Capital & Power. “This partnership ensures that American stakeholders are well-positioned to tap into Africa’s energy potential and contribute to the continent’s ongoing energy transformation.”

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI: Bitfarms Provides March 2025 Production and Operations Update

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

      – Operational hashrate of 19.5 EHuM and fleet efficiency of 19 w/TH–
    -Completes acquisition of Stronghold Digital Mining & sale of Yguazu, Paraguay data center-
    -Appoints two new key HPC/AI and Infrastructure Executives-

    This news release constitutes a “designated news release” for the purposes of the Company’s second amended and restated prospectus supplement dated December 17, 2024, to its short form base shelf prospectus dated November 10, 2023.

    TORONTO, April 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Bitfarms Ltd. (NASDAQ/TSX: BITF), a global energy and compute infrastructure company, today issued its latest monthly production report. All financial references are in U.S. dollars.

    CEO Ben Gagnon stated, “March was a very productive month for Bitfarms. We successfully closed both our transformative acquisition of Stronghold Digital Mining, the largest M&A deal between two public miners in our industry, and the strategic sale of our 200 MW Yguazu data center. Through these transactions, we have rebalanced our portfolio to the U.S. where we expect to achieve greater yields per MW, reduced our average cost of power across our portfolio, minimized our 2025 capex requirements, and secured highly desirable sites that will enable us to diversify beyond Bitcoin mining into HPC/AI and energy generation.

    “In addition, we advanced our HPC/AI strategy with both the appointments of James Bond, SVP of HPC, and Craig Hibbard, SVP of Infrastructure, and the continued evaluation of our three Pennsylvania sites for potential HPC conversion. Initial studies from our strategic partners confirmed that all three sites are well-suited: they are strategically located near other data center campuses and peering hubs and they have the necessary power, land and fiber infrastructure to support HPC. We expect to receive full, detailed feasibility studies in Q2. With the steps we’ve taken in Q1, we now have the properties, internal team, and strategic engineering and marketing advisors in place, taking a holistic approach to advancing our HPC/AI business.”

    SVP of Global Mining Operations Alex Brammer said, “During March we grew our operational hashrate 21% to 19.5 EHuM and reached our Q2 efficiency target of 19 w/TH three months ahead of schedule. Our energy portfolio is now larger and more efficient, with stronger operating economics and significant U.S. growth potential.”

    March 2025 Select Operating Highlights

    Key Performance Indicators March 2025
    (proforma)    		 February
    2025
    Total BTC earned 280 213
    Month End Operating EHuM 19.5 16.1
    BTC/Avg. EH/s 17 16
    Average Operating EHuM 16.4 13.4
    Energized Capacity (MW) 461 437
    Watts/Terahash Efficiency (w/TH) 19 20
    • 19.5 EHuM operational at March 31, 2025, up 21% M/M.
    • 16.4 EHuM average operational, up 22% M/M.
    • 17 BTC/average EHuM, 6% higher M/M.
    • 280 BTC earned on a proforma basis, 31% higher M/M.
    • 9.0 BTC earned daily on average, equal to ~$738,000 per day based on a BTC price of $82,000 at March 31, 2025.

    March 2025 Financial Update

    • Total liquidity of $132 million, including approximately $39 million in cash at March 31, 2025.
    • Treasury of 1,140 BTC, down from 1,260 BTC last month and representing $93.4 million based on the Bitcoin price of $82,000 at March 31, 2025.

    About Bitfarms Ltd.
    Founded in 2017, Bitfarms is a global energy and compute infrastructure company that develops, owns, and operates vertically integrated energy generation and data centers. Bitfarms currently has 15 operating data centers situated in four countries: the United States, Canada, Argentina and Paraguay.

    To learn more about Bitfarms’ events, developments, and online communities:

    www.bitfarms.com
    https://www.facebook.com/bitfarms/
    https://x.com/Bitfarms_io
    https://www.instagram.com/bitfarms/
    https://www.linkedin.com/company/bitfarms/

    Glossary of Terms

    • Y/Y or M/M= year over year or month over month
    • BTC or BTC/day = Bitcoin or Bitcoin per day
    • EH or EH/s = Exahash or exahash per second
    • EHuM = Exahash Under Management, which includes Bitfarms’ proprietary hashrate and hashrate being hosted by Bitfarms for third-party hosting clients
    • MW or MWh = Megawatts or megawatt hour
    • GW or GWh= Gigawatts or gigawatt hour
    • w/TH = Watts/Terahash efficiency (includes cost of powering supplementary equipment)
    • HPC/AI = High Performance Computing / Artificial Intelligence
    • Energized capacity= Power available

    Forward-Looking Statements

    This news release contains certain “forward-looking information” and “forward-looking statements” (collectively, “forward-looking information”) that are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release and are covered by safe harbors under Canadian and United States securities laws. The statements and information in this release regarding the benefits of the acquisition of Stronghold Digital Mining, Inc., the ability to enhance the business of the Company through adding additional human resources to HPC/AI strategies, its revenue diversification strategy, the North American energy and compute infrastructure strategy, opportunities relating to the potential of the Company’s data centers for HPC/AI opportunities, the merits and ability to secure long-term contracts associated with HPC/AI customers, the success of the Company’s HPC/AI strategy in general and its ability to capitalize on growing demand for AI computing while securing predictable cash flows, the Company’s energy pipeline and its anticipated megawatt growth, the Company’s ability to drive greater shareholder value, projected growth, target hashrate, and other statements regarding future growth, plans and objectives of the Company are forward-looking information.

    Any statements that involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as “expects”, or “does not expect”, “is expected”, “anticipates” or “does not anticipate”, “plans”, “budget”, “scheduled”, “forecasts”, “estimates”, “prospects”, “believes” or “intends” or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results “may” or “could”, “would”, “might” or “will” be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking information.

    This forward-looking information is based on assumptions and estimates of management of Bitfarms at the time they were made, and involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of Bitfarms to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Such factors, risks and uncertainties include, among others: an inability to successfully integrate the business of Stronghold Digital Mining, Inc. as contemplated, or at all; an inability to apply the Company’s data centers to HPC/AI opportunities on a profitable basis; a failure to secure long-term contracts associated with HPC/AI customers on terms which are economic or at all; the construction and operation of new facilities may not occur as currently planned, or at all; expansion of existing facilities may not materialize as currently anticipated, or at all; new miners may not perform up to expectations; revenue may not increase as currently anticipated, or at all; the ongoing ability to successfully mine digital currency is not assured; failure of the equipment upgrades to be installed and operated as planned; the availability of additional power may not occur as currently planned, or at all; expansion may not materialize as currently anticipated, or at all; the power purchase agreements and economics thereof may not be as advantageous as expected; potential environmental cost and regulatory penalties due to the operation of the former Stronghold plants which entail environmental risk and certain additional risk factors particular to the former business and operations of Stronghold including, land reclamation requirements may be burdensome and expensive, changes in tax credits related to coal refuse power generation could have a material adverse effect on the business, financial condition, results of operations and future development efforts, competition in power markets may have a material adverse effect on the results of operations, cash flows and the market value of the assets, the business is subject to substantial energy regulation and may be adversely affected by legislative or regulatory changes, as well as liability under, or any future inability to comply with, existing or future energy regulations or requirements, the operations are subject to a number of risks arising out of the threat of climate change, and environmental laws, energy transitions policies and initiatives and regulations relating to emissions and coal residue management, which could result in increased operating and capital costs and reduce the extent of business activities, operation of power generation facilities involves significant risks and hazards customary to the power industry that could have a material adverse effect on our revenues and results of operations, and there may not have adequate insurance to cover these risks and hazards, employees, contractors, customers and the general public may be exposed to a risk of injury due to the nature of the operations, limited experience with carbon capture programs and initiatives and dependence on third-parties, including consultants, contractors and suppliers to develop and advance carbon capture programs and initiatives, and failure to properly manage these relationships, or the failure of these consultants, contractors and suppliers to perform as expected, could have a material adverse effect on the business, prospects or operations; the digital currency market; the ability to successfully mine digital currency; it may not be possible to profitably liquidate the current digital currency inventory, or at all; a decline in digital currency prices may have a significant negative impact on operations; an increase in network difficulty may have a significant negative impact on operations; the volatility of digital currency prices; the anticipated growth and sustainability of hydroelectricity for the purposes of cryptocurrency mining in the applicable jurisdictions; the inability to maintain reliable and economical sources of power to operate cryptocurrency mining assets; the risks of an increase in electricity costs, cost of natural gas, changes in currency exchange rates, energy curtailment or regulatory changes in the energy regimes in the jurisdictions in which Bitfarms operates and the potential adverse impact on profitability; future capital needs and the ability to complete current and future financings, including Bitfarms’ ability to utilize an at-the-market offering program ( “ATM Program”) and the prices at which securities may be sold in such ATM Program, as well as capital market conditions in general; share dilution resulting from an ATM Program and from other equity issuances; volatile securities markets impacting security pricing unrelated to operating performance; the risk that a material weakness in internal control over financial reporting could result in a misstatement of financial position that may lead to a material misstatement of the annual or interim consolidated financial statements if not prevented or detected on a timely basis; risks related to the Company ceasing to qualify as an “emerging growth company”; risks related to unsolicited investor interest, takeover proposals, shareholder activism or proxy contests relating to the election of directors; historical prices of digital currencies and the ability to mine digital currencies that will be consistent with historical prices; and the adoption or expansion of any regulation or law that will prevent Bitfarms from operating its business, or make it more costly to do so. For further information concerning these and other risks and uncertainties, refer to Bitfarms’ filings on www.sedarplus.ca (which are also available on the website of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) at www.sec.gov), including the management’s discussion & analysis for the year-ended December 31, 2024 Although Bitfarms has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended, including factors that are currently unknown to or deemed immaterial by Bitfarms. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate as actual results, and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. Bitfarms does not undertake any obligation to revise or update any forward-looking information other than as required by law. Trading in the securities of the Company should be considered highly speculative. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein. Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, or any other securities exchange or regulatory authority accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

    Investor Relations Contact:

    Bitfarms
    Tracy Krumme
    SVP, Head of IR & Corp. Comms.
    +1 786-671-5638
    tkrumme@bitfarms.com

    Media Contact: 

    Bitfarms
    Caroline Brady Baker 
    Director, Communications   
    cbaker@bitfarms.com 

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Cielo Announces Relocation of First Planned Facility to British Columbia and Provides Update on Proposed Asset Acquisition and Corporate Matters

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    CALGARY, Alberta, April 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Cielo Waste Solutions Corp. (TSXV:CMC; OTC PINK:CWSFF) (“Cielo” or the “Company”) provides an update on certain business and corporate matters.

    First Planned Waste to Fuels Facility – Scrap Railway Ties to Green Hydrogen

    In light of changes in market conditions, the Company announces its intention to relocate its first planned commercial waste to fuel facility for the processing of scrap railway ties from Carseland, Alberta to British Columbia, and a transition in fuel to be produced from Renewable Diesel to Green Hydrogen. This shift remains aligned with the Company’s commitment to commercialize renewable energy initiatives.

    This strategic pivot allows Cielo to explore funding opportunities through the British Columbia Low Carbon Fuel Standard (BCLCFS) credit program, which offers financial incentives for reducing carbon emissions.

    Cielo is engaged in advanced discussions with a technology provider on a project in British Columbia that will utilize scrap railway ties as feedstock to produce Green Hydrogen for use in the British Columbia market.

    “As Cielo completes a shift in our strategy, we also continue to be flexible in our project execution. We are willing and prepared to pivot as the political and technological landscapes change. In addition, as the demand for renewable fuels changes, Cielo understands the need to revise our approach to meet market demand,” said Ryan C. Jackson, CEO of Cielo. “This decision was not made in haste. We believe it is an important step forward in ensuring our resources are dedicated to projects that have the highest potential for success in the short term and sustainable growth in the long term.”

    Rocky Mountain Clean Fuels Acquisition Update

    In light of the foregoing changes, the Company also announces that it will not proceed with the previously announced proposed acquisition (the “Proposed Acquisition”) by Cielo of an Enhanced Gas to Liquids (“EGTLTM”) facility located in Carseland, Alberta (the “EGTLTMFacility”), currently owned and operated by Rocky Mountain Clean Fuels Inc. (“RMCFI”), which deploys patented Enhanced Gas-To-Liquids technology.

    The Company had previously announced its intention to complete a proposed transaction with RMCFI with a view to enhancing the process deployed at the EGTL™ Facility and diversifying the inputs used to process synthetic diesel and jet fuel. Cielo had intended to build a gasifier on the land adjacent to the EGTL™ Facility.

    Due to ongoing market uncertainty and after careful evaluation, Cielo has determined that the uncertainty around the regulatory landscape and shifting market conditions present significant challenges to advancing the Proposed Acquisition in a manner that aligns with the Company’s long-term strategic goals. The project development agreement between Cielo and RMCFI that had been acquired under the Asset Purchase Agreement with Expander (each as defined below) has expired.

    Cielo remains focused on executing its broader strategy of sustainable and profitable fuel production, including new opportunities in Green Hydrogen and other low-carbon initiatives. The Company continues to explore alternative partnerships and funding opportunities to drive its commitment to innovation and environmental sustainability.

    Expander Energy Dispute Resolution

    In November 2023, pursuant to an asset purchase agreement dated September 15, 2023, as amended and restated on November 8, 2023 (the “Asset Purchase Agreement”) between Cielo and Expander Energy Inc (“Expander”), Cielo acquired certain assets and liabilities of Expander to use and operate Expander’s patented EBTL™ and BGTL™ technologies (the “Transaction”).

    Concurrently with the closing of the Transaction, Cielo and Expander executed a license agreement (the “License Agreement”), providing Cielo with an exclusive license in Canada to use Expander’s patented EBTL™ and BGTL™ technologies and related intellectual property for all feedstocks, as well as an exclusive license in the United States for creosote and treated wood waste (the “Licensed Technologies”).

    As a result of recent disagreements between Cielo and Expander on various matters, the Company has notified Expander of its intention to initiate a dispute resolution process in accordance with the terms of the License Agreement. Prior to this, Cielo had received from Expander notices of breach (collectively the “Notices”) with regard to the Asset Purchase Agreement, the License Agreement and a master service agreement executed between Cielo and Expander upon closing of the Transaction. Among other things, the Notices include Expander’s advice that Expander intends to terminate the License Agreement upon a second notice, which Cielo may expect to receive in or after April 2025. Cielo intends to dispute some or all of the assertions made in the Notices and intends to have its own commercial, financial and strategic concerns related to the Licensed Technologies addressed. The Company will continue to provide material updates as they become available.

    “Through this challenging but in our view necessary juncture, we remain dedicated in our mission of investing in innovation in the renewable fuels sector,” said Mr. Jackson. “As we navigate these discussions, our priority is to act in the best interests of our shareholders and stakeholders while maintaining a constructive approach to resolving these matters.”

    Cielo will continue to execute its existing business strategy and technological advancements, while ensuring its leadership role in sustainable waste-to-energy solutions.

    Director Resignation

    Cielo announces that James H. Ross has resigned from its Board of Directors, effective immediately. The Company thanks Mr. Ross for his contributions and leadership during his tenure and wishes him success in his future endeavors.

    Mr. Ross was appointed to the Board of Directors in November 2023 pursuant to the Asset Purchase Agreement with Expander.

    Annual General Meeting

    As previously announced, Cielo had cancelled its rescheduled annual general meeting of shareholders (the “AGM”) to be held on December 19, 2024 due to a Canada Post Strike. Pursuant to the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia), the Company was required to hold the AGM on or before December 31, 2024 (the “Original AGM Deadline”), however it was determined that rescheduling the AGM for a date on or before the Original AGM Deadline was not feasible given the continuing postal strike and mailing requirements. As a result, the Company had made application to request an extension, which was granted until June 30, 2025. Cielo intends to hold the AGM in June 2025 and will provide additional details as they become available.

    Corporate Update Webinar

    Cielo is pleased to announce a corporate update webinar (the “Webinar”) with CEO, Ryan C. Jackson and CFO, Jasdeep K.B. Dhaliwal, scheduled for April 10th, 2025. This event is intended to provide shareholders and stakeholders with updates on the Company’s strategic initiatives and future outlook. Further details will be released prior the date of the Webinar.

    ABOUT CIELO

    Cielo Waste Solutions is a publicly traded company focused on transforming waste materials into high-value renewable fuels. Cielo seeks to address global waste challenges while contributing to the circular economy and reducing carbon emissions. Cielo is fueling renewable change with a mission to be a leader in the wood by-product-to-fuels industry by using environmentally friendly, economically sustainable and market-ready technologies. Cielo is committed to helping society ‘change the fuel, not the vehicle’, which we believe will contribute to generating positive returns for shareholders. Cielo shares are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol “CMC,” as well as on the OTC Pink Market under the symbol “CWSFF.”

    For further information please contact:

    Cielo Investor Relations

    Ryan Jackson, CEO
    Phone: (403) 348-2972
    Email: investors@cielows.com

    CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

    This news release contains certain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively referred to herein as “forward-looking statements”) within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. All statements other than statements of present or historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as “anticipate”, “achieve”, “could”, “believe”, “plan”, “intend”, “objective”, “continuous”, “ongoing”, “estimate”, “outlook”, “expect”, “may”, “will”, “project”, “should” or similar words, including negatives thereof, suggesting future outcomes.

    Forward-looking statements are subject to both known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance, or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. Forward-looking statements and information are based on plans, expectations and estimates of management at the date the information is provided and are subject to certain factors and assumptions. Cielo is making forward-looking statements, including but not limited to with respect to: the change of location of the first planned commercial facility and the focus on Green Hydrogen; the exploration and use of financial incentives in British Columbia; that the Company will not proceed with the Proposed Acquisition; the Company’s strategic focus; the Company’s intention to continue to explore alternative partnerships and funding opportunities; the dispute resolutions process with Expander, Cielo’s intentions with respect thereto and that the Company will provide further updates as they become available; that Cielo will continue to execute its existing business strategy and technological advancements, while ensuring its leadership role in sustainable waste-to-energy solutions; the AGM and the timing thereof; and the Webinar and the date thereof.

    Investors should continue to review and consider information disseminated through news releases and filed by the Company on SEDAR+. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended.

    Forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future performance and involve a number of risks and uncertainties, some of which are described herein. Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause the Company’s actual performance and results to differ materially from any projections of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise such statements to reflect new information, subsequent or otherwise.

    Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Combatting Cyber Threats with AI: Darktrace and Climb Channel Solutions Sign Distribution Agreement for North America

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    EATONTOWN, N.J., April 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Climb Channel Solutions, an international specialty technology distributor and wholly owned subsidiary of Climb Global Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: CLMB) today announced a new partnership with Darktrace, a global leader in AI for cybersecurity. Under this agreement, Climb Channel Solutions will now distribute Darktrace’s portfolio of AI-powered cybersecurity products across North America.

    Darktrace provides the essential cybersecurity platform protecting organizations from unknown threats using its proprietary AI that learns from the unique patterns of life for each customer in real-time. The Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform™ delivers a proactive approach to cyber resilience with pre-emptive visibility into security posture, real-time threat detection, and autonomous response – securing the business across the entire digital estate including cloud, email, identities, operational technology, endpoints, and network. Darktrace’s platform and services protect nearly 10,000 customers across all major industries globally.

    “Darktrace’s pioneering use of AI in network detection and response has earned the trust of thousands of organizations worldwide,” said Dale Foster, CEO of Climb Channel Solutions. “Darktrace’s expertise aligns perfectly with our mission to enhance cybersecurity for our resellers and their clients. By integrating Darktrace into our portfolio, we are not only expanding our range of innovative vendors but also reinforcing our dedication to providing unique and differentiated solutions to the market.”

    “Partners play an essential role in helping to protect customers against the rapidly evolving threat landscape,” said Dan Monahan, Chief Partner and Transformation Officer, Darktrace. “Our collaboration with Climb expands the reach of Darktrace’s solutions across North America to help more organizations increase their cyber resilience and take a more proactive approach to cybersecurity. Together, Darktrace and Climb are equipping partners with the tools they need to deliver best in class AI-powered cybersecurity solutions to customers.”

    For more information about Climb Channel Solutions, visit www.climbcs.com.

    About Climb Channel Solutions and Climb Global Solutions

    Climb Channel Solutions is a global specialty technology distributor focusing on Security, Data Management, Connectivity, Storage & HCI, Virtualization & Cloud, and Software & Application Lifecycle. What sets Climb apart is our commitment to transform distribution by providing emerging and established IT technologies, flexible financing, real-time quoting, best of breed channel operations, speed to market, and exceptional service to our partners worldwide.

    Climb Channel Solutions is a wholly owned subsidiary of Climb Global Solutions (NASDAQ: CLMB). Experience the Climb difference and learn how our people-first approach empowers VARs and MSPs to grow, scale, and accelerate their business. Visit www.ClimbCS.com, call 1-800-847-7078, and connect with us on LinkedIn!

    Those interested in distribution services and solutions should contact Climb by phone at +1.800.847.7078 (US), or +1.888.523.7777 (Canada), or by email at Sales@ClimbCS.com.

    Media contact:

    Dan Walsh – dan@mustardpr.com.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Fengate consortium selected to deliver six new schools in Alberta, Canada

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    EDMONTON, Alberta, April 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Fengate Asset Management (Fengate), as part of the EllisDon Infrastructure consortium, has been selected by the Government of Alberta to deliver six new schools as part of the P3 Schools Bundle #5 project.

    The consortium achieved financial close on the project this week to design, build, finance, and maintain the schools under a public-private partnership (P3).

    Three grade K-9 schools, located in Calgary (Nolan Hill), Chestermere, and Okotoks; one K-8 school in Aidrie; one K-5 school in Blackfalds; and one grade 7-12 school in Edmonton (Glenridding Heights), are anticipated to open in 2027 and provide an opening capacity for 5,550 students.

    “We are honored to be part of this transformative project that will provide state-of-the-art educational facilities for students across Alberta,” said Mac Bell, Managing Director, Infrastructure Investments at Fengate.

    “Achieving financial close is a testament to the collaborative efforts of our consortium partners and the Alberta government, and we look forward to working shoulder-to-shoulder to build the future of education in the province.”

    Fengate, which successfully delivered a P3 bundle of six schools in Prince George’s County, Maryland, near Washington D.C. in 2023, remains committed to delivering high- quality social infrastructure that enhances communities across Canada and the United States.

    The EllisDon Infrastructure consortium – comprised of EllisDon Capital Inc., Fengate Asset Management, EllisDon Construction Services Inc., GEC Architecture, Smith + Andersen, Entuitive Corporation, Grade Consulting Inc., Scatliff + Miller + Murray Inc., Footprint, and FFA Consultants – was selected following a competitive procurement process.

    About Fengate

    Fengate is a leading alternative investment manager focused on infrastructure, private equity and real estate strategies, with more than $10 billion of capital commitments under management. The firm has been investing in infrastructure since 2006 with a focus on mid- market greenfield and brownfield infrastructure assets in the transportation, social, energy transition and digital sectors. Fengate is one of North America’s most active infrastructure investors and developers with a portfolio of more than 45 assets. Learn more at www.fengate.com.

    Media contact

    Maddison Sharples
    Vice President, Communications and Marketing
    +1 416 254 3326
    maddison.sharples@fengate.com

    The MIL Network –