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  • MIL-Evening Report: A community-led health program in remote Arnhem land is showing promising results for First Nations locals

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hasthi Dissanayake, Research Fellow in Indigenous Health, The University of Melbourne

    The Doherty Institute

    Indigenous Australians are more than twice as likely as non-Indigenous Australians to suffer from disease, particularly chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease.

    The health disparities are worse in remote and very remote areas. The burden of diabetes in the remote Aboriginal population of the Northern Territory, where it affects more than one in four adults aged over 20, is among the highest in the world.

    The Yolŋu (or Yolngu) people of Northeast Arnhem land, a large, remote area in the NT, maintain one of the oldest continuously living cultures in the world. They also represent one of the largest Indigenous groups in Australia.

    Yet, people in these communities face the highest number of avoidable deaths in Australia, mostly from chronic disease. A diet of too much sugar, refined and processed food products, smoking and an unhealthy lifestyle contribute to this region’s health crisis.

    Beginning in 2014, senior Yolŋu women in Galiwin’ku, one of the largest communities in Northeast Arnhem land, have been developing a unique diet and lifestyle change program called Hope for Health. The program has been running intermittently since then, and includes on-Country health retreats, individualised health coaching, and group classes and activities.

    We recently evaluated this program. We found it offers significant benefits which could reduce chronic disease risk among the Yolŋu people.

    Hope for Health participants and staff at a cooking workshop.
    Hope for Health

    A holistic approach

    Most Yolŋu live on Aboriginal land in remote communities of various sizes and hold a deep unbroken connection to their ancestral country.

    Health and wellbeing is considered a holistic concept that connects physical, social, emotional, cultural, spiritual and ecological wellbeing at both an individual and community level.

    The Hope for Health program is based on the values of Margikunhamirr (making known and sharing understanding) and Goŋ-ŋthanhamirr (supporting and walking alongside each other) to empower Yolŋu to gain control of their health.

    Over four months, the program focuses on giving people the knowledge to make their own lifestyle changes and choices to improve health and prevent chronic disease.

    It includes:

    • An on-Country health retreat: this is an immersive 12-day bush retreat focused on reconnecting with the Yolŋu tradition of living, eating, and healing from the land, and learning about the body and health.

    • In-community support and mentoring: over 14 weeks following the retreat, this part of the program is focused on overcoming barriers to introducing lifestyle changes. It includes group activities for identifying healthy food options at the shops, storing and cooking fresh produce, and yarning about healthy lifestyles.

    • Individual and home-based health coaching: this takes place during the retreat and afterwards in participants’ homes or places of their choosing. Health coaches explain blood test results to participants, offer education in their language and help with goal setting, such as reducing sugar consumption, smoking, or increasing exercise.

    The Hope for Health program seeks to give people the knowledge they need to make their own lifestyle changes.

    What we found

    Together with colleagues at the Doherty Institute and other collaborators, we evaluated a Hope for Health program in the second half of 2022.

    We assessed outcomes such as body weight and blood sugar levels among 55 adults before and after they took part in the program. All participants were overweight or obese at the beginning.

    We recently published our findings in the Medical Journal of Australia.

    By the end of the program, 52% of participants reduced their HbA1c – a measure of blood sugar – by at least 0.3%. Some 33% of participants lost at least 3% of their body weight.

    Changes such as these are called “clinically significant” because they’re big enough for doctors to see real health benefits such as reduced risk of chronic disease, including diabetes and heart disease.

    Other outcomes we looked at improved too. Overall, participants had smaller waist circumferences at the end, lower body-mass index, better “good” cholesterol levels, were drinking less sugary drinks, and doing more daily exercise.

    Why did it work?

    Behavioural change is not necessarily easy to achieve in these communities, which have a very different language and culture from mainstream Australia.

    Our study is the first in remote Aboriginal communities to comprehensively evaluate a lifestyle change program with such promising results.

    The study design cannot prove the intervention directly caused the changes. That is, there may have been other factors which contributed to the outcomes.

    A randomised controlled trial would have provided stronger proof the program led to the health improvements we observed, but these trials can be unsuitable in remote Indigenous communities. In this study, the community was concerned delaying the program for some people would harm their health. Also, many wanted their extended family to take part, making it difficult to select a representative control group which would be needed for this type of study.

    Nonetheless, our results suggest support for culturally sensitive health initiatives such as Hope for Health is crucial for reducing the burden of chronic disease in remote Indigenous communities.

    We believe Hope for Health worked because it was led by Yolŋu people and is built on Yolŋu knowledge, language and culture. Education provided to remote Aboriginal people such as the Yolŋu needs to be liya-lapmarnhamirr – that is, presented in a way that brings revelation and understanding.

    Hasthi Dissanayake receives or has received funding from the Medical Research Future Fund, University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, and Australian government postgraduate and research grants.

    Beverley-Ann Biggs receives research funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and Medical Research Future Fund competitive grant schemes.

    George Gurruwiwi 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. A community-led health program in remote Arnhem land is showing promising results for First Nations locals – https://theconversation.com/a-community-led-health-program-in-remote-arnhem-land-is-showing-promising-results-for-first-nations-locals-255519

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: To split Moscow from Beijing, Trump is reviving Nixon’s ‘madman diplomacy’. It could backfire badly

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Langford, Executive Director, Security & Defence PLuS and Professor, UNSW Sydney

    When United States President William McKinley advocated high‑tariff protectionism in 1896, he argued squeezing foreign competitors behind a 50% wall of duties would make America richer and safer.

    That logic framed US trade debates for a generation, but it was always an economic device – not a geopolitical lever.

    In 2025, Donald Trump, now the 47th US president, slapped tariffs on most imported goods to the United States, specifically targeting Chinese imports.

    Yet, despite the fact he idolises McKinley, Trump’s emerging grand strategy looks less like his customs schedule and more like Richard Nixon’s “madman” diplomacy of the early 1970s.

    Trump is signalling that unpredictability, not price schedules, will coerce adversaries and reorder alliances.

    An image of irrational resolve

    McKinley’s 1890s tariffs nearly doubled average duties, shielding domestic manufacturers but doing little to shift the global balance of power.

    The lesson from these tariffs was straightforward: protectionism may enrich some sectors, but it rarely bends rivals’ strategic choices.

    Trump’s first term flirted with McKinley-inspired trade wars, industrial policy and “America First” rhetoric. His second term “strategic reset” moves onto darker, Nixonian ground.

    Nixon and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, cultivated an image of irrational resolve. They hinted they might do “anything”, even use nuclear weapons, to force concessions in Vietnam and alarm the Soviet politburo.

    Nixon’s White House chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, recalled the president demanding Moscow and Hanoi see him as a man “with his hand on the nuclear button”.

    The gambit dovetailed with a bold diplomatic inversion. By opening to Mao Zedong’s China, Nixon sought to isolate the Soviet Union.

    Trump’s ‘reverse Nixon’ efforts

    Half a century later, Trump appears to be running the tape backward.

    Rather than prying China from Russia, he is testing whether Moscow can be prised from Beijing.

    In early April, he imposed a blanket 54% tariff on Chinese goods – yet exempted Russia, Cuba and North Korea from the harshest duties.

    The White House has simultaneously floated selective sanctions relief for Moscow if Vladimir Putin shows “flexibility” on Ukraine.

    Trump’s boosters call the manoeuvre a “reverse Nixon”: befriend the weaker adversary to hem in the stronger.

    Al-Jazeera recently reported senior US officials and analysts believe deepening ties with Russia could splinter the Sino‑Russian axis that has unnerved US strategists for years.

    But Foreign Affairs warns that even if Washington dangled lavish incentives, Putin would “play Washington and Beijing off each other” rather than choose sides.

    Australia’s Strategic Policy Institute is blunter: the idea of splitting the pair is “a delusion”.

    Nor is the madman pose guaranteed to intimidate. Scholars note Nixon’s bluff worked only when coupled with painstaking back‑channel diplomacy; the façade of irrationality still required a coherent end‑game.

    Trump’s record of erratic statements on NATO, sudden tariff escalations and social media outbursts risks convincing adversaries that chaos is the message, not the method.

    Success would require discipline

    Yet, the strategic prize is real.

    A durable Sino‑Russian alignment forces Washington to split resources across two theatres, complicates sanctions enforcement, and gives Beijing access to Russian hydrocarbons and military technologies.

    Even a partial wedge – Moscow adopting neutrality in a potential Indo‑Pacific crisis, for instance – would lighten America’s load and disadvantage China.

    Can Trump craft a credible offer? Tariff exemptions and the hint of sanctions relief are carrots; resumed arms‑control talks and guarantees of Russian equities in a post‑war Ukraine settlement could sweeten the pot.

    The sticks are clear: escalating tariffs and technology bans on China, plus renewed US gas exports aimed at undercutting Sino‑Russian energy deals.

    The fact CIA Director John Ratcliffe called China the “top national security threat” in his confirmation hearings earlier this year – relegating Russia to a lesser threat – underscores the hierarchy.

    Still, success would require disciplined messaging and allied buy‑in, traits not often associated with madman theatrics.

    If European and Indo‑Pacific partners suspect Washington will mortgage Ukraine’s security or trade their markets for a fleeting Moscow détente, unity will fray.

    For Australia, the stakes are immense

    For Canberra, the calculus is stark.

    Australia’s primary challenge is a more assertive China, not a distant Russia.

    If Trump could drive even a hairline crack between Moscow and Beijing, the Indo‑Pacific balance would tilt in favour of the US and its allies.

    A Russia preoccupied with Europe or simply unwilling to share sensitive missile and space technologies would deprive China of critical enablers.

    Conversely, a bungled “reverse Nixon” strategy could embolden both autocracies.

    Should Putin benefit from US tariff exemptions and sanctions relief while deepening defence ties with Beijing — as recent drone and satellite deals suggest – Australia would face a sharper, more integrated adversarial bloc.

    The lesson, for Australia, is to hedge: continue deepening AUKUS technology sharing, accelerate long‑range strike acquisition, and tighten diplomatic coordination with Japan, India and ASEAN states.

    For Australia, perched on Asia’s faultline, the stakes are immense. A successful wedge would ease pressure on the “first‑island chain” – the chain of strategic islands that stretches from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia – and give Canberra precious strategic depth.

    A failed gambit risks confronting Australian forces with a tandem of nuclear‑armed revisionists (Russia and China) emboldened by US miscalculation.

    Ian Langford 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. To split Moscow from Beijing, Trump is reviving Nixon’s ‘madman diplomacy’. It could backfire badly – https://theconversation.com/to-split-moscow-from-beijing-trump-is-reviving-nixons-madman-diplomacy-it-could-backfire-badly-255878

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Some Reddit users just love to disagree, new AI-powered troll-spotting algorithm finds

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marian-Andrei Rizoiu, Associate Professor in Behavioral Data Science, University of Technology Sydney

    ginger_polina_bublik/Shutterstock

    In today’s fractured online landscape, it is harder than ever to identify harmful actors such as trolls and misinformation spreaders.

    Often, efforts to spot malicious accounts focus on analysing what they say. However, our latest research suggests we should be paying more attention to what they do – and how they do it.

    We have developed a way to identify potentially harmful online actors based solely on their behavioural patterns – the way they interact with others – rather than the content they share. We presented our results at the recent ACM Web Conference, and were awarded Best Paper.

    Beyond looking at what people say

    Traditional approaches to spotting problematic online behaviour typically rely on two methods. One is to examine content (what people are saying). The other is to analyse network connections (who follows whom).

    These methods have limitations.

    Users can circumvent content analysis. They may code their language carefully, or share misleading information without using obvious trigger words.

    Network analysis falls short on platforms such as Reddit. Here, connections between users aren’t explicit. Communities are organised around topics rather than social relationships.

    We wanted to find a way to identify harmful actors that couldn’t be easily gamed. We realised we could, focusing on behaviour – how people interact, rather than what they say.

    Teaching AI to understand human behaviour online

    Our approach uses a technique called inverse reinforcement learning. This is a method typically used to understand human decision-making in fields such as autonomous driving or game theory.

    We adapted this technology to analyse how users behave on social media platforms.

    Behavioural analysis could help the fight against the growing problem of online misinformation.
    Tero Vesalainen/Shutterstock

    The system works by observing a user’s actions, such as creating new threads, posting comments and replying to others. From those actions it infers the underlying strategy or “policy” that drives their behaviour.

    In our Reddit case study, we analysed 5.9 million interactions over six years. We identified five distinct behavioural personas, including one particularly notable group – “disagreers”.

    Meet the ‘disagreers’

    Perhaps our most striking result was finding an entire class of Reddit users whose primary purpose seems to be to disagree with others. These users specifically seek out opportunities to post contradictory comments, especially in response to disagreement, and then move on without waiting for replies.

    The “disagreers” were most common in politically-focused subreddits (forums focused on particular topics) such as r/news, r/worldnews, and r/politics. Interestingly, they were much less common in the now-banned pro-Trump forum r/The_Donald despite its political focus.

    This pattern reveals how behavioural analysis can uncover dynamics that content analysis might miss. In r/The_Donald, users tended to agree with each other while directing hostility toward outside targets. This dynamic may explain why traditional content moderation has struggled to address problems in such communities.

    Soccer fans and gamers

    Our research also revealed unexpected connections. Users discussing completely different topics sometimes displayed remarkably similar behavioural patterns.

    We found striking similarities between users discussing soccer (on r/soccer) and e-sports (on r/leagueoflegends).

    This similarity emerges from the fundamental nature of both communities. Soccer and e-sports fans engage in parallel ways: they passionately support specific teams, follow matches with intense interest, participate in heated discussions about strategies and player performances, celebrate victories, and dissect defeats.

    Despite their differences, fans of soccer and the online multiplayer battle game League of Legends behave in very similar ways online.
    Vasyl Shulga/Shutterstock

    Both communities foster strong tribal identities. Users defend their favoured teams while critiquing rivals.

    Whether debating Premier League tactics or League of Legends champions, the underlying interaction patterns – the timing, sequence and emotional tone of responses – remain consistent across these topically distinct communities.

    This challenges conventional wisdom about online polarisation. While echo chambers are often blamed for increasing division, our research suggests behavioural patterns can transcend topical boundaries. Users may be divided more by how they interact than what they discuss.

    Beyond troll detection

    The implications of this research extend well beyond academic interest. Platform moderators could use behavioural patterns to identify potentially problematic users before they’ve posted large volumes of harmful content.

    Unlike content moderation, behavioural analysis does not depend on understanding language. It is hard to evade, since changing one’s behavioural patterns requires more effort than adjusting language.

    The approach could also help design more effective strategies to counter misinformation. Rather than focusing solely on the content, we can design systems that encourage more constructive engagement patterns.

    For social media users, this research offers a reminder that how we engage online – not just what we say – shapes our digital identity and influences others.

    As online spaces continue to grapple with manipulation, harassment and polarisation, approaches that consider behavioural patterns alongside content analysis may offer more effective solutions for fostering healthier online communities.

    Marian-Andrei Rizoiu receives funding from the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator, the Australian Department of Home Affairs, the Defence Innovation Network, and the National Science Centre, Poland.

    Lanqin Yuan and Philipp Schneider do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Some Reddit users just love to disagree, new AI-powered troll-spotting algorithm finds – https://theconversation.com/some-reddit-users-just-love-to-disagree-new-ai-powered-troll-spotting-algorithm-finds-255879

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Brownley and House Natural Resources Democrats Reject Republicans’ Plan to Sacrifice our Public Lands, Waters and Wildlife for Billionaire Tax Cuts

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Julia Brownley (D-CA)

    Washington, DC – On Tuesday, Congresswoman Julia Brownley (CA-26) and House Natural Resources Committee Democrats rejected House Republicans’ plan to sell off our lands, waters, and wildlife to fund tax cuts for billionaires in the Committee’s portion of the Republican reconciliation package. Democrats were united in the bipartisan opposition to a Republican amendment offered in the dead of night to sell off thousands of acres of public lands. While House Republicans remained silent, Democrats presented a unified front to protect communities, the American taxpayers, and our most cherished places. 

    “Republicans have launched one of the most egregious attacks on our public lands, our waters, and our health that we have ever witnessed. It hands over our national parks, forests, and precious natural resources to oil and gas corporations, putting their profits over the safety and well-being of the American people,” said Congresswoman Brownley. “In exchange for giveaways to the wealthiest polluters, American families will face higher energy costs, dirtier air and water, and more frequent environmental disasters. This is the same ‘polluters over people’ agenda that has defined the Trump Administration, where corporate greed comes first and the American people pay the price. This Republican proposal will add billions to the deficit while selling off our environment, our economy, and our future to the highest bidder. This bill is shameful, and the American people deserve better.”

    “Republicans just rammed the most extreme, anti-environment legislation in American history through the Natural Resources Committee. It’s a billionaires-first, Americans-last giveaway to benefit Big Oil and polluters,” said Ranking Member Jared Huffman (CA-02). “It guts clean air and water protections, slashes funding for our national parks, and sells off, auctions off, and even allows for giving away our public lands to special interests. For the first time, Americans who simply want their voices heard on Big Oil projects on federal land will be slapped with fees for daring to protest. House Republicans not only voted in lock-step for this cartoonishly extreme bill, they refused to participate in any public debate or discussion about it. I’m sure they had plenty of discussion with their corporate polluter puppet masters, but in the only public hearing before this bill goes to the House Floor they refused to even discuss it. The American people deserve better policy and process than what they’re getting from this GOP Congress. I’m proud that Democrats showed up and fully engaged in debating and challenging this terrible bill. We fought back. And we’ll keep fighting for Americans’ basic freedoms, which include clean air, safe water, healthy communities, and a livable planet for future generations.”

    “The only thing these budget gimmicks will do is drive up Big Oil profits, CEO pay, and shareholder dividends at the expense of our public lands and the American taxpayer,” said Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (AZ-03). “We should be caring about the everyday Americans who are going to be suffering from the consequences of these decisions for years. Our constituents, who are already facing a climate crisis with heat wave after heat wave, who are getting sick from the pollution released by coal fired power plants and petrochemical facilities next door, all compounded by threats of serious cuts to Medicaid healthcare coverage.”

    “House Republicans are once again putting polluters over people. But as a mother, I refuse to let my children’s future be auctioned off to Big Oil. I offered common-sense amendments that range from blocking funds to agencies that refuse to comply with the courts to stopping oil and gas drilling near schools and hospitals,” said Congresswoman Maxine Dexter (OR-03). “This bill is a giveaway to Big Oil and billionaires. My amendments demand House Republicans choose: people or polluters?”

    “Instead of advancing a budget that helps address the challenges Americans are confronting, House Republicans are combining the most extreme attack on our nation’s natural resources with enormous cuts to Medicaid, Social Security, and other critical programs working families depend on every single day,” said Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (MI-06). “We should be focusing on expanding public access to federal lands, not auctioning them off. And we should be investing in our National Parks System and National Wildlife Refuges, not making it harder for Americans to visit these special places. This bill doesn’t put Americans first—it gives massive handouts to pad polluters’ pockets with no regard for the environment.”

    “This is a fire sale on our federal land and waters,” said Congresswoman Sarah Elfreth (MD-03). “This bill reduces corporate fees and eliminates environmental and judicial safeguards that our constituents deserve. And, all for what? There is no guarantee that any of those resources will benefit Americans or lower the cost of energy for our taxpayers. We’ll still be exporting this oil just like before. We’ll still be importing oil to our refineries. We’re putting at real risk the natural resources and national security assets that I’ll address with my amendments. Taxpayers will once again be footing the bill for large corporations from all over the world who score a lease to pillage our land with no recourse. I believe that our taxpayers simply deserve better.”

    “This bill is a giveaway to big oil and gas companies at the expense of our environment, workers, and communities,” said Congresswoman Val Hoyle (OR-04). “Instead of investing in bipartisan priorities like wildfire prevention or strengthening our coastal communities, it prioritizes polluters and weakens the very protections Americans rely on. I stand firmly against this reckless and misguided approach.”

    “This bill is nothing more than a billion-dollar giveaway to corporations,” said Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández (NM-03). “House Republicans are selling off our lands, slashing corporate royalty rates, and raising fees on clean energy—all to pay for tax breaks for billionaires. They’re making our families pay the price in higher energy bills, polluted water, and more extreme climate disasters. I offered amendments to protect Tribal sovereignty, keep revenues in oil and gas producing states like New Mexico, and block foreign adversaries from exploiting our resources. These are common sense protections—but Republicans chose to protect polluters over working families.”

    “The devastating effects of climate change will cost us trillions of dollars and lead to catastrophic threats to our civilization,” said Congressman Dave Min (CA-47). “We have both a moral and economic imperative to fight back and give our children the opportunity to grow up in a world where they can breathe clean air, drink clean water, and have the freedom to chase the American dream. That’s why I led four amendments to stand up for our environment and fight back against the Trump administration.”

    “The GOP is trying to pass a massive tax break to billionaires, and it will cost the American people $7 trillion on the backs of the American people and the expense of the environment,” said Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury (NM-01). “I was truly shocked when I read this reconciliation package before the Natural Resources Committee. It has mandatory oil and gas leasing, mining, and logging requirements. It gives away public lands and resources, not to the highest bidder, but to the lowest bidder. And, it takes away the rights of the American people to participate in planning, permitting, and holding bad actors accountable. That means impacts on public lands and waters without accountability. Furthermore, it is based on a completely false premise that will undermine the protection of our economy, our communities, and the environment. That’s why I am prepared to sit here as long as it takes to fight this bill.”

    Background

    House Republicans are squandering Americans’ money, health, and safety to pad polluters’ pockets. The House Natural Resources Committee’s portion of the Republican reconciliation package, which was pushed through without support from Committee Democrats, does the following:

    • Instantly boosts big oil and gas company profits by letting them drill and frack at bargain-basement prices while robbing taxpayers blind.
    • Puts polluters before people by letting the wealthy companies pay for legal immunity for inadequate environmental reviews and slapping Americans with exorbitant fees to protest oil and gas pollution.
    • Slashes funding for critical and popular public services like NOAA’s coastal restoration and resilience efforts and the National Parks workforce, making it harder for Americans to protect their communities from natural hazards and visit our nation’s most scenic and inspiring places.
    • Locks up 4 million acres for unprofitable coal mining – more land than the entire state of Connecticut – taking our energy policy back to the 19th century.
    • Mandates dirty mining and drilling deals that will create toxic disasters in our nation’s most pristine lands and waters, permanently polluting places like the Boundary Waters and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
    • Crushes clean energy development by jacking up fees for wind and solar while slashing fees for oil and coal.
    • Wipes out protections for endangered species, including dooming the planet’s most endangered whale to extinction by waiving all sensible safeguards for offshore oil and gas operations.
    • Sells off public lands to pay for handouts to big oil and tax cuts for billionaires – a surprise, late-night amendment paves the way for a fire sale of public lands.

    Republicans had the opportunity to support common-sense safeguards and improve the bill. However, they rejected numerous Democratic amendments, including those to do the following:

    Bolster essential and lifesaving public services:

    • Congresswoman Brownley’s amendment (#65) redirecting funding to NOAA climate monitoring, weather forecasts, and disaster preparedness.
    • Congressman Magaziner’s amendment (#213) striking recissions of IRA funds for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration investments in coastal communities and climate resilience and facilities.
    • Congresswoman Leger Fernandez (#69) and Representative Hoyle’s (#70) amendments to fund wildland firefighting and fuels reduction.
    • Congresswoman Randall’s amendment (#18) to fund the Bureau of Indian Education, and Congresswoman Ledger Fernandez’s amendment (#38) to fund the Indian Health Service.

    Hold oil, gas, and mining companies accountable and ensure a fair return for taxpayers:

    • Congresswoman Brownley’s amendment (#61) to require DOI to assess a fee on oil and gas operators to pay for the decommissioning of offshore pipelines in the event of bankruptcy.
    • Congressman Min’s amendment (#44) to require DOI to increase financial assurances from oil and gas companies before reduced royalties can take effect.
    • Congresswoman Ansari’s amendment to (#19) to deny new leases for oil and gas companies if they have been found liable for collusion.
    • Congresswoman Stansbury’s amendment (#9) to prevent bad actor mining companies from operating on federal land if they are owned by foreign adversaries, have a history of using slave labor, or otherwise break the law.

    Prevent dangerous pollution:

    • Congresswoman Elfreth’s amendment (#129) to prohibit offshore drilling where the Defense Department has determined it is incompatible with military readiness, including off the coast of Virginia, other Atlantic Coast states, and the Eastern Gulf.
    • Ranking Member Huffman’s amendments (#20 and #35) to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Boundary Waters.
    • Congresswoman Rivas’s amendment (#210) striking the rescission of funding for the Council on Environmental Quality’s environmental justice screening tool.

    Stop corruption and illegal actions:

    • Congresswoman Rivas’s amendment (#183) prohibiting funding for new contracts with Elon Musk’s companies until Inspectors General determine there are no conflicts of interest.
    • Congresswoman Ansari’s amendment (#301) striking the text of the bill and inserting the STOCK Act 2.0, to prevent government officials from being able to trade individual stocks.
    • Congresswoman Stansbury’s amendment (#150) directing funds to applicable Inspectors General to report to Congress on the impacts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) actions on staffing, program services, funding, and data security.

    Ensure healthy and accessible public lands and waters:

    • Congressman Neguse’s amendment (#139) striking the language that rescinds funding National Park Service staffing.
    • Congressman Soto’s amendment (#13) to redirect funding to coral reef conservation.
    • Congresswoman Randall’s amendment (#144) restoring funding for the Fish and Wildlife Service fish passage restoration program.
    • Congresswoman Dingell’s amendment (#82) to prohibit any recissions of funds for Great Lakes fisheries, harmful algal blooms, and resilience.

    Protect Americans’ rights to provide public input:

    • Congresswoman Dexter’s amendment (#15) striking protest filing fees.
    • Ranking Member Huffman’s amendment (#247) striking the section creating a “pay-to-play” process for NEPA.

    Advance clean and affordable energy:

    • Resident Commissioner Hernández’s amendment (#201) to ensure utility-scale solar financing is implemented on schedule.
    • Congressman Min’s amendment (#45) preventing lease sales until the Trump Administration’s national energy policy includes wind and solar energy.
    • Congresswoman Hoyle’s amendment (#186) to ensure the recent firings at the Power Marketing Administrations will not result in a loss of power for ratepayers.

    A full list of amendments offered by Committee Democrats and blocked by Republicans can be found here.

    ###

    Issues: 119th Congress, Climate Crisis, Disaster Relief, Energy and Environment

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: ICYMI: Secretary Chavez-DeRemer celebrates National Skilled Trades Day, highlights apprenticeship programs in Denver

    Source: US Department of Labor

    DENVER – U.S. Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer continued her America at Work Tour in Denver on May 7, meeting with leaders from the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters and the Southwest Mountain States Carpenters Training Fund at an apprentice training facility.

    During Secretary Chavez-DeRemer’s meeting with leaders from both groups, she gained insight into WSRCC’s hands-on workforce development programs and learned more about the Southwest Carpenters Training Fund, which is responsible for training over 11,000 apprentices in 12 states. 

    The Secretary then participated in a discussion with leaders from CareerWise USA, a national nonprofit dedicated to expanding youth apprenticeships, as well as Pinnacol Assurance and Intertech Plastics, two of the dozens of companies that partner with CareerWise to hire apprentices.

    “As the Labor Department continues our efforts to meet President Trump’s goal of one million new active apprentices, it is essential to connect with the organizations that are successfully advancing workforce development in their communities,” Secretary Chavez-DeRemer said. “The partnerships I learned about demonstrate the importance of collaboration to build a strong, resilient workforce, which is especially important as this Administration advances America First policies to bring jobs back to the U.S. I’ll continue moving forward with commonsense policies to ensure every worker, regardless of their background, has the skills they need to succeed.”

    Also on May 7, Secretary Chavez-DeRemer joined the Colorado Business Roundtable’s “Future of Work: Looking Around Corners” conference. The discussion focused on exploring where the future of work is headed, including in emerging industries like artificial intelligence. The group discussed President Trump’s Executive Order, “Preparing Americans for High-Paying Skilled Trade Jobs of the Future,” highlighting the important role apprenticeships play in developing a workforce that fits region-specific needs.

    Colorado marked Secretary Chavez-DeRemer’s seventh stop on her nationwide America at Work listening tour, which she launched in early April. So far, she has brought together union leaders, business owners, community college educators, local elected officials, and others to fulfill her goal of bringing real-world feedback from American workers to the policymaking table in Washington.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: What They Are Saying: Changes to New York’s Discovery Laws

    Source: US State of New York

    ollowing the FY26 State Budget agreement, District Attorneys, domestic violence survivor advocates, religious leaders and business groups are voicing their support for essential changes to New York’s discovery laws. Included in this year’s Budget, these discovery reforms build upon Governor Hochul’s record investments in proven crime prevention initiatives, while holding perpetrators accountable and safeguarding the right to a fair and speedy trial in New York State.

    Rensselaer County District Attorney and DAASNY President-Elect and Mary Pat Donnelly said, “I am grateful to Governor Hochul for recognizing the important role which Discovery has in the efforts of prosecutors to secure justice for victims in New York State. These changes protect against technical dismissals, and the dangerous consequences of those dismissals. This is a critical investment in public safety; these changes will be effective in promoting a safer New York.”

    Albany County District Attorney Lee C. Kindlon said, “I believe in pragmatic solutions to criminal justice issues, so I am grateful for Governor Hochul’s vision and leadership on Discovery reform. These common sense adjustments to the Discovery laws that the Governor fought for will help us restore justice for victims and provide us more tools to promote public safety.”

    Wayne County District Attorney Christine K. Callanan said, “The original discovery legislation, while well-intentioned, had unintended consequences that allowed for gamesmanship and resulted in the dismissal of otherwise prosecutable cases. The recent reforms preserve the full disclosure of important discovery materials to defendants, ensuring transparency and fairness, while eliminating procedural loopholes that came at the cost of successful prosecutions and justice for victims. This balanced approach strengthens due process without compromising public safety or victims’ rights.”

    Columbia County District Attorney Chris Liberati-Conant said, “The tweaks to the discovery law are a big win for public safety and the people of Columbia County. They uphold the core principles of justice, fairness, and transparency while bringing balance and common sense to the law. Defendants are still entitled to essentially everything in prosecutors’ files — everything they need for their defense. But these changes should end the practice of lying in wait by requiring defense counsel to confer in good faith about any discovery issues and setting a reasonable time limit on discovery motions. No longer should cases be dismissed for technical, minor violations that do not affect the defendant’s ability to prepare a defense. These changes protect crime victims while upholding defendants’ rights and ensuring swift, just, and responsible prosecution of cases. I thank the Governor for her steadfast leadership in support of these needed amendments.”

    Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said, “It has always been critically important to provide complete disclosure of the evidence against someone accused of a crime. The changes to New York’s discovery laws continue to protect the rights of the accused while significantly reducing the chance that a case will be dismissed based upon a technicality. These changes represent a commonsense and pragmatic solution that protects the rights and safety of all New Yorkers and I am extremely pleased that this was a priority for Governor Hochul in this year’s budget.”

    Ulster County District Attorney Manny Nneji said, “Discovery rules are all about achieving justice for all through a fair and transparent process. The adjustments made by Governor Hochul and our State Legislature will go a long way in eliminating the worries for victims of crime resulting from the aggressive and overzealous abuse of loopholes existing in the original discovery reforms. As a prosecutor who has dealt with these abuses firsthand in homicide cases, I am grateful to the Governor and Legislature for taking action that positively impacts victims of crime in my community.”

    Westchester County District Attorney Susan Cacace said, “I am proud to stand alongside Gov. Hochul and my District Attorney colleagues in support of a Fiscal Year 2026 budget that prioritizes public safety. This is a hard-won victory, but one that was undoubtedly worth fighting for. I commend Gov. Hochul’s leadership and the efforts of everyone inside and outside government who brought these reforms over the finish line. This agreement is a win for all New Yorkers who believe crime victims deserve a meaningful chance at securing justice. Though discovery is not often in the public spotlight, it lies at the heart of the criminal justice process. For years, we operated under a status quo that yielded arbitrary disappointments and absurd results. Now, these reforms will help restore the public’s faith in our criminal justice system.”

    Dutchess County District Attorney Anthony Parisi said, “As prosecutors, we are dedicated to pursuing justice fairly, ethically, and within the bounds of the law. While the 2019 discovery reforms were well-intentioned, they created significant operational challenges to our Office, and to district attorneys’ offices state-wide. We applaud Governor Hochul and our lawmakers for proposing amendments that preserve the spirit of reform while adding safeguards to prevent unjust dismissals of cases based upon minor technical errors in disclosures. These changes promote fairness by allowing proportionate remedies for procedural errors, protecting both defendants’ rights and public safety. We are happy to hear that Governor Hochul is committed to providing additional funding to district attorneys’ offices for discovery. To implement these reforms effectively, district attorneys’ offices urgently need additional resources. Investment in staffing and technology is essential to uphold these standards and ensure a just, efficient legal system.”

    Village of Brightwaters Mayor and President of the Suffolk County Village Officials Association John Valdini said, “On behalf of the Villages across Suffolk County, I would like to thank Governor Hochul for standing up for the victims of crimes with the Discovery Law changes included in this year’s state budget. These necessary changes will help restore balance to our justice system, keep our communities safe and support victims throughout the legal process.”

    Westhampton Beach Mayor Ralph Urban said, “Mayor Ralph Urban of Westhampton Beach strongly supports any legislation that will reduce the ‘Revolving Door’ that is currently putting a great deal of stress on our Justice and Police Departments along with putting the public at risk for encountering repeat offenders without relief.”

    North Haven Village Mayor Chris Fiore said, “The recent position of the Governor’s office and the revision of the over restrictive discovery laws will proactively address recidivism and make our neighborhoods safer. There’s more to do but these are great first steps.

    New York City Council Member Keith Powers said, “Safety is a top priority for all New Yorkers. While we’ve continued to see crime fall, it’s as important as ever that we give prosecutors the tools they need to bring criminals to justice. Tweaks to the state’s discovery law will hold perpetrators accountable while keeping the intention of the original 2019 reforms intact, ensuring speedy trials. I commend Governor Hochul for her work, and applaud the prosecutors who have worked so hard to achieve this agreement.”

    New York City Council Member Gale A. Brewer said, “These thoughtful changes to New York’s discovery laws reflect our continued commitment to justice, fairness, and public safety. By listening to the concerns of prosecutors, advocates, and communities across the state, we’ve struck the right balance—ensuring timely access to information, protecting victims, and reinforcing our fundamental promise of due process under the law.”

    Southold Town Supervisor Albert J. Krupski, Jr. said, “I am in support of New York State’s effort to change the discovery law to provide better public safety for our communities.”

    Monroe County Sheriff Todd K. Baxter said, “On behalf of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and the communities we serve, I want to express our appreciation to Governor Hochul for her support of public safety and meaningful discovery reform. This important revision to our discovery laws helps ensure that law enforcement has the tools we need to protect our neighborhoods, while upholding the integrity of our justice system. These changes are necessary across the bail reform spectrum. We are grateful for the willingness to discuss, the willingness to improve.”

    Partnership for New York City President & CEO Kathryn Wylde said, “Governor Hochul’s leadership has resulted in adjustments to the discovery law that were necessary to keep New Yorkers safe. Together with leaders Andrea Stewart Cousins and Carl Heastie, she has delivered reform that was a top priority for the city’s employers.”

    Greater NY Chamber of Commerce President & CEO Mark Jaffe said, “Kathy Hochul is listening! Our members throughout NY have been frustrated by the 2019 Discovery Reforms that needed to be fixed to protect public safety. The well-meaning reforms had resulted in tens of thousands of dismissals for felony and repetitive misdemeanor cases that too often left law abiding citizens without justice. The Governor’s leadership and conviction has delivered a system that will now protect the accused without sacrificing justice for victims of crime. Again, we must thank Governor Hochul for standing up for our members and providing a safer environment for all those who live, work, and visit NY.”

    Manhattan Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jessica Walker said, “This was a very heavy lift, but the Governor got it done! This is one of those wonky issues that isn’t particularly well-known or understood but which has substantial and far-reaching impacts. It goes to the very heart of public safety and justice in New York. The Governor made a strong case, stood firm, and delivered on her promise to fix the issue. New Yorkers should all be tremendously grateful for her steady leadership.”

    Staten Island Chamber of Commerce President & CEO Linda Baran said, “The adjustments to New York State’s discovery law and the investments in our justice system included in the State budget are promising steps towards improving public safety and protecting New Yorkers and business owners. The Chamber is grateful for these improvements and congratulates Governor Hochul and District Attorney McMahon for their efforts in making New York a better and safer place for businesses to thrive.”

    Bronx Chamber of Commerce President Lisa Sorin said, “Retail theft continues to threaten the stability of small businesses and commercial corridors across New York City—particularly in the Bronx, where so many local entrepreneurs operate on razor-thin margins. The discovery law changes included in this year’s budget are a critical step toward restoring accountability, protecting small businesses, and making our communities safer for all residents. We commend Governor Hochul and the Legislature for advancing these thoughtful reforms and for recognizing that economic vitality and public safety must go hand in hand.”

    Long Island Against Domestic Violence Executive Director Wendy Linsalata said, “LI Against Domestic Violence fully supports efforts to enhance systems that are in place to protect survivor safety and hold those that are responsible for inflicting fear and harm on their partner accountable. Changes to the discovery laws were needed to prevent the dismissal of cases and support prosecution based on the merits of the case while not infringing on the rights of offenders. These changes will provide a positive impact for survivors whom, often feel unheard and discouraged from reaching out for assistance in the future when cases are dismissed.”

    Crime Victims Center Executive Director Laura A. Ahearn said, “I applaud Governor Hochul for championing these much needed changes to New York’s discovery laws. These reforms will help ensure victims on Long Island and across the state can finally seek justice based on the facts, not be denied it because of technicalities.”

    SEPA Mujer Inc. Executive Director Martha Maffei said, “The strengthened discovery protections in New York State law are a vital step toward justice, ensuring that those who bravely speak up are not further endangered. For many of the immigrant women we serve, this confidentiality is not just a legal right—it’s a lifeline. These changes affirm that survivor safety and due process can coexist, and we will continue to advocate for both.”

    Sanctuary for Families CEO Hon. Judy Harris Kluger said, “Governor Hochul and the Legislature have taken a vital step to ensure our justice system works for domestic violence survivors as well as defendants. For years, cases were dismissed over minor procedural errors, leaving survivors without protection and offenders without accountability. By addressing the unintended consequences of our discovery laws, these reforms will help restore survivors’ ability to seek safety and justice through the courts.”

    Willow Domestic Violence Center of Greater Rochester President & CEO Meaghan de Chateauvieux said, “Governor Hochul’s proposed discovery reform is a critical step toward strengthening protections for survivors of domestic violence. By ensuring sensitive information is safeguarded and survivors are not retraumatized through the legal process, this proposal prioritizes both justice and safety. We are grateful for the Governor’s leadership and commitment to building a system that better supports those who courageously come forward.”

    Brighter Tomorrows, Inc. Executive Director Dolores Kordon said, “Domestic violence victims face many obstacles in their quest for justice. Measures that create a pathway towards safety for themselves and their children is critical. Streamlining the discovery process helps to ensure fairness for victims.”

    Beit Simchat Torah Senior Rabbi Emerita Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum said, “As Senior Rabbi Emerita of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST), co-founder of the New York Jewish Agenda, and a lifelong advocate for equality, I deeply appreciate Governor Hochul’s leadership in advancing these critical changes to New York’s discovery laws. The discovery amendments that the Governor and the Legislature enacted this budget honor the spirit of the 2019 reforms—protecting the rights of the accused—while addressing unintended consequences that have harmed victims. These thoughtful amendments preserve the rights of the accused and do right by victims, ensuring our justice system works for everyone it touches.”

    Garment District Alliance President Barbara Blair said, “The Garment District Alliance thanks governor Hochul and the state legislature for recognizing and addressing the serious need to modify NY’s discovery laws. GDA has been a first-hand witness to a justice system compromised by opportunism with regard to discovery. Strengthening these laws are an improvement step in restoring credibility and fairness to the judicial process.”

    Times Square Alliance President Tom Harris said, “We commend Governor Hochul for standing strong and delivering reforms to discovery rules for all New Yorkers so victims will no longer be denied justice for technicalities. New York still has the most transparent criminal justice system and protects the rights of the accused while making sure that New York is safe for all.”

    Chinatown Partnership Executive Director Wellington Chen said, “To see and hear directly from the domestic violence advocates and victims talk about their experience and the impacts this change in New York Discovery Laws mean to them make it clear why this is so necessary and why the inscription on the pediment says it all: “the true administration of justice is the firmest form of good government.”

    Village Alliance Business Improvement District Executive Director Scott Hobbs said, “We applaud Governor Hochul and the Legislature for advancing thoughtful reforms that bring fairness and accountability back to our justice system. In our community, small businesses were left vulnerable by the well-intentioned changes to the law in 2019, but the unintended consequences led to cases being dismissed on technical grounds—leaving victims without recourse and emboldening repeat offenders. These essential changes will help ensure that crimes against Greenwich Village’s small businesses are taken seriously, that victims can seek justice, and that due process remains protected for all parties.”

    Staten Island Economic Development Corporation President & CEO Mike Cusick said, “I applaud Governor Hochul for her efforts to build on record crime prevention investments while safeguarding fair trials and accountability as part of the FY26 State Budget. For our small business owners, this means a justice system that works faster, protects community safety, and supports a more stable environment to live and do business on Staten Island.”

    Noir et Blanc Owner Deborah Koenigsberger said, “A done deal! As she promised, Governor Kathy Hochul got it done. So grateful to our Governor who stood her ground on behalf of small businesses like mine! BRAVA Governor! Thank you for fighting with us!”

    Family Services CEO Leah Feldman said, “At Family Services, we stand with victims of crime every step of the way. We thank the Governor for treating discovery reform as a human issue. Ensuring trauma-informed and survivor centered systems protects victims’ rights and promotes justice, strengthening the ability of victims to safely participate in the legal processes meant to protect them without being retraumatized.”

    Citizens Crime Commission of NYC President Richard Aborn said, “At its core, the criminal justice system must be based on a careful balance. The right of an individual who has been accused of a crime to a fair and open trial is of paramount importance. The government has no greater power than to deprive some one of their liberty. Before it can exercise that power, the government must be held to a standard that ensures a just outcome. The balance is struck when the rights of the accused are carefully juxtaposed with the right of the government to fully present its evidence within constitutional and statutory bounds. With the governor’s steady leadership, the legislature has moved New York State law closer to striking that balance. The changes in the discovery law will continue to offer those accused of crimes very high levels of protection from unjust outcomes while removing obstacles that unfairly impinged on prosecutors’ ability to prove their cases. This is a classic win-win.”

    Antioch Baptist Brooklyn Pastor and President of AACEO Rev. Dr. Robert M. Waterman said, “Governor Hochul’s leadership in reforming New York’s Discovery Laws strikes a balance between protecting defendants’ rights and advancing justice for victims—strengthening public safety while ensuring fairness and accountability in our legal system.”

    God’s Battalion of Prayer Pastor Rev. Al Cockfield said, “Public safety is the cornerstone of the faith community and of Black and brown communities, and we are grateful for Governor Hochul’s support in keeping us safe. These changes to discovery delicately uphold transparency while targeting repeat offenders who terrorize our city. No New Yorker should be afraid to go to church or take their child to school. Today’s announcement marks a new day in our criminal justice system.”

    River of Life Church Pastor Donald Mapes said, “Thank you to Governor Hochul for spearheading the much needed reforms to the Discovery Laws. Lawyers must have the time and evidence they need to better ensure victims here in the Hudson Valley and across the State have the justice they deserve.”

    Women’s Equal Justice Director Jane Manning said, “These reforms will make a real difference for survivors and will reduce the number of cases dismissed for trivial technical violations. We still have more work to do, but this bill moves us forward in a powerful way. I cannot say enough how grateful we are to the Governor for standing strong to secure these very significant reforms. Without her commitment to fighting for victims and survivors, this important bill would not have been possible.”

    Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Executive Director Taina Bien-Aimé said, “We applaud Governor Hochul for her unflinching commitment to stand with survivors who have endured unspeakable violence at the hands of people who should have instead loved and protected them. The Governor’s vision of justice for victims and survivors of gender-based violence has carried the day in New York with these necessary changes to the discovery law, and is an example for the country as we continue the journey toward equality, especially for women.”

    Met Council on Jewish Poverty CEO David G. Greenfield said, “As the largest provider of domestic violence services in New York’s Jewish community, Met Council has seen firsthand the heartbreak when survivors summon the courage to seek justice—only to have their cases dismissed over minor procedural errors. Governor Kathy Hochul’s reforms to the state’s discovery laws directly address this injustice by ensuring that serious cases are no longer derailed by technicalities. These changes restore faith in the legal system and offer survivors a real path to safety and accountability. We applaud Governor Hochul for her unwavering commitment to protecting victims and strengthening justice for all New Yorkers.”

    Urban Resource Institute CEO Nathaniel M. Fields said, “URI is grateful to Governor Hochul and the State Legislature for their work to protect survivors of domestic and gender-based violence. The deal struck on discovery strikes the right balance and will ensure that survivors can access justice and safety through the courts. As the largest provider of transitional housing for domestic violence survivors in the country, we look forward to our continued partnership to prevent harm, increase safety and reduce recidivism by investing in violence prevention and accountability work with people who have caused harm.”

    Staten Island Community Board 2 Chair Fred Giunta said, “Staten Island Community Board 2 recognizes the importance of updating New York’s Discovery Laws to ensure that survivors have the necessary tools to seek justice, while also upholding the right to a fair and timely trial. These changes are vital for fostering accountability, protecting due process, and strengthening trust in our legal system. We also appreciate Governor Hochul’s commitment to this issue by allocating $135 million in next year’s budget to support its implementation.”

    Westerleigh Improvement Society President Mark Anderson said, “We are pleased to hear that Governor Kathy Hochul has signed into law, commonsense changes to the discovery requirements in pending criminal cases. These changes are reasonable not only for the prosecution, but also for the defense. These new requirements create a more productive process by relieving the undue burden of providing unnecessary evidence or omitted or incorrect evidence from causing the case to be prematurely dropped. Provisions are also welcomed, that provide a timely process for challenges of the evidence, which will create an expedited defense for those charged. We are also grateful to our elected state officials and especially the efforts towards this successful legislation by District Attorney Michael McMahon.”

    Richmondtown and Clarke Avenue Civic Association President Carol Donovan said, “The 2026 Discovery Laws reforms are welcomed efforts to improve the criminal justice system, and public safety overall. We want to thank Governor Hochul for including these public safety changes in the State budget.”

    Port Richmond Strong North Shore Alliance Vice Chair Mario Buonviaggio said, “The critical investments in public safety and changes in the discovery laws for the 2026 State budget will ensure perpetrators are held accountable and victims of crime are not denied justice on technicalities. We thank Governor Kathy Hochul and Staten Island District Attorney Mike McMahon for these critical changes to the discovery laws that will make our local communities safer.”

    Forest Regional Residents Civic Association President Neil Anastassio said, “Our civic association supports the discovery changes in the 2026 State budget secured by Governor Hochul, in partnership with our Staten Island District Attorney, which reforms timelines and procedures in criminal trials. These reforms will assure that all evidence is allowed to be considered during trials, thus protecting the rights of those accused as well as the victims of these crimes.”

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: Franklin Electric Announces Appointment of Jennifer L. Sherman as Chairperson; Mark Carano Elected to be a Director of the Company

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    FORT WAYNE, Ind., May 08, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Board of Directors of Franklin Electric Co., Inc. (NASDAQ: FELE) has elected Jennifer L. Sherman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Federal Signal Corporation, as Chairperson effective as of May 2, 2025 for a term expiring at the 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Ms. Sherman has been a Director of the Company since 2015. Joe Ruzynski, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer, commented: “I want to congratulate Jennifer on her election as Chairperson of Franklin Electric. She knows the Company well, having served on our Board of Directors for 10 years, and I am looking forward to working closely with her to further develop and refine Franklin’s strategy.”

    In addition, the Company is pleased to announce that Mark A. Carano, Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of SPX Technologies, Inc. has been appointed as a director of the Company effective May 7, 2025 for a term expiring at the 2027 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Mr. Carano has served in that role since 2023. Prior thereto, Mr. Carano served as Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of Insteel Industries, Inc., and Chief Financial Officer of Big River Steel LLC, following 14 years in investment banking.

    Mr. Carano earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Business School.

    Ms. Sherman, Franklin’s Chairperson of the Board, commented: “I have confidence that Mark’s extensive financial and manufacturing sector experience will provide a unique perspective to our deliberations. His investment banking and corporate deal-making experience will be invaluable as Franklin Electric continues to look for opportunities to grow through accretive acquisitions. I join my fellow directors in welcoming Mark to the Board and we look forward to benefitting from his leadership and expertise.”

    About Franklin Electric
    Franklin Electric is a global leader in the production and marketing of systems and components for the movement of water and energy. Recognized as a technical leader in its products and services, Franklin Electric serves customers worldwide in residential, commercial, agricultural, industrial, municipal, and fueling applications. Franklin Electric is proud to be recognized in Newsweek’s lists of America’s Most Responsible Companies 2024, Most Trustworthy Companies 2024, and Greenest Companies 2025; Best Places to Work in Indiana 2024; and America’s Climate Leaders 2024 by USA Today.

    “Safe Harbor” Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any forward-looking statements contained herein, including those relating to market conditions or the Company’s financial results, costs, expenses or expense reductions, profit margins, inventory levels, foreign currency translation rates, liquidity expectations, business goals and sales growth, involve risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to, risks and uncertainties with respect to general economic and currency conditions, various conditions specific to the Company’s business and industry, weather conditions, new housing starts, market demand, competitive factors, changes in distribution channels, supply constraints, effect of price increases, raw material costs, technology factors, integration of acquisitions, litigation, government and regulatory actions, the Company’s accounting policies, future trends, epidemics and pandemics, and other risks which are detailed in the Company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings, included in Item 1A of Part I of the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2024, Exhibit 99.1 attached thereto and in Item 1A of Part II of the Company’s Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. These risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements made herein are based on information currently available, and the Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

    Contact:
    Russ Fleeger
    Franklin Electric Co., Inc.
    260.824.2900

    The MIL Network –

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    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

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    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The attack on public broadcasting is part of a growing threat to press freedom and democracy

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Lorry-Ann Austin, Assistant Professor, Social Work and Human Services, Thompson Rivers University

    In a disturbing parallel between two countries, President Donald Trump’s recent attack on the two largest public broadcasters in the United States mirrors threats to Canada’s own public broadcaster that were recently dodged by the electoral defeat of Conservative Pierre Poilievre.

    These attacks are part of a larger authoritarian move to slander and disempower a free and independent press.

    In the grab to reclaim power from the people, authoritarians and the oligarchs who support them recoil from criticism and dissent, demanding that all people support government positions regardless of the rationality of their claims.

    While they may come for the media first, other institutions are also targeted, including those that nurture critical thinking and uphold the rule of law.



    Read more:
    Yale scholars’ move to Canada can prompt us to reflect on the rule of law

    Essential to democracy

    The news media are a key pillar of democracy and a vigilant monitor of human rights. Often identified as the Fourth Estate, the press is tasked with keeping political power in check while informing people about events beyond their own experiences. This function makes it a prime target for authoritarian assault.

    Both Poilievre and Trump have long attacked the integrity of journalists as they worked to undermine public trust in the media. They both denigrate reporters and limit media accessibility.

    With accusations of fake news and attempts to discredit journalists as leftist and partisan propaganda pedlars, Poilievre and Trump’s call to defund public broadcasters seems aimed at silencing criticism and obscuring oversight of their actions.

    Public broadcasters like PBS, NPR and CBC/Radio-Canada provide vital links to news and life-saving information in times of crisis. They inform regions that no longer have access to local corporate news and they educate the public and strengthen its culture.

    Public broadcasters receive public funding through government legislation, but make no mistake, these are not state propaganda machines as some politicians allege.

    CBC/Radio-Canada, PBS and NPR are all governed by broadcasting acts within their respective nations. CBC/Radio-Canada’s editorial independence is protected by the federal Broadcasting Act. In the U.S., the federal Public Broadcasting Act assures PBS and NPR have “maximum freedom …from interference with, or control of, program content or other activities.”

    These media outlets are publicly funded but their editorial independence is enshrined in law.

    Tracking media coverage

    My exploration of the framing practices of public broadcasters, mainstream corporate media and alternative news agencies in Canada and the U.S. lends support to the expressed independence of publicly funded broadcasters.

    This research tracked press coverage of debates about sexual orientation and gender expression in schools over a 10-year period — from Trump’s initial declaration to seek the Oval Office in 2015 to his return to power in November 2024.

    From an initial sample of close to 38,000 news stories, 60 were randomly selected and subjected to multimodal critical discourse analysis.

    A third of these stories were produced by publicly funded news agencies. Findings suggest that while they consistently use polarizing conflict language to present debates to the public — just as corporate and alternative media outlets do — the majority of the publicly funded news accounts I examined adhered to the principles of fact-based reporting.

    These principles include accuracy and objectivity in reporting as well as the inclusion of a balance of perspectives on a given event, and the maintenance of a non-partisan approach to coverage.

    Only one story produced by a public broadcaster in the U.S. represented propaganda in its attempt to persuade the audience to agree with the biased argument presented within. It was an educational video debunking claims that critical race theory was being taught in schools.

    None of the content produced by public broadcasters represented examples of movement journalism, which rejects objectivity in favour of activism to promote human rights and social change.

    No draining on public coffers

    While these findings cannot be extended to all content produced by public broadcasters, they do suggest these news agencies adhere to requirements of non-partisan coverage.

    Without evidence, Poilievre and Trump claim the public broadcasters in their nations are biased against conservative politics. They also claim that they’re a drain on tax revenues, and that cutting their funding will represent significant tax savings.

    This also fails to hold up to a fact check. CBC/Radio-Canada received less than 0.28 per cent of the money allocated in the 2024 federal budget. In the U.S., federal tax dollars allocated to NPR and PBS represent 0.0001 per cent of the federal budget.

    Given the lack of evidence supporting accusations of partisan bias and the minuscule savings that would come from defunding, something else must be driving the assault on public broadcasting.

    It’s likely no coincidence that Trump’s most recent attack on the media coincided with World Press Freedom Day. It’s a day that asserts the importance of a free and independent press in democracy, and the need to protect the ability of journalists to report the truth without fear or interference.

    Lorry-Ann Austin 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. The attack on public broadcasting is part of a growing threat to press freedom and democracy – https://theconversation.com/the-attack-on-public-broadcasting-is-part-of-a-growing-threat-to-press-freedom-and-democracy-255855

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Canada: Companies sentenced for workplace fatalities

    Source: Government of Canada regional news (2)

    MIL OSI Canada News –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Pope Leo XIV faces limits on changing the Catholic Church − but Francis made reforms that set the stage for larger changes

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dennis Doyle, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, University of Dayton

    Newly elected Pope Leo XIV appears at the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on Thursday, May 8, 2025. AP Photo/Andrew Medichini

    Cardinal Robert Prevost of the United States has been picked to be the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church; he will be known as Pope Leo XIV.

    Attention now turns to what vision the first U.S. pope will bring.

    Change is hard to bring about in the Catholic Church. During his pontificate, Francis often gestured toward change without actually changing church doctrines. He permitted discussion of ordaining married men in remote regions where populations were greatly underserved due to a lack of priests, but he did not actually allow it. On his own initiative, he set up a commission to study the possibility of ordaining women as deacons, but he did not follow it through.

    However, he did allow priests to offer the Eucharist, the most important Catholic sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, to Catholics who had divorced and remarried without being granted an annulment.

    Likewise, Francis did not change the official teaching that a sacramental marriage is between a man and a woman, but he did allow for the blessing of gay couples, in a manner that did appear to be a sanctioning of gay marriage.

    To what degree will the new pope stand or not stand in continuity with Francis? As a scholar who has studied the writings and actions of the popes since the time of the Second Vatican Council, a series of meetings held to modernize the church from 1962 to 1965, I am aware that every pope comes with his own vision and his own agenda for leading the church.

    Still, the popes who immediately preceded them set practical limits on what changes could be made. There were limitations on Francis as well; however, the new pope, I argue, will have more leeway because of the signals Francis sent.

    The process of synodality

    Francis initiated a process called “synodality,” a term that combines the Greek words for “journey” and “together.” Synodality involves gathering Catholics of various ranks and points of view to share their faith and pray with each other as they address challenges faced by the church today.

    One of Francis’ favorite themes was inclusion. He carried forward the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that the Holy Spirit – that is, the Spirit of God who inspired the prophets and is believed to be sent by Christ among Christians in a special way – is at work throughout the whole church; it includes not only the hierarchy but all of the church members. This belief constituted the core principle underlying synodality.

    Pope Francis with the participants of the Synod of Bishops’ 16th General Assembly in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on Oct. 23, 2023.
    AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia

    Francis launched a two-year global consultation process in October 2022, culminating in a synod in Rome in October 2024. Catholics all over the world offered their insights and opinions during this process. The synod discussed many issues, some of which were controversial, such as clerical sexual abuse, the need for oversight of bishops, the role of women in general and the ordination of women as deacons.

    The final synod document did not offer conclusions concerning these topics but rather aimed more at promoting the transformation of the entire Catholic Church into a synodal church in which Catholics tackle together the many challenges of the modern world. Francis refrained from issuing his own document in response, in order that the synod’s statement could stand on its own.

    The process of synodality in one sense places limits on bishops and the pope by emphasizing their need to listen closely to all church members before making decisions. In another sense, though, in the long run the process opens up the possibility for needed developments to take place when and if lay Catholics overwhelmingly testify that they believe the church should move in a certain direction.

    Change is hard in the church

    A pope, however, cannot simply reverse official positions that his immediate predecessors had been emphasizing. Practically speaking, there needs to be a papacy, or two, during which a pope will either remain silent on matters that call for change or at least limit himself to hints and signals on such issues.

    In 1864, Pius IX condemned the proposition that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” It wasn’t until 1965 – some 100 years later – that the Second Vatican Council, in The Declaration on Religious Freedom, would affirm that “a wrong is done when government imposes upon its people, by force or fear or other means, the profession or repudiation of any religion. …”

    A second major reason why popes may refrain from making top-down changes is that they may not want to operate like a dictator issuing executive orders in an authoritarian manner. Francis was accused by his critics of acting in this way with his positions on Eucharist for those remarried without a prior annulment and on blessings for gay couples. The major thrust of his papacy, however, with his emphasis on synodality, was actually in the opposite direction.

    Notably, when the Amazon Synod – held in Rome in October 2019 – voted 128-41 to allow for married priests in the Brazilian Amazon region, Francis rejected it as not being the appropriate time for such a significant change.

    Past doctrines

    The belief that the pope should express the faith of the people and not simply his own personal opinions is not a new insight from Francis.

    The doctrine of papal infallibility, declared at the First Vatican Council in 1870, held that the pope, under certain conditions, could express the faith of the church without error.

    The limitations and qualifications of this power include that the pope be speaking not personally but in his official capacity as the head of the church; he must not be in heresy; he must be free of coercion and of sound mind; he must be addressing a matter of faith and morals; and he must consult relevant documents and other Catholics so that what he teaches represents not simply his own opinions but the faith of the church.

    The Marian doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption offer examples of the importance of consultation. The Immaculate Conception, proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854, is the teaching that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was herself preserved from original sin, a stain inherited from Adam that Catholics believe all other human beings are born with, from the moment of her conception. The Assumption, proclaimed by Pius XII in 1950, is the doctrine that Mary was taken body and soul into heaven at the end of her earthly life.

    The documents in which these doctrines were proclaimed stressed that the bishops of the church had been consulted and that the faith of the lay people was being affirmed.

    Unity, above all

    One of the main duties of the pope is to protect the unity of the Catholic Church. On one hand, making many changes quickly can lead to schism, an actual split in the community.

    In 2022, for example, the Global Methodist Church split from the United Methodist Church over same-sex marriage and the ordination of noncelibate gay bishops. There have also been various schisms within the Anglican communion in recent years. The Catholic Church faces similar challenges but so far has been able to avoid schisms by limiting the actual changes being made.

    On the other hand, not making reasonable changes that acknowledge positive developments in the culture regarding issues such as the full inclusion of women or the dignity of gays and lesbians can result in the large-scale exit of members.

    Pope Leo XIV, I argue, needs to be a spiritual leader, a person of vision, who can build upon the legacy of his immediate predecessors in such a way as to meet the challenges of the present moment. He already stated that he wants a synodal church that is “close to the people who suffer,” signaling a great deal about the direction he will take.

    If the new pope is able to update church teachings on some hot-button issues, it will be precisely because Francis set the stage for him.

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

    – ref. Pope Leo XIV faces limits on changing the Catholic Church − but Francis made reforms that set the stage for larger changes – https://theconversation.com/pope-leo-xiv-faces-limits-on-changing-the-catholic-church-but-francis-made-reforms-that-set-the-stage-for-larger-changes-256181

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Pope Leo XIV faces limits on changing the Catholic Church − but Francis made reforms that set the stage for larger changes

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Dennis Doyle, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, University of Dayton

    Newly elected Pope Leo XIV appears at the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on Thursday, May 8, 2025. AP Photo/Andrew Medichini

    Cardinal Robert Prevost of the United States has been picked to be the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church; he will be known as Pope Leo XIV.

    Attention now turns to what vision the first U.S. pope will bring.

    Change is hard to bring about in the Catholic Church. During his pontificate, Francis often gestured toward change without actually changing church doctrines. He permitted discussion of ordaining married men in remote regions where populations were greatly underserved due to a lack of priests, but he did not actually allow it. On his own initiative, he set up a commission to study the possibility of ordaining women as deacons, but he did not follow it through.

    However, he did allow priests to offer the Eucharist, the most important Catholic sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, to Catholics who had divorced and remarried without being granted an annulment.

    Likewise, Francis did not change the official teaching that a sacramental marriage is between a man and a woman, but he did allow for the blessing of gay couples, in a manner that did appear to be a sanctioning of gay marriage.

    To what degree will the new pope stand or not stand in continuity with Francis? As a scholar who has studied the writings and actions of the popes since the time of the Second Vatican Council, a series of meetings held to modernize the church from 1962 to 1965, I am aware that every pope comes with his own vision and his own agenda for leading the church.

    Still, the popes who immediately preceded them set practical limits on what changes could be made. There were limitations on Francis as well; however, the new pope, I argue, will have more leeway because of the signals Francis sent.

    The process of synodality

    Francis initiated a process called “synodality,” a term that combines the Greek words for “journey” and “together.” Synodality involves gathering Catholics of various ranks and points of view to share their faith and pray with each other as they address challenges faced by the church today.

    One of Francis’ favorite themes was inclusion. He carried forward the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that the Holy Spirit – that is, the Spirit of God who inspired the prophets and is believed to be sent by Christ among Christians in a special way – is at work throughout the whole church; it includes not only the hierarchy but all of the church members. This belief constituted the core principle underlying synodality.

    Pope Francis with the participants of the Synod of Bishops’ 16th General Assembly in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on Oct. 23, 2023.
    AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia

    Francis launched a two-year global consultation process in October 2022, culminating in a synod in Rome in October 2024. Catholics all over the world offered their insights and opinions during this process. The synod discussed many issues, some of which were controversial, such as clerical sexual abuse, the need for oversight of bishops, the role of women in general and the ordination of women as deacons.

    The final synod document did not offer conclusions concerning these topics but rather aimed more at promoting the transformation of the entire Catholic Church into a synodal church in which Catholics tackle together the many challenges of the modern world. Francis refrained from issuing his own document in response, in order that the synod’s statement could stand on its own.

    The process of synodality in one sense places limits on bishops and the pope by emphasizing their need to listen closely to all church members before making decisions. In another sense, though, in the long run the process opens up the possibility for needed developments to take place when and if lay Catholics overwhelmingly testify that they believe the church should move in a certain direction.

    Change is hard in the church

    A pope, however, cannot simply reverse official positions that his immediate predecessors had been emphasizing. Practically speaking, there needs to be a papacy, or two, during which a pope will either remain silent on matters that call for change or at least limit himself to hints and signals on such issues.

    In 1864, Pius IX condemned the proposition that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” It wasn’t until 1965 – some 100 years later – that the Second Vatican Council, in The Declaration on Religious Freedom, would affirm that “a wrong is done when government imposes upon its people, by force or fear or other means, the profession or repudiation of any religion. …”

    A second major reason why popes may refrain from making top-down changes is that they may not want to operate like a dictator issuing executive orders in an authoritarian manner. Francis was accused by his critics of acting in this way with his positions on Eucharist for those remarried without a prior annulment and on blessings for gay couples. The major thrust of his papacy, however, with his emphasis on synodality, was actually in the opposite direction.

    Notably, when the Amazon Synod – held in Rome in October 2019 – voted 128-41 to allow for married priests in the Brazilian Amazon region, Francis rejected it as not being the appropriate time for such a significant change.

    Past doctrines

    The belief that the pope should express the faith of the people and not simply his own personal opinions is not a new insight from Francis.

    The doctrine of papal infallibility, declared at the First Vatican Council in 1870, held that the pope, under certain conditions, could express the faith of the church without error.

    The limitations and qualifications of this power include that the pope be speaking not personally but in his official capacity as the head of the church; he must not be in heresy; he must be free of coercion and of sound mind; he must be addressing a matter of faith and morals; and he must consult relevant documents and other Catholics so that what he teaches represents not simply his own opinions but the faith of the church.

    The Marian doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption offer examples of the importance of consultation. The Immaculate Conception, proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854, is the teaching that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was herself preserved from original sin, a stain inherited from Adam that Catholics believe all other human beings are born with, from the moment of her conception. The Assumption, proclaimed by Pius XII in 1950, is the doctrine that Mary was taken body and soul into heaven at the end of her earthly life.

    The documents in which these doctrines were proclaimed stressed that the bishops of the church had been consulted and that the faith of the lay people was being affirmed.

    Unity, above all

    One of the main duties of the pope is to protect the unity of the Catholic Church. On one hand, making many changes quickly can lead to schism, an actual split in the community.

    In 2022, for example, the Global Methodist Church split from the United Methodist Church over same-sex marriage and the ordination of noncelibate gay bishops. There have also been various schisms within the Anglican communion in recent years. The Catholic Church faces similar challenges but so far has been able to avoid schisms by limiting the actual changes being made.

    On the other hand, not making reasonable changes that acknowledge positive developments in the culture regarding issues such as the full inclusion of women or the dignity of gays and lesbians can result in the large-scale exit of members.

    Pope Leo XIV, I argue, needs to be a spiritual leader, a person of vision, who can build upon the legacy of his immediate predecessors in such a way as to meet the challenges of the present moment. He already stated that he wants a synodal church that is “close to the people who suffer,” signaling a great deal about the direction he will take.

    If the new pope is able to update church teachings on some hot-button issues, it will be precisely because Francis set the stage for him.

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

    – ref. Pope Leo XIV faces limits on changing the Catholic Church − but Francis made reforms that set the stage for larger changes – https://theconversation.com/pope-leo-xiv-faces-limits-on-changing-the-catholic-church-but-francis-made-reforms-that-set-the-stage-for-larger-changes-256181

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How the Take It Down Act tackles nonconsensual deepfake porn − and how it falls short

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sylvia Lu, Faculty Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan

    The Take It Down bill, co-authored by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, easily passed both houses of Congress. President Trump is expected to sign it into law. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

    In a rare bipartisan move, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Take It Down Act by a vote of 409-2 on April 28, 2025. The bill is an effort to confront one of the internet’s most appalling abuses: the viral spread of nonconsensual sexual imagery, including AI-generated deepfake pornography and real photos shared as revenge porn.

    Now awaiting President Trump’s expected signature, the bill offers victims a mechanism to force platforms to remove intimate content shared without their permission – and to hold those responsible for distributing it to account.

    As a scholar focused on AI and digital harms, I see this bill as a critical milestone. Yet it leaves troubling gaps. Without stronger protections and a more robust legal framework, the law may end up offering a promise it cannot keep. Enforcement issues and privacy blind spots could leave victims just as vulnerable.

    The Take It Down Act targets “non-consensual intimate visual depictions” – a legal term that encompasses what most people call revenge porn and deepfake porn. These are sexual images or videos, often digitally manipulated or entirely fabricated, circulated online without the depicted person’s consent.

    The bill compels online platforms to build a user-friendly takedown process. When a victim submits a valid request, the platform must act within 48 hours. Failure to do so may trigger enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission, which can treat the violation as an unfair or deceptive act or practice. Criminal penalties also apply to those who publish the images: Offenders may be fined and face up to three years in prison if anyone under 18 is involved, and up to two years if the subject is an adult.

    A growing problem

    Deepfake porn is not just a niche problem. It is a metastasizing crisis. With increasingly powerful and accessible AI tools, anyone can fabricate a hyper-realistic sexual image in minutes. Public figures, ex-partners and especially minors have become regular targets. Women, disproportionately, are the ones harmed.

    These attacks dismantle lives. Victims of nonconsensual intimate image abuse suffer harassment, online stalking, ruined job prospects, public shaming and emotional trauma. Some are driven off the internet. Others are haunted repeatedly by resurfacing content. Once online, these images replicate uncontrollably – they don’t simply disappear.

    In that context, a swift and standardized takedown process can offer critical relief. The bill’s 48-hour window for response has the potential to reclaim a fragment of control for those whose dignity and privacy were invaded by a click. Despite its promise, unresolved legal and procedural gaps can hinder its effectiveness.

    NBC News gives an overview of the Take It Down Act.

    Blind spots and shortfalls

    The bill targets only public-facing interactive platforms that primarily host user-generated content such as social media platforms. It may not reach the countless hidden private forums or encrypted peer-to-peer networks where such content often first appears. This creates a critical legal gap: When nonconsensual sexual images are shared on closed or anonymous platforms, victims may never even know – or know in time – that the content exists, much less have a chance to request its removal.

    Even on platforms covered by the bill, implementation is likely to be challenging. Determining whether the online content depicts the person in question, lacks consent and affects the hard-to-define privacy interests requires careful judgment. This demands legal understanding, technical expertise and time. But platforms must reach that decision within 24 hours or less.

    On the other hand, time is a luxury victims do not have. But even with the 48-hour removal window, the content can still spread widely before it is taken down. The bill does not include meaningful incentives for platforms to detect and remove such content proactively. And it provides no deterrent strong enough to discourage most malicious creators from generating these images in the first place.

    This takedown mechanism can also be subject to abuse. Critics warn that the bill’s broad language and lack of safeguards could lead to overcensorship, potentially affecting journalistic and other legitimate content. As platforms may be flooded with a mix of real and malicious takedown requests – some filed in bad faith to suppress speech or art – they may resort to poorly designed and privacy-invasive automated monitoring filters that tend to issue blanket rejections or err on the side of removing content that falls outside the scope of the law.

    Without clear standards, platforms may act improperly. How – and even whether – the FTC will hold platforms accountable under the act is another open question.

    Burden on the victims

    The bill also places the burden of action on victims, who must locate the content, complete the paperwork, explain that it was nonconsensual, and submit personal contact information – often while still reeling from the emotional toll.

    Moreover, while the bill targets both AI-generated deepfakes and revenge porn involving real images, it fails to account for the complex realities victims face. Many are trapped in unequal relationships and may have “consented” under pressure, manipulation or fear to having intimate content about them posted online. Situations like this fall outside the bill’s legal framing. The bill bars consent obtained through overt threats and coercion, yet it overlooks more insidious forms of manipulation.

    Even for those who do engage the takedown process, the risks remain. Victims must submit contact information and a statement explaining that the image was nonconsensual, without legal guarantees that this sensitive data will be protected. This exposure could invite new waves of harassment and exploitation.

    Loopholes for offenders

    The bill includes liability-evasive conditions and exceptions that could allow distributors to escape liability. If the content was shared with the subject’s consent, served a public concern, or was unintentional or caused no demonstrable harm, they may avoid consequences under the Take It Down Act. If offenders deny causing harm, victims face an uphill battle. Emotional distress, reputational damage and career setbacks are real, but they rarely come with clear documentation or a straightforward chain of cause and effect.

    Equally concerning, the bill allows exceptions for publication of such content for legitimate medical, educational or scientific purposes. Though well-intentioned, this language creates a confusing and potentially dangerous loophole. It risks becoming a shield for exploitation masquerading as research or education.

    Getting ahead of the problem

    The notice and takedown mechanism is fundamentally reactive. It intervenes only after the damage has begun. But deepfake pornography is designed for rapid proliferation. By the time a takedown request is filed, the content may have already been saved, reposted or embedded across dozens of sites – some hosted overseas or buried in decentralized networks. The current bill provides a system that treats the symptoms while leaving the harms to spread.

    In my research on algorithmic and AI harms, I have argued that legal responses should move beyond reactive actions. I have proposed a framework that anticipates harm before it occurs – not one that merely responds after the fact. That means incentivizing platforms to take proactive steps to protect the privacy, autonomy, equality and safety of users exposed to harms caused by AI-generated images and tools. It also means broadening accountability to cover more perpetrators and platforms, supported by stronger safeguards and enforcement systems.

    The Take It Down Act is a meaningful first step. But to truly protect the vulnerable, I believe that lawmakers should build stronger systems – ones that prevent harm before it happens and treat victims’ privacy and dignity not as afterthoughts but as fundamental rights.

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

    – ref. How the Take It Down Act tackles nonconsensual deepfake porn − and how it falls short – https://theconversation.com/how-the-take-it-down-act-tackles-nonconsensual-deepfake-porn-and-how-it-falls-short-255809

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Klobuchar Presses for Bipartisan Path Forward on Safe AI Development, Highlights Need for Legislation to Give Americans Control Over Their Voice and Likeness

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn)
    WATCH KLOBUCHAR’S FULL QUESTIONS HERE
    WASHINGTON –  At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing titled “Winning the AI Race: Strengthening U.S. Capabilities in Computing and Innovation,” U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) pressed tech leaders on the future of AI development.
    Testifying at the hearing were Sam Altman, Co-Founder and CEO of OpenAI; Lisa Su, CEO and Chair of Advanced Micro Devices; Michael Intrator, CEO and Co-Founder of CoreWeave; and Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President of Microsoft. 
    “I think David Brooks put it the best when he said, ‘I’ve found it incredibly hard to write about AI because it is literally unknowable whether this technology is leading us to heaven or hell.’ We want it to lead us to heaven, and I think we do that by making sure we have some rules of the road in place so it doesn’t get stymied or set backwards because of scams or because of use by people who want to do us harm,” said Klobuchar.
    Klobuchar is a leader on efforts to put in place guardrails around the use and development of AI. Last Congress, Klobuchar and Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) partnered on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research, Innovation, and Accountability Act, which would create baseline accountability for AI deployment in high-risk areas, like managing critical infrastructure. The bill would also boost transparency for AI systems that are used to decide a person’s access to health care or housing, or to decide who to hire and fire.
    Last month, Klobuchar reintroduced the bipartisan Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act with Senators Chris Coons (D-DE), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Thom Tillis (R-NC). This legislation aims to protect Americans’ voice and likeness and combat the proliferation of AI deepfakes.
    Klobuchar’s and Senator Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) bipartisan TAKE IT DOWN Act passed Congress last week – the bill is now headed to the President’s desk to be signed into law. The TAKE IT DOWN Act would criminalize the publication of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), including AI-generated NCII, and require social media and similar websites to have in place procedures to remove such content within 48 hours of notice from a victim.
    A rough transcript of Klobuchar’s questions is available below. Video is available HERE for download.
    Senator Klobuchar: Thank you very much, Senator Cruz. A lot of exciting things with AI, especially from a state like mine that’s home to the Mayo Clinic, with the potential to unleash scientific research. While we’ve mapped the human genome, we have rare diseases that can be solved, so there’s a lot of positive, but we all know, as you’ve all expressed, there’s challenges that we need to get at with permitting reform. I’m a big believer in that. Energy development, thank you, Mr. Smith, for mentioning this with wind and solar and the potential for more fusion and nuclear, but wind and solar, the price going down dramatically in the last few years, and to get there, we’re going to have to do a lot better. 
    I think David Brooks put it the best when he said, “I found it incredibly hard to write about AI because it is literally unknowable whether this technology is leading us to heaven or hell.” We want it to lead us to heaven, and I think we do that by making sure we have some rules of the road in place so it doesn’t get stymied or set backwards because of scams or because of use by people who want to do us harm. 
    As mentioned by Senator Cantwell, Senator Thune, and I have teamed up on legislation to set up basic guardrails for the riskiest non-defense applications of AI. Mr. Altman, do you agree that a risk-based approach to regulation is the best way to place necessary guardrails for AI without stifling innovation? 
    Sam Altman: I do, that makes a lot of sense to me. 
    Klobuchar: Okay, thanks. And did you figure that out in your attic?
    Altman: No, that was a more recent discovery. 
    Klobuchar: Thank you very good. Just want to make sure. Our bill directs, Mr. Smith, the Commerce Department, to develop ways of educating consumers on how to safely use AI systems. Do you agree that consumers need to be more educated? This was one of your answers to your five words, so I assume you do. 
    Brad Smith: Yes, and I think it’s incumbent upon us as companies and across the business community to contribute to that education as well.
    Klobuchar: Okay, very good. Back to you, Mr. Altman. The Americans rely on AI, as we know, increasingly, on some high-impact problems, to make them be able to trust that we need to make sure that we can trust the model outputs. The New York Times recently reported, earlier this week, that AI hallucinations, a new word to me, where models generate incorrect or misleading results, are getting worse. That’s their words. What standards or metrics does OpenAI use to evaluate the quality of its training data and model outputs for correctness?
    Altman: On the whole, AI hallucinations are getting much better. We have not solved the problem entirely yet, but we’ve made pretty remarkable progress over the last few years. When we first launched ChatGPT, it would hallucinate things all the time. This idea of robustness, being sure you can trust the information, we’ve made huge progress there. We cite sources. The models have gotten much smarter. A lot of people use these systems all the time. And we were worried that if it was not 100, you know, .0% accurate, which is still a challenge with these systems, it would cause a bunch of problems. But users are smart. People understand, you know, what these systems are good at, when to use them, when not. And as that robustness increases, which it will continue to do. People will use it for more and more things, but as an industry, we’ve made pretty remarkable progress in that direction over the last couple of years.
    Klobuchar: I know we’ll be watching that. Another challenge that has been, we’ve seen, and Senator Cruz worked and I worked on a bill together for quite a while, and that’s the TAKE IT DOWN Act, and that is that we are increasingly seeing internet activity where kids looking for a boyfriend or girlfriend, maybe they put out a real picture of themselves, it ends up being distributed at their school, or they somehow they someone tries to scam them from financial gain, or its AI, as we’ve increasingly seen, where It’s not even someone photos, but someone puts a fake body on there. And we’ve had about over 20 suicides in one year, of young people, because they felt like their life was ruined, because they were going to be exposed in this way. So this bill we passed, and through the Senate and the House, the First Lady supported it, and it’s headed to the President’s desk. Could you talk about how we can build models that can better detect harmful deep fakes? Mr. Smith
    Smith: Yeah. I mean, we’re doing that. OpenAI is doing that, and a number of us are. And I think the goal is to first identify content that is generated by AI, and then, often, it is to identify what kind of content is harmful. And I think we’ve made a lot of strides in our ability to do both of those things. There’s a lot of work that’s going on across the private sector and in partnership with groups like NIC MEC to then collaboratively identify that kind of content. So it can be taken down. We’ve been doing this in some ways for 25 years, since the internet, and we’re going to need to do more of it.
    Klobuchar: And on the issue, last question, Mr. Chair, since the last one was about your bill, I figure it’s okay. The newspapers and you testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Smith, about the bill Senator Kennedy and I still think that there’s an issue here about negotiating content rates. We’ve seen some action recently in Canada and other places. Can you talk about those evolving dynamics with AI developers and what’s happening here to make sure that content providers and journalists get paid for their work? 
    Smith: Yeah, it’s a complicated topic, but I’ll just say a couple of things. First, I think we should all want to see newspapers in some form flourish across the country, including, say, rural counties that increasingly have become news deserts, newspapers have disappeared. Second, and it’s been the issue that we discussed in the Judiciary Committee, there should be an opportunity for newspapers to get together and negotiate collectively. We’ve supported that. That will enable them to basically do better. Third, every time there’s new technology, there is a new generation of a copyright debate. That is taking place now. Some of it will probably be decided by Congress, some by the courts. A lot of it is also being addressed through collaborative action, and we should hope for all of these things. To I’ll just say, strike a balance. We want people to make a living creating content, and we want AI to advance by having access to data.
    [Sen. Klobuchar followed up with an additional round of questions.] 
    Klobuchar: I had one more question that I wanted to ask, and it’s related to just the whole deep fake issue, just because Senator Blackburn and Senator Coons and Senator Tillis and I have worked on this really hard, and Blackburn and Coons are in the lead of the bill. But we have recently seen deep fake videos of Al Roker promoting a cure for high blood pressure, a deep fake of Brad Pitt asking for money from a hospital bed. Sony Music has worked with platforms to remove more than 75,000 songs with unauthorized deep fakes, including voices of Harry Styles Beyonce. I recently met – it’s not just famous people – there is a Grammy-nominated artist from Minnesota, talked to him about what’s going on with digital replicas. So there’s a real concern, and it kind of gets at what Senator Schatz and I were talking about earlier with the news bill. But they just wanted to make you all aware of this legislation, because there were some differences on this, and now we have gotten a coalition, including YouTube, supporting it, as well as the Recording Industry Association, Motion Picture Association, SAG AFTRA. So it’s a big deal, and I’m hoping it’s something that you will all look at, but could you just comment – I would go to you, Mr. Smith first, about protecting people from having their likenesses replicated through AI without permission, and even if you all pledge to do it, our obvious concern is that there will, maybe other companies that wouldn’t, and that’s why I think, as we look at what these guard rails are. The protection of digital people’s digital rights should be part of this.
    Smith: No, I think you’re right to point to it. It has become a growing area of concern. During the presidential election last year, both campaigns, both political parties, were concerned about the potential for deep fakes to be created. We worked with both campaigns and both parties to address that. We see it being used in really ways that I would call abusive, including of celebrities and the like. I think it starts with an ability to identify when something has been created by AI and is not a genuine, say, photographic or video image. And we do find that AI is much more capable at doing that than, say, the human eye and human judgment. I think it’s right that there be certain guardrails, and some of these we can apply voluntarily. We’ve been doing that across the industry. OpenAI and Microsoft were both part of that last year. And there are certain uses that probably should be considered across the line and therefore should be unlawful. And I think that’s where the kinds of initiatives that you’re describing have a particularly important role to play.
    Klobuchar: And could you look at that legislation? 
    Smith: Absolutely.
    Klobuchar: I appreciate it.  Mr. Altman, just same question, same thing.
    Altman: Of course, we’d be happy to look at the legislation. I think this is a big issue, and it’s one coming quickly… I think there’s a few areas to attack it. You can talk about AI that generates content, platforms that distribute it, how takedowns work, how we educate society, and how we build in robustness to expect this is going to happen. I do not believe it will be possible to stop the generation of the content. I think open source, open weight models are a great thing on the whole, and something we need to pursue, but it does mean that there’s going to be just a lot of these models floating around that can do this, the mass distribution, I think it’s possible to put some more guardrails in place, and that seems important, I but I don’t want to neglect the sort of societal education piece. I think with every new technology, there’s some sort of, almost always some sort of new scams that come, the sooner we can get people to understand these Be on the lookout for them. Talk about this as a thing that’s coming, and then I think that’s happening. I think the better people are very quickly understanding that content can be AI-generated, and building new kinds of defenses in their own minds about it. But still, you know, if you get a call and it sounds exactly like someone you know and they’re panicked and they need help, or if you see a video  like the videos you talked about this gets at us in a very deep psychological way. And I think we need to build societal resilience, because this is coming.
    Klobuchar: It’s coming, but there’s got to be some ways to – you’ve got to have some to either enforce it, damages whatever. There’s just not going to be any consequences.
    Altman: Absolutely, we should have all of that. Bad actors don’t always follow the laws, and so I think we need an additional shield, or whenever we can have them. But yes, we should absolutely have that.
    Klobuchar: All right. Look forward to working with you on it.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Luján Statement on Republican Resolution to Strip Internet Access from Millions of Students and Educators

    US Senate News:

    Source: US Senator for New Mexico Ben Ray Luján
    Luján Joined Press Conference Ahead of Senate Republicans’ Vote, Highlighted Impact on New Mexico Students

    Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Ranking Member of the Telecommunications and Media Subcommittee, issued the following statement on Senate Republicans’ vote to strip internet access from millions of students and educators:
    “Across the country, the E-Rate program has helped connect countless students to the internet they need to succeed in today’s world – especially in the most rural parts of America. Under the FCC’s Wi-Fi hotspots rule, schools and libraries across America can provide Wi-Fi hotspots to students and educators to use at home.
    “Senate Republicans just passed a partisan resolution that would rob New Mexico students and educators of the very tools they need to succeed. When we should be increasing connectivity, my Republican colleagues are working to limit it. If this resolution is signed into law, New Mexico schools and libraries that have applied for Wi-Fi spots through the E-Rate program will be rejected.”
    Earlier today, Senator Luján joined U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), U.S. Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), and advocates at a press conference on Republican attempts to gut low-income, rural, and Tribal students’ access to Wi-Fi internet hotspots. Following the press conference, Senate Republicans voted to pass a Congressional Review Act resolution that overturns a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule allowing schools and libraries to use their E-Rate funds to loan Wi-Fi hotspots to students and educators.  
    In New Mexico, 40% of students lack access to high-speed broadband. Nationwide, studies have estimated between 9 million to 15 million U.S. students lack adequate internet access at home. Since 2020, the FCC’s E-Rate program has committed over $174 million in support to New Mexico schools and libraries.
    Schools and libraries in New Mexico that have applied for Wi-Fi hotspots through the E-Rate program include:
    ·         David F. Cargo El Valle De Anton Chico Library
    ·         Farmington Municipal School District 5
    ·         Grants Public Library
    ·         Lake Valley Navajo School
    ·         Ojo Encino Day School
    ·         Taos Day School
    ·         Taos Municipal School District
    As Ranking Member of the Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Media, Senator Luján is a strong champion for 100% broadband connectivity. In the 118th Congress, Senator Luján introduced the bipartisan Tribal Connect Act to make it easier for Tribes to secure high-speed internet access at Tribal Essential Community-Serving Institutions through the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Universal Service Fund (USF) Schools and Libraries Program, or E-Rate program. In the 117th Congress, Senator Luján introduced legislation to help close the homework gap by equipping school buses with Wi-Fi technology and improving financing options for broadband deployment.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: GVP Sullivan Visits Pratt & Whitney Picket Line as Support Pours in for Striking IAM District 26 Members

    Source: US GOIAM Union

    IAM Local 700 and 1746 (District 26) members at Pratt & Whitney in Middletown and East Hartford, Conn., are on strike to secure a better contract.

    Workers are seeking improved wage security, job security, and retirement security. But, the current company proposal do not address their core issues, despite the company’s high profits.

    “I stand behind you and we’re going to fight like hell every day to get what you want,” said IAM Eastern Territory General Vice President David Sullivan.

    Watch the video report here.
    View photo gallery here.

    Union representatives and striking members emphasized the support of IAM and highlighted that the strike is driven by a significant rejection of the company’s offer and a strong desire to protect the future for all generations of workers. The difficulties faced by striking workers, such as the cost of childcare, are also mentioned by several members who are walking the picket lines.

    IAM members at Pratt and Whitney have also received an outpouring of support from the highest levels of state government and leadership in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Additionally, the striking members at Pratt and Whitney have drawn community support from other labor organizations. 

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    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: India-Pakistan: escalating conflict between two nuclear powers

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor

    This article was first published in The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email newsletter. Sign up to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.

    Once again, India and Pakistan are locked in conflict over Kashmir. A diplomatic crisis that started with a terrorist attack that killed 26 tourists, all but one of them Indian, became a fortnight of cross-border skirmishes and pugilistic posturing from New Delhi and Islamabad. India responded on May 7 with Operation Sindoor, a series of airstrikes apparently aimed at what India said were terrorist training camps, in which at least 31 people were reportedly killed. Pakistan has vowed revenge and launched its own deadly attacks. And so an old emnity is rekindled.

    India and Pakistan have been at loggerheads over Kashmir virtually since partition in 1947. Its mixed population, its geography and, importantly, its history as what was known as a “princely state”, virtually guaranteed it. Princely states, which were not administered by the British Raj were given the choice of joining either independent India or the newly created Pakistan. Kashmir, ruled over by the Hindu maharaja Hari Singh, eventually joined India.

    Hari Singh reportedly did so with some misgivings. The state he ruled over had a majority population of Muslims. But when the first conflict broke out at the end of 1947, with an invasion by Pakistani tribesmen looking to take control of Kashmir, he called on India for assistance and signed a deal temporarily incorporating the state into India pending a plebiscite – which never took place.

    The first India-Pakistan war ended in 1949 with a UN-mandated ceasefire. A border was drawn through the state giving India roughly two-thirds control over Jammu and Kashmir, with Pakistan controlling the other third. Both sides have claimed the whole territory ever since.

    Violence has broken out periodically in the intervening decades, characterised since the 1980s by insurgencies, which India routinely accuses Pakistan of backing – an accusation which Pakistan routinely denies. Groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) have carried out terror attacks in both Kashmir and India, including LeT’s 2008 Mumbai massacre in which 166 people were killed.

    Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

    Now the situation which the rest of the world has worried about for years, a conflict between two neighbouring nuclear armed powers, has begun to escalate with fears it might spiral out of control. Natasha Lindsteadt, an expert in international security, takes a look at the military – and nuclear– capabilities and policies of the two countries.

    She writes that India has a far larger military (it’s ranked as one of the world’s top five military nations by Military Watch magazine, with Pakistan ranked ninth). The two countries have a roughly comparable nuclear arsenal. But while India has a “no first use” policy, Pakistan has never committed itself in this way, arguing it needs its nuclear arsenal to counter India’s larger conventional forces.

    But even a small nuclear exchange between the two could kill more than 20 million people, writes Lindsteadt.



    Read more:
    Why are India and Pakistan on the brink of war and how dangerous is the situation? An expert explains

    Part of the problem seems to be a complete lack of communications at the highest level. US president, Donald Trump, initially appeared reluctant to get involved, saying that he is “sure they’ll figure it out one way or the other … There’s great tension between Pakistan and India, but there always has been.” He is since reported to have offered to step in, an offer apparently politely rejected by New Delhi.

    “What is needed now is robust, real-time crisis communication between the two nations,” write security experts Syed Ali Zia Jaffery of the University of Lahore and Nicholas Wheeler of the University of Birmingham. The problem is that there is no mechanism for that.

    And as we know from the Cuban missile crisis, when the US and Soviet Union came very close to a nuclear exchange, it’s all too easy for mistakes to be made which could escalate a conflict between two nuclear powers into a conflagration.

    After that crisis, the two leaders involved, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev, set up a communications link (which became known as the “hotline”) to enable direct communications. As Jaffery and Wheeler point out, this served to keep the rival powers from further dangerous confrontation (it even helped in bringing about arms treaties when Ronald Reagan was in the White House and Mikhail Gorbachev was in the Kremlin.



    Read more:
    Why a hotline is needed to help bring India and Pakistan back from the brink of a disastrous war

    For a deeper dive into the crisis and the long history of conflict between India and Pakistan, here are five essential reads, carefully curated for you by my colleague Matt Williams, senior international editor at The Conversation in the US.



    Read more:
    India-Pakistan strikes: 5 essential reads on decades of rivalry and tensions over Kashmir

    Netanyahu’s Gaza plan

    In the Middle East, meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are planning to move in large numbers into Gaza with a plan to occupy the whole of the territory. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has described the move as a “forceful operation” which will destroy Hamas and rescue its remaining hostages. The remaining population of 2.1 million Palestinian civilians will be moved “to proect it”.

    With more than 50,000 people dead in Gaza since the conflict began in October 2023, you have to say Israel’s attempts to protect civilians have been decidedly unsuccessful.

    Leonie Fleischmann, senior lecturer in international politics at City St George’s, University of London, sees this as Israel’s next step towards clearing Gaza of Palestinians, something she says Netanyahu’s far-right enablers have been pushing for all along. But she also sees parallels with what is happening in the West Bank, where Israel is gradually annexing land occupied by Palestinians and mandated by the Oslo accords of the 1990s as part of a future Palestinian state.

    The recent Louis Theroux documentary film showed the terrible circumstances under which Palestinians live on the West Bank, juxtaposing that with the determination of extreme Zionists to take over what they see as the land of their forefathers.

    Fleischmann notes that this week, Israeli cabinet minister Bezalel Smotrich approved plans for construction on land in an area which, if given to settlers, would effectively cut the West Bank in two. This would, she says, “bury any remaining hope for a two-state solution”. Rather chillingly, Smotrich is quoted as saying: “This is how you kill the Palestinian state.”



    Read more:
    Israeli plan to occupy all of Gaza could open the door for annexation of the West Bank

    Where would Palestinians go under Netanyahu’s plan? Well, if the Israeli prime minister shares Donald Trump’s vision of redeveloping Gaza as some sort of Middle Eastern “riviera”, they’d be dispersed into countries such as Egypt and Jordan.

    This idea is a non-starter, writes Scott Lucas of University College Dublin. Lucas, a Middle East expert who has written regularly for us about Israel and Gaza and answered our questions about the situation. He says Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has definitively ruled out accepting a mass exodus of Palestinians via the Rafah crossing at Gaza’s southern end. And Jordan is equally unwilling to accept any more Palestinian refugees. Apart from anything else, it already has about 3 million.

    As Lucas writes: “Any Arab government that takes in Gazans, even amid a humanitarian crisis, would be tacitly burying the idea of a Palestinian state. That would break a 77-year-old principle and resurrect the Nakba – the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948.”

    Israel is unlikely to get much international support for such a move either, Lucas adds. Donald Trump is preoccupied with other things and, even if he weren’t, the rest of the international community would hardly stand for what would probably be seen as an act of ethnic cleansing on a massive scale.



    Read more:
    What does Netanyahu’s plan for ‘conquering’ Gaza mean for Israel, Palestine and their neighbours? Expert Q&A

    But what do ordinary Israelis think of their government’s plans for Gaza? For most Israelis the paramount factor is their security. So far the Netanyahu government’s actions in Gaza had enjoyed majority suppport for that reason and in the hope that somehow the conflict might lead to getting the remaining hostages home.

    But the latest plan to take Gaza completely could scupper any hope of repatriating the hostages. And there are signs that many Israelis are getting tired of the constant crisis and conflict. There appears to be a growing appetite for peace.

    Or so writes Yuval Katz of Loughborough University, who grew up in Israel but left eight years ago to pursue an academic career. He was recently home for the first time in two years and spent time contacting peace groups. Here is what he found.



    Read more:
    Israel’s peace movement offers a ray of hope amid the pain of Gaza conflict

    World Affairs Briefing from The Conversation UK is available as a weekly email newsletter. Click here to get updates directly in your inbox.

    – ref. India-Pakistan: escalating conflict between two nuclear powers – https://theconversation.com/india-pakistan-escalating-conflict-between-two-nuclear-powers-256277

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Senate passes Kennedy resolution to undo cumbersome Biden-era bank merger rule

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator John Kennedy (Louisiana)

    Watch Kennedy’s comments here.

    WASHINGTON – The Senate passed Sen. John Kennedy’s (R-La.) joint resolution of disapproval under Congressional Review Act (CRA) procedures to block an Office of Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) rule that delays the bank merger approval process by adding more red tape that could lead to consumer uncertainty.

    The Biden administration’srule, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2025, amended the Bank Merger Act of 1960 to make it harder for the OCC to approve healthy bank mergers quickly. Kennedy’s resolution would reverse the Biden administration’s misguided rule so that banks can stay in business and serve hardworking Americans. 

    Kennedy spoke on the Senate floor ahead of the resolution’s passage. Key excerpts of the speech are below:

    “Well, President Biden’s people at the OCC decided that [the rule] wasn’t broken; so they were going to fix it. Again, I don’t hate anybody, but you have got to call it like you see it. 

    “I think the folks at President Biden’s OCC got up one day and thought there was an award for being stupid. They took this very simple and effective rule and procedure, and they turned it on its head. What they did was tier-one level moronic.”

    . . . 

    “I am going to ask the Senate to reject President Biden’s cumbersome rule. . . . That doesn’t mean that the OCC can’t revisit it at some point, but let me just be blunt: What President Biden’s OCC people did was put together a plan—a new rule—that looks like it was put together by a heroin addict with a socket wrench. I mean, it is the most convoluted thing you have ever seen.

    “If we vote yes today—and I hope we do—then we will reject this rule and go back to doing it the old way.”

    Background:

    • Historically, the OCC assumed that a potential merger passed muster if the agency took no action on a merger application within 15 days. The burden of showing that a merger would harm business and consumers fell on the OCC and bank regulators. 

    • The Biden administration’s rule shifted the burden of proof to individual banks, making it harder for banks—particularly community banks—to fulfill their obligations by making smart, strategic mergers.

    Sens. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) cosponsored the resolution.

    “The Biden OCC rule restricting bank mergers would lead to less competition in the industry and reduce access to credit and important services for Americans. I’m proud to join Senator Kennedy’s effort to overturn this rule and allow the free market to decide how financial institutions can best serve their customers,” said Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

    “The Biden bank merger rule was a solution in search of a problem and embodies the overzealous rulemaking that defined the last Administration. Lacking any basis in sound banking policy, this regulation added more red tape and disproportionally burdened and harmed the competitiveness of small and mid-size banks by deterring beneficial business combinations,” said Daines.

    The resolution will now move to the House of Representatives for consideration. Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), chairman of the Financial Institutions Subcommittee on the House Financial Services Committee, has introduced the companion resolution.

    “With President Trump restoring regulatory sanity in Washington, I’m proud to partner with Senator Kennedy on this effort to overturn the Joe Biden’s OCC’s flawed bank merger rule. This resolution upholds the integrity of our financial system by ensuring that merger applications are evaluated based on clear, consistent standards—not arbitrary political agendas. Community and regional banks deserve a regulatory framework that supports growth, innovation, and expanded access to credit,” said Barr.

    The American Bankers Association (ABA) supports Kennedy’s resolution.

    “ABA has long believed that bank mergers should be subject to clear and transparent standards, and that regulators should act in a timely and fair manner when considering applications. Unfortunately, the final rule the OCC approved last September created unhelpful and biased new standards—including arbitrary asset thresholds—without providing the clarity and predictability that banks and their customers need. We applaud today’s Senate passage of the Congressional Review Act resolution nullifying the OCC’s merger rule and thank Sen. Kennedy for his leadership on this important issue. We now urge the House to quickly pass the companion resolution introduced by Rep. Andy Barr so regulators can correct this flawed rule and establish a new framework that reflects today’s financial services landscape and promotes competition that strengthens our financial system,” said Rob Nichols, President and CEO of the ABA.

    Text of the resolution is available here.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Risch, Cantwell Introduce Bill to Expand Small Business Disaster Coordination

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Idaho James E Risch

    WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) today introduced the Small Business Disaster Coordination Act to improve on the ground support for small businesses affected by disasters.

    This bill would allow Small Business Administration (SBA) resource partners to assist businesses outside their usual service areas in an emergency. The Small Business Disaster Coordination Act would also require the SBA to work with these partners on disaster planning and response, ensuring local networks can share recovery-related information. 

    “From catastrophic wildfires to disastrous flooding, SBA resource partners stand ready to assist small businesses in times of emergency,” said Risch. “By expanding opportunities for these partners to help through my Small Business Disaster Coordination Act, we can ensure that the small businesses vital to our communities and economy stick around for years to come.”

    “Wherever disasters strike, it has to be all-hands-on-deck,” said Cantwell. “This bill will ensure SBA partners such as Small Business Development Centers, SCORE, and Women’s Business Centers can work with local partners to assist small businesses as they recover.”

    Risch and Cantwell are joined by U.S. Senators Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), and Michael Bennett (D-Colo.) in introducing the legislation.

    The Small Business Disaster Coordination Act has received support from America’s Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), SCORE, and the Association of Women’s Business Centers.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: Mountain America Credit Union Recognized as Utah’s Top SBA 7(a) Lender for Fourth Consecutive Year

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    SANDY, Utah, May 08, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Mountain America Credit Union has once again been recognized by the Utah District Office of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) as the state’s top 7(a) lender by dollar amount for 2024. The award was presented during the SBA’s annual awards ceremony held on May 1, 2025.

    A Media Snippet accompanying this announcement is available in this link.

    This honor marks the fourth consecutive year that Mountain America has earned the distinction, having previously received the top 7(a) lender recognition in 2021, 2022, and 2023. The SBA 7(a) loan program is the agency’s primary vehicle for providing financial assistance to small businesses, and this award underscores Mountain America’s continued commitment to supporting the local business community.

    “At Mountain America, we believe small businesses are the heartbeat of our communities. We’re honored to be recognized by the SBA once again, and this achievement reflects our ongoing dedication to helping entrepreneurs succeed,” said Sterling Nielsen, president and CEO of Mountain America Credit Union. “Our business lending team works tirelessly to provide the resources, guidance, and capital our local business owners need to grow and thrive.”

    In addition to the Utah SBA district rankings, Mountain America stands as the nation’s top credit union SBA lender for total number of loans.

    Through its partnership with the SBA, Mountain America has helped hundreds of small businesses gain access to the funding they need to expand operations, create jobs, and build a stronger Utah economy. The credit union continues to enhance its lending services and outreach to ensure business owners receive timely, personalized financial solutions.

    Empowering Small Business Success Stories

    Mountain America’s impact can be seen in the success of its business members, like Alfonso Porras, owner of Sir Walter Candy Company. Sir Walter Candy Company was recently named the 2025 Small Business of the Year and Porras will go on to compete at the national level. His journey highlights the power of small business innovation and resilience, backed by strong financial partnerships.

    “It’s an incredible honor to be named the 2025 Small Business of the Year. Mountain America believed in our vision and helped us grow when we needed it most,” said Porras. “Their support has been key to our success and continues to empower us to dream bigger.”

    Additionally, Mountain America played a pivotal role in the success of Sun Print Solutions, co-owned by Jennifer Pettinger and Sara Deneau. In 2024, they were honored with the Woman-Owned Small Business of the Year award. A beacon of success in a traditionally male-dominated industry, Sun Print Solutions was recognized for its business innovation, leadership, and community involvement. When they needed assistance purchasing the land their business occupied, they turned to Mountain America for support, securing a foundation for continued growth.

    According to the SBA’s 2024 Small Business Profile, the 34.8 million small businesses in the United States account for more than 99.9% of all businesses. These small businesses provide jobs to 59 million people, representing 45.9% of private sector employees in the U.S.

    Mountain America offers a variety of financial resources and options to small business owners. These services include expert guidance and resources to improve business productivity and streamline finances through attentive, personalized services. This is achieved by featuring a full cash management suite of products, enhanced expense management business credit card software, merchant services, and top-of-market deposit rates.

    To learn more about Mountain America’s small business solutions, please visit macu.com/business.

    Loans are made on approved credit.

    About Mountain America Credit Union
    With more than 1 million members and $20 billion in assets, Mountain America Credit Union helps its members define and achieve their financial dreams. Mountain America provides consumers and businesses with a variety of convenient, flexible products and services, as well as sound, timely advice. Members enjoy access to secure, cutting-edge mobile banking technology, over 100 branches across multiple states, and more than 50,000 surcharge-free ATMs. Mountain America—guiding you forward. Learn more at macu.com.

    Contact: publicrelations@macu.com, macu.com/newsroom

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Economics: Winning the AI race: Strengthening U.S. capabilities in computing and innovation

    Source: Microsoft

    Headline: Winning the AI race: Strengthening U.S. capabilities in computing and innovation

    Editor’s note: On Thursday, May 8, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith testified before the Senate Commerce Committee. To view the proceedings, visit the committee’s website.

     

    Winning the AI Race:
    Strengthening U.S. Capabilities in Computing and Innovation

    Written Testimony of Brad Smith
    Vice Chair and President, Microsoft Corporation

    Senate Commerce Committee

    Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and Members of the Committee,

    Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the critical issue of artificial intelligence. I am Brad Smith, the Vice Chair and President of Microsoft Corporation.

    AI has the potential to become the most useful tool for people ever invented. Like the general purpose technologies that preceded it, such as electricity, machine tools, and digital computing, AI will impact every part of our economy. It will shape not just how we work and live, but how we compete, prosper, and stay secure as a nation between now and the middle of this century.

    The notice for this hearing aptly refers to an “AI race.” I would like to talk today about what is needed to win this race.

    The AI race involves both technology and economics. It requires both innovation and diffusion. It is both a sprint and a marathon. The country can win a lap but lose the race if it fails to bring together all the ingredients needed for success.

    It is a race that no company or country can win by itself.

    To win the AI race, the United States will need to support the private sector at every layer of the AI tech stack. The nation will need to partner with American allies and friends around the world.

    In my testimony today, I will focus on three strategic priorities where this Congress and the federal government will make a difference.

    First, the country must win the AI innovation race. This will require massive datacenters and AI infrastructure that need federal support to expand and modernize the electrical grid on which they depend. The country must recruit and train skilled labor like electricians and pipefitters that are in short supply. We all must summon the best of our researchers at national labs and universities, supported by federal basic research programs and partnerships that have become the envy of the world. We will need to continue to excel in moving innovative ideas from academic labs into companies and new products. And we will need to support AI developers with open and broad access to public data.

    Second, the nation must win the AI diffusion race. This will require that we promote broad AI adoption that will enable productivity growth across every sector of the economy. More than anything, this requires new initiatives to promote the AI skilling of the American workforce. This will involve basic AI fluency in our schools and new AI training programs in our community colleges. It will also include advanced AI education that will represent the next generation of computer science degrees, organizational skills that will be mastered in the country’s business schools, and new courses in the nation’s law schools. When combined, these will enable companies, non-profits, and government agencies alike to put AI to effective use. Governments at the federal, state, and local levels can then help accelerate this diffusion by adopting AI services to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the services they provide to the public.

    Third, the United States must export AI to American allies and friends. No company or country is so powerful that it can master the future of AI without friends. The United States and China are competing not only to innovate but to spread their respective technologies to other countries. This part of the race likely will be won by the fastest first mover. The United States needs a smart export control strategy that protects our national security while assuring other countries that they will have reliable and sustained access to critical American AI components and services. Perhaps as much as anything, this requires that we collectively sustain international trust in our products, our companies, and the country itself.

    AI as a General Purpose Technology

    Economists sometimes put technologies into two categories, general purpose technologies and single-purpose tools. Most things in the world are single-purpose tools, like a smoke detector or a lawn mower. They do one thing very well. But over the course of history, certain so-called general purpose technologies impact and sometimes even redefine almost every sector of the economy. Electricity is the prototypical example, because when you think about it, electricity changed the way every economic sector works.

    The key to mastering the future of AI starts in part by understanding the role technology has played in the past. The past three centuries have brought the world three industrial revolutions, each driven by these general purpose technologies. First, it was iron working in the United Kingdom, starting in the 1700s. And then it was electricity and machine tools in the 1800s, when the United States overtook the United Kingdom by putting these technologies to work more broadly than any other country. And then there was the third industrial revolution during the last 50 years, driven by computer chips and software.

    Without question, being a global leader in advancing a general purpose technology gives a country a major edge. But one lesson of history is that the countries that benefit the most and advance the fastest are not necessarily the countries where the technology is invented. Rather, it’s where the technology is diffused – or adopted – the most quickly and broadly. This is for good reason. If a technology improves productivity and changes every part of an economy, then the country that uses it the most broadly and quickly will benefit the most.

    This both frames and defines the AI opportunity and challenge for the United States. As a nation, we need to focus both on advancing innovation and driving diffusion, both domestically and as a leading American export.

    The AI Tech Stack

    The key to driving both innovation and diffusion is to recognize that AI, like all general purpose technologies, is built on what we in the industry call a tech stack – a stack of technologies that are used together. This is true for every great general purpose technology. You can see this, for example, if we go back in time and think about electricity. Thomas Edison first succeeded in 1878 in using electricity to light a lightbulb. But the illumination of lights across a city quickly required the construction of power plants, the fuel to run them, the creation of an electrical grid, the standardization of circuits, and a wide range of electrical appliances beyond the lightbulb itself. In short, a tech stack for electricity.

    Artificial intelligence similarly is built on an AI tech stack. Fundamentally, it is divided into three layers, infrastructure, the platform layer, and applications. You can see this illustrated below.

    The infrastructure layer is massive. Microsoft is spending more than $80 billion this fiscal year on the capital investment needed for this layer, with more than half this amount being spent in the United States. This goes to buying land, investing in electricity and broadband connectivity, procuring chips like GPUs, and installing liquid cooling. These lead to the construction of datacenters – or often datacenter campuses with many buildings with potentially hundreds of thousands of computers. This infrastructure supports both the training of new AI models and their deployment, so they can be used for AI-based services around the world.

    On top of this infrastructure, there is the platform layer. The heart of this layer consists of AI foundation models, including frontier models created by companies like OpenAI, as well as open source and other models from a wide variety of other firms – including Anthropic, Google, Mistral, DeepSeek, and Microsoft itself. The platform layer relies on data to train and ground models. And it includes a new generation of software-based AI platform services that are used to help build AI applications.

    Ultimately, both the infrastructure and platform layers support the applications layer. These are devices and software applications that use AI to deliver better services to people. ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot are both examples of AI applications. One of the amazing things about the applications layer is it’s not just companies – large or small or established or startup – that are creating AI applications. It’s everybody. It’s researchers using new AI-infused applications to change drug discovery. It’s non-profits changing the way they deliver services. It’s teachers using AI as a tool to improve the way they prepare material for a classroom. It’s governments making everything from the filing of a tax return to the renewal of a driver’s license easier and more efficient.

    To build a new AI economy, it’s critical to get all three of these layers working and to get a flywheel turning across the ecosystem. It’s essential to build the infrastructure layer so people can develop and deploy the models at the platform layer. It’s essential to use the AI models so that people will build the applications on top of them. And it’s essential for customers to adopt the applications, so the market can grow, and drive increased investment to expand the infrastructure further. The process repeats itself. This is how a new economy is born.

    Success Requires an Entire Ecosystem

    The flywheel effect makes clear that success requires not only national progress at one layer of the tech stack, but at every layer. That is what the private sector currently is pursuing in the United States better than in any other country. And it’s what this Congress and the Executive Branch can help support with a strategy that promotes both AI innovation and diffusion up and down this stack.

    National AI leadership requires not only success by a few companies, but by many. Today’s panel, involving leading firms such as OpenAI, AMD, CoreWeave, and Microsoft, reflects important slices of the new AI economy. The AI economy requires a multifaceted and integrated ecosystem that includes “Big Tech” and “Little Tech,” startups and more established firms, open source and proprietary developers, suppliers and customers, firms that create data and firms that consume it, all working together. Governments as both regulators and leading AI adopters have critical roles to play.

    Commentators sometimes focus on the tensions between different participants in this tech ecosystem. These deserve attention. What’s often overlooked is that the different participants also depend on each other. And this means that the different contributors to the AI ecosystem all need to be healthy.

    A large technology company like Microsoft has a unique opportunity – and responsibility – to partner with and support the participants at every level of the tech stack. We strive to advance not just innovation but an economic architecture, business models, and responsible practices that will help grow the AI market on a long-term basis. Not just for the United States, but the country’s friends and allies.

    Winning the Innovation Race

    Although the AI economy is being built mostly by the private sector, government policies and initiatives need to play a critical role. This starts with work needed to help fuel innovation. A few areas deserve particular attention in this hearing.

    Power the growth of datacenters

    Just as you can’t have reliable electricity in your home without a powerplant, you can’t have AI without datacenters and AI infrastructure. And these datacenters require a vast supply chain to construct and large amounts of electricity to operate.

    America’s advanced economy relies on 50-year-old infrastructure that cannot meet the increasing electricity demands driven by AI, reshoring of manufacturing, and increased electrification. The United States will need to invest in more transmission and energy resources, onshore our supply chains, and modernize our electric grid to support forecasted increases in electrical loads. Microsoft is investing in these areas itself.

    We urge the federal government to streamline the federal permitting process to accelerate growth in all these areas. The current federal permitting processes often involve multiple agencies and complex, unpredictable, multi-year reviews. This hinders progress. The federal government should take immediate steps to establish reliable, reasonable, and transparent timelines for permitting decisions. This can also be done by standardizing federal permitting processes and designating a lead agency to shepherd the permits through the process. Further, the permitting agencies should utilize AI and digital tools to improve timelines and transparency for applicants and ensure the permitting agencies have quick access to information to assist them in their review and decision-making process.

    We were pleased to see President Trump’s recent Executive Order, “Updating Permitting Technology for the 21st Century,” directing agencies to make maximum use of technology in the environmental review and permitting process. The Congress should also look to the Federal-State Modern Grid Deployment Initiative as a proven program that can be leveraged to deliver results.

    This is just the start of what is needed to modernize and expand America’s energy grid. We need to recognize that new investments in the grid are just as important today as they were a century ago, when the United States led the world in private and public sector support for electricity.

    Grow the AI Infrastructure workforce

    Perhaps the single biggest challenge for data center expansion in the United States is a national shortage of people – including skilled electricians and pipefitters. Electricians, for example, are essential to datacenter construction, installing a complex system of electrical panels, transformers and backup power systems. We have hired thousands of electricians across the country, including in Arizona, Georgia, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. But the United States doesn’t have enough electricians to fill the growing demand. We estimate that over the next decade, the United States will need to recruit and train half a million new electricians to meet the country’s growing electricity needs. We need a national strategy to ensure we meet this opportunity for American workers.

    These are good jobs that will provide great long-term careers for people across the country. We recommend making existing federal education and training funds, as well as tax incentives, available to scale up these opportunities. These could include targeting current federal apprenticeship investments in regions that have identified major AI infrastructure initiatives and supporting existing training centers to quickly increase the number of registered apprenticeships focused on electricians.

    We commend President Trump’s recent Executive Order, “Preparing Americans for High-Paying Skilled Trade Jobs of the Future,” for highlighting the importance of skilled trades in the building of AI infrastructure and for paving the way to meet this moment. As federal agencies work to implement the order, it will be critical that industry forecasters and union training centers work together to maximize impact.

    Ultimately, we need new steps at every level of government and in communities across the country. For example, we need to do more as a nation to revitalize the industrial arts and shop classes in American high schools. This should be a priority for local school boards and state governments. Similarly, the nation’s community colleges will need to do more to support a national initiative to help train a new generation of skilled labor, including electricians and pipefitters.

    Invest in AI research and development

    To uphold America’s position as a global scientific leader, it is imperative to enhance federal investment in fundamental scientific research. The United States boasts a storied history of employing public-private partnerships. The decisions made decades ago to publicly fund research infrastructure and provide financial support to talented scientists and entrepreneurs paved a pathway to American technological leadership. Through federal, state and local government initiatives, investments were made in regional economies and programs, betting on the ingenuity of the American people. Notable incubators of the 20th  century – such as Bell Labs and the network of federal national laboratories – were the result of deliberate efforts to unite industry, government, and academia to propel scientific advancement. We must deploy a similar strategy today for AI and quantum technologies. Investments in these areas are critical to advancing the development of innovative technological solutions that address complex global challenges.

    To outcompete nations like China, which have significantly boosted their research and development (R&D) investments, the United States must accelerate strategic investments in scientific research for future technologies. Experts predict China will continue to invest substantial resources in next-generation technologies such as AI, advanced manufacturing, clean energy, quantum computing, and semiconductors over the next decade.

    Since the Second World War, America’s technological innovation has been driven by R&D based on two critical ingredients that the rest of the world has both studied and envied. The first is sustained support for basic research. While a few tech companies invest substantial sums in basic research, as we do through Microsoft Research (MSR), most world-leading basic research is pursued by academics at American universities, often based on funding from the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies. Driven by curiosity rather than a profit motive, this research often leads to unexpected but profound discoveries that are published publicly.

    The second ingredient is a sustained commitment to investments in product development by companies of all sizes. The United States, more than any other country, has mastered the process of moving new ideas quickly from universities to the private sector. This success rests on healthy investments in both R and D, recognizing that basic research is often publicly funded and typically in universities, while product development is robustly and privately funded through companies. It’s the combination of the two that makes American R&D so successful.

    In 2019, President Trump approved an executive order designed to strengthen America’s lead in artificial intelligence. It rightly focused on federal investments in AI research and making federal data and computing resources more accessible. Six years later, the President and Congress should expand on these efforts to support advancing America’s AI leadership. More funding for basic research at the National Science Foundation and through our universities is one good place to start.

    Ensure public data is open and accessible

    Data is the fuel that powers artificial intelligence. The quality, quantity, and accessibility of data directly determines the strength and sophistication of AI models. While the internet has been a major source of training data, the federal government remains one of the largest untapped sources of high-quality and high-volume data. Yet today, many of these datasets are either inaccessible or not usable for AI development.

    By making government data readily available for AI training, the United States can significantly accelerate the advancement of AI capabilities, driving innovation and discovery. Opening access to these datasets would allow for the analysis of themes, patterns, and insights across broad datasets, propelling the country to the forefront of global AI development.

    Importantly, accessible public data levels the playing field. It empowers not only large companies but startups, academic institutions, and nonprofits to train and refine AI models. This fosters a more competitive and inclusive AI ecosystem, where innovation is driven by ideas and ingenuity – not just proprietary data.

    In comparison, countries like China and the United Kingdom are already investing heavily in their data resources, recognizing the economic and strategic value of national-scale data management. China’s comprehensive system to manage datasets as a strategic resource and the UK’s National Data Library underscore a growing global trend of treating data as a common good for economic competitiveness.

    Winning the AI Diffusion Race

    History teaches us that the true impact of a general-purpose technology is not measured solely by the caliber of its leading inventions, but by how quickly, widely, and effectively these are adopted across society. But the reality is that technology diffusion takes time, investment, partnerships, and sound public policy.

    The history of electricity offers an important insight for AI. Once Thomas Edison proved in 1878 that electricity could power a lightbulb, why would anyone choose to sit at night in a room illuminated by a candle or kerosene? Yet tonight, almost 150 years later, more than 700 million people on the planet still live without electricity in their homes. Diffusion requires not only great technology, but sound economics.

    The economics of tech diffusion start with skilling. Countries need to invest in the skills needed to use new technology, both as individuals and across organizations. It is easy to underestimate both the role that skilling plays and the need for public policy to support it. But in each industrial revolution, the country that best harnessed the leading general-purpose technology of its time was the nation that skilled its population the most quickly and broadly.

    Skill the American workforce

    In the new AI economy, Americans of all backgrounds will need critical AI skills to compete. To meet the totality of the skilling challenge, the country must pursue a new national goal to make AI skilling accessible and useful for every American. This will require a very broad range of partnerships and new policy ideas, spanning across geographic, organizational, economic, and political divides.

    President Trump’s recent executive orders focused on AI education and the workforce provide critical steps towards a national skilling strategy for AI. The “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth” EO establishes a clear policy to promote AI literacy by responsibly integrating AI into education for teachers and students. By fostering this early exposure, the nation’s youth will be better positioned for AI-enabled work. Congress can also consider leveraging existing federal funding to the nation’s school districts to encourage AI learning and literacy in K-12 education.

    Businesses and non-profits have important roles to play. At Microsoft, we are seeking to do our part to meet this skilling challenge. In 2025 alone, we are on a path to train 2.5 million Americans in basic AI skills. We’re partnering with the National Future Farmers of America (FFA) to train educators in every state to integrate AI into the agricultural classroom through our Farm Beats for Students program. We are partnering with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the largest organization representing the nation’s educators in America, to deliver a co-developed training program to 10,000 AFT members. And we’re partnering with the State of New Jersey, Princeton University, and CoreWeave on an AI Hub in New Jersey that will include support for AI education in local community colleges.

    When it comes to AI skilling, the most important thing we need to do is recognize that this is a critical field that is ripe for attention, learning, partnership, and innovation. It will have a huge impact on broadening access to this technology across our economy and society. Generative AI is a new and young technology. So is our knowledge of the full extent of need in terms of AI skilling programs and support. This is a first-class priority that deserves as much attention and support as innovation in AI technology itself.

    Encourage AI adoption

    The federal government also will play a critical role in AI diffusion by using AI itself. There are opportunities across the government to use AI to improve the quality and efficiency of public services for citizens.

    It’s encouraging to see the recent OMB publication of M-Memos focused on federal government use and procurement of AI. Both memos emphasized the importance of removing barriers to innovation, maximizing the use of domestically developed AI products, and encouraging AI leaders within the federal government to facilitate responsible AI adoption.

    We’re seeing activity in the states as well. We partnered with the Texas Department of Transportation to launch a six-week pilot program aimed at boosting productivity and improving decision-making across various departments. The program saw strong results with 97 percent of participants using the AI digital assistant during the pilot, 68 percent have integrated it into their daily workflow, and participants reporting saving an average of 12 hours a week on routine tasks.

    Exporting American AI

    The ability to export our AI is essential to sustaining our global competitiveness and ensuring that our technological progress benefits not only our nation, but also our allies and partners around the world. Building on recent AI diplomacy efforts, the United States offers a compelling and trusted value proposition in the global technology landscape.

    American tech companies, including Microsoft, are making unprecedented investments in AI infrastructure around the world. Microsoft alone is building AI infrastructure in more than forty countries, including regions where China has focused its investments. We urgently need a national policy that provides the right balance of export controls and trade support for these investments.

    While the U.S. government rightly has focused on protecting sensitive AI components in secure datacenters through export controls, an even more important element of AI competition will involve a race between the United States and China to spread their respective technologies to other countries. Given the nature of technology markets and their potential network effects, this race between the United States and China for international influence likely will be won by the fastest first mover. The United States needs a smart international strategy to rapidly support American AI around the world.

    This fundamental lesson emerges from the past twenty years of telecommunications equipment exports. Initially, American and European companies such as Lucent, Alcatel, Ericsson, and Nokia built innovative products that defined international standards. But as Huawei invested in innovation and China’s government subsidized sales of its products, especially across the developing world, adoption of these Chinese products outpaced the competition and became the backbone of numerous countries’ telecommunications networks. This created the technology foundation for what later became an important issue for the Trump Administration in 2020, as it grappled with the presence of Huawei’s 5G products and their implications for national and cybersecurity.

    Early signs suggest the Government of China is interested in replicating its successful telecommunications strategy. China is starting to offer developing countries subsidized access to scarce chips, and it’s promising to build local AI datacenters. The Chinese wisely recognize that if a country standardizes on China’s AI platform, it likely will continue to rely on that platform in the future.

    International partnerships will be critical. This is why Microsoft has partnered with entities like the UAE’s G42 and investment funds like Blackrock and MGX, aiming to raise up to $100 billion for AI infrastructure and supply chains. American tech companies and private capital markets are forging stronger ties with key nations and sovereign investors in the Middle East, surpassing previous efforts to counter Chinese subsidies in telecommunications and reflecting our commitment to innovation and cooperation. While China’s government may subsidize its technology adoption in developing regions, it will struggle to match the scale and impact of America’s private sector investments.

    Pragmatic American export control policies are essential, balancing security protections with the ability to expand rapidly. Protecting national security by preventing adversaries from acquiring advanced AI technology is crucial. Rules should include qualitative standards for secure datacenter deployments to prevent chip diversion to China and ensure advanced AI services are safeguarded. We support this type of approach.

    However, we have expressed our concerns about the quantitative caps imposed on GPU shipments by the interim final AI Diffusion Rule issued in January. These place key American allies and partners in a Tier Two category, imposing limits on AI datacenter expansion. This includes countries like Switzerland, Poland, Greece, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Customers in these countries now fear restricted access to American AI technology – potentially benefitting China’s AI sector by turning to alternatives.

    The Trump administration has an opportunity to revise the rule, eliminating quantitative caps and retaining qualitative standards. This approach ensures American allies and partners remain confident in accessing American AI products.

    Ultimately, we need to recognize that countries around the world will use American AI only if they can trust it. This creates responsibilities for American companies to develop and deploy AI infrastructure and products in a responsible manner that meets local needs. And it requires that countries have confidence in sustained and uninterrupted access to critical AI components and services. The United States has long built a reputation for trustworthy technology that China has been unable to match. But this reputation, like everything that truly matters, requires constant attention and care.

    Tags: AI, AI economy, artificial intelligence, Brad Smith, Congress, Innovation, Innovation Featured, Technology

    MIL OSI Economics –

  • MIL-OSI Economics: Empowering multi-agent apps with the open Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol

    Source: Microsoft

    Headline: Empowering multi-agent apps with the open Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol

    Over the past year, we’ve seen AI agents evolve from experimental tools to essential components of enterprise systems. From simple prompt and response bots to agents that act autonomously on your behalf, this shift marks a new era of software design where intelligence is no longer tied to static interfaces or single applications.

    At Microsoft, we’ve seen this transformation firsthand. Azure AI Foundry is now used by developers at more than 70,000 enterprises and digital native companies, including Atomicwork, Epic, Fujitsu, Gainsight, H&R Block, and LG Electronics, to design, customize, and manage AI apps and agents. In just four months, over 10,000 organizations have adopted our new Agent Service to build, deploy, and scale agentic systems. More than 230,000 organizations, including 90% of the Fortune 500, have already used Microsoft Copilot Studio. 

    As agents take on more sophisticated roles, they need access not only to diverse models and tools but also to one another. That is why we are committed to advancing open protocols like Agent2Agent (A2A), coming soon to Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio, which will enable agents to collaborate across clouds, platforms, and organizational boundaries.

    We’re aligning with the broader industry push for shared agent protocols—doing what we’ve always done: embracing openness, supporting real-world developers, and turning experimentation into enterprise-grade platforms. Our goal is simple: empower both pro and citizen developers to build agents that interoperate across clouds and frameworks.  

    We believe that Microsoft Copilot will empower every employee and act as the “UI for AI” to connect with agents and agentic systems—networks of agents that reason, act, and adapt across boundaries. As customers scale these systems, interoperability is no longer optional. They want their agents to orchestrate tasks that span vendors, clouds, and data silos. They want control, visibility, and trust—without being locked in.  

    A2A can enable structured agent communication—exchanging goals, managing state, invoking actions, and returning results securely and observably. Developers can use tools they know, like Semantic Kernel or LangChain, and still interoperate. Every call travels through enterprise-grade safeguards: Microsoft Entra, mutual TLS, Azure AI Content Safety, and full audit logs. Azure AI Foundry is built with trust by default, and as agent ecosystems grow more open and distributed, safety, compliance, and accountability remain first-class.  

    What we are delivering 

    With support for A2A: 

    • Azure AI Foundry customers can build complex, multi-agent workflows that span internal copilots, partner tools, and production infrastructure—while maintaining governance and SLAs.
    • Copilot Studio agents will be able to securely invoke external agents, including those built with other platforms or hosted outside Microsoft.
    • Enterprises gain a path to composable, intelligent systems that scale across organizational and cloud boundaries.
    • Microsoft’s contributions will accelerate development and adoption of the open A2A protocol across the industry.

    This is just one step on a longer journey. As we’ve done with innovations like Autogen, Semantic Kernel, our contributions to Model Context Protocol (MCP), and our catalog of open models, we will continue to evolve the platform to support the protocols, models, and frameworks that matter most to developers and enterprises. We see protocols like A2A and MCP as important steps in the direction of realizing our vision for the agentic future.    

    What’s next 

    Agentic computing isn’t a trend—it’s a foundational shift. It changes how software is built, how decisions are made, and how value is created. 

    We have joined the A2A working group on GitHub to contribute to the spec and tooling. The A2A public preview in Foundry and Copilot Studio will arrive soon.  

    By supporting A2A and building on our open orchestration platform, we’re laying the foundation for the next generation of software—collaborative, observable, and adaptive by design. The best agents won’t live in one app or cloud; they’ll operate in the flow of work, spanning models, domains, and ecosystems. We’re building that future with openness at the center—because agents shouldn’t be islands, and intelligence should work across boundaries, just like the world it serves.  

    Getting started 

    We’ve introduced a new sample in Semantic Kernel (available in Python) that demonstrates how two local agents can collaborate using the A2A protocol. In this example, the agents work together to plan a travel itinerary and handle currency conversions, showcasing seamless interoperability without the need for custom orchestration code.

    Resources 

    MIL OSI Economics –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Edinburgh appoints visitor levy forum chair

    Source: Scotland – City of Edinburgh

    Julie Ashworth will lead the new forum to advise the Council on all matters related to establishing Edinburgh’s Visitor Levy and its ongoing performance.

    A recruitment panel, comprising senior representatives of the City of Edinburgh Council, Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, Visit Scotland and Edinburgh Association of Community Councils, identified the experienced executive as the ideal candidate to establish and lead the Visitor Levy Forum.

    Councillors formally agreed to the appointment at the full Council meeting on Thursday 8 May.

    Julie brings to the role considerable experience in complex stakeholder management and financial planning, and is a skilled networker with a strong track record of building relationships across multiple industry sectors, local and national governments.

    She is founder and CEO of BroadReach Leadership Consultancy, whose clients span retail, technology, travel, education and the arts.

    An Edinburgh resident, she currently serves as a Public Interest Board Trustee for the Institute of Chartered Accountants Scotland, is Chair of the Board for the University of Aberdeen and has been a longstanding member of the Institute of Directors, where she is Chair of the Scotland Board. She also contributes on a cross-party working group at the Scottish Parliament and is a member of the Scottish Government’s New Deal for Business Group.

    She has previously held executive and advisory positions with leading organisations operating in the retail sector including Marks and Spencer, Liberty of London, IBM, the Spirit Group and Clear Returns.

    Council Leader Jane Meagher said:

    “I’m delighted that Julie has been appointed as Chair of the Visitor Levy Forum. This independent role will be important in helping to deliver the scheme in a way that benefits everyone living, working in and visiting Edinburgh, making sure big decisions are taken in a way that supports the whole city.

    “Julie’s proven ability to analyse important information and make sound decisions in high profile organisations will be a great asset to this new position. We believe her clear, determined and approachable style mean she is the right person to establish and lead a well-balanced forum where all views are given fair representation.

    “The levy is a once in a lifetime opportunity to invest in the future of our city, and with Julie onboard as forum chair, we are well placed to deliver a scheme that will enhance and sustain the things that make Edinburgh such a great place to live in and visit.”

    Commenting on her appointment, Julie Ashworth said:

    “I am excited to get to work with establishing the forum and encouraging a broad range of views from businesses and communities across the city. We are entering a busy period as we build up to the implementation of the levy, and getting underway with the forum is a big opportunity for all of us.

    “As a long-time resident of the city, I am passionate about Edinburgh’s heritage and future success. I strongly believe the forum can play a very important role in helping the levy to be delivered in a way that is fair, just and brings benefits to everyone in the years to come.”

    Julie’s first task will be to establish the Edinburgh Visitor Levy Forum in line with the duties set out in the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Act, with the first meeting taking place before 24 July 2025.

    The forum’s purpose is to discuss and advise the Council on matters to do with the levy, including advising the Council on any recommended modifications to the scheme at the formal three-year review point.

    The forum will also be consulted on how the income from the levy will be invested and invited to review and comment on the performance of the scheme and investments once in place. Decisions on amendments to the scheme and how the proceeds from the levy are invested will ultimately be taken by councillors.

    It will comprise an equal number of representatives from the community and businesses operating in the city’s visitor economy, and aim for at least 40 per cent of the representatives to be women. Council officers responsible for the investment streams and officers from the Council’s Programme Management Office will attend forum meetings and may make recommendations to the forum, but will not be members of the forum itself.

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI USA: LEADER JEFFRIES: “THE HOUSE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY HAS BEEN A COMPLETE AND UTTER FAILURE”

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (8th District of New York)

    Washington, D.C. – Today, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries held a press conference where he emphasized that while Rubber Stamp Republicans try to jam through their reckless budget, House Democrats will continue to push back against the scheme to enact the largest cut to Medicaid and food assistance in American history. 

    LEADER JEFFRIES: Good morning, everyone. The economy is collapsing. The Trump tariffs are raising costs on hardworking American taxpayers. Small businesses are closing. Businesses and corporations are unable to invest and hire people. And Republicans are driving us toward a painful recession. Donald Trump and House Republicans promised the American people last year that they were going to lower costs on day one. But costs aren’t going down, they’re going up. Inflation is going up, and life is getting more expensive in the United States of America. The House Republican majority has been a complete and utter failure. They’ve now had the opportunity to govern for 125 days and we haven’t seen a single bill that actually has moved to the Floor that is designed to make life more affordable.

    Instead, what House Republicans are doing is trying to jam this extreme budget down the throats of the American people that would visit the largest cut to healthcare in American history, and at the same time take food out of the mouths of children, veterans and families in order to pay for a massive tax cut for their billionaire donors like Elon Musk. It’s totally and completely unacceptable. And House Democrats will continue to strongly oppose it today, tomorrow, this week, next week and as long as it takes until we can bury this extreme budget in the ground, never to rise again.

    Full press conference can be watched here.

    ###

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: Bigbank AS Results for April 2025

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    Bigbank’s loan portfolio grew by 55 million euros in April, representing the highest monthly increase so far this year. The growth continues to be driven by key products: the corporate loan portfolio increased by 26 million euros, and the home loan portfolio increased by 20 million euros. The consumer loan portfolio grew by 9 million euros.

    The deposit portfolio decreased by a total of 12 million euros in April. The larger liquidity buffer accumulated in the first quarter enabled continued optimisation of deposit pricing across all Bigbank markets during April. As a result, the volume of term deposits declined by 50 million euros, while the volume of savings deposits increased by 37 million euros. As the interest rates on term and savings deposits have decreased, customers are increasingly opting for the more flexible savings deposit product when placing new deposits.

    Net interest income at the end of April was 0.6 million euros, or 2%, lower year-on-year. On the interest income side, the growing loan portfolio has so far been sufficient to offset the lower income resulting from the decline in Euribor. However, interest expenses have grown at a slightly faster pace, as the drop in deposit interest rates has lagged behind the decline in Euribor and the deposit portfolio has expanded.

    One of the most positive developments in April was that the net allowance for expected credit losses remained significantly lower than in the same period last year. This is mainly due to improved repayment behaviour in the consumer loan portfolios of the Baltic countries. Despite the significant growth in the loan portfolio, the net allowance for expected credit losses and provision expenses decreased by a total of 4.2 million euros, or 42%, in the first four months of the year compared to the same period in 2024.

    Net profit in April amounted to 3.0 million euros – a solid result considering the continued decline in interest rates. It is also encouraging that the lower net interest income compared to last year has been compensated by lower expected credit losses, reduced administrative expenses, and growing net fee income. One of the key contributors to the strong performance is Bigbank’s dedicated and expanding team. At the same time, the growing team has increased salary expenses by 1.3 million euros over the four-month period. A negative development has been the 1.1 million euro increase in income tax expenses over the same period, mainly due to higher income tax rates introduced in Estonia and Lithuania at the beginning of 2025.

    Bigbank’s key financial indicators for April 2025:

    • Customer deposits and loans received increased by 358 million euros over the year, reaching 2.55 billion euros (+16%).
    • Loans to customers grew by 573 million euros year-on-year, reaching 2.37 billion euros (+32%).
    • Net interest income totalled 8.4 million euros in April; the four-month total reached 34.0 million euros. Compared to the same period last year, net interest income declined by 0.6 million euros (–2%).
    • Net allowance for expected credit losses and provision expenses totalled 5.8 million euros in the first four months of the year, down 4.2 million euros or 42% year-on-year.
    • Net profit in April was 3.0 million euros. Cumulative profit for the first four months amounted to 12.9 million euros, an increase of 3.6 million euros or 38% compared to the same period in 2024.
    • Return on equity in April was 13.4%.
    Income statement, in thousands of euros Apr 2025 YTD25 YTD24 Difference YoY
    Total net operating income, incl. 9,082 38,236 37,598 638 +2%
    Net interest income 8,384 33,958 34,592 -634 -2%
    Net fee and commission income 853 3,376 2,901 475 +16%
    Total expenses, incl. -4,131 -16,485 -16,421 -64 +0%
    Salaries and associated charges -2,517 -9,993 -8,734 -1,259 +14%
    Administrative expenses -898 -3,650 -4,943 1,293 -26%
    Profit before loss allowances 4,951 21,751 21,177 574 +3%
    Net allowance for expected credit losses and provision expenses -1,178 -5,813 -9,965 4,152 -42%
    Income tax expense -737 -3,038 -1,892 -1,146 +61%
    Profit for the period from continuing operations 3,036 12,900 9,320 3,580 +38%
    Profit or loss before tax from discounted operations 0 0 29 -29  
    Profit for the period 3,036 12,900 9,349 3,551 +38%
               
               
    Business volumes, in thousands of euros Apr 2025 YTD25 YTD24 Difference YoY
    Customer deposits and loans received 2,548,170 2,548,170 2,190,221 357,949 +16%
    Loans to customers 2,367,531 2,367,531 1,794,458 573,073 +32%
               
    Key figures Apr 2025 YTD25 YTD24 Difference YoY
    ROE 13.4% 14.2% 11.4% +2.8pp  
    Cost / income ratio (C/I) 45.5% 43.1% 43.7% -0.6pp  
    Net promoter score (NPS) 59 58 58 +0  

    Compared to the financial results published for April 2024, the net interest income and the net allowance for expected credit losses for the prior period have been adjusted, both reduced by 0.6 million euros. The adjustment is related to an identified error, where interest income from impaired financial assets had been accrued on the gross exposure rather than on a net basis. This correction does not impact the net profit for April 2024.

    Bigbank AS (www.bigbank.eu), with over 30 years of operating history, is a commercial bank owned by Estonian capital. As of 30 April 2025, the bank’s total assets amounted to 2.9 billion euros, with equity of 274 million euros. Operating in nine countries, the bank serves more than 170,000 active customers and employs over 550 people. The credit rating agency Moody’s has assigned Bigbank a long-term bank deposit rating of Ba1, along with a baseline credit assessment (BCA) and an adjusted BCA of Ba2.

    Argo Kiltsmann
    Member of the Management Board
    Telephone: +372 5393 0833
    Email: argo.kiltsmann@bigbank.ee
    www.bigbank.ee

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Applied Releases Commercial Lines Premium Rate Index Findings for Q1 2025

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    Toronto, ON, May 08, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Applied Systems® today announced the first quarter 2025 results of the Applied Commercial Index™, the Canadian insurance industry’s premium rate index. Overall, the magnitude of rate increases was down across all lines relative to average premium renewals in the same quarter last year with 3.85% in Q1 2025 down from 6.14% in Q1 2024. All lines of business saw decreases compared to the same quarter last year.

    Quarter over quarter, Q1 2025 results showed average renewal rate change decreased across all lines of the most commonly placed Commercial Lines categories, including Real Estate Property, Business and Professional Services, Construction, Hospitality Services, and Retail Services.

    Significant findings include: 

    • Business and Professional Services: Q1 2025 premium renewal rate change average was 3.99%, down from the Q4 2024 average of 5.48%.     
    • Construction, Erection, and Installation Services: Premium renewal rate change average was 3.85% for the quarter, down from the Q4 2024 average of 4.78%.
    • Hospitality Services: Q1 2025 premium renewal rate change average was 3.08%, down from the Q4 2024 average of 3.79%.
    • Real Estate Property: Premium renewal rate change average was 3.58% for the quarter, down from the Q4 2024 average of 4.59%.
    • Retail Services: Premium renewal rate change averaged 4.57%, down relative to the Q4 2024 average of 6.84%.

    “This quarter’s average premium renewal rate change across all industries have somewhat dissipated, limiting the tailwind they provided over the recent period and therefore putting a greater focus on margins,” said Steve Whitelaw, SVP and general manager, Canada, Applied Systems. “As brokers begin their renewal conversations, the Applied Commercial Index will help them focus on specific lines that will foster more profitable growth opportunities.”

    Access the complete quarterly report here.                                                       

    # # #

    Applied Commercial Index is a trademark of Applied Systems, Inc. All data is fully anonymized when aggregating and analyzing the Applied Commercial Index.

    About Applied Systems
    Applied Systems is the leading global provider of cloud-based software that powers the business of insurance. Recognized as a pioneer in insurance automation and the innovation leader, Applied is the world’s largest provider of agency and brokerage management systems, serving customers throughout the United States, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, and the United Kingdom. By automating the insurance lifecycle, Applied’s people and products enable millions of people around the world to safeguard and protect what matters most.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: ASSOCIATED CAPITAL GROUP, INC. Reports First Quarter Results

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    • Performance for our Merger Arbitrage strategy in the first quarter was 3.8% before expenses and 2.8% after expenses
    • Assets Under Management (“AUM”): $1.27 billion at March 31, 2025 compared to $1.25 billion at December 31, 2024
    • Book Value per share ended the quarter at $42.51 per share vs $42.14 per share at December 31, 2024

    GREENWICH, Conn., May 08, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Associated Capital Group, Inc. (“AC” or the “Company”), a diversified financial services company, today reported its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2025.

    In March 2025, Doug Jamieson retired as our Chief Executive Officer and President but will continue serving the Company as a Director. We thank him for his years of dedicated service and look forward to his continued contributions as a member of the Board of Directors. Patrick Huvane was named Interim Chief Executive Officer upon Doug Jamieson’s retirement.

    “The prospects for Associated Capital Group remain strong and we are well positioned to grow value in the face of an uncertain environment. I am privileged to take on this opportunity to serve AC shareholders.” Mr. Huvane said.

    Financial Highlights
    ($ in 000’s except AUM and per share data)

     (Unaudited)   Three months ended  
        March 31,     December 31,     March 31,  
        2025     2024     2024  
    AUM – end of period (in millions)   $ 1,268     $ 1,248     $ 1,549  
    AUM – average (in millions)     1,261       1,291       1,556  
                             
    Revenues     2,129       5,154       3,011  
    Operating loss before management fee (Non-GAAP)     (4,185 )     (3,059 )     (2,988 )
    Investment and other non-operating income, net     15,834       4,372       22,625  
    Income before income taxes     10,546       1,179       17,655  
                             
    Net income     7,669       4,280       13,821  
    Net income per share-diluted     0.36       0.20       0.64  
                             
    Class A shares outstanding (000’s)     2,194       2,234       2,469  
    Class B ” “     18,951       18,951       18,951  
    Total ” “     21,145       21,185       21,420  
                             
    Book value per share   $ 42.51     $ 42.14     $ 42.80  


    First Quarter Financial Data

    • Assets under management ended the quarter at $1.27 billion versus $1.25 billion at December 31, 2024. 
    • Book value was $42.51 per share at March 31, 2025 versus $42.14 per share at December 31, 2024. 

    First Quarter Results

    Total revenues in the first quarter were $2.1 million compared to $3.0 million in the first quarter of 2024.  Revenues generated by the GAMCO International SICAV – GAMCO Merger Arbitrage (the “SICAV”) were $0.9 million versus $1.7 million in the prior year period due to lower average AUM in 2025. All other revenues were $1.2 million compared to $1.3 million in the year-ago quarter.

    Total operating expenses, excluding management fee, were $6.3 million in the first quarter of 2025 and $6.0 million in the first quarter of 2024. The increase is driven primarily by $0.9 million of mark to market expense on phantom RSA’s driven by an increase in AC’s stock price compared to 2024, partially offset by lower variable-based sales and marketing costs on the SICAV of $0.6 million.

    Net investment and other non-operating income was $15.8 million for the first quarter of 2025 compared to $22.6 million in the first quarter of 2024. The primary driver of the 2025 quarter’s results was our merger arbitrage partnerships. Interest income was lower in the 2025 quarter due to lower average interest rates in the first quarter of 2025.

    For the quarter ended March 31, 2025, the management fee was $1.1 million versus $2.0 million for the three months ended March 31, 2024.

    The effective tax rate applied to our pre-tax income for the quarter ended March 31, 2025 was 26.3%. In the year ago quarter, the effective tax rate was 21.5%; 2024’s lower rate is primarily driven by deferred tax benefits from a foreign investment.

    Assets Under Management (AUM)

    Assets under management at March 31, 2025 were $1.27 billion, $21 million higher than year-end 2024 primarily due to market appreciation of $33 million and the impact of currency fluctuations in non-US dollar denominated classes of investment funds ($13 million). These increases were partially offset by net outflows of $25 million. 

        March 31,     December 31,     March 31,  
        2025     2024     2024  
    ($ in millions)                        
    Merger Arbitrage(a)   $ 1,012     $ 1,003     $ 1,262  
    Long/Short Value(b)     221       209       251  
    Other     36       36       36  
    Total AUM   $ 1,269     $ 1,248     $ 1,549  

    (a) Includes $401, $408, and $580 of sub-advisory AUM related to GAMCO International SICAV – GAMCO Merger Arbitrage, $70, $68, and $66 of sub-advisory AUM related to Gabelli Merchant Partners Plc (f/k/a Gabelli Merger Plus+ Trust Plc), respectively.
    (b) Assets under management represent the assets invested in this strategy that are attributable to Associated Capital Group, Inc.

    Alternative Investment Management

    The alternative investment strategy offerings center around our merger arbitrage strategy which has an absolute return focus of generating returns independent of the broad equity and fixed income markets. We also offer strategies utilizing fundamental, active, event-driven and special situations investments.

    Merger Arbitrage

    For the first quarter of 2025, the longest continuously offered fund in the merger arbitrage strategy generated gross returns of 3.77% (2.81% net of fees). A summary of the performance is as follows:

                        Full Year                  
    Performance%(a)   1Q ’25     1Q ’24     2024     2023     2022     2021     5 Year(b)     Since 1985(b)(c)  
    Merger Arb                                                                
    Gross     3.77       1.33       5.83       5.49       4.47       10.81       9.57       10.02  
    Net     2.81       0.87       3.82       3.56       2.75       7.78       7.09       7.09  

    (a) Net performance is net of fees and expenses, unless otherwise noted. Performance shown for an actual fund in this strategy. The performance of other funds in this strategy may vary. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
    (b) Represents annualized returns through March 31, 2025
    (c) Inception Date: February 1985

    Global M&A activity for the first quarter of 2025 totaled $890 billion, an increase of 15% compared to the first quarter of 2024. Technology was the most active sector with $165 billion, accounting for 19% of total value, followed by Financials ($165 billion or 19%) and Energy & Power ($126 billion or 14%). Europe was a bright spot with M&A totaling $154 billion in Q1 2025, a 12% increase compared to Q1 2024, while Asia Pacific M&A increased 59% to $187 billion. Both of these regions experienced their strongest performance in 3 years. Private Equity remained active, accounting for 21% of deal volume overall, or about $185 billion. This was the third strongest opening quarter for private equity and is indicative of the values PE firms are finding and reflective of the approximately $3 trillion of “dry powder” private equity firms have to deploy. Despite recent market volatility creating uncertainty, we believe a more accommodative antitrust environment and pent-up demand from acquirers should be supportive of ongoing M&A activity.

    The Merger Arbitrage strategy is offered by mandate and client type through partnerships and offshore corporations serving accredited as well as institutional investors. The strategy is also offered in separately managed accounts, a Luxembourg UCITS (an entity organized as an Undertaking for Collective Investment in Transferrable Securities) and a London Stock Exchange listed investment company, Gabelli Merchant Partners Plc (GMP-LN) (f/k/a Gabelli Merger Plus+ Trust Plc). 

    Acquisitions

    Associated Capital Group’s plan is to accelerate the use of its capital. We intend to leverage our research and investment capabilities by pursuing acquisitions and alliances that will broaden our product offerings and add new sources of distribution. In addition, we may make direct investments in operating businesses using a variety of techniques and structures to accomplish our objectives.

    Gabelli Private Equity Partners, LLC was created to launch a private equity business, somewhat akin to the success our predecessor PE firm had in the 1980s. We will continue our outreach initiatives with business owners, corporate management, and various financial sponsors. We are activating our program of buying privately owned, family started businesses, controlled and operated by the founding family.

    Shareholder Compensation

    On May 7, 2025, the Board of Directors declared a semi-annual dividend of $0.10 per share, which is payable on June 26, 2025 to shareholders of record on June 12, 2025.

    During the first quarter of 2025, AC repurchased 39,018 Class A shares, for $1.4 million, at an average price of $36.32 per share. In the first quarter of 2024, AC repurchased 117,354 Class A shares, for $3.9 million, at an average price of $33.63 per share.

    Since our spin-off from GAMCO on November 30, 2015, AC has returned $184.2 million to shareholders through share repurchases, exchange offers and dividends of $83.2 million.

    At March 31, 2025, there were 21.145 million shares outstanding, consisting of 2.194 million Class A shares and 18.951 million Class B shares outstanding.

    About Associated Capital Group, Inc.

    Associated Capital Group, Inc. (NYSE:AC), based in Greenwich, Connecticut, is a diversified global financial services company that provides alternative investment management through Gabelli & Company Investment Advisers, Inc. (“GCIA”). We have also earmarked proprietary capital for our direct investment business that invests in new and existing businesses. The direct investment business is developing along several core pillars including Gabelli Private Equity Partners, LLC (“GPEP”), formed in August 2017 with $150 million of authorized capital as a “fund-less” sponsor. We also created Gabelli Principal Strategies Group, LLC (“GPS”) in December 2015 to pursue strategic operating initiatives.

    Operating Loss Before Management Fee

    Operating loss before management fee expense represents a non-GAAP financial measure used by management to evaluate its business operations. We believe this measure is useful in illustrating the operating results of the Company as management fee expense is based on pre-tax income before management fee expense, which includes non-operating items including investment gains and losses from the Company’s proprietary investment portfolio and interest expense.

        Three Months Ended
    March 31,    		  
    ($ in 000’s)   2025     2024  
                     
    Operating loss – GAAP   $ (5,288 )   $ (4,970 )
                     
    Add: management fee expense (1)     1,103       1,982  
                     
    Operating loss before management fee – Non-GAAP   $ (4,185 )   $ (2,988 )

    (1) Management fee expense is incentive-based and is equal to 10% of Income before management fee and income taxes and excludes the impact of consolidating entities. For the three months ended March 31, 2025 and 2024, Income before management fee, income taxes and excluding consolidated entities was $11,028 and $19,822, respectively. As a result, $1,103 and $1,982 was accrued for the 10% management fee expense in the first quarters 2025 and 2024, respectively.

                       
    Table I
                       
    ASSOCIATED CAPITAL GROUP, INC.
    UNAUDITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION
    (Amounts in thousands)
                       
        March 31,     December 31,     March 31,  
        2025     2024     2024  
    ASSETS                        
                             
    Cash, cash equivalents and US Treasury Bills(1)   $ 357,813     $ 367,850     $ 395,386  
    Investments in securities and partnerships(1)     506,156       487,623       442,458  
    Investment in GAMCO stock(2)     15,599       16,920       51,026  
    Receivable from brokers(1)     25,458       27,634       32,966  
    Income taxes receivable, including deferred tax assets, net(1)     3,310       6,021       6,444  
    Other receivables(1)     1,752       4,778       2,126  
    Other assets(1)     23,169       24,463       23,776  
    Total assets   $ 933,257     $ 935,289     $ 954,182  
                             
    LIABILITIES, REDEEMABLE NONCONTROLLING INTERESTS AND EQUITY   
                             
    Payable to brokers(1)   $ 5,258     $ 5,491     $ 6,332  
    Income taxes payable, including deferred tax liabilities, net     –       –       1,723  
    Compensation payable(1)     12,456       17,747       11,545  
    Securities sold short, not yet purchased(1)     8,754       8,436       9,439  
    Accrued expenses and other liabilities(1)     2,149       5,317       2,514  
    Total liabilities   $ 28,617     $ 36,991     $ 31,553  
                             
    Redeemable noncontrolling interests(1)     5,682       5,592       5,779  
                             
    Total equity     898,958       892,706       916,850  
                             
    Total liabilities, redeemable noncontrolling interests and equity   $ 933,257     $ 935,289     $ 954,182  

    (1) Certain captions include amounts related to a consolidated variable interest entity (“VIE”) and voting interest entity (“VOE”); refer to footnote 4 of the Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements included in the 10-Q report to be filed for the quarter ended March 31, 2025 for more details on the impact of consolidating these entities.
    (2) Investment in GAMCO stock: 674,700, 699,749 and 2,382,170 shares, respectively.

           
    Table II
           
    ASSOCIATED CAPITAL GROUP, INC.
    UNAUDITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME
    (Amounts in thousands, except per share data)
           
        Three Months Ended
    March 31,    		  
        2025     2024  
                     
    Investment advisory and incentive fees   $ 2,004     $ 2,907  
    Other revenues     125       104  
    Total revenues     2,129       3,011  
                     
    Compensation     4,448       3,820  
    Other operating expenses     1,866       2,179  
    Total expenses     6,314       5,999  
                     
    Operating loss before management fee     (4,185 )     (2,988 )
                     
    Investment gain     10,892       16,794  
    Dividend income from GAMCO     54       95  
    Interest and dividend income, net     4,919       5,805  
    Shareholder-designated contribution     (31 )     (69 )
    Investment and other non-operating income, net     15,834       22,625  
                     
    Income before management fee and income taxes     11,649       19,637  
    Management fee     1,103       1,982  
    Income before income taxes     10,546       17,655  
    Income tax expense     2,777       3,798  
    Income before noncontrolling interests     7,769       13,857  
    Income attributable to noncontrolling interests     100       36  
    Net income attributable to Associated Capital Group, Inc.   $ 7,669     $ 13,821  
                     
    Net income per share attributable to Associated Capital Group, Inc.:                
    Basic and Diluted   $ 0.36     $ 0.64  
                     
    Weighted average shares outstanding:                
    Basic and Diluted     21,166       21,500  
                     
    Shares outstanding – end of period     21,145       21,420  

    SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

    The financial results set forth in this press release are preliminary. Our disclosure and analysis in this press release, which do not present historical information, contain “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements convey our current expectations or forecasts of future events. You can identify these statements because they do not relate strictly to historical or current facts. They use words such as “anticipate,” “estimate,” “expect,” “project,” “intend,” “plan,” “believe,” and other words and terms of similar meaning. They also appear in any discussion of future operating or financial performance. In particular, these include statements relating to future actions, future performance of our products, expenses, the outcome of any legal proceedings, and financial results. Although we believe that we are basing our expectations and beliefs on reasonable assumptions within the bounds of what we currently know about our business and operations, the economy and other conditions, there can be no assurance that our actual results will not differ materially from what we expect or believe. Therefore, you should proceed with caution in relying on any of these forward-looking statements. They are neither statements of historical fact nor guarantees or assurances of future performance.

    Forward-looking statements involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors, some of which are listed below, that are difficult to predict and could cause actual results and outcomes to differ materially from any future results or outcomes expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Some of the factors that could cause our actual results to differ from our expectations or beliefs include a decline in the securities markets that adversely affect our assets under management, negative performance of our products, the failure to perform as required under our investment management agreements, and a general downturn in the economy that negatively impacts our operations. We also direct your attention to the more specific discussions of these and other risks, uncertainties and other important factors contained in our Form 10 and other public filings. Other factors that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. We do not undertake to update publicly any forward-looking statements if we subsequently learn that we are unlikely to achieve our expectations whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required by law.

    A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/8f083310-4b5e-4b0f-8176-453a01cbd4c1

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: FHLBank San Francisco and Local Financial Institutions Deliver Nearly $4 Million for Wildfire Relief and Recovery in Southern California

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    SAN FRANCISCO, May 08, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In partnership with 41-member financial institutions, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco (FHLBank San Francisco) has delivered over $3.9 million in critical funding to support communities impacted by this year’s Southern California wildfires.

    FHLBank San Francisco matched 70 member donations, providing $1.4 million in funding to more than two dozen local nonprofits providing direct relief, plus contributed $600,000 in direct donations — $300,000 each to the California Fire Foundation and Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles — to support both immediate emergency response and long-term rebuilding efforts.

    “The tragic losses experienced by thousands of local residents and business owners in the Southern California wildfires earlier this year were truly heartbreaking,” said Joseph Amato, interim president and chief executive officer of FHLBank San Francisco. “We respond when our communities need us and are proud to partner with our member financial institutions to provide millions in donations to support local nonprofits and vital community organizations in wildfire relief efforts. Together, we can help Los Angeles recover and rebuild stronger than ever.”

    As part of its commitment to wildfire relief and recovery in Southern California, FHLBank San Francisco matched member donations up to $50,000 each. Donations were directed to nearly 50 local nonprofits and community organizations, including:

    • American Red Cross
    • California Community Foundation
    • Community Build, Inc.
    • Door of Hope
    • Fire Family Foundation
    • Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation
    • Pasadena Community Foundation
    • Union Station Homeless Services
    • United Way of Greater Los Angeles
    • USC Community Credit Union Foundation
    • West Angeles Community Development Corporation
    • YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles

    Response to Wildfire Recovery

    In support of longer-term housing recovery, FHLBank San Francisco contributed $300,000 to California Fire Foundation and $300,000 to Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles, two leading nonprofits actively contributing to wildfire relief in Southern California.

    “These funds from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco are very helpful in serving as a catalyst to help the local wildfire recovery efforts,” said Erin Rank, president and chief executive officer of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles. “We are deploying the funds to our Together, We Can ReBUILD LA® initiative that is focused on helping families rebuild, relocate, provide essential goods, provide rental or mortgage assistance, and other intermediate housing needs.”

    Member Engagement in Matching Funds

    Among the 41 FHLBank San Francisco member community financial institutions that participated in the matching funds, 17 requested the $50,000 maximum amount, including Wescom Central Credit Union which donated over $100,000 to the American Red Cross.

    “At Wescom, we are committed to supporting the financial well-being and resilience of our community, especially during times of crisis. In partnership with our credit union members and the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, we acted swiftly to provide not only the necessary financial resources but also to mobilize essential supplies,” said Darren Williams, President and CEO of Wescom Financial. “This effort is part of Wescom’s longstanding commitment to corporate social responsibility, and we remain focused on advancing our support as our community rebuilds.”

    A Broader Commitment to Recovery and Resilience

    FHLBank San Francisco’s wildfire relief and recovery efforts are a part of a suite of tools and resources that are available to help member financial institutions address both urgent needs and longer-term recovery in local communities. These tools and resources include discounted credit programs that support affordable housing, economic development and community revitalization efforts. Learn more at fhlbsf.com.

    About Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco

    The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco is a member-driven cooperative helping local lenders in Arizona, California, and Nevada build strong communities, create opportunity, and change lives for the better. The tools and resources we provide to our member financial institutions — commercial banks, credit unions, industrial loan companies, savings institutions, insurance companies, and community development financial institutions — propel homeownership, finance quality affordable housing, drive economic vitality, and revitalize whole neighborhoods. Together with our members and other partners, we are making the communities we serve more vibrant and resilient.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: U.S. Hospitals and Health Systems Hit with Long-running Increases in Medical Supply and Drug Expenses, Bad Debt and Charity Care, According to New Strata Report

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    CHICAGO, May 08, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Hospitals and health systems nationwide saw notable growth in medical supply and drug expenses and increases in bad debt and charity care in recent years — all factors that could be exacerbated in the coming months as the healthcare industry feels the effects of federal tariffs and other policy changes, according to a new report from Strata Decision Technology.

    Non-labor expenses have long been on the rise for U.S. hospitals, with total non-labor expense increasing year-over-year (YOY) each month for more than three years, according to Strata data. Medical supply and drug expenses have steadily grown as a share of overall expenses. Medical supply expense as a percent of total expense increased from 7.2% in the first quarter of 2023 to 8.0% in Q1 of this year. Drug expense as a percent of total expense rose from 4.1% in Q1 2023 to 4.4% in Q1 2025. 

    “Hospitals and health systems have battled persistent expense increases for years,” said Steve Wasson, Strata’s chief data and intelligence officer. “Now — with more than two-thirds of medical devices used in the U.S. manufactured outside of the country — tariffs and other federal policy changes could further drive up costs for pharmaceuticals, syringes, personal protective equipment, and other medical supplies and devices that healthcare professionals rely on every day to care for patients.”

    U.S. health systems also saw growth in charity and bad debt deductions in recent years. The median charity deduction for health systems increased 5.4% from Q1 2024 to Q1 2025, and jumped 21.4% in Q1 2025 versus Q1 2023. The median health system bad debt deduction increased 9.2% from Q1 2024 to Q1 2025 and 16.9% versus Q1 2023. 

    For hospitals, charity deductions for the first quarter rose 7.6% from Q1 2024 and jumped 24.5% versus Q1 2023. Bad debt deductions at hospitals decreased slightly at 0.9% from Q1 2024 to Q1 2025, but rose 15.3% versus two years ago. 

    Possible changes to Medicaid being discussed in Congress could contribute to further increases in bad debt and charity care. As of Q1 2025, the data show that Medicaid accounts for 12% or more of revenue for most U.S. hospitals, depending on the region. Hospitals in the Midwest have the lowest share of Medicaid revenue at 11.1%, while hospitals in the West have the largest at 14.4%. 

    About the Data 
    The report uses data from Strata’s StrataSphere® and Comparative Analytics database. Comparative Analytics offers access to near real-time data drawn from more than 135,000 physicians from over 10,000 practices and 139 specialty categories, and from 500+ unique departments across more than 1,600 hospitals. Comparative Analytics also provides data and comparisons specific to a single organization for visibility into how their market is evolving. StrataSphere is a unique and comprehensive data-sharing platform that helps providers leverage a network that represents approximately 25% of all provider spend in U.S. healthcare. This report incorporates data from more than 600 hospitals with StrataJazz® Decision Support.

    About Strata Decision Technology 
    Strata Decision Technology provides a cloud-based platform for software and service solutions to help organizations better analyze, plan, and perform in support of their missions. With the combination of Syntellis Performance Solutions’ Axiom solutions, more than 2,300 organizations rely on Strata to provide their financial analytics, planning, and performance solutions. Strata has been named the market leader for Business Decision Support for 18 consecutive years. By uniting these two industry leaders, Strata continues to deliver market-leading solutions and world-class service, with an increased focus on accelerating innovation. For more information, please go to www.stratadecision.com.

    Strata Social Networks 
    LinkedIn: Strata Decision Technology
    Media contact: 
    Sally Brown, Inkhouse 
    strata@inkhouse.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Israel’s peace movement offers a ray of hope amid the pain of Gaza conflict

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yuval Katz, Lecturer in Communication and Media, Loughborough University

    The first thing I do when going back to Israel for a visit is go for a run. After more than two years abroad, it is a good opportunity to refamiliarise myself with the home I left to pursue my academic career more than eight years ago.

    I knew things would not feel the same. On October 7 2023, Hamas militants breached the fence surrounding the Gaza Strip, killing over 1,000 Israelis and taking more than 200 hostage. It was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and a resounding blow against the founding idea of the state of Israel, which was established as a safe haven for the Jewish people, who have been persecuted for millennia.

    But in the 18 months that have passed since this catastrophic day, I have grown increasingly critical of the path Israel has taken. It has become a path of revenge, in which Israel has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians through ruthless air strikes and ground operations in the Gaza Strip.

    Now, as many government officials openly declare that there are “no innocent people in Gaza”, plans are in the making to cleanse Gaza of Palestinians through “voluntary immigration”. Although it has not been recognised as such by international law (charges of genocide are currently being investigated by the International Court of Justice), the Netanyahu government has been accused of premeditated genocide, carried out by Jews only 80 years after the Holocaust ended.

    Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

    In the meantime, Israelis are frustrated and exhausted. Their security has not improved, and 59 hostages remain in Gaza (only 24 of whom are thought to be alive). Those who returned from captivity alive report that military operations kill rather than save them – many of them urge the government to stop the war.

    During my run, I was amazed by the mesmerising advocacy campaign to release the hostages. Faces of the hostage and their stories are omnipresent across the public sphere – in posters hung on walls and fences, on flags, bumper stickers and slogans sprayed in graffiti on highways.

    One cannot escape the simultaneous presence (absence) of the hostages. When driving across the country, I listened to radio hosts mentioning those left behind in the Gaza tunnels at the beginning of every hour. Lest we forget.

    Yet, with all the yearning to bring them home comes a devastating helplessness. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, whose intelligence failures were responsible for October 7 and the endless war, is still in power – and many ordinary people feel there is little they can do to change this reality.

    Perhaps it was my indefatigable search for hope that led me to an organisation that embodies the alternative to endless cycles of conflict.

    My academic work focuses on how media forms – whether that be popular television shows, digital activism, or mainstream journalism – generate spaces where Palestinians and Jews meet each other. Where they can process their traumas together creatively through art and storytelling in ways that offer new possibilities for a life worth living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

    But I completed collecting the data for my book project before October 7. Now, returning, I felt an urgency to discover whether a vision for peace was still possible amid this unbearable despair.

    Standing together

    The movement, Standing Together, was founded in late 2015 in the wake of a series of violent incidents. Witnessing the incompetence of left-wing parties and human rights organisations to protect Palestinian citizens of the state from growing racism, a few dozen activists decided to organise a joint demonstration for Palestinians and Jews, so they set up a Facebook page to invite people to join.

    Trailer for No Other Land.

    The movement has expanded significantly since then; from a group of roughly 20 activists, it now consists of over 6,000 registered members, operating in 14 local centres across the country and is a leading organiser of political activities on Israeli campuses.

    I visited its headquarters in Tel Aviv – where the movement has expanded from a couple of rooms to a whole floor of an office building, with paid staff managing its data, media content, finances, and student relations.

    I conducted several interviews with Standing Together’s managers in which they indicated that membership and donations have grown exponentially since the war started. They told me many Palestinians and Israelis are looking for a political home to advance a vision of peace, equality and solidarity.

    The activities of Standing Together include operating information booths which also collect humanitarian aid for Gaza and send it across the border. They screen events and movies for members that reflect the harsh reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while offering an alternative to perpetual violence.

    A series of national screenings was dedicated to the Oscar-winning documentary, No Other Land, which depicts the dispossession of the Palestinian community of Masafer Yatta in the West Bank.

    The movie had been banned from commercial screening in Israel, but the filmmakers, peace activists for whom changing the political reality in Masafer Yatta is more important than anything else, have made it free to screen – they want all Israelis to see it.

    It also screened the joint Memorial Day service, a ceremony that has been staged for years now to allow bereaved families from both sides to meet and grieve together and call for a political change in which no more people join this community of pain.

    People who attended a screening of the Israeli-Palestinian memorial day ceremony at a synagogue in the city of Ra’anana at the end of April were attacked by right-wing activists. There was no response or condemnation from government officials.

    As darkness threatens to consume the people of Israel and Palestine with little regard for human life, movements like Standing Together spread light and bring hope.

    Yuval Katz 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. Israel’s peace movement offers a ray of hope amid the pain of Gaza conflict – https://theconversation.com/israels-peace-movement-offers-a-ray-of-hope-amid-the-pain-of-gaza-conflict-256030

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –