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Category: Education

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: The use of federal troops to quell Los Angles protests recalls militarized law enforcement during the Civil Rights Movement

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Justin Randolph, Assistant Professor of U.S. History, Texas A&M University

    The National Guard and protesters stand off outside of a downtown jail in Los Angeles on June 8, 2025. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

    President Donald Trump activated 4,000 National Guard troops on June 10, 2025, to quell protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids – without the normal request from the state. He has also sent to Los Angeles hundreds of U.S. Marines, with the goal of protecting the unprecedented deportation operations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    If this all feels exceptional, it should. Governors typically activate their own state troops, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he would do on June 11 ahead of expected immigration protests.

    California quickly sued the president. A federal court has sided with the state, but an appeals court will weigh the Trump administration’s use of the U.S. code on armed services to activate the National Guard, which relies on protesters constituting either an “invasion” or “rebellion.”

    “What we’re witnessing is not law enforcement – it’s authoritarianism,”
    California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on June 10.

    Protesters report violent responses from Los Angeles police, too. Nonetheless, Newsom’s invocation of authoritarianism is apt.

    The last example of a president federalizing troops over the objection of a state government dates to Jim Crow segregation, a period marked by legal practices that routinely denied due process and citizenship rights to Black Americans in the South. In the 1960s, numerous Black freedom struggles took stands against this authoritarianism backed by militarized law enforcement.

    As a scholar of U.S. history, I’ve just completed a book on Jim Crow policing and the ways Black Americans fought back against racist law and order. I think the militarization of policing in Los Angeles opens important questions about democracy and state violence.

    Jim Crow dreams

    During the Civil Rights Movement, the federal government activated National Guard troops over Southern state objections when those states would neither enforce court orders nor protect protesters.

    In those cases, presidents protected people with the help of troops. In Trump’s case, he’s using troops to protect the government from protesters.

    The Trump administration’s vision of law enforcement aims for the type of militarized authority that state governments institutionalized under Jim Crow policing. If your political enemy is perceived more like an enemy combatant, the rules of legal procedure, especially due process, might not apply. Policing becomes war.

    When you see the words “Jim Crow,” your mind may jump to photos of racially segregated water fountains. But Jim Crow was far more than that. It was homegrown racial authoritarianism, or the repression of freedom of thought and action.

    Before troops enforced civil rights, Black Southerners saw the National Guard as an enemy rather than a friend.

    In the words of Ida B. Wells-Barnett after a white riot against Black residents in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1917, “The police were either indifferent or encouraged the barbarities. … The major part of the National Guard was indifferent or inactive. No organized effort was made to protect the Negroes or disperse the murdering groups.”

    Eisenhower sends in the troops

    The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education changed things. It overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that legalized racial segregation and ruled that segregated public school education was unconstitutional. This significantly altered the federal government’s responsibility in the South’s legal system of white supremacy.

    The first test came in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Though numerous school districts across the South quietly desegregated, Southern governors such as Arkansas’ Orville Faubus resisted the planned desegregation of Little Rock Central High School.

    Seven of nine Black students walk onto the campus of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., with a National Guard officer as an escort on Oct. 15, 1957.
    AP Photo/File

    Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to stop Black children at the door. For nearly three weeks, Guardsmen blocked the small group of Black students – known as the “Little Rock Nine” – who were supposed to attend the school before President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered them to stand down.

    Eisenhower deployed U.S. Army riot troops to Little Rock under the Insurrection Act. In the end, the Little Rock Nine began their studies at Central High despite the much-photographed spitting from the white mob that surrounded the school.

    State troops, state rights

    Next came the desegregation of interstate transportation.

    In spring 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality, a civil rights advocacy group, sent buses of integrated passengers through the Deep South. White terrorists attacked Freedom Riders, as these activists became known, three times in Alabama.

    But state authorities had learned from the Little Rock experience. Southern governors in Alabama and Mississippi deployed the National Guard themselves. This time they intended to only minimally protect Freedom Riders to block federal law enforcement. In Mississippi, police arrested and prison guards tortured Freedom Riders in the state penitentiary. Mob violence killed no one.

    James Meredith, center, is escorted by federal marshals as he appears for his first day of class at the previously all-white University of Mississippi on Oct. 1, 1962.
    AP Photo, File

    The same was not true during the desegregation of public universities.

    When U.S. marshals arrived to enforce the court order enrolling James Meredith at the University of Mississippi in September 1962, a white riot erupted. State law enforcement withdrew from the scene. Two men died, and many more were injured.

    President John F. Kennedy federalized the Mississippi National Guard and sent them in to restore order. The next summer, he did the same in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to preemptively halt a riot at the University of Alabama.

    The occasion became a publicity stunt for Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace. He temporarily blocked the entrance to Foster Auditorium, intent on stopping the court-ordered registration of three Black students.

    “I stand before you here today in place of thousands of other Alabamians whose presence would have confronted you,” Wallace said to federal authorities. A National Guard general said, “Sir, it is my sad duty to ask you to step aside under the orders of the President of the United States.”

    A National Guard general informs Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace that the guard was under federal control, as the two meet at Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on June 11, 1963.
    AP Photo, File

    Wallace also triggered the last federal use – until now – of the National Guard. Alabama’s Selma-to-Montgomery march began as a memorial to Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young Black civil rights activist who was killed by police on Feb. 26, 1965. The march became primarily a symbol for the year’s Voting Rights Act.

    In an important change, President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized the National Guard to protect marchers. State troopers and sheriff’s deputies had terrorized marchers, including John Lewis, who was almost beaten to death on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.

    Democracy is in the streets

    The history of the National Guard in the South is an important part of what’s unfolding in Los Angeles and across the nation.

    For most of the National Guard’s history in the South, political leaders used domestic military power to preserve the interests of racial authoritarians, not racial egalitarians. Little Rock, Tuscaloosa, Selma: Those moments when troops protected racial justice protesters at home stand out as some of America’s most hopeful moments.

    Recent statements by Trump administration officials help illustrate how it envisions using military power in domestic law enforcement. On June 8, 2025, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “to arrest rioters” – a request beyond the original order to protect ICE agents.

    And on June 12, Noem said that “the military people that are working on this operation … are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country.”

    The National Guard and Marines are reportedly protecting immigration enforcement. But what might happen if they directly interact with protests?

    With diverse tactics, protesters are halting business as usual because they see a mass-deportation regime terrorizing and disappearing people in their communities. U.S. courts tend to agree with their analysis but seem powerless to enforce even basic due process rights for those detained by ICE.

    These activists show the messy work of American social change. Their work may look like “anarchy” to even some Democrats. It may be maligned as “invasion” and “rebellion” by the Trump administration.

    But the calls to constrain ICE follow an American tradition of fighting authoritarianism.

    Justin Randolph 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. The use of federal troops to quell Los Angles protests recalls militarized law enforcement during the Civil Rights Movement – https://theconversation.com/the-use-of-federal-troops-to-quell-los-angles-protests-recalls-militarized-law-enforcement-during-the-civil-rights-movement-258866

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: AI ‘reanimations’: Making facsimiles of the dead raises ethical quandaries

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Nir Eisikovits, Professor of Philosophy and Director, Applied Ethics Center, UMass Boston

    This screenshot of an AI-generated video depicts Christopher Pelkey, who was killed in 2021. Screenshot: Stacey Wales/YouTube

    Christopher Pelkey was shot and killed in a road range incident in 2021. On May 8, 2025, at the sentencing hearing for his killer, an AI video reconstruction of Pelkey delivered a victim impact statement. The trial judge reported being deeply moved by this performance and issued the maximum sentence for manslaughter.

    As part of the ceremonies to mark Israel’s 77th year of independence on April 30, 2025, officials had planned to host a concert featuring four iconic Israeli singers. All four had died years earlier. The plan was to conjure them using AI-generated sound and video. The dead performers were supposed to sing alongside Yardena Arazi, a famous and still very much alive artist. In the end Arazi pulled out, citing the political atmosphere, and the event didn’t happen.

    In April, the BBC created a deep-fake version of the famous mystery writer Agatha Christie to teach a “maestro course on writing.” Fake Agatha would instruct aspiring murder mystery authors and “inspire” their “writing journey.”

    The use of artificial intelligence to “reanimate” the dead for a variety of purposes is quickly gaining traction. Over the past few years, we’ve been studying the moral implications of AI at the Center for Applied Ethics at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and we find these AI reanimations to be morally problematic.

    Before we address the moral challenges the technology raises, it’s important to distinguish AI reanimations, or deepfakes, from so-called griefbots. Griefbots are chatbots trained on large swaths of data the dead leave behind – social media posts, texts, emails, videos. These chatbots mimic how the departed used to communicate and are meant to make life easier for surviving relations. The deepfakes we are discussing here have other aims; they are meant to promote legal, political and educational causes.

    Chris Pelkey was shot and killed in 2021. This AI ‘reanimation’ of him was presented in court as a victim impact statement.

    Moral quandaries

    The first moral quandary the technology raises has to do with consent: Would the deceased have agreed to do what their likeness is doing? Would the dead Israeli singers have wanted to sing at an Independence ceremony organized by the nation’s current government? Would Pelkey, the road-rage victim, be comfortable with the script his family wrote for his avatar to recite? What would Christie think about her AI double teaching that class?

    The answers to these questions can only be deduced circumstantially – from examining the kinds of things the dead did and the views they expressed when alive. And one could ask if the answers even matter. If those in charge of the estates agree to the reanimations, isn’t the question settled? After all, such trustees are the legal representatives of the departed.

    But putting aside the question of consent, a more fundamental question remains.

    What do these reanimations do to the legacy and reputation of the dead? Doesn’t their reputation depend, to some extent, on the scarcity of appearance, on the fact that the dead can’t show up anymore? Dying can have a salutary effect on the reputation of prominent people; it was good for John F. Kennedy, and it was good for Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

    The fifth-century B.C. Athenian leader Pericles understood this well. In his famous Funeral Oration, delivered at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War, he asserts that a noble death can elevate one’s reputation and wash away their petty misdeeds. That is because the dead are beyond reach and their mystique grows postmortem. “Even extreme virtue will scarcely win you a reputation equal to” that of the dead, he insists.

    Do AI reanimations devalue the currency of the dead by forcing them to keep popping up? Do they cheapen and destabilize their reputation by having them comment on events that happened long after their demise?

    In addition, these AI representations can be a powerful tool to influence audiences for political or legal purposes. Bringing back a popular dead singer to legitimize a political event and reanimating a dead victim to offer testimony are acts intended to sway an audience’s judgment.

    It’s one thing to channel a Churchill or a Roosevelt during a political speech by quoting them or even trying to sound like them. It’s another thing to have “them” speak alongside you. The potential of harnessing nostalgia is supercharged by this technology. Imagine, for example, what the Soviets, who literally worshipped Lenin’s dead body, would have done with a deep fake of their old icon.

    Good intentions

    You could argue that because these reanimations are uniquely engaging, they can be used for virtuous purposes. Consider a reanimated Martin Luther King Jr., speaking to our currently polarized and divided nation, urging moderation and unity. Wouldn’t that be grand? Or what about a reanimated Mordechai Anielewicz, the commander of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, speaking at the trial of a Holocaust denier like David Irving?

    But do we know what MLK would have thought about our current political divisions? Do we know what Anielewicz would have thought about restrictions on pernicious speech? Does bravely campaigning for civil rights mean we should call upon the digital ghost of King to comment on the impact of populism? Does fearlessly fighting the Nazis mean we should dredge up the AI shadow of an old hero to comment on free speech in the digital age?

    No one can know with certainty what Martin Luther King Jr. would say about today’s society.
    AP Photo/Chick Harrity

    Even if the political projects these AI avatars served were consistent with the deceased’s views, the problem of manipulation – of using the psychological power of deepfakes to appeal to emotions – remains.

    But what about enlisting AI Agatha Christie to teach a writing class? Deep fakes may indeed have salutary uses in educational settings. The likeness of Christie could make students more enthusiastic about writing. Fake Aristotle could improve the chances that students engage with his austere Nicomachean Ethics. AI Einstein could help those who want to study physics get their heads around general relativity.

    But producing these fakes comes with a great deal of responsibility. After all, given how engaging they can be, it’s possible that the interactions with these representations will be all that students pay attention to, rather than serving as a gateway to exploring the subject further.

    Living on in the living

    In a poem written in memory of W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden tells us that, after the poet’s death, Yeats “became his admirers.” His memory was now “scattered among a hundred cities,” and his work subject to endless interpretation: “the words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.”

    The dead live on in the many ways we reinterpret their words and works. Auden did that to Yeats, and we’re doing it to Auden right here. That’s how people stay in touch with those who are gone. In the end, we believe that using technological prowess to concretely bring them back disrespects them and, perhaps more importantly, is an act of disrespect to ourselves – to our capacity to abstract, think and imagine.

    Nir Eisikovits directs UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center, which receives funding from the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He’s also a data ethics advisor to mindguard.com

    Daniel J. Feldman 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. AI ‘reanimations’: Making facsimiles of the dead raises ethical quandaries – https://theconversation.com/ai-reanimations-making-facsimiles-of-the-dead-raises-ethical-quandaries-256771

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Precise measurement standards have revolutionized museum science, helping nail down where artifacts are from

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Edward Vicenzi, Research Scientist, Museum Conservation Institute, Smithsonian Institution

    Museums and their bountiful collections are research bastions. Douglas Rissing/iStock via Getty Images

    On a cool February morning in 1904, a spark ignited a fire in the heart of downtown Baltimore. Within hours, a raging inferno swept eastward across the harbor district, consuming everything in its path. By evening, the local firefighters were overwhelmed, and the city sent telegrams to the fire chiefs of major Northeastern cities pleading for help in battling the blaze.

    Washington, Philadelphia and New York, along with other cities, responded quickly with dozens of engine companies. Yet when they arrived at the scene, many responders could not hook up to Baltimore’s hydrants since each city had its own threading standards to connect fire hoses.

    The fire resulted in damages of over US$3.5 billion in today’s dollars. It created a call for a national standard of threads for hoses and fire hydrant outlets. These standards now improve emergency responses across the country – and the same concept of standardization allows for consistency and replicability in scientific research.

    An illustration of the aftermath of the Great Baltimore Fire in February 1904.
    Fred Pridham/Wikimedia Commons

    In science, the ideal way to evaluate data is related to the concept driving the calls for uniform fire hose equipment. When scientists compare their results to those obtained in other laboratories, or with previously published data, the comparisons are most meaningful if all datasets were made with standardized practices and reference materials.

    Museum scientists like us provide compelling insights into the natural world, prehistory and historical culture heritage. Like that of many other scientists, our work, and the measurements we take day to day, depends upon standard references.

    Here we offer two fascinating stories from the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Conservation Institute that highlight how scientific measurement standards allow for exciting new discoveries:

    You are what you drink

    In 2007, the New Mexico Bureau of Reclamation exhumed the remains of dozens of Civil War-era soldiers from the ruins of Fort Craig. They had been left behind when the fort was abandoned in 1885.

    A historical view of Fort Craig, N.M.
    Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico, CC BY-NC-SA

    Anthropologists from the Smithsonian and the Bureau of Reclamation in New Mexico identified the remains as belonging to a diverse range of people – including a few dozen African American Buffalo Soldiers, a group that made up a relatively small percentage of the U.S. military at that time.

    Historical records tell researchers that most of the military units at Fort Craig mobilized out of Kentucky and Virginia, but official records don’t always tell the full story. The group of project scientists, which included one of us, Christine France, needed a way to confirm the origin of these individuals and restore some identity to these forgotten soldiers.

    The researchers decided to use stable isotope analysis on the bones. This technique counts the number of atoms of a particular element in the sample that have one or more extra neutrons – this is the “heavy” isotope – and compares it with the number of atoms that have a normal number of neutrons – this is the “light” isotope.

    Drinking water in southern latitudes has more naturally occurring heavy oxygen atoms compared with northern latitudes. If a soldier’s bones had a relatively high ratio of the heavy to the light oxygen atoms, that soldier likely spent more time drinking water from the South.

    Researchers have measured oxygen isotopes in other archaeological remains and in water all over North America, giving us a water “isotope map.” But matching the bone isotope values to the water map is like comparing apples to oranges, and every lab has subtle variations in its instruments. The scientists needed to normalize and calibrate the isotope ratios they had measured to a reference standard.

    In this case, the standard was the average oxygen isotope value of ocean water, a convention that stable isotope researchers agreed upon as a consistent and readily available value. The researchers now had a uniform way to say how many more – or fewer – heavy oxygen isotopes the bones contained compared to the ocean water standard.

    Other archaeology labs and the North American water isotope map use that same standard comparison, allowing them to directly compare all the bone isotope values to one another, and to the North American water isotope map.

    Ultimately, the method helped the team identify several soldiers who came from quite far away to join the company, including individuals who likely grew up in the mid-Atlantic, New England and Southeast.

    The exact circumstances that brought these soldiers together is lost to history. But the researchers’ ability to assign them geographic provenance with the help of reference standards gave them further insight into this pivotal time in U.S. history.

    Volcanic glass mirrors

    Humans have always been fascinated by looking at themselves in the mirror. In Mesoamerica – modern-day central and southern Mexico together with northern Central America – archaeologists have found convex round objects so finely polished that they have been termed mirrors.

    But instead of using them for vanity, shamans from ancient times likely used them as a tool to access portals to other dimensions.

    The oldest Preclassic mirrors (2000 BCE to 250 CE) were fashioned from polished iron ores, but later Postclassic period mirrors (900 CE to 1450 CE) were made from obsidian, a typically black silica-rich volcanic glass.

    The collections at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian contain six large, rectangular obsidian mirrors, purchased in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Their labels state they come from the “Valley of Mexico.”

    Obsidian tablets, a view of both their front and back sides, found in the National Museum of the American Indian collections.
    NMAI, Martinez et al (2022)

    Archeologists rarely find rectangular obsidian mirrors like these at pre-Columbian dig sites. So, local artisans skilled in stone polishing likely made these unusually shaped objects upon request by Spanish invaders around the time of European contact. But which Mesoamerican culture did they come from?

    Scientists from the Museum Conservation Institute, including two of us, Thomas Lam and Edward Vicenzi, and a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, worked with staff at the National Museum of the American Indian on an effort to pinpoint which volcano created the obsidian in the mirrors.

    The location of the obsidian source would indicate whether the Aztecs who controlled eastern central Mexico, or the Purépecha who controlled an area west of the Aztecs, produced the objects, as both had ample sources of obsidian in their territories.

    To conduct such a study, the researchers required two types of reference materials: obsidian that had erupted from known volcanic locations, and a reference obsidian that scientists already knew the composition of to confirm the quality of the analysis.

    The first reference obsidians, from known locations, told the researchers about the differences in geochemistry of the volcanoes in central Mexico. That information allowed them to match the mirror analyses to the known volcanic location analyses and their map coordinates. The second reference obsidian served as a quality control specimen for the analysis.

    Museum Conservation Institute scientists used a nondestructive technique called X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to analyze ratios of elements in the obsidians. The process works by “exciting” atoms in the obsidian, and a spectrum of X-ray energies is given off as the atoms “relax.”

    Scientists analyzed the obsidian shards to see which elements were present in them in which ratios, and where in Mexico obsidian contained similar elements at similar ratios.
    Sharps et al. (2021)

    The results showed that all the specimens came from a region controlled by the Purépecha, not the Aztecs. The museum curators updated their records describing the mirrors to include this new information about their origin.

    Creating standards

    Standardized measurement procedures and reference materials play a central role in museum science. Organizations dedicated to rigorous measurement science, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal government agency, help create some of these standards and research new measurement procedures.

    Without their leadership, it would be far more difficult for researchers like us to produce high-quality data and discern the relationships between specimens in the natural and cultural heritage sciences. With quality measurement standards in our toolbox, we are finding new insights into human history and the natural world.

    Edward Vicenzi is a guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the Material Measurement Laboratory.

    Christine France and Thomas Lam do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Precise measurement standards have revolutionized museum science, helping nail down where artifacts are from – https://theconversation.com/precise-measurement-standards-have-revolutionized-museum-science-helping-nail-down-where-artifacts-are-from-254025

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: Security law anniversary session held

    Source: Hong Kong Information Services

    A sharing session for the social welfare sector on the fifth anniversary of the promulgation and implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law, jointly organised by the Government and Connecting Hearts, concluded today.

     

    The event was attended by about 300 management staff of social welfare organisations, with several thousand representatives from the social welfare sector joining it online.

     

    Secretary for Labour & Welfare Chris Sun said at its ceremony that with the implementation of the National Security Law, the Labour & Welfare Bureau and the Social Welfare Department have enhanced the mechanisms such as including the requirement into relevant documents for the department’s subsidised and subvented services.

     

    This is to ensure non-governmental organisations’ compliance with the security law and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance in the delivery of services, he added.

     

    Mr Sun also mentioned the amendments of the Social Workers Registration Ordinance, which allow prompt and appropriate actions taken on registered social workers convicted of offences endangering national security.

     

    The labour chief said that upon the implementation of these enhancements, the social welfare sector not only showed a rising awareness of safeguarding national security but also integrated such awareness into the operation of their organisations, fully demonstrating that safeguarding national security is everyone’s responsibility.

     

    Mr Sun emphasised that the bureau and the department will continue to organise activities to promote national security education and patriotism in partnership with Connecting Hearts and encourage organisations providing subvented welfare services to make use of the dedicated fund to enhance their staff’s understanding of national affairs by arranging Mainland exchange tours and studies programmes.

     

    He highlighted the overwhelming response from social workers on the Thousands of Hong Kong Social Workers Exploring the Motherland & Hong Kong Social Work Teaching Staff Exploring the Motherland tours as clear indication of the sector’s wish to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the nation’s overall development.

    MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: German chancellor’s rebuke of Israel marks a shift in state policy that has long put such criticism out of bounds

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Elisabeth Weber, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara

    German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Israeli President Isaac Herzog prepare to shake hands in Berlin on May 12, 2025. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

    Friedrich Merz did something unprecedented for a German chancellor in late May 2025: publicly criticize Israel in unvarnished, unequivocal terms.

    “What the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip, I no longer understand the goal,” he said in a televised interview. He added, “To harm the civilian population in such a way … can no longer be justified as a fight against terrorism.”

    A day later, during a summit with prime ministers of Nordic countries in Finland, Merz doubled down. “I take a very, very critical view of what has happened in Gaza,” he said in reference to Israel’s bombing campaign and the blockade of food and other aid.

    Merz is not alone in the German government. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul also weighed in, noting that Germany’s stance against antisemitism and its “full support” for the right of Israel to exist “must not be instrumentalized for the conflict and the warfare currently being waged in the Gaza Strip.”

    Criticism by outside governments of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas that killed close to 1,200 people has been present since the war in Gaza began. At first, it was largely confined to countries in the Global South. But more recently it has included countries in the West.

    Still, as a scholar of the Shoah – the Hebrew term for the Holocaust – I know that this rebuke from Germany hits differently. Post-war Germany has a long-standing political commitment to Israel’s security. It is a commitment rooted in the nation’s historical responsibility for the Nazis’ annihilation of European Jews and that has been staunchly reaffirmed by German governments since the 1952 agreement of reparations between the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Adenauer, and the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion.

    ‘Staatsräson’ and its critics

    In 2008, then-chancellor Angela Merkel went so far as to call this commitment to Israel’s security Germany’s “Staatsräson,” or “reason of state.” In a speech she gave to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, on March 18, 2008, Merkel emphasized that “only if Germany acknowledges its perpetual responsibility for the moral catastrophe of German history can we shape the future humanely.” She went on to assert that Germany’s “historic responsibility” is “part of my country’s raison d’état.” She added: “Israel’s security is never negotiable for me as German chancellor.”

    The argument that Israeli security is Germany’s “reason of state” was reiterated by Merkel’s successor, Olaf Scholz, during his visit to Israel on Oct. 17, 2023 – just 10 days after the Hamas attack. Standing next to Scholz, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Palestinian militant group “the new Nazis.”

    Tracing back the term’s origins and history, renowned historian Enzo Traverso recently noted that theorists and practitioners of “reason of state” agree that the concept “denotes the violation by a political power of its own ethical principles in service to a higher interest, generally the safeguarding of its own power.”

    The problem with Germany’s invocation of the “Staatsräson” as prioritizing the security of Israel above other concerns is that it implies defending policies even if they contravene Germany’s foundational ethical principles, such as those declared in its constitution. Article 1 asserts that the German people “acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world.”

    Such principles were born out of the recognition of the horrendous violation of human rights under the Nazi regime and the acknowledgment of Germany’s “perpetual responsibility,” as Merkel put it.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks ahead of a special session of the Israeli parliament on March 18, 2008.
    Sebastian Scheiner/Pool/Getty Images

    In Germany’s public discourse, as well as school curricula, the Shoah is always described as absolutely unique.

    But as Israeli-American genocide and Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov has argued, this assertion is also open to criticism:

    “Germany’s commitment to the uniqueness of the Holocaust, from which it also derives its unique commitment to Israel, has arguably put it in a morally highly dubious position of both long denying its own past colonial crimes [in Namibia] and of denying Israel’s culpability in the present destruction of Gaza, including the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.”

    Germany’s commitment to the uniqueness of the Shoah also leaves little room for an acknowledgment of the Nakba – the violent expulsion of around 800,000 Palestinians before, during and after the foundation of the state of Israel.

    And it leaves no room for a recognition of how both catastrophes, the Shoah and the Nakba, are, as Bartov insists, “inextricably entangled.”

    Antisemitism definitions — and their critics

    As a consequence of Germany’s responsibility for the Shoah and its commitment to its uniqueness, the country has some of the strictest laws to combat antisemitism in the world. But critics also note widespread conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel.

    Germany, like the United States,
    has adopted a definition of antisemitism authored in 2004 by American lawyer Kenneth Stern and espoused in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. That definition includes 11 examples of antisemitism, seven of which pertain to Israel.

    It has been criticized for being too vague, leading to the labeling of Jewish and non-Jewish people who oppose the current Israeli war in Gaza as “antisemitic.”

    Stern, who describes himself as Zionist, has sharply criticized the misuse of his definition to stifle academic freedom and criticism of the actions of the Israeli nation.

    In an article for the conservative Germany newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Israeli legal scholar Itamar Mann
    argued that Germany “needs a new definition of antisemitism.”

    He applauded the recent adoption, by the German leftist party Die Linke, of a separate definition of antisemitism laid out in the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. Formulated in 2021 by more than 350 respected scholars, many of them Jewish, the declaration rejects labeling as antisemitic political speech that “criticizes or opposes Zionism as a form of nationalism.”

    Mann calls on the German government to implement policies to “protect all Jews, including those who … reject the current Israeli government and insist on a vocabulary that allows us to be Jewish and to criticize Israel.”

    A historic shift?

    The recent remarks of Merz may represent a subtle but sure shift in Germany’s “Staatsräson” and how it engages with its historical debt, Israel and antisemitism.

    And that may be a first step in moving away from a “Staatsräson” that, in the words of scholar of Middle Eastern politics Lena Obermaier, is “detrimental for Palestinians and progressive Jews” and gives Israel international cover when accused of massive violations of international law.

    What Merkel called Germany’s “perpetual responsibility for the moral catastrophe” of the Holocaust would, from my perspective as a scholar of the Shoah, demand nothing less.

    Elisabeth Weber 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. German chancellor’s rebuke of Israel marks a shift in state policy that has long put such criticism out of bounds – https://theconversation.com/german-chancellors-rebuke-of-israel-marks-a-shift-in-state-policy-that-has-long-put-such-criticism-out-of-bounds-258156

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Global: German chancellor’s rebuke of Israel marks a shift in state policy that has long put such criticism out of bounds

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Elisabeth Weber, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara

    German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Israeli President Isaac Herzog prepare to shake hands in Berlin on May 12, 2025. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

    Friedrich Merz did something unprecedented for a German chancellor in late May 2025: publicly criticize Israel in unvarnished, unequivocal terms.

    “What the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip, I no longer understand the goal,” he said in a televised interview. He added, “To harm the civilian population in such a way … can no longer be justified as a fight against terrorism.”

    A day later, during a summit with prime ministers of Nordic countries in Finland, Merz doubled down. “I take a very, very critical view of what has happened in Gaza,” he said in reference to Israel’s bombing campaign and the blockade of food and other aid.

    Merz is not alone in the German government. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul also weighed in, noting that Germany’s stance against antisemitism and its “full support” for the right of Israel to exist “must not be instrumentalized for the conflict and the warfare currently being waged in the Gaza Strip.”

    Criticism by outside governments of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas that killed close to 1,200 people has been present since the war in Gaza began. At first, it was largely confined to countries in the Global South. But more recently it has included countries in the West.

    Still, as a scholar of the Shoah – the Hebrew term for the Holocaust – I know that this rebuke from Germany hits differently. Post-war Germany has a long-standing political commitment to Israel’s security. It is a commitment rooted in the nation’s historical responsibility for the Nazis’ annihilation of European Jews and that has been staunchly reaffirmed by German governments since the 1952 agreement of reparations between the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Adenauer, and the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion.

    ‘Staatsräson’ and its critics

    In 2008, then-chancellor Angela Merkel went so far as to call this commitment to Israel’s security Germany’s “Staatsräson,” or “reason of state.” In a speech she gave to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, on March 18, 2008, Merkel emphasized that “only if Germany acknowledges its perpetual responsibility for the moral catastrophe of German history can we shape the future humanely.” She went on to assert that Germany’s “historic responsibility” is “part of my country’s raison d’état.” She added: “Israel’s security is never negotiable for me as German chancellor.”

    The argument that Israeli security is Germany’s “reason of state” was reiterated by Merkel’s successor, Olaf Scholz, during his visit to Israel on Oct. 17, 2023 – just 10 days after the Hamas attack. Standing next to Scholz, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Palestinian militant group “the new Nazis.”

    Tracing back the term’s origins and history, renowned historian Enzo Traverso recently noted that theorists and practitioners of “reason of state” agree that the concept “denotes the violation by a political power of its own ethical principles in service to a higher interest, generally the safeguarding of its own power.”

    The problem with Germany’s invocation of the “Staatsräson” as prioritizing the security of Israel above other concerns is that it implies defending policies even if they contravene Germany’s foundational ethical principles, such as those declared in its constitution. Article 1 asserts that the German people “acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world.”

    Such principles were born out of the recognition of the horrendous violation of human rights under the Nazi regime and the acknowledgment of Germany’s “perpetual responsibility,” as Merkel put it.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks ahead of a special session of the Israeli parliament on March 18, 2008.
    Sebastian Scheiner/Pool/Getty Images

    In Germany’s public discourse, as well as school curricula, the Shoah is always described as absolutely unique.

    But as Israeli-American genocide and Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov has argued, this assertion is also open to criticism:

    “Germany’s commitment to the uniqueness of the Holocaust, from which it also derives its unique commitment to Israel, has arguably put it in a morally highly dubious position of both long denying its own past colonial crimes [in Namibia] and of denying Israel’s culpability in the present destruction of Gaza, including the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.”

    Germany’s commitment to the uniqueness of the Shoah also leaves little room for an acknowledgment of the Nakba – the violent expulsion of around 800,000 Palestinians before, during and after the foundation of the state of Israel.

    And it leaves no room for a recognition of how both catastrophes, the Shoah and the Nakba, are, as Bartov insists, “inextricably entangled.”

    Antisemitism definitions — and their critics

    As a consequence of Germany’s responsibility for the Shoah and its commitment to its uniqueness, the country has some of the strictest laws to combat antisemitism in the world. But critics also note widespread conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel.

    Germany, like the United States,
    has adopted a definition of antisemitism authored in 2004 by American lawyer Kenneth Stern and espoused in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. That definition includes 11 examples of antisemitism, seven of which pertain to Israel.

    It has been criticized for being too vague, leading to the labeling of Jewish and non-Jewish people who oppose the current Israeli war in Gaza as “antisemitic.”

    Stern, who describes himself as Zionist, has sharply criticized the misuse of his definition to stifle academic freedom and criticism of the actions of the Israeli nation.

    In an article for the conservative Germany newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Israeli legal scholar Itamar Mann
    argued that Germany “needs a new definition of antisemitism.”

    He applauded the recent adoption, by the German leftist party Die Linke, of a separate definition of antisemitism laid out in the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. Formulated in 2021 by more than 350 respected scholars, many of them Jewish, the declaration rejects labeling as antisemitic political speech that “criticizes or opposes Zionism as a form of nationalism.”

    Mann calls on the German government to implement policies to “protect all Jews, including those who … reject the current Israeli government and insist on a vocabulary that allows us to be Jewish and to criticize Israel.”

    A historic shift?

    The recent remarks of Merz may represent a subtle but sure shift in Germany’s “Staatsräson” and how it engages with its historical debt, Israel and antisemitism.

    And that may be a first step in moving away from a “Staatsräson” that, in the words of scholar of Middle Eastern politics Lena Obermaier, is “detrimental for Palestinians and progressive Jews” and gives Israel international cover when accused of massive violations of international law.

    What Merkel called Germany’s “perpetual responsibility for the moral catastrophe” of the Holocaust would, from my perspective as a scholar of the Shoah, demand nothing less.

    Elisabeth Weber 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. German chancellor’s rebuke of Israel marks a shift in state policy that has long put such criticism out of bounds – https://theconversation.com/german-chancellors-rebuke-of-israel-marks-a-shift-in-state-policy-that-has-long-put-such-criticism-out-of-bounds-258156

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: How Birmingham will benefit from the Government’s Spending Review

    Source: City of Birmingham

    Access to more affordable homes, increased funding for schools and their pupils, and investment in Birmingham’s transport networks are among the Chancellor’s spending priorities.

    These headlines come from the Government’s Spending Review, which unveiled on 11 June, outlining their spending plans for the next three years.

    Finance officers are assessing what the Chancellor’s announcement means for the council’s own finances and services and the picture will become clearer later in the year.

    Cllr John Cotton, Leader of Birmingham City Council, said: “I welcome this Spending Review, and I’m encouraged the Chancellor has included funding for projects like the extension of the West Midlands Metro into East Birmingham, which will bring with it hundreds of jobs.

    “Working closely with West Midlands Mayor Richard Parker, we are ambitious for Birmingham and its people, and we need a government that matches those ambitions – so I am glad to see investment in education, children and young people are among those key spending priorities,

    “With the right support, cities like Birmingham can unlock growth and tackle inequalities that continue to hold too many people back – and the Government’s commitment to invest £39 billion in affordable housing is also key to this. This funding will transform the lives of so many people.”

    In Birmingham – one of the youngest cities in Europe – children will benefit from the £4.7 billion committed to spending on schools, up by £2 billion – to improve facilities and opportunities in education by 2028/29.

    There will also be investment in amenities and activities for young people, which in Birmingham could translate into revitalising local facilities. This is part of a new Local Growth Fund and an additional Mayoral Growth Fund to help cities deliver on the Government’s Growth Mission.

    In addition £410 million will be spent on extending the Free School Meals scheme to all pupils with a parent receiving Universal Credit. This comes on top of the council’s ongoing work to auto-enrol children across the city who qualify for free school meals, but have not applied for them.

    Meanwhile school breakfast clubs will be open to all children – to ensure their school day gets off to a good start.

    Housing features highly in this Spending Review – with a £39 billion commitment to increase the provision of affordable housing across the country over the next decade.

    Being able to access this funding will help Birmingham City Council tackle the city’s housing crisis – by improving access to safe, decent and affordable housing, to those most in need.

    Extending the West Midlands Metro through East Birmingham – connecting the Birmingham Sports Quarter and investment in West Midland Rail Hub will all help create thousands of jobs and opportunities for local business as part of our ambitious inclusive growth agenda for East Birmingham.

    This investment in key infrastructure will help to deliver Birmingham’s Sports Quarter – which will be home to Birmingham City FC’s new stadium.

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Help shape our strategy to give Derby’s children the best start in life

    Source: City of Derby

    Derby City Council has launched a consultation to gather feedback on how it supports the city’s children. The Council’s draft Early Years 0-7 Strategy has been designed to create an inclusive and thriving city where every child and young person can succeed and live their best life.

    Children develop quickly in the early years and a child’s experiences between birth and age seven have a major impact on their future life. This strategy sets out a vision of how education, health and social care services will collaborate with families and the voluntary sector to provide all Derby children with equal opportunity to be healthy, happy, and safe.

    The Council would love to hear what parents, carers, stakeholders and city residents think about the draft strategy to help shape it going forwards. An online survey is now live on Let’s Talk Derby and is open until Friday 25 July.

    Derby has already demonstrated significant progress in supporting its most disadvantaged children. In 2024, 54% of Derby children eligible for free school meals achieved a Good Level of Development (GLD), surpassing the national average of 51.5%. Furthermore, 29.8% of Derby children receiving SEND Support and 4.1% of children with an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan achieved a GLD, compared with national outcomes of 24.9% and 3.8% respectively. These achievements place Derby 10th nationally for these key outcomes.

    This new strategy builds on these existing strengths and aims to further narrow the educational attainment gap, ensuring that all children, particularly the most disadvantaged, can flourish.

    The Council has developed the strategy in partnership with key Early Years stakeholders, identifying areas where collective efforts can further improve outcomes for children and families across the city.

    Councillor Paul Hezelgrave, Derby City Council Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Skills, said:

    Derby aims to be an ambitious and inclusive city where all children and young people can thrive. This means providing the best possible start in life, fostering a strong sense of belonging, and supporting their development, health, and well-being. 

    This vision will be achieved through a strong collaborative network with children and families at the centre, ensuring they get the right support at the right time.

    You can contribute to this by taking part in our consultation on the draft Early Years Strategy, so please take part.

    The survey is available at Let’s Talk Derby until Friday 25 July. Feedback can also be sent by post to Coral Golding, Professional Advocate for Children in Education (PACE) and Early Years Quality Improvement Service Manager, at The Council House, Corporation Street, Derby, DE1 2FS.

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI: Willis appoints new leader for law firms in North America

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    NEW YORK, June 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Willis, a WTW business (Nasdaq: WTW), has announced the appointment of Linda Fisher as the sub-vertical leader for law firms within the Financial Services and Professional Services (FIPS) industry vertical division within North America.

    Based in Chicago and reporting directly to Brad Messinger, FIPS Leader, Fisher will leverage her extensive industry experience to drive growth in the legal sector. Her responsibilities will include business development, creating intellectual capital, representing Willis at industry events, and enhancing the full suite of services and solutions for law firm clients.

    Prior to joining Willis, Fisher was with Marsh McLennan Agency, where she was a Managing Director in their national law firm vertical. She was also a leader in Gallagher’s law firm group and the law firm practice leader at Old Republic Professional. Fisher holds a B.S. degree from the University of Alabama, has her RPLU and CPLP designations, and is a frequent conference and panel speaker.

    Messinger commented, “I am thrilled to welcome Linda to the team. Her deep understanding of the legal landscape and passion for law firms is second to none in the industry, and her expertise will guide us in deepening our business within the legal sector. I look forward to welcoming her to the team.”

    About WTW
    At WTW (NASDAQ: WTW), we provide data-driven, insight-led solutions in the areas of people, risk and capital. Leveraging the global view and local expertise of our colleagues serving 140 countries and markets, we help organizations sharpen their strategy, enhance organizational resilience, motivate their workforce and maximize performance.

    Working shoulder to shoulder with our clients, we uncover opportunities for sustainable success—and provide perspective that moves you.

    Learn more at wtwco.com.

    Media Contact
    Arnelle Sullivan +1 (718) 208-0474 | Arnelle.Sullivan@wtwco.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Willis appoints new leader for law firms in North America

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    NEW YORK, June 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Willis, a WTW business (Nasdaq: WTW), has announced the appointment of Linda Fisher as the sub-vertical leader for law firms within the Financial Services and Professional Services (FIPS) industry vertical division within North America.

    Based in Chicago and reporting directly to Brad Messinger, FIPS Leader, Fisher will leverage her extensive industry experience to drive growth in the legal sector. Her responsibilities will include business development, creating intellectual capital, representing Willis at industry events, and enhancing the full suite of services and solutions for law firm clients.

    Prior to joining Willis, Fisher was with Marsh McLennan Agency, where she was a Managing Director in their national law firm vertical. She was also a leader in Gallagher’s law firm group and the law firm practice leader at Old Republic Professional. Fisher holds a B.S. degree from the University of Alabama, has her RPLU and CPLP designations, and is a frequent conference and panel speaker.

    Messinger commented, “I am thrilled to welcome Linda to the team. Her deep understanding of the legal landscape and passion for law firms is second to none in the industry, and her expertise will guide us in deepening our business within the legal sector. I look forward to welcoming her to the team.”

    About WTW
    At WTW (NASDAQ: WTW), we provide data-driven, insight-led solutions in the areas of people, risk and capital. Leveraging the global view and local expertise of our colleagues serving 140 countries and markets, we help organizations sharpen their strategy, enhance organizational resilience, motivate their workforce and maximize performance.

    Working shoulder to shoulder with our clients, we uncover opportunities for sustainable success—and provide perspective that moves you.

    Learn more at wtwco.com.

    Media Contact
    Arnelle Sullivan +1 (718) 208-0474 | Arnelle.Sullivan@wtwco.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Fengate Asset Management and Tilbury Properties achieve financial close on new student residence in Ontario

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    SARNIA, Ontario, June 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Fengate Asset Management (Fengate), in partnership with Tilbury Properties (Tilbury), today announced financial close on a new student residence at Lambton College in Sarnia. The residence will provide much-needed accommodation to 311 college students when it opens in September 2027.

    Fengate and Tilbury were selected to design, construct, finance, operate, and maintain the new on-campus residence following a competitive procurement process. Fengate is managing the investment on behalf of the Fengate Infrastructure Yield Fund and its affiliated entities, including an investment by LiUNA’s Pension Fund of Central and Eastern Canada.

    Located in the heart of Lambton County, Lambton College is a globally recognized leader in education, innovation, and applied research. As the sole post-secondary institution in the region, the College plays a vital role in the community, driving economic development and diversification, propelling social and environmental innovation, and providing quality education to domestic and international students to ensure a thriving skilled workforce.

    “Fengate looks forward to bringing its deep institutional project experience to this new campus residence to provide modern, sustainable accommodation opportunities to Lambton College students in 2027,” said Mac Bell, Managing Director, Infrastructure Investments at Fengate.

    Fengate delivered and is operating the Emily Carr University of Art + Design in British Columbia (B.C.) – the only specialized post-secondary institution in B.C. In 2023, the firm also completed a public-private partnership bundle of six schools in Prince George’s County, Maryland, to provide state-of-the-art schools and 8,000 new desks for K-8 and middle school students.

    “Tilbury is proud to partner with Lambton College on this exciting new student residence,” said Michael Kaye, Founding Partner at Tilbury. “This thoughtfully designed project will modernize the College’s on-campus housing and support the academic and personal success of students for decades to come.”

    Specializing in purpose-built student accommodation, Tilbury takes a collaborative, hands-on approach with its post-secondary partners. The company prides itself on tailoring each project to meet the unique needs of academic institutions, creating exceptional living and learning environments. In September 2025, Tilbury will open a 452-bed residence and dining hall at the University of Windsor, further demonstrating its leadership in on-campus housing development.

    The new campus residence at Lambton College will incorporate energy-efficient systems and sustainable building materials to minimize environmental footprint and will include landscaped green spaces to enhance the campus environment.

    Construction is scheduled to start later this month.

    About Fengate

    Fengate is a leading alternative investment manager focused on infrastructure, private equity and real estate strategies, with more than $10 billion of capital commitments under management. The firm has been investing in infrastructure since 2006 with a focus on mid-market greenfield and brownfield infrastructure assets in the transportation, social, energy transition and digital sectors. Fengate is one of North America’s most active infrastructure investors and developers with a portfolio of more than 50 assets. Learn more at www.fengate.com.

    About Tilbury

    Tilbury Properties is a Canadian real estate development firm focused on purpose-built student housing. Founded in 2020, the company has over 1,000 student beds in various stages of development, making it one of the leading developers in Canada’s student housing sector. Learn more at www.tilburyprop.com.

    Media Contact

    Maddison Sharples
    Vice President, Communications and Marketing
    Fengate Asset Management
    +1 416-254-3326
    Maddison.Sharples@fengate.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Fengate Asset Management and Tilbury Properties achieve financial close on new student residence in Ontario

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    SARNIA, Ontario, June 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Fengate Asset Management (Fengate), in partnership with Tilbury Properties (Tilbury), today announced financial close on a new student residence at Lambton College in Sarnia. The residence will provide much-needed accommodation to 311 college students when it opens in September 2027.

    Fengate and Tilbury were selected to design, construct, finance, operate, and maintain the new on-campus residence following a competitive procurement process. Fengate is managing the investment on behalf of the Fengate Infrastructure Yield Fund and its affiliated entities, including an investment by LiUNA’s Pension Fund of Central and Eastern Canada.

    Located in the heart of Lambton County, Lambton College is a globally recognized leader in education, innovation, and applied research. As the sole post-secondary institution in the region, the College plays a vital role in the community, driving economic development and diversification, propelling social and environmental innovation, and providing quality education to domestic and international students to ensure a thriving skilled workforce.

    “Fengate looks forward to bringing its deep institutional project experience to this new campus residence to provide modern, sustainable accommodation opportunities to Lambton College students in 2027,” said Mac Bell, Managing Director, Infrastructure Investments at Fengate.

    Fengate delivered and is operating the Emily Carr University of Art + Design in British Columbia (B.C.) – the only specialized post-secondary institution in B.C. In 2023, the firm also completed a public-private partnership bundle of six schools in Prince George’s County, Maryland, to provide state-of-the-art schools and 8,000 new desks for K-8 and middle school students.

    “Tilbury is proud to partner with Lambton College on this exciting new student residence,” said Michael Kaye, Founding Partner at Tilbury. “This thoughtfully designed project will modernize the College’s on-campus housing and support the academic and personal success of students for decades to come.”

    Specializing in purpose-built student accommodation, Tilbury takes a collaborative, hands-on approach with its post-secondary partners. The company prides itself on tailoring each project to meet the unique needs of academic institutions, creating exceptional living and learning environments. In September 2025, Tilbury will open a 452-bed residence and dining hall at the University of Windsor, further demonstrating its leadership in on-campus housing development.

    The new campus residence at Lambton College will incorporate energy-efficient systems and sustainable building materials to minimize environmental footprint and will include landscaped green spaces to enhance the campus environment.

    Construction is scheduled to start later this month.

    About Fengate

    Fengate is a leading alternative investment manager focused on infrastructure, private equity and real estate strategies, with more than $10 billion of capital commitments under management. The firm has been investing in infrastructure since 2006 with a focus on mid-market greenfield and brownfield infrastructure assets in the transportation, social, energy transition and digital sectors. Fengate is one of North America’s most active infrastructure investors and developers with a portfolio of more than 50 assets. Learn more at www.fengate.com.

    About Tilbury

    Tilbury Properties is a Canadian real estate development firm focused on purpose-built student housing. Founded in 2020, the company has over 1,000 student beds in various stages of development, making it one of the leading developers in Canada’s student housing sector. Learn more at www.tilburyprop.com.

    Media Contact

    Maddison Sharples
    Vice President, Communications and Marketing
    Fengate Asset Management
    +1 416-254-3326
    Maddison.Sharples@fengate.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Duck Creek Technologies Announces Six New Digital Certifications through Duck Creek University

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    BOSTON, June 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Duck Creek Technologies, the global intelligent solutions provider defining the future of property and casualty (P&C) and general insurance, today announced the release of six new digital certifications through Duck Creek University. These certifications are designed to deepen industry expertise, elevate technical knowledge, and drive success across the insurance technology ecosystem.

    The newly launched certifications include:

    • Loss Control Certification
    • DevOps Certification
    • Intelligence Certification
    • Suite Certification
    • Billing Certification
    • Reinsurance Certification

    Each certification track delivers a structured, role-based learning experience that equips learners with the practical skills needed to implement and optimize Duck Creek solutions. Developed by industry experts and powered by Duck Creek University’s modern learning platform, these certifications align directly with product capabilities and real-world application.

    “We are committed to building the future of insurance through education,” said Jeff Reinholtz, Senior Director, Duck Creek University for Duck Creek Technologies. “These new certifications not only validate key competencies but also empower our customers and partners to deliver value faster with confidence.”

    All digital credentials earned include a Credly certificate and badge, enabling learners to share their verified achievements on LinkedIn and other platforms. With a focus on flexibility, accessibility, and hands-on learning, Duck Creek University continues to support the growing demand for skilled professionals across the insurance technology landscape.

    Visit Duck Creek University for more information about Duck Creek’s world-class learning experience.

    About Duck Creek Technologies
    Duck Creek Technologies is the global intelligent solutions provider defining the future of the property and casualty (P&C) and general insurance industry. We are the platform upon which modern insurance systems are built, enabling the industry to capitalize on the power of the cloud to run agile, intelligent, and evergreen operations. Authenticity, purpose, and transparency are core to Duck Creek, and we believe insurance should be there for individuals and businesses when, where, and how they need it most. Our market-leading solutions are available on a standalone basis or as a full suite, and all are available via Duck Creek OnDemand. Visit www.duckcreek.com to learn more. Follow Duck Creek on our social channels for the latest information – LinkedIn and X.

    Media Contacts:
    Marianne Dempsey/Tara Stred
    duckcreek@threeringsinc.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI USA: UConn to Host 57th North American Power Symposium (NAPS)

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    The University of Connecticut has been selected to host the 57th North American Power Symposium (NAPS), an annual conference mainly sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The event will be held in October 2025 at Hartford Marriott Downtown, and for the first time will be co-organized with the Clean Energy Summit, an annual gathering organized by UConn’s Eversource Energy Center in partnership with Eversource Energy.

    The selection of UConn as the host institution was the result of a competitive proposal process in 2022, completed by Professor Zongjie Wang, associate director from the Eversource Energy Center, who will serve as the general chair for NAPS 2025. She will be joined by Professor Diego Cerrai, the interim director of the Eversource Energy Center, who will serve as co-chair.

    Zongjie Wang, associate director, Eversource Energy Center, will serve as the general chair for NAPS 2025 (UConn Photo)

    “NAPS has always been a student-centered conference, and for 2025 we are expanding that mission with new undergraduate-focused awards and international student engagement,” says Wang. “In past years, we have successfully supported many UConn undergraduate students to attend NAPS, where some have won Best Paper and Best Presentation awards.”

    Wang says she has seen, firsthand, how influential and valuable this platform is in shaping student careers.

    “Whether by building confidence, showcasing their research, or opening doors to internships and job offers in the energy sector, this conference provides great value for UConn and our students,” Wang adds. “As the general chair of NAPS 2025, I am committed to further expanding these opportunities by introducing additional undergraduate awards and building stronger academic/industry connections to attract a broader and more diverse pool of future power engineers.”

    Founded in 1969, NAPS is one of the longest-running power engineering conferences in North America, drawing students, faculty, and professionals from across the United States, Canada, and abroad. It serves as a launchpad for emerging scholars and a convening ground for frontier research in power systems, electric grid operations, renewable energy integration, and distribution-transmission coordination. The 2025 NAPS in Hartford will feature paper presentations, poster sessions, panel discussions, technical tutorials, and industry networking opportunities.

    NAPS 2025 will maintain its core academic focus on power systems research while creating stronger bridges to industry. UConn’s College of Engineering (CoE) enhances student experiences through new networking opportunities, career panels, and mentorship sessions involving local, regional, and national partners. The Clean Energy Summit component will showcase innovations in grid modernization, grid resilience, and workforce development, highlighting Connecticut’s leadership in energy policy and utility engagement.

    According to Emmanouil Anagnostou, executive director of UConn Tech Park, integrating the Clean Energy Summit with NAPs further establishes UConn’s key role as a leader in promoting energy conservation, utilization and research.

    “This combined event reflects UConn’s growing role as a regional hub for clean-energy research and workforce development through the Eversource Energy Center, which serves as a bridge between academic research and practical deployment across New England’s energy infrastructure,” Anagnostou says. “The summit will feature the third cohort of students participating in the Eversource-sponsored Clean Energy and Sustainability Innovation Program (CESIP). As part of this program, students research and design solutions centered around a UConn campus-focused initiative or to assist a Connecticut municipality reach their sustainable energy goals.”

    Further details—including speaker announcements, program schedule, and registration—will be posted at the official NAPS 2025 website: Summary – 57th North American Power Symposium 2025. Registration is now open.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Cuts to School Lunch and Food Bank Funding Mean Less Fresh Produce for Children and Families

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    The U.S. government recently cut more than $1 billion in funding to two long-running programs that helped schools and food banks feed children and families in need. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the reductions are a “return to long-term, fiscally responsible initiatives.” But advocacy groups say the cuts will hurt millions of Americans.

    The reductions came just days before the release of the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again report, an analysis of the factors causing chronic disease in children. One of those factors, the report says, is poor diet.

    Marlene Schwartz, a professor of human development and family sciences and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health at UConn, discusses why cutting the Local Food for Schools and the Local Food Purchase Assistance programs means less fresh food will be available to children and families – and could hurt local farmers and ranchers too.

    The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion, edited here for brevity and clarity.

    Could you explain the two programs that were cut?

    Marlene Schwartz: Most schools were eligible for Local Food for Schools, a $660 million program, which has now been cut. The funds for Local Food for Schools were on top of the reimbursement that schools get for meals and would have allowed them to buy more local, fresh food.

    The Local Food Purchase Assistance program was designed primarily for food banks. Again, the idea was to provide federal money, about $500 million, so food banks could buy from local farmers and support local agriculture. But that too was cut.

    How will these cuts affect families and schoolchildren?

    Schwartz: Many children eat two of their meals, five days a week, at school. During the 2022-2023 school year, about 28 million kids ate lunch at school. More than 14 million had breakfast there.

    Having fresh, local produce in the school cafeteria provides the opportunity to introduce children to more fruits and vegetables and teach them about the food grown in their own communities. Think about how powerful a lesson about nutrition and local agriculture can be when you not only hear and read about it but can taste it too.

    How will these cuts affect farmers and ranchers?

    Schwartz: When the funding was there, the farmers and ranchers knew they had guaranteed buyers for their products. So the loss of these funds, especially so quickly, will have a very negative effect on them. Suddenly, the buyers they counted on don’t have the money to buy from them.

    How does nutritious food in schools impact kids?

    Schwartz: Both the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program are required to comply with the dietary guidelines for Americans, so they’ve always had nutrition standards. These guidelines are updated every five years to reflect the most recent science and public health needs.

    The regulations on school meal nutrition were strengthened significantly with the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. We’ve done a number of studies showing that because of these changes, healthier meals are available at schools, and children eat better. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also did a large national study that reported much the same.

    Another study looked at the nutritional quality of the food at school, from home and at restaurants. It found that school food was the healthiest of all. Many people were surprised by this, but when you think about it, schools are the only setting required to follow federal and state nutrition regulations – restaurants and grocery stores don’t have to do that.

    But getting kids to eat nutritious food can be a challenge.

    Schwartz: We’ve known for decades that American children are not eating enough fruits and vegetables. We know they’re eating too much added sugar, saturated fat and sodium.

    This is due in part to the millions of dollars food companies spend to entice children to eat more sugary cereals, sweetened beverages and fast food.

    I think the best nutrition education happens on your plate. By maximizing the quality of food served in schools, policymakers can influence the diets of millions of children every single day.

    How nutritious are the foods at food banks?

    Schwartz: Food banks often measure their success in terms of the pounds of food they distribute into a community. But families relying on the charitable food system often have a higher risk of diet-related illness – like high blood pressure or Type 2 diabetes – and many want healthier foods.

    In response, food banks, which nationwide serve about 50 million Americans, have made a concerted effort to improve the nutritional quality of their food. There’s now a system to help food banks consistently track the nutritional quality of what they provide.

    Watch the full interview to hear more.

    Originally published in The Conversation.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Neag School Graduate Students Publish Third Issue of Education Research Journal

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    The UConn Neag School of Education’s academic journal has published its third issue, thanks to the hard work and dedication of a group of graduate students.

    “We are pleased to share the third issue of the Neag School of Education Journal,” reads a letter from the journal’s board members in the Spring 2025 issue. “We take pride in providing a supportive “testing ground” for graduate authors to refine their original work in collaboration with our graduate-led editorial board. Fundamentally, the Neag School of Education Journal is committed to the growth and development of emergent educational researchers across fields. After much hard work and dedication from our authors and editorial board, we are thrilled to unveil the culmination of their efforts – three pieces that showcase the excellence of our 2025 edition.”

    The Neag School of Education Journal is an editor-reviewed, open-access, annual journal. Founded and run by graduate students and published online through the Neag School, its primary purpose is to offer a platform for graduate students to share their research and knowledge with academic communities. It also hopes to broaden and deepen the literature of education as written and experienced by graduate students and early-career scholars. Ten graduate students from the Neag School make up the journal’s current board.

    The journal prizes pieces that seek to “improve education and social systems in order to facilitate increasingly effective, equitable, and socially just practices for educators and practitioners from a variety of fields, perspectives, and theoretical lenses as they serve their local communities.”

    The three articles accepted and published in the Spring 2025 issue are:

    In addition to providing graduate students and early-career scholars an opportunity to share their work more widely, the editors say the journal fosters collaboration among students and their colleagues. It also helps to demystify the publishing process and supports editors as they move toward publishing their own work in the field. Making the journal open access was also important, ensuring that its content could serve as an available source of information for current and future practitioners. Importantly, authors maintain their copyright and thus can work on their pieces after publication for future submission elsewhere – a feature aligned with the journal’s orientation toward building authors’ capacity and opportunities.

    The journal is accepting manuscripts for its fourth issue until June 30. Manuscripts must be one of the following four types: research articles, essays, literature reviews, or personal reflections. Of course, the manuscript must deal with a topic of interest to those in the field of education.

    “We have many fantastic and dedicated people to thank for the realization of our third issue,” the letter from the board says. “To Dr. Jennie Weiner, our advisor, thank you for your tireless dedication to this journal and to students. You model to us what a human-centered and compassionate review process can be and have taught us enduring lessons as reviewers and researchers. Another thank you to Dr. Jason Irizarry, our dean, who has enthusiastically supported the journal from its inception and made it clear that our work and voices matter. … Finally, thank you to the authors of the pieces featured in this issue and all who submitted work. It goes without saying that this would be impossible without your contributions. We are immensely proud to feature your work in this issue.”

    To learn more about the Neag School of Education Journal, visit education.uconn.edu/neag-journal.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why is there so much concern over Iran’s nuclear program? And where could it go from here?

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Benjamin Zala, Senior Lecturer, Politics & International Relations, Monash University

    Maxar satellite imagery overview of the Fordow enrichment facility located southwest of Tehran. Maxar/Contributor/Getty Images

    Conflict between Israel and Iran is intensifying, after Israeli airstrikes on key nuclear sites and targeted assassinations last week were followed by counter-strikes by Iran on Israel.

    These attacks have come at a moment of growing concern over Iran’s nuclear program, and have prompted larger questions over what this means for the global non-proliferation regime.

    The short answer: it’s not good.

    Where was uranium being enriched in Iran?

    There are two main enrichment sites: one at Natanz and one at Fordow. There’s also a facility at Isfahan, which, among other things, is focused on producing important materials for the enrichment process.

    Natanz has a hall of centrifuges, which are cylindrical devices that spin incredibly quickly to enrich uranium for creating either the fuel for a nuclear power program or the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon.

    Much the same is happening at Fordow, as far as we know. It is a smaller facility than Natanz but much of it is buried deep under a mountain.

    To make it weapons grade, uranium ought to be close to 90% purity. It is possible to create a bomb with uranium enriched to a lower level, but it is a much less efficient method. So around 90% is the target.

    The key nuclear sites being targeted by Israel.
    Maxxar Technologies/AP, Planet Labs/AP, The Conversation, CC BY-NC

    The Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran signed in 2015 (in exchange for the US lifting sanctions) limited Iran’s enrichment capacities and its stockpile of enriched uranium. But Trump ripped up that deal in 2018.

    Iran remained in compliance for a while, even while the US resumed its economic sanctions, but in recent years, has started to enrich to higher levels – up to about 60%. We know Iran still hasn’t got weapons-grade enriched uranium, but it’s a lot closer than it was to being able to build a bomb.

    And worse, much of their stockpile of enriched uranium will now be effectively unaccounted for because of the strikes by Israel. There are no inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) happening there now and probably won’t be for some time.

    Iran could also say some of its stockpile was destroyed in the strikes – and we’ve got no way of knowing if that’s true or not.

    Both Natanz and Fordow have extensive, hardened, underground facilties. The above-ground facility at Natanz, at least, appears to have been badly damaged, based on satellite photos.

    Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, said the centrifuges at Natanz were likely to have been “severely damaged if not destroyed altogether”. This was likely caused by power cuts, despite the fact the underground facility was not directly hit.

    Grossi said there was no visible damage to the underground facilities at Fordow, which is hidden some 80–90 metres beneath a mountain.

    Unlike the United States, Israel doesn’t have the very deep penetrating ordinance that can totally destroy such deeply buried structures.

    So a key question is: has Israel done enough damage to the centrifuges inside? Or have Iran’s efforts at fortifying these facilities been successful? We may not know for some time.

    Was Iran trying to hide its activities?

    In the past, Iran had a clandestine nuclear weapons program laying out the foundation of how it would build a bomb.

    We know that because, as part of the diplomatic process associated with the previous nuclear deal that Trump killed off, the IAEA had issued an assessment confirming that Iran previously had this plan in breach of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

    Iran hadn’t actually built weapons or done a test, but it had a plan. And that plan, Project AMAD, was shelved in 2003. We also know that thanks to Israel. In 2018, Israeli special forces undertook a raid in downtown Tehran and stole secret documents revealing this.

    When the Obama administration managed to negotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015, part of the deal was Iran had to accept greater oversight of its nuclear facilities. It had to accept restrictions, limit the number of centrifuges and couldn’t maintain large stockpiles of enriched uranium. This was in exchange for the US lifting sanctions.

    These restrictions didn’t make it impossible for Iran to build a weapon. But it made it extremely difficult, particularly without being detected.

    What did the IAEA announce last week and why was it concerning?

    Last week, the IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution saying that Iran was in breach of its obligations under the NPT.

    This related to Iran being unable to answer questions from inspectors about nuclear activities being undertaken at undeclared sites.

    That’s the first time in 20 years the IAEA has come to this finding. This is not why Israel attacked Iran. But it helps explain the exact timing. It gives Israel a degree of cover, perhaps even legitimacy. That legitimacy is surely limited however, given that Israel itself is not a signatory of the NPT and has maintained its own nuclear arsenal for more than half a century.

    In response to the IAEA announcement last week, Iran announced it would plan to build a third enrichment site in addition to Fordow and Natanz.

    Can a militarised approach to counter-proliferation backfire?

    Yes.

    When Israel hit the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, it put Iraq’s nuclear program back by a few years. But the Iraqis redoubled their efforts. By the end of that decade, Iraq was very close to a fully-fledged nuclear weapons program.

    Presumably, Israel’s thinking is it will have to redo these strikes – “mowing the grass”, as they say – in an effort to hinder Iran’s attempts to reconstitute the program.

    Overnight, Iranian lawmakers also drafted a bill urging Iran to withdraw from the NPT. That is entirely legal under the treaty. Article X of the treaty allows that if “extraordinary events” jeopardise a state party’s “supreme interests” then there’s a legal process for withdrawal.

    Only one state has done that since the NPT was opened for signature in 1968: North Korea. Now, North Korea is a nuclear-armed state.

    Iran seems likely to withdraw from the treaty under this article. It has experienced a full-scale attack from another country, including strikes on key infrastructure and targeted assassinations of its top leaders and nuclear scientists. If that doesn’t count as a risk to your supreme interests, then I don’t know what does.

    Iran’s withdrawal would pose a significant challenge to the wider non-proliferation regime. It may even trigger more withdrawals from other countries.

    If Iran withdraws from the NPT, the next big questions are how much damage has Israel done to the centrifuge facilities? How quickly can Iran enrich its uranium stockpile up to weapons grade?

    And, ultimately, how much damage has been done to the ever-fragile nuclear non-proliferation regime based around the NPT?

    Benjamin Zala has received funding from the Stanton Foundation, a US philanthropic group that funds nuclear research. He is an honorary fellow at the University of Leicester on a project that is funded by the European Research Council.

    – ref. Why is there so much concern over Iran’s nuclear program? And where could it go from here? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-there-so-much-concern-over-irans-nuclear-program-and-where-could-it-go-from-here-259052

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Regime change wouldn’t likely bring democracy to Iran. A more threatening force could fill the vacuum

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Andrew Thomas, Lecturer in Middle East Studies, Deakin University

    The timing and targets of Israel’s attacks on Iran tell us that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s short-term goal is to damage Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to severely diminish its weapons program.

    But Netanyahu has made clear another goal: he said the war with Iran “could certainly” lead to regime change in the Islamic republic.

    These comments came after an Israeli plan to assassinate the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was reportedly rebuffed by United States President Donald Trump.

    It’s no secret Israel has wanted to see the current government of Iran fall for some time, as have many government officials in the US.

    But what would things look like if the government did topple?

    How is power wielded in today’s Iran?

    Founded in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran has democratic, theocratic and authoritarian elements to its governing structure.

    The founding figure of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, envisioned a state run by Islamic clerics and jurists who ensured all policies adhered to Islamic law.

    As Iran was a constitutional monarchy before the revolution, theocratic elements were effectively grafted on top of the existing republican ones, such as the parliament, executive and judiciary.

    Iran has a unicameral legislature (one house of parliament), called the Majles, and a president (currently Masoud Pezeshkian). There are regular elections for both.

    But while there are democratic elements within this system, in practice it is a “closed loop” that keeps the clerical elite in power and prevents challenges to the supreme leader. There is a clear hierarchy, with the supreme leader at the top.

    Khamenei has been in power for more than 35 years, taking office following Khomeini’s death in 1989. The former president of Iran, he was chosen to become supreme leader by the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member body of Islamic jurists.

    While members of the assembly are elected by the public, candidates must be vetted by the powerful 12-member Guardian Council (also known as the Constitutional Council). Half of this body is selected by the supreme leader, while the other half is approved by the Majles.

    The council also has the power to vet all candidates for president and the parliament.

    In last year’s elections, the Guardian Council disqualified many candidates from running for president, as well as the Majles and Assembly of Experts, including the moderate former president Hassan Rouhani.

    As such, the supreme leader is increasingly facing a crisis of legitimacy with the public. Elections routinely have low turnout. Even with a reformist presidential candidate in last year’s field – the eventual winner, Masoud Pezeshkian – turnout was below 40% in the first round.

    Freedom House gives Iran a global freedom score of just 11 out of 100.

    The supreme leader also directly appoints the leaders in key governance structures, such as the judiciary, the armed forces and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

    The all-powerful IRGC

    So, Iran is far from a democracy. But the idea that regime change would lead to a full democracy that is aligned with Israel and the US is very unlikely.

    Iranian politics is extremely factional. Ideological factions, such as the reformists, moderates and conservatives, often disagree vehemently on key policy areas. They also jockey for influence with the supreme leader and the rest of the clerical elite. None of these factions is particularly friendly with the US, and especially not Israel.

    There are also institutional factions. The most powerful group in the country is the clerical elite, led by the supreme leader. The next most powerful faction would be the IRGC.

    Originally formed as a kind of personal guard for the supreme leader, the IRGC’s fighting strength now rivals that of the regular army.

    The IRGC is extremely hardline politically. At times, the IRGC’s influence domestically has outstripped that of presidents, exerting significant pressure on their policies. The guard only vocally supports presidents in lockstep with Islamic revolutionary doctrine.

    In addition to its control over military hardware and its political influence, the guard is also entwined with the Iranian economy.

    The IRGC is heavily enriched by the status quo, with some describing it as a “kleptocratic” institution. IRGC officials are often awarded state contracts, and are allegedly involved in managing the “black economy” used to evade sanctions.

    Given all of this, the IRGC would be the most likely political institution to take control of Iran if the clerical elite were removed from power.

    In peacetime, the general consensus is the IRGC would not have the resources to orchestrate a coup if the supreme leader died. But in a time of war against a clear enemy, things could be different.

    Possible scenarios post-Khamenei

    So, what might happen if Israel were to assassinate the supreme leader?

    One scenario would be a martial law state led by the IRGC, formed at least in the short term for the purposes of protecting the revolution.

    In the unlikely event the entire clerical leadership is decimated, the IRGC could attempt to reform the Assembly of Experts and choose a new supreme leader itself, perhaps even supporting Khamenei’s son’s candidacy.

    Needless to say, this outcome would not lead to a state more friendly to Israel or the US. In fact, it could potentially empower a faction that has long argued for a more militant response to both.

    Another scenario is a popular uprising. Netanyahu certainly seems to think this is possible, saying in an interview in recent days:

    The decision to act, to rise up this time, is the decision of the Iranian people.

    Indeed, many Iranians have long been disillusioned with their government – even with more moderate and reformist elements within it. Mass protests have broken out several times in recent decades – most recently in 2022 – despite heavy retaliation from law enforcement.

    We’ve seen enough revolutions to know this is possible – after all, modern Iran was formed out of one. But once again, new political leadership being more friendly to Israel and the West is not a foregone conclusion.

    It is possible for Iranians to hold contempt in their hearts for both their leaders and the foreign powers that would upend their lives.

    Andrew Thomas 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. Regime change wouldn’t likely bring democracy to Iran. A more threatening force could fill the vacuum – https://theconversation.com/regime-change-wouldnt-likely-bring-democracy-to-iran-a-more-threatening-force-could-fill-the-vacuum-259042

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • Researchers creates new robotic “skin” that feels heat, pain, pressure

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (4)

    Researchers have developed a revolutionary robotic skin that brings machines closer to achieving a human-like sense of touch.

    Made from a flexible, low-cost gel material, the skin transforms the entire surface of a robotic hand into a sensitive and intelligent sensor.

    Unlike traditional robotic skins that rely on a patchwork of different sensors, this material can detect pressure, temperature, pain, and even distinguish multiple contact points simultaneously.

    Developed by researchers from the University of Cambridge and University College London (UCL), the flexible, conductive skin is easy to fabricate and can be melted down and moulded into a wide range of complex shapes.

    The technology allows robots to sense and process a variety of physical inputs, enabling more meaningful interactions with the physical world.

    Unlike other robotic touch solutions—which typically use embedded sensors limited to small areas and require different sensors for different stimuli—the entirety of this new electronic skin functions as a sensor. This makes it more similar to the human skin, where sensory information is distributed across the surface.

    While the robotic skin is not yet as sensitive as human skin, it can detect signals from over 860,000 tiny pathways within the material. This allows it to recognise different types of touch and pressure—such as a finger tap, hot or cold surfaces, damage from cutting or stabbing, or multiple simultaneous contact points—all within a single material.

    The researchers used a combination of physical tests and machine learning techniques to help the skin ‘learn’ which of these pathways are most important, enabling it to sense different types of contact more efficiently.

    In addition to potential applications in humanoid robots and prosthetics—where a sense of touch is vital—the researchers suggest the robotic skin could be useful in industries such as automotive manufacturing and disaster relief.

    The results have been published in the journal Science Robotics.

    Electronic skins work by converting physical information—like pressure or temperature—into electronic signals. Traditionally, different types of sensors are needed for different kinds of touch. These sensors are embedded into soft, flexible materials, but they can interfere with one another and are prone to damage.

    “Having different sensors for different types of touch leads to materials that are complex to make,” said lead author Dr David Hardman from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering.

    “We wanted to develop a solution that can detect multiple types of touch at once, but within a single material,” he added.

    “At the same time, we need something that’s cheap and durable, so it’s suitable for widespread use,” said co-author Dr Thomas George Thuruthel from UCL.

    In future, the researchers aim to enhance the durability of the electronic skin and conduct further tests in real-world robotic applications.

    (ANI)

  • Labour welfare schemes empower over 50 lakh unorganised workers: Govt

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (4)

    Over 50 lakh workers and their families have benefitted from welfare schemes implemented by the Union Ministry of Labour & Employment, which continues to deliver critical support to India’s unorganised workforce through the Directorate General of Labour Welfare (DGLW), particularly in the Beedi, Cine, and Mining sectors.

    The flagship Education Assistance Scheme for instance offers annual scholarships ranging from ₹1,000 to ₹25,000 to the children of eligible workers. Managed through the National Scholarship Portal (NSP), the scheme receives over one lakh applications annually, with benefits disbursed via Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) for transparency and efficiency.

    The Ministry also provides vital healthcare support, including outpatient services and financial aid for critical illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, and kidney transplants. Assistance under the scheme ranges from ₹30,000 for minor surgeries to up to ₹7.5 lakh for cancer treatment, offering a safety net for low-income families.

    Though the Revised Integrated Housing Scheme (RIHS) was merged with the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) in 2016, the Ministry continued disbursing pending installments to eligible beneficiaries until March 31, 2024, fulfilling its commitment to dignified housing.

    The welfare schemes are implemented nationwide by the Labour Welfare Organisation (LWO), operating under DGLW, through a robust network of 18 Welfare Commissioners. These initiatives focus on social protection, healthcare, education assistance, and housing support, especially in remote and underserved areas, and reflect the government’s commitment to inclusive welfare under the vision of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas.

  • MIL-OSI Russia: “Telling the Story of the Arctic”: New Photo Exhibition at HSE

    Translation. Region: Russian Federal

    Source: State University Higher School of Economics – State University Higher School of Economics –

    The opening of the exhibition “Khatanga. Heritage” took place in the atrium of the HSE building on Pokrovsky Boulevard, organized with the support of the Russian Geographical Society (RGS). As part of the educational project, photo materials with interactive excursions are presented, as well as a series of videos and a podcast, drawing attention to the cultural and environmental aspects of the region.

    The project became a logical continuation of a large-scale environmental campaign “Arctic. General cleaning”, during which work was carried out over two years to clean the banks of the village of Khatanga in the Krasnoyarsk Territory from accumulated metal waste. Volunteers from different parts of Russia took part in the expeditions, they carried out research, media and environmental activities. In three shifts, volunteers managed to remove more than 700 tons of industrial waste, which significantly improved the ecological situation in the area and made it possible to create an extensive archive of photo and video materials.

    As Andrey Lavrov, Senior Director of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, noted, the Russian Geographical Society has been a partner of the Higher School of Economics since 2022. He recalled that Faculty of Geography and Geoinformation Technologies HSE actively cooperates with the Russian Geographical Society, and the university students work a lot on Arctic topics, including within the framework of the project “Rediscovering Russia”. “It was important for us to tell the story of the Arctic, a strategically important territory for Russia, through such an exhibition,” said Andrei Lavrov.

    Russia is a huge country, it is almost impossible to see everything in it, says Professor Fuad Aleskerov, head of Department of Mathematics FEN HSE. “Such exhibitions give an understanding of where and what we have in our homeland. In addition, the photographs describe what our volunteers saw when they came to the Arctic to clean up trash. I myself participate in environmental projects, and support them financially. In this case, we need working hands, and if I were a student now, of course, I would go too,” he emphasized.

    Dmitry Kobets, a representative of the Russian Geographical Society and a visiting lecturer at the HSE Department of Mathematics, did not know in his student years that one could spend one’s vacation on an expedition and benefit entire regions. He believes that it is important to tell students about this opportunity by organizing such exhibitions.

    “I thought that an expedition was a matter for big scientists, but it turns out that it is not. The Russian Geographical Society (and not only it) provides an opportunity for young specialists who have just started their journey to go on an expedition. And there is no need to do complex scientific work. Maybe you just want to relax and change the intellectual vector of activity that prevailed from September to June. And after the expedition, you also create a good community,” added Dmitry Kobets.

    In total, four thematic virtual tours were prepared for the exhibition.

    1. “Khatanga. Three suns for luck”, which takes you into the world of creativity, where each photographic work carries its own unique emotion and story.

    2. “The cold raised me”, dedicated to the harsh Arctic region, which is currently home to less than 6,000 people: the history of Khatanga, its people, and its natural conditions.

    3. “Khatanga – this is us”, which tells about the members of the expedition: young photographers, scientists, journalists, athletes and managers.

    4. “A snowflake won’t melt” — a quiz journey for the exhibition’s youngest spectators.

    Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Driven by a Dream: Farah Al Fulfulee’s Quest to Reach the Stars

    Source: NASA

    Farah Al Fulfulee was just four years old when she started climbing onto the roof of her family’s house in Iraq to gaze at the stars.
    “It scared me how vast and quiet the sky was, but it made me very curious. I grew a deep passion for the stars and constellations and what they might represent,” she said.
    Her father noticed her interest and began bringing home books and magazines about space. Al Fulfulee first read about NASA in those pages and was fascinated by the agency’s mission to explore the cosmos for the benefit of all humanity.
    “Right then I knew I had to be an astronaut! I must go to space myself and get a closer look,” she said. “I knew I must find a way to go and work for NASA and fulfill my dream, working with other people like me who had a passion to explore the universe.”

    As a girl growing up in the Middle East, Al Fulfulee had few opportunities to pursue this dream, but she refused to give up. Her dedication to schoolwork and excellence in science and math earned her a spot at the University of Baghdad College of Engineering. She completed a degree in electronic and communication engineering — similar to American electrical and computer engineering programs — and graduated as one of the top 10 students in her class. “We had a graduation party where you dress up as what you want to be in the future,” she recalled. “I wore a spacesuit.”

    Al Fulfulee was ready to launch her career, but Iraq did not have a developed space industry and finding work as a female engineer was a challenge. She accepted a project engineer position with a prominent Iraqi engineering firm in the information technology sector and spent four years working for the company in Iraq, Turkey, and Jordan, but she was disappointed to discover that her role involved very little engineering. “I was the only female on the team,” she said. “It was not common for a woman to work in the field or with customers, so I was always left behind to do office work. The job was not fulfilling.”
    Still determined to join NASA, Al Fulfulee kept looking for her chance to come to the United States and finally found one in 2016, when she moved to Oklahoma to be near her sister. A new challenge soon rose: Without a degree from an American school or previous work experience in the United States, engineering opportunities were hard to come by. Al Fulfulee spent the next six years working in quality assurance for a human resources software company while she completed a MicroMasters program in software verification and management from the University of Maryland and honed her English and leadership skills.
    Her big break came in 2022, when she landed a job with Boeing Defense, Space, and Security as a software quality engineer. “I was so excited,” she said. “I knew I was much closer to my dream since Boeing worked in the space industry and I would be able to apply internally to work on a space program.”

    Less than one year later, Al Fulfulee became a system design and analysis engineer for the International Space Station Program and joined the Station Management and Control Team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. She helps develop requirements, monitors performance, and validates testing for electrical systems and software supporting space station payloads. She also designs hardware, software, and interface specifications for those systems. Al Fulfulee has served as the team’s point of contact, delivering verification assessment and data assessment reports for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 and Crew-10 missions, as well as the upcoming Axiom Mission 4 flight. She is currently working to support testing and verification for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11.
    “I could not be happier,” she declared.
    She is also not stopping. “I won’t quit until I wear the blue suit.”

    Al Fulfulee has been an enthusiastic volunteer for various NASA studies, including the Exploration Atmosphere Studies that tested spacewalk safety protocols in an analog environment. She is pursuing a master’s degree in Space Operations Engineering from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She is an avid gardener and learning how to grow produce indoors as a volunteer experimental botanist with the Backyard Produce Project, noting that such knowledge might come in handy on Mars.
    She is also helping to inspire the next generation. Earlier this year, Al Fulfulee was a guest speaker at the Women in Tech & Business Summit in Iraq – an event designed to encourage Iraqi women to pursue technology careers. “I was the only person representing women in space,” she said. “It was a really moving experience.” Al Fulfulee provided practical advice on breaking barriers in aerospace and shared her story with the crowd.
    “I know my path is long and across the continents,” she said, “but I am enjoying my journey.”

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Explore Our Dynamic Sun!

    Source: NASA

    from NASA’s Heliophysics Education Activation Team (NASA HEAT) and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific/Night Sky Network
    Have you ever wondered about what the Sun is made of? Or why do you get sunburned on even cloudy days? NASA’s new Explore the Sun toolkit brings the wonders of solar science to you, offering answers to these questions and more!

    A collaboration between NASA’s Heliophysics Education Activation Team (NASA HEAT) and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s Night Sky Network program, this resource was developed for informal educators, amateur astronomers, and astronomy enthusiasts alike, providing engaging activities for anyone eager to learn more about our nearest star.
    Whether you’re hosting a solar viewing event or an indoor presentation, the Our Dynamic Sun toolkit provides easy-to-use materials designed to spark curiosity. Each card in the set pairs NASA images with clear explanations for each topic:

    “What color is the Sun?” (hint: it’s not yellow!)
    “How does the Sun affect us here on Earth?”
    “When will the Sun die?”

    These cards not only answer common questions the public may have, but also highlight how NASA’s solar research helps us understand space weather, solar storms, and their impacts on our daily lives.
    Bring the Sun’s story to your community and inspire the next generation of explorers. You can download this free Our Dynamic Sun toolkit here: https://bit.ly/suntoolkit

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Non-recognition of academic qualifications awarded to students of the Italian subsidiary (Enna) of Romania’s ‘Dunărea de Jos’ University of Galaţi – E-001153/2025(ASW)

    Source: European Parliament

    Under the intergovernmental Bologna process, the common agreement is that i f a Romanian university’s branch in Italy offers a programme accredited in full compliance with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG)[1] by the Romanian quality assurance system, it would provide the necessary evidence for trust, which is the basis for recognition by other European Higher Education Area (EHEA) countries.

    However, this remains a non-binding commitment, meaning there is no legal barrier preventing Italy from establishing its own accreditation procedures.

    In the Rome Ministerial Communiqu é[2], part of the Bologna process, ministers reaffirmed their commitment to ensuring that external quality assurance arrangements, when conducted in accordance with the ESG , apply equally to transnational higher education within the EHEA as they do to domestic provision. However, this political commitment does not translate into a legal obligation.

    Directive 2005/36/EC[3] applies only when the purpose of recognition is for professional reasons, which does not correspond to the situation described. Accreditation procedures are not addressed in this context.

    In the case of recognition for further study, there is no legally binding instrument at EU level. The non-binding Council Recommendation of 2018[4] states that higher education qualification acquired in one country should be automatically recognised at the same level in another one .

    Regarding the Lisbon Recognition Convention of the Council of Europe and Unesco[5], the EU did not accede to this Convention and is not in a position to interpret its provisions. Relevant information can be provided by National Academic Recognition Centres (NARICs).

    • [1] Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area, https://www.enqa.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ESG_2015.pdf.
    • [2] https://ehea.info/Upload/Rome_Ministerial_Communique.pdf.
    • [3] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2005/36/oj/eng .
    • [4] Council Recommendation of 26 November 2018 on promoting automatic mutual recognition of higher education and upper secondary education and training qualifications and the outcomes of learning periods abroad, OJ C 444, 10.12.2018, p. 1, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=oj:JOC_2018_444_R_0001.
    • [5] United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list?module=treaty-detail&treatynum=165.
    Last updated: 17 June 2025

    MIL OSI Europe News –

  • MIL-OSI: Albion Technology & General VCT PLC: Interim Management Statement

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    Albion Technology & General VCT PLC
    Interim Management Statement
    LEI code: 213800TKJUY376H3KN16

    Introduction
    I present Albion Technology & General VCT PLC (the “Company”)’s interim management statement for the period from 1 January 2025 to 31 March 2025.

    Performance
    The Company’s unaudited net asset value (“NAV”) as at 31 March 2025 was £274.8 million or 73.51 pence per share (excluding treasury shares), an increase of 0.47 pence per share (0.6%) since 31 December 2024.

    Fundraising
    A prospectus Top Up Offer of new ordinary shares opened to applications on 6 January 2025. The Board announced on 31 March 2025 that it had reached its £30 million limit (inclusive of the Company’s £10 million over-allotment facility) under its offer for subscription.

    During the period, the Company issued the following shares under the Albion VCTs Top Up Offers 2024/2025:

    Date Number of shares issued Issue price per share Net consideration received £’000
    21 March 2025 29,774,402 74.54 to 75.30 pence 21,748

    Portfolio
    The following investments have been made during the period:

    New investments £’000 Activity
    Latent Technology Group 1,722 Reinforcement Learning based Animation
    Innerworks Technology 350 Adaptive security
    Scripta Therapeutics 274 AI-enabled drug discovery
    OtoImmune 172 Detection and treatment of autoimmune diseases
    Pastel Health 97 Digital-first provider of multi-specialty care
    Formicor Pharmaceuticals 55 Drug reformulation
    Total new investments 2,670  
    Further investments £’000 Activity
    Mondra Global 1,273 Food supply chain emissions modelling
    TransFICC 1,097 A provider of a connectivity solution, connecting financial institutions with trading venues via a single Application Programming Interface (“API”)
    Runa Network 90 Cloud platform and infrastructure that enables corporates to issue digital incentives and payouts
    NuvoAir Holdings 71 Digital therapeutics and decentralised clinical trials for respiratory conditions
    uMedeor (T/A uMed) 59 A middleware technology platform that enables life science organisations to conduct medical research programmes
    Total further investments 2,590  

    Top ten holdings as at 31 March 2025:

    Investment Carrying value
    £’000    		 % of net asset value Activity
    Quantexa 51,401 18.7% Network analytics platform to detect financial crime
    Proveca 18,414 6.7% Reformulation of medicines for children
    Gravitee Topco (T/A Gravitee.io) 9,259 3.4% API management platform
    Oviva 8,814 3.2% A technology enabled service business in medical nutritional therapy (“MNT”)
    Convertr Media 5,966 2.2% Digital lead generation software
    The Evewell Group 5,815 2.1% Operator and developer of women’s health centres focusing on fertility
    TransFICC 5,719 2.1% A provider of a connectivity solution, connecting financial institutions with trading venues via a single API
    Chonais River Hydro 5,606 2.0% Owner and operator of a 2 MW hydro-power scheme in the Scottish Highlands
    Runa Network 5,420 2.0% Cloud platform and infrastructure that enables corporates to issue digital incentives and payouts
    Radnor House School (TopCo) 4,968 1.8% Independent school for children aged 2-18

    A full breakdown of the Company’s portfolio can be found on the Company’s webpage on the Manager’s website at www.albion.capital/vct-funds/AATG.

    Share buy-backs
    During the period, the Company did not buy back any shares as the Company was in a close period until 23 April 2025.

    It remains the Board’s policy to buy back shares in the market, subject to the overall constraint that such purchases are in the Company’s interest, including the maintenance of sufficient resources for investment in existing and new portfolio companies and the continued payment of dividends to shareholders.

    It is the Board’s intention for buy-backs to be at around a 5% discount to net asset value, so far as market conditions and liquidity permit.

    Material events and transactions after the period end
    After the period end, the Company issued the following new Ordinary shares of nominal value 1 penny per share under the Albion VCTs Prospectus Top Up Offers 2024/2025:

    Date Number of shares issued Issue price per share Net consideration received £’000
    4 April 2025 10,100,775 75.30 pence 7,378

    There have been no other material events or transactions after the period end to the date of this announcement.

    Further information
    Further information regarding historic and current financial performance and other useful shareholder information can be found on the Company’s webpage on the Manager’s website at www.albion.capital/vct-funds/AATG.

    Clive Richardson, Chairman
    17 June 2025

    For further information please contact:
    Vikash Hansrani
    Operations Partner
    Albion Capital Group LLP – Tel: 020 7601 1850

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Albion Technology & General VCT PLC: Interim Management Statement

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    Albion Technology & General VCT PLC
    Interim Management Statement
    LEI code: 213800TKJUY376H3KN16

    Introduction
    I present Albion Technology & General VCT PLC (the “Company”)’s interim management statement for the period from 1 January 2025 to 31 March 2025.

    Performance
    The Company’s unaudited net asset value (“NAV”) as at 31 March 2025 was £274.8 million or 73.51 pence per share (excluding treasury shares), an increase of 0.47 pence per share (0.6%) since 31 December 2024.

    Fundraising
    A prospectus Top Up Offer of new ordinary shares opened to applications on 6 January 2025. The Board announced on 31 March 2025 that it had reached its £30 million limit (inclusive of the Company’s £10 million over-allotment facility) under its offer for subscription.

    During the period, the Company issued the following shares under the Albion VCTs Top Up Offers 2024/2025:

    Date Number of shares issued Issue price per share Net consideration received £’000
    21 March 2025 29,774,402 74.54 to 75.30 pence 21,748

    Portfolio
    The following investments have been made during the period:

    New investments £’000 Activity
    Latent Technology Group 1,722 Reinforcement Learning based Animation
    Innerworks Technology 350 Adaptive security
    Scripta Therapeutics 274 AI-enabled drug discovery
    OtoImmune 172 Detection and treatment of autoimmune diseases
    Pastel Health 97 Digital-first provider of multi-specialty care
    Formicor Pharmaceuticals 55 Drug reformulation
    Total new investments 2,670  
    Further investments £’000 Activity
    Mondra Global 1,273 Food supply chain emissions modelling
    TransFICC 1,097 A provider of a connectivity solution, connecting financial institutions with trading venues via a single Application Programming Interface (“API”)
    Runa Network 90 Cloud platform and infrastructure that enables corporates to issue digital incentives and payouts
    NuvoAir Holdings 71 Digital therapeutics and decentralised clinical trials for respiratory conditions
    uMedeor (T/A uMed) 59 A middleware technology platform that enables life science organisations to conduct medical research programmes
    Total further investments 2,590  

    Top ten holdings as at 31 March 2025:

    Investment Carrying value
    £’000    		 % of net asset value Activity
    Quantexa 51,401 18.7% Network analytics platform to detect financial crime
    Proveca 18,414 6.7% Reformulation of medicines for children
    Gravitee Topco (T/A Gravitee.io) 9,259 3.4% API management platform
    Oviva 8,814 3.2% A technology enabled service business in medical nutritional therapy (“MNT”)
    Convertr Media 5,966 2.2% Digital lead generation software
    The Evewell Group 5,815 2.1% Operator and developer of women’s health centres focusing on fertility
    TransFICC 5,719 2.1% A provider of a connectivity solution, connecting financial institutions with trading venues via a single API
    Chonais River Hydro 5,606 2.0% Owner and operator of a 2 MW hydro-power scheme in the Scottish Highlands
    Runa Network 5,420 2.0% Cloud platform and infrastructure that enables corporates to issue digital incentives and payouts
    Radnor House School (TopCo) 4,968 1.8% Independent school for children aged 2-18

    A full breakdown of the Company’s portfolio can be found on the Company’s webpage on the Manager’s website at www.albion.capital/vct-funds/AATG.

    Share buy-backs
    During the period, the Company did not buy back any shares as the Company was in a close period until 23 April 2025.

    It remains the Board’s policy to buy back shares in the market, subject to the overall constraint that such purchases are in the Company’s interest, including the maintenance of sufficient resources for investment in existing and new portfolio companies and the continued payment of dividends to shareholders.

    It is the Board’s intention for buy-backs to be at around a 5% discount to net asset value, so far as market conditions and liquidity permit.

    Material events and transactions after the period end
    After the period end, the Company issued the following new Ordinary shares of nominal value 1 penny per share under the Albion VCTs Prospectus Top Up Offers 2024/2025:

    Date Number of shares issued Issue price per share Net consideration received £’000
    4 April 2025 10,100,775 75.30 pence 7,378

    There have been no other material events or transactions after the period end to the date of this announcement.

    Further information
    Further information regarding historic and current financial performance and other useful shareholder information can be found on the Company’s webpage on the Manager’s website at www.albion.capital/vct-funds/AATG.

    Clive Richardson, Chairman
    17 June 2025

    For further information please contact:
    Vikash Hansrani
    Operations Partner
    Albion Capital Group LLP – Tel: 020 7601 1850

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Albion Technology & General VCT PLC: Interim Management Statement

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    Albion Technology & General VCT PLC
    Interim Management Statement
    LEI code: 213800TKJUY376H3KN16

    Introduction
    I present Albion Technology & General VCT PLC (the “Company”)’s interim management statement for the period from 1 January 2025 to 31 March 2025.

    Performance
    The Company’s unaudited net asset value (“NAV”) as at 31 March 2025 was £274.8 million or 73.51 pence per share (excluding treasury shares), an increase of 0.47 pence per share (0.6%) since 31 December 2024.

    Fundraising
    A prospectus Top Up Offer of new ordinary shares opened to applications on 6 January 2025. The Board announced on 31 March 2025 that it had reached its £30 million limit (inclusive of the Company’s £10 million over-allotment facility) under its offer for subscription.

    During the period, the Company issued the following shares under the Albion VCTs Top Up Offers 2024/2025:

    Date Number of shares issued Issue price per share Net consideration received £’000
    21 March 2025 29,774,402 74.54 to 75.30 pence 21,748

    Portfolio
    The following investments have been made during the period:

    New investments £’000 Activity
    Latent Technology Group 1,722 Reinforcement Learning based Animation
    Innerworks Technology 350 Adaptive security
    Scripta Therapeutics 274 AI-enabled drug discovery
    OtoImmune 172 Detection and treatment of autoimmune diseases
    Pastel Health 97 Digital-first provider of multi-specialty care
    Formicor Pharmaceuticals 55 Drug reformulation
    Total new investments 2,670  
    Further investments £’000 Activity
    Mondra Global 1,273 Food supply chain emissions modelling
    TransFICC 1,097 A provider of a connectivity solution, connecting financial institutions with trading venues via a single Application Programming Interface (“API”)
    Runa Network 90 Cloud platform and infrastructure that enables corporates to issue digital incentives and payouts
    NuvoAir Holdings 71 Digital therapeutics and decentralised clinical trials for respiratory conditions
    uMedeor (T/A uMed) 59 A middleware technology platform that enables life science organisations to conduct medical research programmes
    Total further investments 2,590  

    Top ten holdings as at 31 March 2025:

    Investment Carrying value
    £’000    		 % of net asset value Activity
    Quantexa 51,401 18.7% Network analytics platform to detect financial crime
    Proveca 18,414 6.7% Reformulation of medicines for children
    Gravitee Topco (T/A Gravitee.io) 9,259 3.4% API management platform
    Oviva 8,814 3.2% A technology enabled service business in medical nutritional therapy (“MNT”)
    Convertr Media 5,966 2.2% Digital lead generation software
    The Evewell Group 5,815 2.1% Operator and developer of women’s health centres focusing on fertility
    TransFICC 5,719 2.1% A provider of a connectivity solution, connecting financial institutions with trading venues via a single API
    Chonais River Hydro 5,606 2.0% Owner and operator of a 2 MW hydro-power scheme in the Scottish Highlands
    Runa Network 5,420 2.0% Cloud platform and infrastructure that enables corporates to issue digital incentives and payouts
    Radnor House School (TopCo) 4,968 1.8% Independent school for children aged 2-18

    A full breakdown of the Company’s portfolio can be found on the Company’s webpage on the Manager’s website at www.albion.capital/vct-funds/AATG.

    Share buy-backs
    During the period, the Company did not buy back any shares as the Company was in a close period until 23 April 2025.

    It remains the Board’s policy to buy back shares in the market, subject to the overall constraint that such purchases are in the Company’s interest, including the maintenance of sufficient resources for investment in existing and new portfolio companies and the continued payment of dividends to shareholders.

    It is the Board’s intention for buy-backs to be at around a 5% discount to net asset value, so far as market conditions and liquidity permit.

    Material events and transactions after the period end
    After the period end, the Company issued the following new Ordinary shares of nominal value 1 penny per share under the Albion VCTs Prospectus Top Up Offers 2024/2025:

    Date Number of shares issued Issue price per share Net consideration received £’000
    4 April 2025 10,100,775 75.30 pence 7,378

    There have been no other material events or transactions after the period end to the date of this announcement.

    Further information
    Further information regarding historic and current financial performance and other useful shareholder information can be found on the Company’s webpage on the Manager’s website at www.albion.capital/vct-funds/AATG.

    Clive Richardson, Chairman
    17 June 2025

    For further information please contact:
    Vikash Hansrani
    Operations Partner
    Albion Capital Group LLP – Tel: 020 7601 1850

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Albion Technology & General VCT PLC: Interim Management Statement

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    Albion Technology & General VCT PLC
    Interim Management Statement
    LEI code: 213800TKJUY376H3KN16

    Introduction
    I present Albion Technology & General VCT PLC (the “Company”)’s interim management statement for the period from 1 January 2025 to 31 March 2025.

    Performance
    The Company’s unaudited net asset value (“NAV”) as at 31 March 2025 was £274.8 million or 73.51 pence per share (excluding treasury shares), an increase of 0.47 pence per share (0.6%) since 31 December 2024.

    Fundraising
    A prospectus Top Up Offer of new ordinary shares opened to applications on 6 January 2025. The Board announced on 31 March 2025 that it had reached its £30 million limit (inclusive of the Company’s £10 million over-allotment facility) under its offer for subscription.

    During the period, the Company issued the following shares under the Albion VCTs Top Up Offers 2024/2025:

    Date Number of shares issued Issue price per share Net consideration received £’000
    21 March 2025 29,774,402 74.54 to 75.30 pence 21,748

    Portfolio
    The following investments have been made during the period:

    New investments £’000 Activity
    Latent Technology Group 1,722 Reinforcement Learning based Animation
    Innerworks Technology 350 Adaptive security
    Scripta Therapeutics 274 AI-enabled drug discovery
    OtoImmune 172 Detection and treatment of autoimmune diseases
    Pastel Health 97 Digital-first provider of multi-specialty care
    Formicor Pharmaceuticals 55 Drug reformulation
    Total new investments 2,670  
    Further investments £’000 Activity
    Mondra Global 1,273 Food supply chain emissions modelling
    TransFICC 1,097 A provider of a connectivity solution, connecting financial institutions with trading venues via a single Application Programming Interface (“API”)
    Runa Network 90 Cloud platform and infrastructure that enables corporates to issue digital incentives and payouts
    NuvoAir Holdings 71 Digital therapeutics and decentralised clinical trials for respiratory conditions
    uMedeor (T/A uMed) 59 A middleware technology platform that enables life science organisations to conduct medical research programmes
    Total further investments 2,590  

    Top ten holdings as at 31 March 2025:

    Investment Carrying value
    £’000    		 % of net asset value Activity
    Quantexa 51,401 18.7% Network analytics platform to detect financial crime
    Proveca 18,414 6.7% Reformulation of medicines for children
    Gravitee Topco (T/A Gravitee.io) 9,259 3.4% API management platform
    Oviva 8,814 3.2% A technology enabled service business in medical nutritional therapy (“MNT”)
    Convertr Media 5,966 2.2% Digital lead generation software
    The Evewell Group 5,815 2.1% Operator and developer of women’s health centres focusing on fertility
    TransFICC 5,719 2.1% A provider of a connectivity solution, connecting financial institutions with trading venues via a single API
    Chonais River Hydro 5,606 2.0% Owner and operator of a 2 MW hydro-power scheme in the Scottish Highlands
    Runa Network 5,420 2.0% Cloud platform and infrastructure that enables corporates to issue digital incentives and payouts
    Radnor House School (TopCo) 4,968 1.8% Independent school for children aged 2-18

    A full breakdown of the Company’s portfolio can be found on the Company’s webpage on the Manager’s website at www.albion.capital/vct-funds/AATG.

    Share buy-backs
    During the period, the Company did not buy back any shares as the Company was in a close period until 23 April 2025.

    It remains the Board’s policy to buy back shares in the market, subject to the overall constraint that such purchases are in the Company’s interest, including the maintenance of sufficient resources for investment in existing and new portfolio companies and the continued payment of dividends to shareholders.

    It is the Board’s intention for buy-backs to be at around a 5% discount to net asset value, so far as market conditions and liquidity permit.

    Material events and transactions after the period end
    After the period end, the Company issued the following new Ordinary shares of nominal value 1 penny per share under the Albion VCTs Prospectus Top Up Offers 2024/2025:

    Date Number of shares issued Issue price per share Net consideration received £’000
    4 April 2025 10,100,775 75.30 pence 7,378

    There have been no other material events or transactions after the period end to the date of this announcement.

    Further information
    Further information regarding historic and current financial performance and other useful shareholder information can be found on the Company’s webpage on the Manager’s website at www.albion.capital/vct-funds/AATG.

    Clive Richardson, Chairman
    17 June 2025

    For further information please contact:
    Vikash Hansrani
    Operations Partner
    Albion Capital Group LLP – Tel: 020 7601 1850

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: Private sector urged to use SAYouth.mobi to create more job opportunities

    Source: South Africa News Agency

    President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on businesses and other public sector entities to use SAYouth.mobi to provide more pathways for young people to earning and learning.

    In his weekly newsletter, the President reflected that the country observed Youth Day on 16 June in tribute to the generations of young people who continue to inspire the ongoing pursuit for social justice, equality and opportunity for all.

    “The private sector needs to use all available mechanisms, including the Employee Tax Incentive, to hire young people.

    “South Africa’s young people deserve to lead lives of dignity. Unemployment is robbing far too many youths of this right. As government and business, let us continue to work together and do all within our means to empower young people to find jobs and create their own opportunities,” the President said. 

    WATCH | Youth Day commemoration 

    [embedded content]

    President Ramaphosa said that if the country is to live up to the democratic promise for which so many sacrificed their lives, it is essential to invest in today’s generation of young people and unleash their potential.

    Like many parts of the world, he highlighted that South Africa is grappling with high youth unemployment. 

    “To overcome this challenge, we need an approach that includes investing in education and skills development, fostering youth entrepreneurship and implementing targeted employment programmes focusing on young people,” he said. 

    As part of this work, government established the Presidential Employment Stimulus and the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention, initiatives that are providing opportunities to hundreds of thousands of young people at a time when not enough jobs are being created to absorb new entrants into the labour market.

    Since it began in 2020, the Presidential Employment Stimulus has provided more than two million jobs and livelihood opportunities. Of the participants in the programme to date, 72% are young people and 66% are women.

    A vital part of government’s efforts to empower young people is the SAYouth.mobi platform, which is a single point for unemployed young South Africans to access opportunities for work, training and learning.

    There are now over 4.7 million young people registered on the SAYouth platform and the Department of Employment and Labour’s employment services database. Through these platforms, young people have been supported to access over 1.6 million earning opportunities.

    “Last week in the City of Tshwane, I met with a number of young people who told me excitedly they had been approached by potential employers who had seen their profiles on SA Youth.mobi.

    “I want to encourage young job-seekers to utilise this trusted recruitment platform at https://sayouth.mobi/. Registration is free and the app is zero rated, meaning you can access the site and its contents without incurring any data charges,” the President said. 

    READ | Presidential Youth Initiative continues to empower SA’s most excluded youth

    The President said government has also focused on providing workplace experience and on-the-job training. He added that young people have often expressed frustration around the onerous experience requirements from employers, which effectively serve as a barrier to entry for them. 

    In 2019, government abolished the work experience requirement for entry level jobs in the public sector. Through the Youth Employment Service, a collaboration with the private sector, thousands of young people have been placed in workplace experience opportunities in a range of economic sectors.

    “The extent and scale of the youth unemployment crisis means that we should not focus solely on placing more young people in formal, existing jobs, but that we must bolster skills development and foster an entrepreneurial culture.

    “It is critical that we overcome the mismatch between the skills available in the workforce and market need,” he said. 

    President Ramaphosa said this is why government is investing in vocational training. 

    “We have increased funding to Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges and subsidies for the operationalisation of new campuses. Each year, we are placing thousands of learners and graduates into workplace experience opportunities.

    “Entrepreneurship is a key economic growth driver, but rates of entrepreneurial activity in South Africa are relatively low compared to other countries. We are working to foster an enabling environment that allows more young people to become self-employed,” the President said. 

    The Presidential Youth Employment Intervention has been working with the National Youth Development Agency and the Department of Small Business Development to financial and non-financial support to young people for their businesses.

    “Through all of these initiatives, the state has supported millions of young South Africans with work opportunities, work experience and skills development. However, we can only vastly scale up the employment of young people with greater private sector involvement,” the President said. – SAnews.gov.za

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: Hong Kong ranks among world’s top three most competitive economies in World Competitiveness Yearbook 2025

    Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region

         In the latest World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) 2025 published by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), Hong Kong’s global competitiveness rises by two places further to third globally, after improving by two places to fifth last year. This marks Hong Kong’s return to the global top three for the first time since 2019. 
     
         WCY 2025 shows that Hong Kong’s competitiveness improves significantly, with a total score of 99.2 out of 100 and an increase of 7.7 points, representing the largest increase among the global top 10 economies.
     
         Among the four competitiveness factors in WCY 2025, Hong Kong rises to second globally in “Government efficiency” and “Business efficiency”. Its respective rankings in “Economic performance” and “Infrastructure” also improve to sixth and seventh globally. As regards the competitiveness sub-factors, Hong Kong tops the rankings in “Tax policy” and “Business legislation”, and ranks second globally in “International investment”, “Education” and “Finance”, and third globally in “International trade” and “Management practices”. 
     
         A Government spokesperson said today (June 17), “Having taken into account a host of factors including objective data and business opinions, the IMD’s WCY 2025 has reaffirmed Hong Kong as one of the most competitive economies in the world with a continuous rise in ranking. Hong Kong’s scores in overall terms and in many areas have improved in WCY 2025, showing that the HKSAR Government’s policy directions are on the right course and that various policies have yielded results. In particular, ‘Government efficiency’ is ranked second globally, which reflects the inherent excellence and competence of civil servants, and also validates that the change in government culture led by the Chief Executive to drive result-oriented policies has borne fruit. With the efforts of civil servants and the leadership of the governing team, the Government can efficiently deliver results that benefit our people and bring them better livelihoods. In addition, our ranking in ‘Business efficiency’ also comes second globally, reflecting business leaders’ positive views on Hong Kong’s competitiveness, as well as Hong Kong’s strengths including the rule of law, independent exercise of judicial power, a simple tax system with low tax rates, an efficient and transparent market, a robust financial system, a facilitating business environment aligned with international best practices, and free flow of capital, information, goods and talent, which are affirmed by the business community.”
     
         The spokesperson stated, “Hong Kong’s economic growth this year is forecast to be 2 per cent to 3 per cent. Against this backdrop, the number of companies registered in Hong Kong reached a new high. Hong Kong is in a period of economic restructuring. Some industries are performing very well, while others, such as the retail and catering industries, are facing challenges. The Government has announced a series of measures to support small and medium-sized enterprises, assisting them in upgrading and transforming, enhancing their brands, and exploring new markets.
     
         “In the face of a complicated global economic and political landscape, Hong Kong will understand changes accurately, respond to changes scientifically, and embrace changes proactively. We will continue to actively integrate into the overall national development and align with national development strategies to consolidate our functional role as a ‘super connector’ and a ‘super value-adder’, while continuously strengthening our governance systems and governance efficacy. We will strengthen international exchanges and co-operation, expand and deepen regional trade, and explore new markets, with a view to building a vibrant economy, striving for development, and improving people’s livelihoods on all fronts. With the staunch support of the country, Hong Kong is poised to achieve higher-quality and more sustainable development.”

    MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –