NewzIntel.com

Category: Education

  • MIL-Evening Report: This NZ law aims to give people with criminal convictions a ‘clean slate’. It’s not working

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Plum, Senior Research Fellow, Auckland University of Technology

    Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock

    If you own a business, would you be willing to hire a person who has been convicted for a crime? Give them a chance when a background check shows they have a criminal record?

    The answers matter for both individuals and communities. For people who have paid their debt to society, rejoining it can hinge on getting a second chance without being judged on their past.

    It is not something they can really hide. Employers often conduct criminal background checks as part of the hiring process. People with criminal records face high levels of stigmatisation, making it harder to reenter their communities and make money legally.

    The thorny question of what to do with people with convictions when it comes to employment has been considered by policymakers and justice campaigners around the world.

    In the United States, more than 27 states have introduced “Ban the Box” legislation. While each law is unique, by and large they have eliminated the requirement to provide criminal background information in job applications.

    And a number of countries, including New Zealand, have implemented clean slate initiatives which help conceal criminal records for people who meet certain criteria.

    Our new research looks at whether New Zealand’s clean slate scheme increases the job prospects for eligible people.

    The clean slate reform was introduced as the Criminal Records Act in 2004. People who were previously convicted of minor offences can now have their criminal records automatically concealed if they can maintain a conviction-free record for seven years after their last sentence.

    The regulation excludes people who were involved in a serious offence (such as sexual misconduct) or who received a particularly punitive sentence (such as incarceration or an indefinite disqualification from driving).

    The Criminal Records Act allows eligible people with a conviction to wipe their slate clean seven years after their last sentencing.
    Shutterstock

    Clean slate and the labour market

    Our research started with the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI), hosted by Statistics New Zealand (StatsNZ). This is a repository of records provided by different public and private agencies, including court charge data from the Ministry of Justice and tax records from Inland Revenue.

    StatsNZ uses specific characteristics of individuals (such as name and birth date) to identify them across the different datasets. This enables researchers to track the same individual’s data footprint across different administrative records.

    We used court charges data on all men convicted between 1992 and 2003 who had fulfilled the clean slate eligibility criteria. We then linked this pool of people with their Inland Revenue records to measure their employment and earnings.

    To identify the labour market impact of the clean slate policy, we compared the employment and earnings of those who completed their seven-year rehabilitation period (the treatment group) with individuals who become eligible some time later (control group).

    Limited benefits of clean slate scheme

    Our analysis found the clean slate scheme has no relevant impact on the likelihood of eligible individuals finding work. This could result from the length of time required between sentencing and being eligible for a clean slate. Seven years could simply be too long.

    But the clean slate scheme did create at least a 2% increase in eligible workers’ monthly wages and salaries – equivalent to a NZ$100 hike for an individual with an average monthly salary of $5,000.

    The increase in monthly earnings appears to be greater for workers with a stronger commitment to working and for those who remain with one company for longer periods.

    Global patterns

    The labour market effects of concealing past convictions have also been explored in the US. Recent research looked at a policy enacted in Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Bexar County, Texas. Mirroring our own results, the authors do not find any relevant impact on gaining employment.

    Our findings indicate the concealment of past convictions through New Zealand’s clean slate scheme might happen too late to make a huge difference. But there are changes that can be made to improve work outcomes for people who have completed their sentences.

    This could include following the example of countries such as Finland, where access to criminal histories is much more restricted. In Finland, the background check has to be directly relevant to the job requirements. For example, the law allows checks for someone applying to work in the financial sector who was convicted of fraud.

    There would also be benefits from looking at the eligibility criteria for New Zealand’s clean slate scheme.

    Currently, it only applies to people who committed a minor offence. But policymakers should consider whether it makes sense to expand the policy to people who committed more serious crimes but managed to turn their life around. Making this change would allow people to reap the benefits of working without stigma.

    All that said, the government’s current “tough on crime” stance makes change unlikely, with a focus on the cost of crime rather than what happens after punishment has been completed.

    Kabir Dasgupta is affiliated with the Federal Reserve Board. The opinions expressed in this article does not reflect the views of the the Federal Reserve Board or the Federal Reserve System.

    Alexander Plum 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. This NZ law aims to give people with criminal convictions a ‘clean slate’. It’s not working – https://theconversation.com/this-nz-law-aims-to-give-people-with-criminal-convictions-a-clean-slate-its-not-working-254687

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Universities – Similar to owls, sharp hearing helps hunting harriers home in on their prey – Flinders

    Source: Flinders University

    Owls, well adapted to hearing the exact location of prey, have something in common with an unrelated group of raptors – harriers.

    A new study led by Canadian and Australian researchers has found that harriers across the world are able to keep a much better ear out for their next meal than previously thought.

    The international team of University of Lethbridge and Flinders University researchers made the discovery when they found unexpected owl-like traits in the ear and brain of several harrier species, such as the Australian spotted harrier.

    The new article published in Journal of Anatomy features the work of the Iwaniuk Lab at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta and Associate Professor Vera Weisbecker’s ‘Bones and Diversity Lab’ at Flinders University in South Australia.

    University of Lethbridge PhD student Sara Citron, who led the study, says owls have fine-tuned hearing abilities, allowing some of their species to locate prey in complete darkness.

    “Until recently, it was assumed that all their hearing adaptations were unique to owls. However, our study shows that harriers have independently evolved several key adaptations for finding prey by sound,” she says.

    The research team focused on harriers – a group of hawks found in North America, Australia, NZ, Europe, and parts of Africa and Asia – because they show some unusual, owl-like hunting behaviours.

    Senior author and PhD supervisor Dr Andrew Iwaniuk, Associate Professor at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience,  says: “Hawks tend to hunt primarily by sight. But unlike other hawks, harriers fly low over tall grass with their beak pointed to the ground.

    “During this so-called ‘quartering flight’, they are not only looking for prey, they are also listening for it,” he says.

    Co-author Aubrey Keirnan, a PhD student at Flinders University who is also co-supervised by Dr Iwaniuk and Flinders University Associate Professor Vera Weisbecker, says that simply by looking at the harrier, you can see similarities with owls.

    “The Australian Spotted Harrier is a great example,” she says. “When you look at this species’ face, you can see a distinctive disc-shaped face, which may improve their prey localisation just like owls.”

    The discovery matches older behavioural studies showing that harriers can locate sounds with similar accuracy to owls, but how they did this has been a mystery.

    Using specimens from wildlife rehabilitators and museums in Australia and Canada, the team examined the anatomy of the skull and brain of harriers and other closely related hawk species such as the wedge-tailed eagle.

    They found that, like owls, harriers have enlarged ear openings and two expanded brain regions that are essential for calculating where a sound is coming from.

    “These auditory nuclei are found in the brainstem and compare the time at which sounds arrive at the left or right ear,” says co-author Associate Professor in evolutionary biology Vera Weisbecker, from Flinders University’s College of Science and Engineering.

    “If a sound arrives at both ears at the same time, then the sound is coming from directly in front of an animal. If there is a delay, this indicates that the prey is more to the left or right,” she says.

    “By having these two brain regions expanded, harriers can make such computations more accurately than other hawks, allowing them to locate where a potential rat, mouse or other prey is hiding in the grass.”

    “Harriers have therefore evolved an auditory system similar to owls, enabling them to target sounds as accurately as owls in a remarkable example of convergent evolution of both brain and behaviour in animals separated by over 60 million years,” adds first author Ms Citron.

    The team is careful to point out that the auditory system of many owls is far more sophisticated than that of harriers. This explains the ability of some owl species, such as the barn owl, to hunt in complete darkness whereas hawks only hunt during the day.

    “There are several other features that help owls with their keen hearing which we did not find in harriers. For example, some owl species have asymmetric ears that allow them to locate sound with greater acuity, and these owls also have several other enlarged brain regions that were not enlarged in harriers,” says Ms Citron.

    The team hopes their study results will encourage further research on bird anatomy to find out how a species perceives its surrounds.

    “Anatomical studies like ours are a window into how a bird perceives the world around it, which can be extremely useful for bird conservation,” adds Dr Iwaniuk. “For example, harriers’ reliance on sound for prey location means that they are likely more sensitive to traffic and industrial noise. This could be contributing to the large decreases in Northern Harrier populations we have seen in Canada.”

    The article, ‘The evolution of an “owl-like” auditory system in harriers: Anatomical evidence’ (2025) by Sara Citron, Cristian Gutierrez-Ibanez, Aubrey Keirnan, Vera Weisbecker, Douglas Wylie, Andrew N Iwaniuk has been published in Journal of Anatomy (Wiley Online Library) DOI: 10.1111/joa.14264.

    First published: 29 April 2025 https://doi.org/10.1111/joa.14264

    MIL OSI – Submitted News –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Unexpected humour and reflections on a complex past: my top 5 films from the 2025 German Film Festival

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claudia Sandberg, Senior Lecturer, Technology in Culture and Society, The University of Melbourne

    Foreign audiences often associate German cinema with tragedy, trauma and death. Certainly, major historical events such as the second world war and the Fall of the Berlin Wall — cornerstones of German film — are present in this year’s selection at the 2025 German Film Festival.

    Alongside these themes is a variety of contemporary topics, innovative fictional formats and strong documentary work. The increased presence of women in directing and producing roles also brings female experiences sharply into focus.

    Here are my highlights from this year’s programme.

    Riefenstahl (2024)

    Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003), Hitler’s favourite filmmaker, has been a subject of controversy for decades – explored in documentaries such as The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993).

    Now, with access to new material from Riefenstahls’ private archive, director Andres Veiel and journalist Sandra Maischberger cast a fresh eye over this complex figure.

    Using extensive visual materials, they trace Riefenstahl’s journey from dancer to actress, to filmmaker and photographer – capturing everything from her pioneering cinematic techniques to her entanglement with political power and personal vanity. And they are not afraid to confront uncomfortable aspects of her past.

    Her claim to have endured an unwanted romantic pursuit by Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels (first made in her 1987 memoir) appears in new light as an older Riefenstahl faces questioning from aggressive TV interviewers. She unflinchingly and fiercely maintains her version of events.

    Is Leni Riefenstahl a creative genius, a political victim, or an ignorant perpetrator? This film invites audiences to grapple with this old question anew — and perhaps come to their own conclusion.

    Montages depict Riefenstahl’s life from youth to old age, culminating in an image of an elderly lady who, even late in life, manipulates camera angles and lighting to ensure a more flattering appearance.

    Two to One (2024)

    Some German films such as Balloon (2018) or The Last Execution (2022) have a tendency to explore East Germans as either victims of oppression, or complicit with the regime of the German Democratic Republic.

    But there are also films that rebel against such simplification – such as Beauty and Decay (2019), Dear Thomas (2021) and Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything (2023) – to powerfully present the many dimensions of former East Germany and its people.

    Among them is Two to One, a thoughtful picture by director Nadja Brunckhorst, which fluctuates between thriller, comedy and melodrama. Based on a true story, this film remembers the delirious time between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and Reunification.

    It is July 1990, and just days after the deadline for exchanging East German marks to more valued West German marks at the exchange rate of 2:1. This halved the life savings of many East Germans.

    We follow a Hausgemeinschaft (community of renters) who discover millions of East German mark bills in an underground bunker. They cleverly use the more privileged members of their old and new worlds – sleek Western sales representatives and former East German diplomats – to transform the worthless bills into West mark and buy goods for everyone.

    Two to One stars Ronald Zehrfeld (also in the festival opener Long Story Short), Sandra Hueller and Peter Kurth in top form.

    Dying (2024)

    As a contender in the 2024 Berlin Film Festival (where it won best screenplay), and winner of the 2024 German Film Award, Dying comes highly recommended.

    Versatile German actor Lars Eidinger is cast as Tom, a youth orchestra conductor trying to pull off his best friend’s composition “Dying”. Not only does the performance never please the composer, his private world is also a mess.

    Tom is raising someone else’s child. His father (Hans-Uwe Bauer) suffers dementia. His sister Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg) can’t keep up with the expectations of their estranged parents. And his mother’s (Corinna Harfouch) thinly veiled contempt for her own son is visible in a breathtaking scene involving the seemingly innocent ritual of coffee and cake.

    But despite its weighty subject matter, humour appears in the most unexpected places.

    There is Ellen’s affair with her boss, a dentist, who ends up drunk in a bar — where she pulls one of his teeth. There is also the quietly absurd scene of her ageing parents trying to drive home from the supermarket: one nearly blind, the other unable to remember where they live.

    A film that uses absurdity and tenderness to break through emotional tension with surprising charm, Dying is a must see.

    I Want It All (2025)

    Singer and actress Hildegard Knef would have turned 100 this year.

    Knef was one of the most prominent and daring post-WWII West German female artists. Driven from a young age to become successful, she began her career in the 1946 rubble film, The Murderers Are Among Us.

    In her 2025 documentary I Want It All, director Luzia Schmidt captures Knef in rehearsals, at home, in the recording studio and through press photos. The film is a vivid portrait of an unapologetic woman constantly under scrutiny, as the German public seemed entitled to access every corner of her life.

    Knef comes across as sharp but self-aware. The artist discusses her stage fright and the art of holding an audience’s attention. Her candid remarks about undergoing plastic surgery, as a female artist navigating the ruthless entertainment industry, remain just as relevant today.

    Arguably the greatest assets of the film are the reflective comments from Knef’s daughter, Tinta, who speaks with empathy and kindness about her mother’s ambition and vulnerabilities.

    I Want It All is a treat for anyone who is familiar with Knef, and for those who want to know more about this grand dame of German culture.

    Cicadas (2025)

    An idyllic countryside in summer: a paradise retreat for some, and a prison for others.

    Isabell is the daughter of an architect, who is paralysed by a stroke. His beautifully designed house is in disrepair and no one can pay for it, but Isabell can’t get him to sell it. Meanwhile, Isabell’s marriage to her needy French husband Philippe is strained by a shared trauma.

    Anja, a single mum to young Greta, navigates a fragile existence. In a region with weak infrastructure, she moves between low-paying jobs, barely making ends meet.

    When the two women meet, their bond forms cautiously. Both are shaped by differences in class, age and life experience, yet there is a connection that bridges these divides.

    Carried by compelling performances by Saskia Rosenthal and Nina Hoss (the latter of whom had worked with director Ina Weisse in The Audition (2019)), Cicadas is a quiet drama about vulnerability and loss of control that evolves in the open landscapes of the Brandenburg region.

    Claudia Sandberg 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. Unexpected humour and reflections on a complex past: my top 5 films from the 2025 German Film Festival – https://theconversation.com/unexpected-humour-and-reflections-on-a-complex-past-my-top-5-films-from-the-2025-german-film-festival-254788

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Beyer Video Statement On Federal Court Hearing In Case Of Detained Georgetown Scholar Dr. Badar Khan Suri

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Don Beyer (D-VA)

    Rep. Don Beyer issued a video statement today after attending a hearing at the Eastern District of Virginia courthouse on the case of his constituent, Dr. Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University who lives in Arlington, Virginia, and who was in the country legally when he was detained without charges on orders from the Trump Administration in March. Beyer met with counsel for Dr. Suri yesterday in his Washington, D.C. office. A transcript of Beyer’s statement follows below. 

    Dr. Suri was detained in March by masked agents outside his home in Rosslyn, and moved to a series of prisons and detention centers, ultimately ending in Texas. He is still being held there today, over 1,300 miles away from his wife, who is a U.S. citizen, and three young children. According to Dr. Suri’s counsel, “His son spent days crying uncontrollably following his father’s disappearance, and has now stopped speaking.” Dr. Suri has never been charged with a crime and the government has never produced evidence that he did anything wrong.

    In today’s hearing, Dr. Suri’s attorneys sought his return to Virginia, with Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles seeking further information from the government on their justification for moving him to Texas. The government claimed Dr. Suri was removed to Texas to prevent overcrowding at a Virginia detention center, yet, as Judge Giles pointed out, Suri had a room with a bed to himself in Virginia whereas, for the first 10 days of his detention in Texas Suri “was forced to sleep on the floor of the television room with the TV blaring nonstop and the lights on 24/7.”

    Judge Giles gave the government 24 hours to answer questions about the transfer, with a further 24 hours for response from Dr. Suri’s legal team, and a ruling to follow next week. 

    Transcript of Rep. Beyer’s video statement:

    “This is Congressman Don Beyer, representing Northern Virginia in the U.S. House, and it’s Thursday afternoon, May 1st. I’m here in front of the U.S. courthouse in Alexandria.

    “I just spent two hours listening to, Judge Patricia Giles, and the arguments over Dr. [Badar] Khan Suri. 

    “He’s my constituent here legally in America. He’s a postdoc graduate student and teacher at Georgetown University working on conflict resolution. 

    “He was picked up, a little less than two months ago, late at night by three plain-clothes ICE agents [with] no identification, put in an unmarked car and whisked off to Chantilly, to Farmville, to Chesterfield and then Richmond, to Louisiana, and finally to Texas. 

    “We’re here today because his lawyers are making the case that he should never have been taken from Virginia when a writ of habeas corpus had been filed. 

    “I’m very upset by this. Dr. [Suri] – no one has accused him of doing anything wrong. More than anything else, this is a great example – another sad example of the Trump administration’s attempt to instill fear and repression into our college campuses and to immigrants, or people with voices they don’t like, across this country. 

    “We have to fight back. We have to resist. I’ll be doing everything I can to help Dr. [Suri] and his family, and I encourage each one of us to do all that we can to tell these stories, to help educate the American people about what’s happening, and this threat to our Constitution, to our rights. 

    “It is Kafkaesque when somebody can be kidnapped without reason, without acknowledgment, without logic, without charges, and taken off to be locked in a prison in Texas, not knowing what happens next.”

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Court Rules to Stop Trump Administration Effort to Gut Institute of Museum and Library Services

    Source: American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union

    American Library Association and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Win Order to Pause Cuts to Independent Agency, Which Threaten Libraries Nationwide

    Washington, D.C. – A federal judge has temporarily stopped devastating and unlawful Trump administration dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, ordering a temporary restraining order in ALA et al v Sonderling et al brought by Democracy Forward and Gair Gallo Eberhard LLP on behalf of the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). With today’s ruling, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) – a non-partisan and independent agency dedicated to supporting and funding museums and libraries and the crucial community services they provide in every state across the country – will continue to operate as required by Congress while the court hears the case.

    “The immediate halt to the gutting of IMLS is a win for America’s libraries and the millions of Americans who rely on them,” said ALA President Cindy Hohl. “ALA is encouraged that the court recognizes the immediacy of the need for IMLS and library services at risk. The temporary restraining order will stop the dismantling of IMLS while the court considers the merits in this case.”

    “We celebrate today’s decision as a victory for library and museum workers and the communities who depend on them. They do everything from helping workers connect to job opportunities to instilling a love of learning and inspiring creativity in others. This ruling will halt the layoffs of the critical workers who support them,” said AFSCME President Lee Saunders. “We look forward to moving our case forward and reversing this unlawful shut down.”

    “Libraries are vital for people and communities across our nation. Attacking libraries and those who ensure the continuity of their services is yet another move by the Trump administration that does nothing to make Americans’ lives better or easier,” said Skye Perryman, President & CEO of Democracy Forward. “Democracy Forward is honored to continue our work with libraries and librarians to protect these important educational institutions in our country, and we are grateful that this preliminary injunction will pause these devastating cuts while our case can be considered.”

    IMLS was first created and funded by Congress in 1996 and charged with supporting America’s libraries and museums. The agency has had bipartisan support throughout its history, having been reauthorized under the Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. IMLS is bound by laws requiring that the agency conduct certain activities to support libraries and report on important issues to Congress. The complaint explains that cutting programs at IMLS will violate the law by eliminating programs Congress has provided funding for and directed IMLS to undertake.

    This case continues Democracy Forward’s record of working with communities, parents, and libraries to defend the freedom to read. That work has previously included efforts in Arkansas, where Democracy Forward represented a coalition of librarians, booksellers, and readers who successfully prevented portions of an Arkansas law that threatens to criminalize librarians and booksellers from taking effect is asking a court to permanently stop the law from being enforced; Florida, where Democracy Forward represented the Florida Education Association, Florida Freedom to Read Project, and Families for Strong Public Schools to challenge the DeSantis administration’s actions that shutter classroom libraries and undermine public education in Florida; and in Alabama, where Democracy Forward is representing a group of Alabama families and librarians with a broad array of political and religious backgrounds in a suit to stop policies approved by the library board that threaten to keep constitutionally protected books like To Kill a Mockingbird off of public library shelves.

    Read the full complaint here and the temporary restraining order here.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Bonamici Introduces Bipartisan Bill to Educate Students About Danger of Accidental Fentanyl Poisoning

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Suzanne Bonamici (1st District Oregon)

    WASHINGTON, DC [5/1/25] – Today Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) introduced bipartisan legislation based on a successful Oregon program to protect students from accidental fentanyl poisoning.

    The Fentanyl Awareness for Children and Teens in Schools (FACTS) Act is modeled on the Beaverton School District’s Fake and Fatal fentanyl awareness curriculum in Oregon, which has successfully prevented student deaths since its launch. The bill will also develop a federal interagency task force to fight the synthetic opioid crisis through education and prevention and improve federal education and health data collection efforts to understand and highlight the effects of synthetic opioids on youth.

    Oregonians Jon and Jennifer Epstein lost their son Cal to fentanyl poisoning when he mistakenly took a fake pill, and they were instrumental in creating the Fake and Fatal curriculum and advocating for its expansion. Jon was Bonamici’s guest for the 2024 State of the Union.

    “I continue to be inspired by Jon and Jennifer’s dedication to saving lives following the tragic loss of their son,” said Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici. “The educational programs they helped create are already saving students by increasing awareness about the dangers of fake pills laced with fentanyl. The FACTS Act will build on that legacy by spreading this powerful and effective curriculum to reach students in schools across the country.”

    “An accidental fentanyl poisoning forever changed our family,” said Jon and Jennifer Epstein. “Like many youth still today, Cal had no idea that something 50x more powerful than heroin was being made into fake pills that look exactly like real pharmaceuticals and sold on social media for a few bucks. Cal made a tragic mistake thinking that buying something like this online was safe; he had no idea the risk he was taking, and it turned out to be fatal. The FACTS Act will reduce the number of families from suffering the devastation ours did by giving youth trustworthy facts and information about today’s drug landscape and how to keep themselves and their friends safe.  We’re incredibly grateful to Rep. Bonamici and the other members for bringing forward and supporting this valuable legislation; closing the knowledge gap and changing the perception of harm around off script medicine use will undoubtably save young lives and lessen the future burden of harmful substance use. There are no magic wands in this crisis, but upstream awareness, education, and primary prevention efforts are largely untapped mitigations with huge potential.

    “As a mother who lost a child to this scourge, I am grateful to see members of Congress from opposite sides of the aisle introduce this legislation. I want to thank Representative Bonamici, Representative Wittman, Representative Neguse, and Representative Van Drew for introducing the Fentanyl Awareness for Children and Teens in Schools (FACTS) Act, which will bring awareness to this issue and save lives,” said Laura Didier, Outreach Coordinator at Song for Charlie.

    The FACTS Act is cosponsored by Representatives Rob Wittman (R-VA), Joe Neguse (D-CO), and Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ).

    “Far too many families in Virginia’s First District and across America have experienced the heartbreak of losing a loved one to accidental fentanyl poisoning,” said Congressman Rob Wittman (VA-01). “I’m proud to join my colleagues in reintroducing the FACTS Act to help stop this crisis before it starts in schools —by giving students, parents, and educators the tools they need to recognize the dangers of counterfeit pills laced with deadly synthetic opioids. Education is prevention, and this bipartisan bill will help save lives by expanding access to proven awareness programs in schools across the country.” 

    “The harsh reality we are dealing with is fentanyl is destroying families and taking lives right here in our communities,” said Congressman Jeff Van Drew. “The FACTS Act is a proactive step to arm our students, teachers, and families with the knowledge and tools they need to fight back. By educating our youth about the dangers of counterfeit pills and synthetic opioids, we are giving them the power to make safer choices.”

    Only 2 in 5 young Americans consider themselves knowledgeable about fentanyl, according to Song for Charlie. The organization, which is dedicated to raising awareness about fake pills, also found that only 36 percent of teens are aware that fentanyl is being used to create counterfeit pills.

    The FACTS Act is endorsed by: Song for Charlie, National PTA, School Superintendents Association (AASA), American Psychological Association (APA), National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP), National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), National Association of Counties (NACo), National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

    “The recent decline in youth fentanyl deaths indicate that public awareness campaigns are having a positive impact,” said Ed Ternan, President of Song for Charlie, a nonprofit that educates kids and families about the fentanyl crisis. “The FACTS Act facilitates the critical next step – implementing educational programs in classrooms and community centers across the country.”

    “The solution to the problem of substance use by youth requires a collaborative effort,” said Yvonne Johnson, president of National PTA, the nation’s oldest and largest child advocacy association. “PTA applauds Representative Bonamici for reintroducing the FACTS Act. The bill would provide funding to establish and strengthen partnerships between public health agencies, nonprofit organizations and state and local education agencies to help raise awareness and prevent the use of fentanyl by children and teens.”

    “Fentanyl education works,” said Dr. Gustavo Balderas, Superintendent of the Beaverton School District, where a robust fentanyl awareness program, called Fake & Fatal, has been in practice since April 2021. “When you intentionally and consistently inform students and their families about the dangers of fake pills made from deadly fentanyl, you equip them with the knowledge to make life-saving decisions. It is my hope that this legislation will provide other school districts around the country with the tools and encouragement to implement curriculum and support systems that save lives.”

    A fact sheet on the FACTS Act can be found here and the full text can be found here.

    ###

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI New Zealand: Universities – Mushroom testing could be magic – UoA

    Source: University of Auckland (UoA)

    Scientists are researching how best to identify mushroom species as a basis for a potential drug-checking service.

    Magic mushrooms are coming under the microscope, as scientists at the University of Auckland forage for evidence to support a drug-checking service with the goal of reducing harm.

    Doctoral student Sam Lasham will research the science and the acceptability of such a service.

    “We’d like to work out the effectiveness of a magic mushroom drug-checking service and the best way to run that, and, in the case of people who are seeking mental health benefits, reduce the risks and offer advice on safe consumption,” Lasham says.

    Lasham’s interest grew out of his studies at the University of Otago in genetics and botany and focused on Aotearoa New Zealand’s indigenous mushrooms.

    “I was using environmental DNA from soil across our native beech forests in the South Island to estimate where species were and what species were around.

    “A lot of that research was focused on DNA sequencing and something called ‘DNA barcoding’, which is using short genetic sequences to identify species.

    “That’s what has led into this, because the most important thing, from a safety perspective, is making sure you’ve got the right species of mushroom, and you haven’t got a common lookalike that’s poisonous.”

    At the same time, Lasham became interested in illicit use of psilocybin mushrooms and the need for harm-reduction measures, founding Students for Sensible Drug Policy Aotearoa in Dunedin.

    There has been increasing interest in the potential benefits of hallucinogenic mushrooms, including studies of microdosing for mental health and creativity at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland.

    Magic mushrooms are typically either grown from spores or foraged, then prepared in various ways to preserve them and enhance their effects.

    The active ingredient, psilocybin, is relatively benign, but mushrooms contain other pharmacologically active compounds.

    Adverse effects can include nausea, vomiting, increased heart rate, and headaches.
    If foraging, the biggest risk is accidentally picking a poisonous look-a-like species.

    “Galerina are the best example of this as they are very similar to Psilocybe subaeruginosa but they contain some of the same toxins (amatoxins) as the death cap mushroom,” Lasham says.

    There are numerous reports of a syndrome termed ‘wood-lovers paralysis’, which seems to be caused by species of psilocybin mushrooms that grow on wood.

    Lasham is based in the School of Pharmacy using the lab to identify the constituent parts of various types of mushrooms.

    He is working in senior lecturer Dr Rhys Ponton’s research group, which holds the only drug-checking licence specifically for research purposes in Aotearoa New Zealand.

    “People can bring their mushroom samples in and know they are legally protected while we are doing a full, confidential and free check of their drugs,” Lasham says.

    “We can test the samples to make sure they’re not a poisonous species and also to tell them what dose they have got, which will be another innovation that’s not currently being offered in any drug-checking service.”

    The researchers will interview and survey people across the country to see how mushrooms are being consumed, what mushrooms people are using, how they’re using them and what sort of effects they are getting.

    An advisory group of people with lived experience of mushroom use will guide how the research is set up, implemented and interpreted.

    The research is supported by funding from the HRC and Ember Innovations.

    Success in the lab could enable a ‘know your mushrooms’ service to run in a similar way to current drug-checking services at festivals, events and in the community.

    Find out more about the study here: http://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/fmhs/research/research-study-recruitment/research-study-recruitment–m—p-/magic-mushroom-drug-checking-study.html

    MIL OSI New Zealand News –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Explainer: what mental health support do refugees and asylum seekers get in Australia?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philippa Specker, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Refugee Trauma and Recovery Program, School of Psychology, UNSW Sydney

    PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    When Australia signed the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention, it committed to providing protection to people who have fled war, persecution and human rights violations.

    Refugees have often experienced severe traumatic events. This can include war, torture, kidnapping and witnessing the murder of loved ones.

    Understandably, refugees are more likely than the general population to experience mental health problems. About 27% of adult refugees suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and 30% from depression. Only 5.6% of Australians experience PTSD and 6.4% experience depression.

    Australia has a humanitarian and legal responsibility to support the mental health of refugees and asylum seekers so they can recover and thrive.

    Mental health problems are highly treatable when people have access to effective treatment. Addressing key barriers to accessing mental health services is in everyone’s best interest.

    So, what mental health support is available for refugees when they arrive in Australia?

    Different pathways

    Much depends on how the person came to Australia and through which scheme they applied to be recognised as a refugee.

    First, there are people who apply for and are granted refugee status by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or Australia’s humanitarian program before arriving in Australia.

    These people, often termed “humanitarian entrants”, represent the largest cohort of Australia’s refugees.

    They are provided with permanent visas and join the government-run Humanitarian Settlement Program upon their arrival.

    Humanitarian Settlement Program caseworkers can refer these people to internal or external mental health support services.

    Importantly, people under Australia’s humanitarian program can also access vital services such as:

    • Medicare
    • Centrelink
    • English-language classes.

    They also have the right to work and study. This helps promote recovery, adjustment and wellbeing.

    Some people apply for and are granted refugee status by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees before arriving in Australia.
    John Wreford/Shutterstock

    Second, there are people who sought asylum via alternate pathways.

    This often means they arrived in Australia without a valid visa. Or, they may have held a non-refugee visa and subsequently applied for refugee status after arriving in Australia.

    These people, termed “asylum seekers”, are in a much more precarious situation.

    They face lengthy visa processing times, the possibility of being held in detention, and a greater likelihood of being granted only temporary visas.

    Many people in this situation are restricted from accessing government-run settlement support, such as the Humanitarian Settlement Program and Centrelink.

    This is a problem, because research shows people seeking asylum or holding temporary visas in Australia are especially likely to be experiencing mental health problems.

    A range of services

    That said, Australia has a range of mental health support services available to all refugees and asylum seekers.

    This includes the Forum of Australian Services for Survivors of Torture and Trauma (FASSTT), a network of rehabilitation centres in every state and territory.

    These specialised services provide holistic support including:

    • psychological and counselling sessions
    • community capacity building programs (such as work readiness and community garden initiatives), and
    • advocacy.

    Organisations such as Settlement Services International, Australian Red Cross, AMES and Beyond Blue also provide refugee-specific mental health supports and resources.

    And some community-run social programs, such as Football United, focus on increasing social inclusion, which can help boost mental health.

    Refugees have often experienced severe traumatic events.
    PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    Barriers to access

    Demand for specialised mental health services is high. That can mean long waiting times for all Australians, including refugees and asylum seekers.

    Research has identified a number of barriers that especially affect refugees and asylum seekers. These include:

    • stigma around mental health problems and help-seeking
    • lack of knowledge on mental health
    • language and cultural barriers, and
    • logistical barriers (such as cost and travel distance).

    Finally, some refugees (particularly asylum seekers or people with temporary visas) may not be as aware of mental health services as humanitarian entrants. The latter group are often connected with such services while part of the Humanitarian Settlement Program.

    This puts the onus on such individuals to independently research what services are available and refer themselves.

    That’s a tough ask for people also busy finding housing, learning English, enrolling children in school, and progressing their visa applications.

    Why does this matter?

    Refugees represent a significant portion of our society. By the end of this year, Australia will have welcomed 1 million refugees since the end of World War II.

    International law dictates that survivors of torture and other forms of persecution under Australia’s protection have access to effective rehabilitation services.

    More broadly, the psychological cost of trauma can make it harder for some refugees to adapt to life in Australia. PTSD and depression can be chronic conditions. Without effective treatment, mental health challenges can persist for decades.

    Helping refugees recover from the psychological effects of trauma and displacement also promotes the prosperity of the wider community. That’s because refugees enrich Australian society by establishing local businesses, working, facilitating new trade links, volunteering and contributing to the community.

    When refugees thrive, we all do.

    Philippa Specker receives funding from an MQ: Transforming Mental Health Postdoctoral Scholarship (MPSIP15). She is an associate of the Human Rights Institute, UNSW.

    Angela Nickerson receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.

    Belinda Liddell receives funding from the Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council.

    – ref. Explainer: what mental health support do refugees and asylum seekers get in Australia? – https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-mental-health-support-do-refugees-and-asylum-seekers-get-in-australia-255427

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI China: China’s space station delivers new samples for research

    Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News

    BEIJING, May 1 — The latest samples from 25 scientific experiments conducted aboard China’s Tiangong space station, totaling approximately 37.25 kilograms, were brought back to Earth on Wednesday.

    Marking the eighth batch of experimental materials from the orbiting laboratory, the samples were brought back to Earth aboard the Shenzhou-19 return capsule. According to a news release from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on Thursday, the returned materials originated from experiments in space life sciences, materials science and new space technologies.

    The time-sensitive samples from the space life science experiments were swiftly transported from the landing site to Beijing. At around 9:40 p.m. on Wednesday, following an inspection by the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization under the CAS, the samples were handed over to scientists for further research.

    The biological samples comprise 20 different types, the largest variety ever returned during the operational phase of the space station. They include bone cells, human stem cells, bronchial epithelial cells, human and animal embryos, protein samples, and fruit flies, according to the CAS.

    Researchers will analyze these samples to explore key questions, such as the cellular mechanisms behind bone loss in space, the impact of microgravity on the growth and maintenance of human stem cells, and the role of space radiation in cancer development.

    Studies will also explore how the space environment affects early mammalian embryonic development and alters protein structure-function relationships in microgravity. Additional experiments involving fruit flies will investigate their adaptation to the unique conditions of space.

    The findings are expected to offer crucial data and theoretical support for safeguarding human health during space missions, while also potentially contributing valuable insights to medical research on Earth.

    Materials science samples, including tungsten alloys, high-strength steel, specialized crystals, semiconductor materials, lunar soil reinforcement compounds and novel lubricants, are scheduled to be transported to Beijing later.

    This research also aims to support the development of next-generation materials for a range of advanced applications — including jet engine components, deep-ultraviolet lithography, lunar construction, large deployable space structures such as flexible solar arrays, and durable space lubricants — all of which are vital for future deep-space exploration, according to the CAS.

    MIL OSI China News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Tuberville, Grassley Reintroduce Bill to Help Students Navigate College Costs

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Alabama Tommy Tuberville
    WASHINGTON – Today, Senators Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) reintroduced a bill to help students and families make informed decisions when choosing a college and taking out loans. From the initial college search, to the acceptance of financial aid, to counseling once in college, the bill would help students avoid sticker shock, find the best school for their budget and avoid taking out ill-advised and oversized loans. Senator Tuberville, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee and the Chairman of the Education and the American Family Subcommittee, emphasized the importance of transparency in the college decision-making process:
    “More and more of our young people are finding themselves buried in student loan debt,” said Senator Tuberville. “Too many of our young people are falling behind on their life goals because they are carrying the burden of college loans for years after completing their degrees. This bill will help young people, who are considering pursuing higher education, understand if college is right fit for them and exactly what financial assistance they may need.”
    BACKGROUND:
    The Understanding the True Cost of College Act would create a universal financial aid offer form and standardize terms used to describe financial aid to allow students to more easily compare financial aid packages between schools. This move aims to prevent troubling findings by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that over 90% of college financial aid offer letters currently understate the price students would pay. A summary of the Understanding the True Cost of College Act is available HERE. 
    MORE:
    Tuberville Introduces Legislation to Lower the Cost of Graduate School
    Tuberville: No Student Loan Bailouts for Convicted Antisemitic Protestors
    Tuberville, Marshall Request Expedited Review of Financial Aid Applications
    Tuberville Joins Legislation to Protect Taxpayers From Biden’s Latest Student Loan Scam
    Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, HELP and Aging Committees.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Shaheen, Colleagues Introduce Bipartisan America the Beautiful Act

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for New Hampshire Jeanne Shaheen
    (Washington, DC) – U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) joined her colleagues, U.S. Senators Steve Daines (R-MT) and Angus King (I-ME), to introduce their bipartisan conservation bill, the America the Beautiful Act. This legislation builds on the 2020 Great American Outdoors Act, which Shaheen cosponsored, by strengthening and reauthorizing the Legacy Restoration Fund (LRF) and addressing the serious maintenance backlog in national parks and public lands.
    “New Hampshire’s public lands and outdoor spaces are integral to our state identity and our thriving outdoor recreation economy. We must take steps to protect these resources for future generations of Granite Staters,” said Shaheen. “I was proud to see the Great American Outdoors Act become law, and I’ll continue fighting to protect and preserve outdoor spaces by passing this legislation which will continue the progress we’ve made.” 
    Shaheen, Daines and King were joined by U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mark Warner (D-VA), Tim Sheehy (R-MT) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) in introducing the bill.
    The America the Beautiful Act reauthorizes the LRF through 2033 and increases funding to $2 billion per year to help address the maintenance backlog in national parks and public lands. Currently, the maintenance backlog for each agency is $23.26 billion for the U.S. Park Service, $8.695 billion for the U.S. Forest Service, $2.65 billion for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, $5.72 billion for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and $804.5 million for the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education. In New Hampshire, National Parks and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Refuges have approximately $13 million in outstanding deferred maintenance needs.
    Since its creation in 2020, the LRF has benefitted numerous national parks and public lands in New Hampshire. Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park has received more than $14 million from the Legacy Restoration Fund to rehabilitate four historic structures and address electrical, HVAC and alarm systems. Across the White Mountain National Forest, the Legacy Restoration Fund is supporting trail restoration work on the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail and Rumney Rocks Climbing Area, as well as repairs of the Tripoli Bridge. Sections of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail across New England are slated to receive $15 million in FY25 to rehabilitate and repair facilities along the trail that will address maintenance needs and improve visitor safety. 
    The America the Beautiful Act is supported by over 40 public lands, conservation and recreation groups. Click here to view the full list of statements of support and supporting groups.
    You can read the full bill text here.
    Shaheen has led efforts to safeguard our natural environment and invest in climate resiliency while boosting New Hampshire’s recreation economy. Shaheen led the bipartisan Outdoor Recreation Jobs and Economic Impact Act into law to require the federal government to measure the impact of the outdoor recreation on the economy. In November 2024, Shaheen applauded the release of an annual report showing a $1.2 trillion economic contribution by the outdoor recreation sector in 2023, including $3.9 billion in New Hampshire. Shaheen also helped reintroduce the Ski Hill Resources for Economic Development (SHRED) Act to fuel investment in outdoor recreation in national forests that benefits mountain communities.
    Shaheen has also led efforts to help secure full funding and permanent authorization for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), which has helped protect more than 2.5 million acres of land and supported tens of thousands of state and local outdoor recreation projects throughout the nation. In 2020, Shaheen helped lead the Great American Outdoors Act into law to permanently fund the LWCF and provide mandatory funding for deferred maintenance on public lands.  

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Union County Teacher Charged with Possession of Child Pornography and Enticement of a Minor

    Source: Office of United States Attorneys

    NEWARK, N.J. – A Union County, New Jersey man was charged with possessing images of child sexual abuse and for enticing a minor to engage in prostitution and produce child pornography, U.S. Attorney Alina Habba announced today.

    Jack Wilder, 26, of Somerville, New Jersey, was charged by complaint with one count of possession of child pornography and two counts of enticement of a minor.  He made his initial appearance today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael A. Hammer in Newark federal court and was detained.

    According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:

    In or around February 2024, Wilder, a history teacher at a school in Plainfield, New Jersey, communicated with a minor victim using a mobile payment application through which Wilder advised he would pay the minor victim to engage in sexual activity.  The minor victim also sent Wilder sexually explicit pictures.  Thereafter, on or about July 23, 2024, Wilder returned from an international trip aboard a flight that landed in New York.  Law enforcement subsequently lawfully searched Wilder’s cell phone and found a video depicting child sexual abuse material and sexually explicit conversations between Wilder and other individuals who identified themselves as minors.

    “These charges are the most recent example of this office’s dedication to protecting children in our community.  We are tirelessly committed to working with our law enforcement partners to ensure that individuals who victimize and prey on the vulnerable are brought to justice.”

    – U.S. Attorney Alina Habba

    “Our children are the most innocent members of society and they should never be victimized by anyone, particularly​ by those in positions of trust such as teachers,” said Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Newark Special Agent in Charge Ricky J. Patel. “In partnership with the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, every child has our unwavering commitment ​to bring to justice those that would heinously abuse them for their own profit and perverse self-gratification. No child should have to face a lifetime of trauma caused by a predator. We will continue to make combatting child sexual exploitation a priority, and will always strive to put an end to ​these disturbing acts from happening around the world.”

    The charge of possession of child pornography carries a maximum potential penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.  The charges of enticement of a minor each carry a statutory mandatory minimum penalty of 10 years in prison, a maximum potential penalty of life imprisonment, and a $250,000 fine.

    U.S. Attorney Habba credited the work of the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations Newark, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Ricky J. Patel, with the investigation leading to the charges.

    This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit: https://www.justice.gov/psc.

    The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Casey S. Smith of the Criminal Division in Newark.

    The charges and allegations contained in the indictment are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

                                                                           ###

    Defense counsel: Candace Hom, Esq.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI New Zealand: Raising achievement & closing the equity gap at school

    Source: New Zealand Government

    The Government is continuing to raise achievement and close the equity gap in schools across the country, so all Kiwi kids have the knowledge, skills and competencies they need to reach their full potential, Education Minister Erica Stanford says.  
    The Governments’ ambitious changes reflect the responsibility we have to these children and young people, to ensure their experiences with our education system deliver consistent high-quality, services that set students up for future success.  As students start back at school this week for Term 2, they will benefit from:  

    Cell phone use banned in schools so students can concentrate on their learning,
    An hour a day of reading, writing, and maths in primary and intermediate classrooms,
    A world-leading year-by-year, knowledge-rich, internationally comparable, evidence-based curriculum detailing what is taught and when in english and maths all the way from year 1 to year 13 with other subject areas underway. 
    Over 836,000 maths resources for students and teachers in primary and intermediates to support the new maths curriculum,
    The mandated teaching of phonics and structured literacy so that every child gets the very best start when they learn to read,
    A phonics checks after 20 and 40 weeks at school to ensure that children’s reading is on track and progressing,
    $3.2 million over 2025/2026 for tier 2 teachers to support readers who need extra help using structured literacy approaches. 962 schools are benefitting from this investment,
    $3 million to support 3,000 Year 7-8 students to accelerate their learning with 12 weeks of math tutoring,
    20,000 teachers having received high quality professional development in structured literacy and 15,000 have received training in structured maths, 
    NCEA co-requisite literacy and numeracy supports reaching 9,100 kids.  

    “I’ve asked the Education Review Office (ERO) to track closely how well our new approaches are working, and the emerging findings are encouraging.” Ms Stanford says.  
    ERO has found: 

    Almost two-thirds of teachers say structured literacy approaches have already changed their teaching practices a lot.
    Half of teachers report that structured literacy approaches have improved student engagement a lot.
    Three-quarters of teachers say structured literacy approaches have improved literacy for most students. 
    For maths, nearly 90 percent of monitored schools have appointed a lead for implementation. 

    “After the first term of implementing structured literacy approaches through the new national curriculum, this is a testament to the incredible work of our teachers. We know how important it is for our schools to be supported, which is why I’ve asked ERO to keep me updated to ensure that schools receive the support they need.” 
    “Everything we are doing in English medium schools we are providing in te reo Māori. No matter where you are in the country, parents can have confidence that this Government is putting the foundations in place for their child to reach their full potential at school,”  
    “We want Kiwi kids to learn in safe, warm and dry classrooms. It is crucial school property is delivered effectively and efficiently across the country so more students, teachers and communities benefit from suitable learning environments,” 
    “There has been a 35 percent increase in the number of standardised and repeatable designs, allowing us to reduce the price per classroom by 28 percent and built 137 more classrooms in 2024 than in 2023.” Ms Stanford says. 
    Through the Government’s decisive action to improve efficiency and performance in school property delivery, $100 million has been freed up to deliver new schools and more classrooms across the country in areas that have growing populations. 
    “Thank you to our amazing principals, teachers and support staff for your incredibly hard work in implementing this transformational system reform. Our plan is setting every child in New Zealand up for success and restoring ambition and achievement at the heart of the education system,” Ms Stanford says.  

    MIL OSI New Zealand News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Reed Renews Push to End Special Tax Deductions for Huge Executive Bonuses

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Rhode Island Jack Reed
    WASHINGTON, DC – According to the Economic Policy Institute, the gulf in pay between CEOs and average workers is 290 to 1. In an effort to ensure that hardworking U.S. taxpayers are not forced to subsidize lavish executive compensation packages while making a fraction of CEO pay, U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) today reintroduced legislation that would finally fully close a major loophole in corporate tax law.
    The Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act (S. 1576) would put an end to a special tax break for huge executive bonuses by preventing publicly traded corporations from deducting the cost of any multimillion-dollar pay package paid to executives from their corporate tax bills.
    Under section 162(m) of the tax code, publicly traded corporations cannot deduct more than $1 million in compensation paid to their top executives.  But section 162(m) does not cover compensation paid to all public company employees, and corporations have long exploited this loophole to claim tax deductions for executive compensation packages that far exceed $1 million.  As publicly traded corporations offer lucrative compensation deals to increasing numbers of executives and not just those at the very top of the organization, U.S. taxpayers are shouldering the cost.
    Both Republican and Democratic administrations have signed laws based on earlier versions of this legislation in order to curtail the abuse of this deduction.  This includes ensuring that performance-based compensation is actually counted as compensation under section 162(m) and increasing the number of highly paid executives who are subject to section 162(m).  Partially tightening the law in these ways has saved taxpayers billions of dollars.  However, the full loophole has still not been closed, and taxpayers continue to subsidize extravagant compensation.
    The Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act would address the remaining gaps by applying section 162(m) restrictions to all employees of publicly traded corporations so that all compensation is subject to a deductibility cap of $1 million per employee.  The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that closing this loophole would save taxpayers nearly $80 billion over ten years.  In other words, taxpayers are currently paying around $8 billion each year to subsidize exorbitant executive pay packages.
    “Corporations shouldn’t be able to get out of paying their fair share of taxes by lavishing executives with jumbo bonuses at the expense of taxpayers, workers, and shareholders.  Taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing millionaire compensation and it’s way past time for this loophole to be fully closed,” said Senator Reed.  “Companies are free to pay their executives as much as they want.  But it is unfair to force hardworking American taxpayers to foot the bill for multimillion-dollar bonuses.  The Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act puts an end to this give-away and will restore fairness to the tax code and ensure corporations, not taxpayers, are the ones who pay for multimillion dollar bonuses.  Success and capitalism are not at issue here.  What’s at issue is a broken system that has taxpayers subsidizing multimillion dollar executive bonuses while those same taxpayers are struggling with rising costs.”
    The Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act is also cosponsored by U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
    The bill is supported by Public Citizen, Americans for Financial Reform, the AFL-CIO, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, MIT Professor and Nobel Prize Winner Simon Johnson, Take On Wall Street, Americans for Tax Fairness, and the Institute for Policy Studies, Global Economy Project.
    “This is a timely and important proposal, addressing a basic issue of fairness in the American economy,” said MIT Professor and Nobel Prize Winner Simon Johnson.
    “It’s high time our tax code stopped rewarding large corporations for giving their executives extravagant pay packages. We applaud Senator Reed and Representative Doggett for introducing legislation to finally close a senseless loophole that subsidizes outrageous executive pay,” said Natalia Renta, Associate Director of Corporate Governance and Power at Americans for Financial Reform.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Senators Murray, Wyden, and Padilla and West Coast Ports Sound Alarm on Trump’s Tariffs Leaving Shelves Bare, Forcing Painful Layoffs

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Washington State Patty Murray
    ***WATCH THE FULL PRESS CONFERENCE HERE; DOWNLOAD HERE***
    Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Alex Padilla (D-CA) held a virtual press call alongside West Coast ports to sound the alarm on the dramatic decline of container ships making the trip to West Coast ports and the harmful consequences of Trump’s tariffs across the American economy—price hikes, layoffs, empty store shelves, and more.
    The Senators were joined by Mario Cordero, Chief Executive Officer of the Port of Long Beach; Ryan Calkins, Port of Seattle Commissioner; and Dick Marzano, Port of Tacoma Commissioner. The press call comes just one day after the overwhelming majority of Senate Republicans rejected a bipartisan resolution led by Senator Wyden and unanimously supported by Democrats to repeal President Donald Trump’s global tariffs.
    A new forecast by Apollo Global Management contends that the U.S. economy is on the verge of a self-inflicted recession as a result of Trump’s tariff policies, drawing a plain timeline from Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” on April 2nd to a dramatic slowdown of container ships making their way to U.S. ports. Apollo predicts this slowdown of container ships will lead to a sharp decrease in trucking demand by mid-to-late May, which will subsequently result in supply shortages and lower sales for retailers. By late May to early June, Apollo predicts layoffs will occur across trucking and retail industries and that the U.S. economy will fall into a recession by this summer.
    During the call, the West Coast Senators sounded the alarm on the major warning signs for the economy and continued to urge their Republican colleagues to join them in asserting Congressional authority over tariffs to put an end to Trump’s trade war and minimize the economic damage already inflicted by the President.
    “We are already seeing the consequences of Trump’s tariffs at our ports: fewer ships from across the Pacific, means less cargo at our ports, less cargo at our ports means less goods for our truckers to transport—and that ultimately means bare shelves for our retailers and the American consumer,” said Senator Murray. “Our ports know better than anyone that supply chains do not reset in an instant. The time to reverse these Republican tariffs was the same day they were announced. Every day This Republican Congress refuses to reject these tariffs is a day they are actively enabling Trump’s pro-recession agenda and higher taxes on every American. Congress needs to take the matches away from the President who is setting fire to the economy. Democrats are going to make sure Republicans continue to feel the pressure until this Congress takes action and overrides this President.”
    “Oregon knows firsthand that Trump’s tariff chaos is already hurting small businesses and drying up markets for red-white-and-blue products,” said Senator Wyden. “Speaking with small businesses and workers all over Oregon last week, every single one warned of damage from tariffs in the near future. West Coast senators will be on the front lines pushing back against these senseless Republican tariffs.”
    “California’s Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are keystones for the success of not just our state’s economy, but our national economy. So when the San Pedro Bay ports and other West Coast ports send warning signs about the damage of Trump’s tariffs, we know they’re really warning signs for our country,” said Senator Padilla. “The drop in cargo volume caused by Trump’s tariffs will mean empty shelves when products don’t reach our stores, rising prices on everything from groceries to clothes to cars, and undoubtedly, more Americans out of work. While today, it’s Western ports — we know it will only be a matter of weeks before the ripple effect causes pain across the nation.”
    “We take our mission as ports seriously because a lot is at stake. The current tariffs will have far-reaching consequences for Washington businesses and consumers, and the thousands of jobs that rely on international trade. We are fortunate to have such a great advocate in Senator Murray and are grateful for her continued attention to these critical issues,” said Northwest Seaport Alliance Managing Member and Port of Tacoma Commissioner, Dick Marzano.
    “At the Northwest Seaport Alliance, we have already started to see serious impacts of the tariff war on our docks. As our policy makers address economic and security concerns with international trading partners, we encourage them to tread carefully in order to preserve space for a commercial relationship. We thank Senator Murray for her advocacy for policies that support Washington businesses, jobs, and communities,” said Northwest Seaport Alliance Managing Member and Port of Seattle Commissioner, Ryan Calkins.  
    “As one of America’s largest ports, Long Beach moves more than $300 billion in cargo every year to and from every congressional district, supporting 2.7 million jobs. Due to the new trade policies, we are about to see a shift from cargo surge to cargo slowdown in the supply chain, and this will have a real impact on the American economy. For workers across the country whose jobs depend on cargo moving through the Port of Long Beach – dockworkers, truckers, logistics workers, retailers, farmers, factory workers – any sort of long-term, sustained downturn in shipments caused by the tariff will be detrimental to the job market. I remain hopeful that leaders in our nation’s capital recognize the significance of the goods movement industry and will take necessary action to ensure America’s economy can thrive,” said Mario Cordero, CEO of the Port of Long Beach.
    “Cargo volume at the nation’s busiest port will drop by about one-third next week,” said Port of Los Angeles Executive Director, Gene Seroka. “That means fewer jobs along with rising prices for consumers and businesses. Additionally, counter tariffs are having a severe impact on American agricultural exporters. We need agreements quickly with our trading partners that benefit and support the U.S. economy and supply chain.”
    Washington state has one of the most trade-dependent economies of any state in the country, with 40 percent of jobs tied to international commerce. Washington state is the top U.S. producer of apples, blueberries, hops, pears, spearmint oil, and sweet cherries—all of which risk losing vital export markets due to retaliatory tariffs from key trading partners including Canada. Additionally, more than 12,000 small and medium-sized companies in Washington state export goods and will struggle to absorb the impact of retaliatory tariffs. Canada is Washington’s largest trading partner, accounting for nearly $20 billion in imports and $10 billion in exports. China is the world’s second-largest economy and Washington state exported over $12 billion in goods to China last year—making China Washington state’s top export partner—and imported $11.2 billion in goods, the most in imports from any country aside from Canada. Trump’s tariffs during his first term were extremely costly for Washington state—for example, India imposed a 20 percent retaliatory tariff on U.S. apples, causing Washington apple shipments to India to fall by 99 percent and growers to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in exports.
    Senator Murray has been a vocal opponent of Trump’s chaotic trade war from the very start and has been lifting up the voices of people in Washington state harmed by this administration’s approach to trade and calling on Republicans to end Trump’s trade war—which Congress has the power to do—and take back Congress’ Constitutionally-granted power to impose tariffs. Earlier last month, Senator Murray brought together leaders across Washington state who highlighted how Trump’s ongoing trade war is already a devastating hit to Washington state’s economy, businesses, and our agriculture sector. Senator Murray also took to the Senate floor to lay out how Trump’s chaotic trade war is seriously threatening our economy, American businesses, families’ retirement savings, and so much else.
    Murray has also been sounding the alarm on Trump’s tariffs across Washington state. Recently, Senator Murray held a roundtable discussion in Tacoma with local businesses and ports, met with farmers in Yakima to discuss the consequences of Trump’s tariffs, and held a roundtable discussion in Vancouver at a local metal fabrication company to highlight how Trump’s trade war is hurting businesses and our economy Washington state. Just last week, Senator Murray met with small business owners in Seattle’s University District to hear how Trump’s tariffs and the broader economic uncertainty are affecting them, and later she met with farmers in Skagit County to discuss tariffs, and visited Blaine near the Canadian border to highlight the impacts of Trump’s trade war.
    Senator Murray’s full remarks as delivered during today’s press call are below:
    “Thank you everyone for joining us, and I am so glad to be on this call today with some of my colleagues from the West Coast—the best coast. You’re going to hear from Senators Wyden and Padilla, and our West Coast ports. 
    “We are here to sound the alarm on Trump’s disaster of a trade policy with some of the ports that we represent, because the window of opportunity we have to minimize the worst consequences of this inane tariff agenda is rapidly shrinking. I want to be clear what’s happening here, one economically illiterate President is forcing a totally unpredictable and thoughtless trade war onto the entire world—and although Trump inherited a remarkably strong and resilient American economy, he is singlehandedly pushing this nation toward a painful Republican Recession while forcing a tax increase on everyone.
    “All of the major economic indicators are there, we’re talking big red, flashing sirens. We went from months of strong economic growth and predictions of more growth to come, to a shrinking economy all thanks to Trump and his tariffs. Consumer confidence is at its lowest level since COVID because it’s pretty obvious Trump is driving the economy into the ground on purpose. Small businesses in my state who rely on imports are telling me the situation is as dire for them as it was during COVID—during COVID! They’re actually calling Trump’s trade war a kind of COVID 2.0 for them.
    “They are facing tariffs on items we either don’t grow or make in the United States, and realistically never will, for things like coffee or Green Tea. They are shouting from the rooftop that Trump is singlehandedly detonating a mass extinction event for small businesses in America.
    “And listen, few people understand better than our Ports that you don’t need these tariffs to last very long for them to have a verybig impact. Fewer ships from across the Pacific, means less cargo at our ports, less cargo at our ports means less goods for our truckers to transport, and that ultimately means bare shelves for our retailers and the American consumer.
    “Now even if you assume the most optimistic outlook that Trump is going to cut amazing new trade deals with everyone he’s burned—which he won’t—there will still be a painful cost from the shock to the economy that has already been set in motion. Supply chains do not reset in an instant. The time to reverse these Republican tariffs was the same day they were announced.
    “Just three Republicans chose to support Senator Wyden’s resolution yesterday, with the majority blocking that bill. That is a dangerous and deliberate decision by Republicans to enable Trump’s pro-recession agenda and higher taxes on every American—and for every day that Republicans choose to allow Trump to sabotage the economy, more small businesses will continue to suffer.
    “Businesses in Washington state are already having to take cost cutting measures, they’re laying off employees, some may even close for good. For what? There’s no strategy here. It’s short-term pain for long-term pain. This entire debacle is already a prime example of self-inflicted economic arson. No one wins here.
    “Republicans need to cut their losses, and work with Democrats immediately to end this tax on consumers and stop these nonsense trade wars. Congress needs to take the matches away from the President who is setting fire to the economy. So, Democrats are going to make sure Republicans continue to feel the pressure until this Congress takes action and overrides this President.
    “So, with that, I want to turn it over to Senator Wyden. He has been a leader in our efforts to rein in Trump’s tariffs.”

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Gillibrand Slams Trump Administration For Making Seniors More Vulnerable To Financial Frauds And Scams

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for New York Kirsten Gillibrand
    In 2023, More Than 4,300 Older New Yorkers Were Victims of Fraud; Victims Lost Over $200 Million;
    Trump Is Firing The Federal Regulators Who Help Older Adults Fight Frauds and Scams
    Today, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Aging Committee, held a virtual press conference highlighting Trump administration policies that are leaving senior citizens vulnerable to financial fraud. 
    President Trump is working to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a federal agency that prevents Americans from getting scammed by big banks and corporations and responds to millions of consumer complaints each year. He has attempted to fire nearly 90% of the agency’s staff, including all but one employee of the CFPB’s Office of Financial Protection of Older Americans. Older Americans are disproportionately the targets of scams and fraud; in 2023 alone, Americans over age 60 lost $3.4 billion to scams. Without the CFPB’s financial education and counseling, coordination with other agencies, and enforcement support activity, they will be left even more vulnerable to exploitation. 
    “Since its creation after the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB has provided over $21 billion in compensation and relief to Americans impacted by financial scams, frauds, and wrongdoing,” said Senator Gillibrand.“Now, President Trump is trying to shutter the agency and eliminate the support and resources it offers to seniors, putting them at risk of losing their savings or even plunging them into debt. I will be doing everything in my power to stop this ill-considered and illegal shutdown from moving forward.” 
    The CFPB’s Office of Financial Protection of Older Americans helps educate older Americans about common scams that target seniors and provides a variety of resources to help them navigate medical billing and debt, reverse mortgages, the death of a spouse, and more. 
    The effort to shut down the CFPB is just the latest of President Trump’s attacks on seniors’ financial wellbeing. He has attempted to shut down Social Security field offices, cut thousands of staff, and eliminate phone support – making it harder for seniors to access the benefits they have spent a lifetime earning. The administration has also paused regulations on inaccurate credit reporting that would protect victims of elder abuse. 
    The full text of Senator Gillibrand’s letter to the Acting Director of the CFPB is available here or below: 
    Acting Director
    Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
    1700 G St. NW
    Washington, DC 20552
    Dear Acting Director Vought,
    We write with grave concerns about illegal actions you are taking in your acting role at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Last week, you tried to fire nearly all of the agency’s remaining 1,700 employees—the staff responsible for fulfilling the CFPB’s mission and statutory requirements to prevent Americans from getting scammed by big banks and giant corporations. Your hasty and unjustified mass firings are an illegal shutdown of the CFPB that will leave it unable to conduct agency actions that are required by law.
    You directed the gutting of entire divisions—including departments created by Congress to protect service members and older Americans—attempting to leave a shell of only 200 employees to supervise and examine large financial institutions across the country, respond to millions of consumer complaints, answer the phone for hundreds of thousands of people seeking help, monitor emergency financial risks, and run all of the agency’s other operations. This rush to dismantle the CFPB without any careful analysis of the impact on its work is not only illegal, it also defies a court order prohibiting you from shutting down the agency and interfering with its statutorily required responsibilities.
    A bipartisan majority in Congress created the CFPB as part of the Dodd-Frank Act in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Since its creation, the CFPB has returned over $21 billion to Americans cheated by giant companies and has been the primary federal regulator supervising and examining the largest financial institutions across the country for compliance with consumer financial protection laws. Congress authorized the CFPB to play this role and required it to perform more than 80 specific functions to protect consumers and our economy from the types of rampant consumer abuse that set off the Great Recession. It is not possible for your proposed skeleton crew of CFPB employees to conduct anything close to all of those congressionally mandated activities to protect consumers. To take just a few examples, your planned cuts include:
    •      Slashing staff so just 16 employees would be responsible for addressing millions of complaints from scammed consumers. Under 12 U.S.C. 5493(b)(3) and 5511(c), the CFPB must maintain an office for collecting, investigating, and addressing complaints from consumers about financial products and services. Specifically, the law states that the Director shall establish a unit whose functions shall include establishing a single, tollfree telephone number, a website, and a database or utilizing an existing database to facilitate the centralized collection of, monitoring of, and response to consumer complaints regarding consumer financial products or services.” 
    In 2024 alone, CFPB received more than 2.7 million complaints, routed more than 100,000 complaints to other regulators, directed more than 100,000 complaints to companies, and oversaw the vendor responsible for handling more than 40,000 calls per month.6 But according to court filings, you have slashed the staff in that responsible section of the CFPB from approximately 135 to 16 people (and did not consult the head of the Office of Consumer Response to determine how to continue fulfilling the agency’s statutory responsibilities). In fact, the head of that office said that after the staff cuts, “the Office will be incapable of performing its statutory duties.”
    •      Wiping out the office required to help members of our military, leaving just one employee responsible for assisting thousands of service members and their families. Under 12 U.S.C. 5493(e), the Director “shall establish an Office of Service Member Affairs, which shall be responsible for developing and implementing initiatives for service members and their families.” These initiatives must include efforts to “educate and empower service members and their families to make better informed decisions regarding consumer financial products and services,” “monitor complaints by service members and their families and responses to those complaints by the Bureau or other appropriate Federal or State agency” and “coordinate efforts among Federal and State agencies . . . regarding consumer protection measures relating to consumer financial products and services offered to, or used by, service members and their families.”
    There are more than two million service members in the United States. In 2023, service members and their families submitted nearly 84,600 complaints to the CFPB, a 27% increase from 2022 and a 98% increase from 2021. But according to court filings, you have gutted the entire office so it will be staffed by a single person.
    •      Eliminating support for older Americans, leaving just one employee focused on the tens of millions of seniors who are disproportionately targeted by scams and fraud. Under 12 U.S.C. 5493(g), the CFPB must maintain an “Office of Financial Protection for Older Americans” that is “headed by an assistant director” and must “facilitate the financial literacy of [seniors] on protection from unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices and on current and future financial choices.” The office must specifically monitor certifications of financial advisors, conduct research to identify best practices for counseling seniors about personal financial management, develop goals for financial literacy programs, coordinate consumer protection efforts with other federal and state regulators, and work with outside organizations involved with assisting seniors.
    There are roughly 62 million adults aged 65 and older in the United States. According to the FBI, older Americans are disproportionately the targets of scams and fraud; these crimes against Americans over age 60 caused $3.4 billion in losses in 2023. The average older fraud victim lost $33,915 in 2023.But according to court filings, you have eliminated all but one position in the Office of Financial Protection for Older Americans.
    •      Gutting the capacity to supervise hundreds of giant financial institutions and to enforce the law. Under 12 U.S.C. 5514(b) and 5515, the CFPB has exclusive authority to supervise banks with more than $10 billion in assets—along with all nonbank lenders—to ensure they are complying with federal consumer financial laws and to assess risks they may pose to consumers and the broader market for consumer financial products. The Chair of the Federal Reserve confirmed earlier this year that the CFPB is the only federal regulator examining giant banks to ensure they are following federal consumer financial laws. The CFPB is responsible for supervising more than 180 banks and bank affiliates as well as many nonbank lenders that service more than 55% of the U.S. mortgage market. But according to court filings, you have slashed the staff responsible for this nationwide supervision of hundreds of institutions from 487 to just 50 employees, with only 50 additional people remaining from the 248 who were previously assigned to pursue legal action when the CFPB discovers illegal activity or violations of consumer protection laws.
    •      Dismantling the office responsible for monitoring developments in our markets that could crash our economy again. Under 12 U.S.C. 5493(b)(1), the CFPB must maintain a research unit to analyze and report on trends in consumer financial products and services, including on consumer understanding of costs, risks and benefits of those products; the use of disclosures; and access to fair and affordable credit for traditionally underserved communities. Under 12 U.S.C. 5499, the CFPB must maintain public access to all published data sets. Under 12 U.S.C. 5512(c), it must actively monitor and issue reports on emerging risks to consumers. Under 12 U.S.C. 5106(a)(1), 2809(a), and 2809(c), it must also help maintain a registration system for mortgage loan originators; compile statistics, on an ongoing basis, on mortgage issuance; and make mortgage issuance data available to the public. But according to court filings, your cuts would slash the research unit from 208 to 22 staff and eliminate all 10 current employees of the data office.
    •      Eliminating almost 90% of the agency that has returned $21 billion to scammed consumers and families. The examples above only illustrate the broader ways in which you are dismantling the CFPB, where you plan to leave a single person responsible for the Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity, a single person in the Office of Civil Rights, a Private Education Loan Ombudsman with no staff, no Chief Data Officer, and almost no one responsible for basic tasks like running CFPB operations—much less fulfilling all of the more than 80 statutory obligations of the agency. You appear to have no plan for ensuring the CFPB meaningfully meets its responsibilities, including many not highlighted here—such as maintaining an Office of Financial Education, working with a Consumer Advisory Board, engaging in community affairs, and regulating mortgage loan servicing.
    In short, it is not possible for the CFPB to perform all of its statutorily required functions with a staff of 200 people left after slashing almost 90% of the agency. Directors from both Republican and Democratic Administrations have all made clear that they needed far more personnel to fulfill their responsibilities under the law. Even during the cuts early in the first Trump Administration, the number of employees never dropped below 1,400—nearly seven times the broken shell that would be left after you have hollowed out the staff. In fact, staffing increased after Director Kathy Kraninger—appointed by President Trump—undertook a “comprehensive planning initiative in 2019 to determine the staffing levels needed to support and execute the Bureau’s priorities in Fiscal Year 2020.”
    Maintaining the staff to perform the agency’s required functions is a critical responsibility. There is no other federal agency that is chiefly responsible for enforcing our federal consumer financial protection laws, and consumers across America will be left to fend for themselves against a broad swath of unchecked financial frauds and scams. Though the Trump Administration filed a document last week with a superficial list of the number of people assigned to some sections of the CFPB, it includes a number of zeroed-out offices and does not explain how the remaining 200 staff will perform each of the agency’s required functions.
    In light of these significant concerns, we request that you provide—by April 30, 2025—a detailed accounting of each of the more than 80 statutory obligations of the CFPB, the number of employees assigned to each of those functions as of December 2024, the number of employees who would be assigned to each function if your rushed reduction in force were to go into effect, the immediate impact of such a reduction on the agency’s ability to perform each function consistent with federal law and federal court orders, and copies of any individualized or particularized analysis of those planned reductions on the agency’s work.
    Sincerely,

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Tillis, Coons, Kiley, and Peters Reintroduce Landmark Legislation to Restore American Innovation

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for North Carolina Thom Tillis
    WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, and Chris Coons (D-DE) and Representatives Kevin Kiley (R-CA) and Scott Peters (D-CA) reintroduced the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act. This bipartisan, bicameral legislation will restore patent eligibility to important inventions across many fields while also resolving legitimate concerns over the patenting of mere ideas, the mere discovery of what already exists in nature, and social and cultural content that everyone agrees is beyond the scope of the patent system. It also affirms the basic principle that the patent system is central to promoting technology-based innovation.
    “Clear, reliable, and predictable patent rights are imperative to enable investments in the broad array of innovative technologies that are critical to the economic and global competitiveness of the United States, and to ensuring the national security of our great country,” said Senator Tillis. “Unfortunately, a series of Supreme Court decisions have rendered patent eligibility law unclear, unreliable, and unpredictable, resulting in U.S. inventors being unable to obtain patents in areas where our economic peers offer patent protection. This is particularly concerning in the economically critical areas of biotechnology and artificial intelligence. This bipartisan, bicameral legislation maintains the existing statutory categories of eligible subject matter, which have worked well for over two centuries, while addressing inappropriate judicially created eligibility limitations by creating clear rules for what is eligible. We cannot allow foreign adversaries like China to overtake us in key areas of technology innovation due to the current state of patent eligibility law. I look forward to continuing to work with all stakeholders on this important matter. Passing patent eligibility reform is one of my top legislative priorities.”
    “When American innovators know their ideas are eligible for patent protection, they take the risks that push us into the future – whether that’s the next medical test or the latest AI technology,” said Senator Coons. “PERA restores clarity to the law on what can be patented and what cannot – guidance that federal courts have been requesting for years and that the Supreme Court has refused to provide. Congress must step up to provide America’s inventors with the stable legal foundation they need to produce the cutting-edge technologies that power our economy.”
    “American innovators have been at a disadvantage in recent years because of the U.S. patent system,” said Representative Kevin Kiley. “Convoluted Supreme Court rulings and tests on subject matter eligibility have made it increasingly difficult for inventors to receive patents, leading to foreign companies overtaking our own. That’s why I’m proud to introduce the bi-partisan Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, which will dramatically reverse this trend, and unleash a tide of economic growth and job creation here at home.”
    “For more than two centuries, a U.S. patent has guaranteed inventions will be protected from theft, helping the U.S. become the innovation capital of the world. San Diego, in particular, is the proud home of a thriving life sciences and technology ecosystem that has benefited from these protections,” said Representative Peters. “Over the last 15 years, however, several Supreme Court decisions have created confusion about what exactly is eligible for a patent. Innovators, consumers, and even the judges who adjudicate patent law have called on Congress to provide clarity on what can be patented. I look forward to working with Congressman Kiley, Senator Coons, and Senator Tillis to advance our Patent Eligibility Restoration Act and protect American innovation.” 
    “Congress has not made substantive changes to what subject matter is patentable in the United States since the Patent Act of 1793, making it difficult for courts, inventors, and the public to understand how 21st-century technologies fit within an 18th Century patent statute,” said Andrei Iancu, board co-chair of C4IP and former Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and USPTO Director from 2018 to 2021. “I commend Congress for advancing PERA in order to finally modernize our patent laws and promote U.S. global leadership in biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and other modern technologies.” 
    “PERA provides the clarity needed to unlock the full potential of cutting-edge technologies and solidify U.S. leadership in scientific and technological breakthroughs,” said David Kappos, board co-chair of C4IP and former Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and USPTO Director from 2009 to 2013. “We cannot allow legal uncertainty to stall the next wave of American innovation.”
    “Patent Eligibility is an important issue for cancer patients – both for life-saving, early diagnosis and for promising new treatments.  PERA will provide the certainty needed to enable innovative breakthroughs to reach patients. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute applauds Congress for introducing and advancing this important bill – the patients are waiting.” – Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
    “Passing PERA is essential if the US is to catch up to Europe and Asia, especially China,” said Judge Paul Michel (retired). “They make eligible for patenting many classes of inventions held ineligible here. The very uncertainty of the zone of eligibility is itself an obstacle to companies getting the investments they need to compete both domestically and globally. Only Congress can fix this chaotic mess because the courts are trapped in their own harmful precedents.” 
    “In my former court, which hears patent cases on appeal, concurring and dissenting opinions in patent eligibly cases have proliferated,” said Judge Kathleen O’Malley (retired). “Veteran jurists have described the state of affairs as ‘incoherent,’ ‘unclear,’ ‘fraught,’ and ‘inconsistent.’ The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act would return clarity to patent eligibly law and encourage continued innovation in key emerging technologies – technologies that are central to the United States remaining the world’s innovation leader.”
    “NCLifeSci thanks Senator Tillis for reintroducing the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2025, which restores the confidence in our nation’s patent laws by bringing much needed clarity to Section 101 of the Patent Act. Confidence that the life sciences industry needs to robustly invest in the future of medicine. For too long, fields like diagnostics, precision medicine, cell and gene therapy, RNA medicine, and digital health have been threatened by unclear and uncertain patent-eligibility standards that put America’s innovators at a disadvantage, and that discourage local investment. Through this legislation, our members – which include leading innovators who operate cutting-edge gene therapy manufacturing facilities here in North Carolina and research potential treatments and cures for Alzheimer’s and cancer —will be able to continue to take the bold risks and make the high levels of investment necessary to take fields like these to their next level, with the confidence that our patent laws will continue to hold up through future waves of technological progress.” – NC Life Sciences Organization 
    “The Innovation Alliance applauds Senators Tillis and Coons and Representatives Kiley and Peters for sponsoring the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, which will provide much needed predictability and clarity to the hopelessly confused law of patent eligibility.  The Supreme Court has provided no workable framework to guide patent owners or the courts, and it has repeatedly refused to clarify the law, rejecting requests by the Federal Circuit and others to do so time and again. Investment dollars are flowing out of the United States as a result, jeopardizing the future of America’s innovation economy. It is past time for Congress to act.” – The Innovation Alliance  
    “This bipartisan and much-needed bill would strike a decade of judicial tinkering that has needlessly turned the question of patent eligibility into a confusing mess and harmed the U.S. versus our economic competitors. While the U.S. has spent a decade holding back innovations in areas such as fintech, diagnostic solutions and medical devices trying to figure out whether they are ‘abstract’ or not, our competitors are moving forward and protecting these inventions. PERA would be particularly beneficial to American startups and innovators by providing the clarity needed to attract investment for new ventures in essential areas such as medical devices, diagnostics, manufacturing and a whole new range of advancements powered by software.”- Alliance of U.S. Startups & Inventors for Jobs
    “AUTM – the association representing technology transfer professionals – thanks Senators Tillis and Coons and others for their leadership in introducing PERA. This legislation is crucially needed to address the ambiguities that the courts have created about what is, and what is not, patent eligible. At a time when the U.S. is competing for innovation leadership, its patent system needs to clearly delineate this process so that it can move forward on numerous discoveries that otherwise would wither on the vine.” – AUTM
    “The reintroduction of the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) marks a pivotal move toward restoring clarity and consistency in U.S. patent law. By providing clear statutory guidelines, PERA offers inventors, entrepreneurs, and research institutions the certainty needed to innovate confidently. We commend Senator Tillis and Senator Coons for their leadership on this critical issue and remain committed to collaborating with Congress to support a patent system that fosters transparency and predictability.” – American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA)
    “The Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform applauds Congress for reintroducing PERA. This legislation represents a significant step forward in clarifying patent eligibility while maintaining necessary standards on what is ultimately patentable.  21C applauds these efforts as they will make sure that the United States remains the most attractive place in the world to invest, invent, and grow.” – The Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform (21C)
    The following organizations support the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act: Innovation Alliance, C4IP, AUTM, AIPLA, IEEE-USA, USIJ, MDMA, BIO, NCLifeSci, Adeia, Nokia, Sisvel, Conservatives for Property Rights, Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, U.S. Business & Industry Council, Center for a Free Economy, Center for Individual Freedom, American Policy Center, Less Government, 60 Plus Association, American Association of Senior Citizens, Frontiers of Freedom, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy, Center for American Principles, Prosperity for Us Foundation, Market Institute, Inventors Defense Alliance, Lauder Partners, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Heritage Action, 21C, Netlist, and FICPI.
    Background:
    Unfortunately, due to a series of Supreme Court decisions, patent eligibility law in the United States has become confused, constricted, and unclear in recent years. This has resulted in a wide range of well-documented negative impacts – inconsistent case decisions, uncertainty in innovation and investment communities, and unpredictable business outcomes.
    As of 2021, all 12 then-sitting judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit lamented the state of the law. Witnesses and stakeholders from a wide array of industries, fields, interest groups, and academia have testified and submitted comments confirming the uncertainty and detailing the detrimental effects of patent eligibility confusion in the United States. There is now widespread bipartisan agreement in Congress and across all recent Administrations that reforms are necessary to restore the United States to a position of global strength and leadership in key areas of technology and innovation, such as medical diagnostics, biotechnology, personalized medicine, artificial intelligence, 5G, and blockchain.
    The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act achieves this critical goal by restoring patent eligibility to important inventions across many fields, while also resolving legitimate concerns over patenting of mere ideas, the mere discovery of what already exists in nature, and social and cultural content that everyone agrees is beyond the scope of the patent system, which is a system aimed at promoting technology-based innovation. As a general approach, the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act maintains the existing statutory categories of eligible subject matter, which have worked well for over two centuries, but eliminates the overly malleable set of current judicial exceptions – replacing them with five specific, defined statutory exclusions. By eliminating and replacing the current judicial exceptions, the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act provides predictable patent eligibility for important computer-implemented technological developments and medical advances, creating a solid bedrock for America’s innovation future.
    Full text of the bill is available HERE. 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Meridian Man Sentenced to 27 Months in Prison for Possession of a Machinegun

    Source: Office of United States Attorneys

    Jackson, MS – A Meridian, Mississippi, man was sentenced today to 27 months in prison for possession of a machinegun.

    According to court documents, Demetriz Romelo Hopson, 25, was found by law enforcement officers in possession of a Glock 9mm handgun that had been equipped with a machinegun conversion device or “switch” while Hopson was attending a football game on the campus of Meridian High School. Hopson pleaded guilty to the charged conduct on January 8, 2025.

    Acting U.S. Attorney Patrick A. Lemon of the Southern District of Mississippi and Special Agent in Charge Joshua Jackson of the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives made the announcement.

    The ATF investigated the case with assistance from the Meridian Schools Police Department.

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Samuel Goff prosecuted the case.

    This case is part of Operation Take Back America (https://www.justice.gov/dag/media/1393746/dl?inline), a nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Department of Justice to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), and protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime. Operation Take Back America streamlines efforts and resources from the Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETFs) and Project Safe Neighborhood (PSN).

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Raman Bahal Receives the School of Pharmacy 2025 Faculty Research Advising Award

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    Raman Bahal, Associate Professor of Pharmacy, earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University before receiving post-doctoral training at Yale. After pursuing his interests in pharmaceuticals and physical sciences, Bahal took his versatile knowledge and passion for interdisciplinary sciences to UConn in 2017 as an assistant professor. He went on to apply ambitiously for the role of associate professor a year early, eager to take on more responsibility.  

    During his time at UConn, Bahal has excelled in multiple areas, but prides himself on his students and research: “My students are my accomplishment.” Combining his passion for research and his love for mentoring students throughout their academic journey, Bahal has worked with undergraduate and graduate students in many capacities. The mentorship provided by Bahal has transformed into life-changing results when just last year Bahal and his team launched a startup – called Zeal Therapeutics – to develop a promising drug delivery system to target the kidneys. Bahal is also passionate about therapeutic application, working with a team of faculty and students targeting genomic DNA and RNA to fight cancer cells.  Bahal has explored other research interests throughout various publications.

    “At the end of the day, as long as my students are happy, learning, and progressing – this is what matters.” 

    In addition to his research, Bahal has also taken on leadership roles within the School, including serving on the PTR Chair Committee last year, where he helped guide decisions on the promotion, tenure, and reappointments of faculty members. 

    Raman Bahal. Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutics in the School of Pharmacy onJune 27, 2019. (Sean Flynn/UConn Photo)

    Bahal is honored to receive the Faculty Research Advising Award and hopes to inspire the next generation of scientists with his mentorship: “Some of the students I’ve worked with have been published as coauthors of our papers – they are strong contributors.” Looking to the future, Bahal wants to continue his mentorship journey. Passionate about building relationships between undergraduate students, Pharm.D. students, Ph.D. students, and postdocs, Bahal wants to be the bridge for relationships forged within the School.  

    Bahal also has an interest in working with students in middle and high school and finding ways to encourage STEM programs within these environments. Hosting events for younger students to visit the UConn labs and be inspired to forge their own paths in the STEM and pharmaceutical fields, Bahal hopes to create symposiums and other events to build connections between high school students and university-level students.  

    Motivated to inspire the next generation of scientists, Bahal truly embodies both the research and advising components of his award. This recognition, which Bahal attributes to UConn’s continuous support, has motivated him to look for even more ways to serve the pharmaceutical industry through his research and UConn Pharmacy through his mentorship.

    “I really like mentoring. That’s my passion.” 

    Bahal will receive his award during commencement weekend in May. 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Rep. Pfluger, Messmer Lead Push to Defund Universities Still Requiring the COVID-19 Vaccine

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman August Pfluger (TX-11)

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — As first reported in Fox News, Congressman August Pfluger (TX-11) and Congressman Mark Messmer (IN-08) introduced legislation to ensure that no federal dollars go to any university across the country that still requires its students or staff to receive a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of enrollment of employment, or receiving any benefit, service, or contract.

    The No Vaccine Mandates in Higher Education Act will codify a key piece of one of President Trump’s February executive orders that restricted federal funding to public schools, including colleges and universities, that mandate COVID-19 vaccines for attendance. It is unacceptable that any university still requires the COVID-19 vaccine. Taxpayers’ hard-earned money should not go to higher education institutions that require the COVID-19 vaccine for attendance.

    “The COVID-19 pandemic opened Pandora’s box to a lengthy list of overreaching policies and mandates from the government, institutions, and companies alike. As we work to restore common sense and liberties back to the American people, I am proud to co-lead this legislation to ensure universities can no longer force their students to have the COVID-19 vaccine,” said Rep. Pfluger.

    “It is unbelievable that even today, two years after the COVID-19 emergency was officially declared dead and gone, there are still learning institutions across this country persecuting students and staff with unnecessary vaccine mandates,” said Rep. Messmer. “The No Vaccine Mandates in Higher Education Act assures the American people that Congress and President Trump recognize this continued injustice and will work together to restore the civil liberties and freedom from government overreach that all Americans richly deserve.”

    To read the full text of the legislation, click here.

    Background:

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, many higher education institutions implemented vaccine mandates for their students and staff. These mandates affect the individual liberties of students and teachers around the country.

    Many institutions announced the end of their vaccine requirement after President Joe Biden ended the COVID-19 national and public health emergency last May. These institutions have either removed COVID-19 information from their websites or haven’t updated the content in a couple of years. 

    Even with the COVID-19 pandemic behind us, there are still higher education institutions around the country that still have vaccine requirements for their students and teachers.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: Diversified Royalty Corp. Announces Additions to the Mr. Lube + Tires Royalty Pool, May 2025 Cash Dividend and Q1 2025 Earnings Release Date

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Diversified Royalty Corp. (TSX: DIV and DIV.DB.A) (the “Corporation” or “DIV”) and Mr. Lube Canada Limited Partnership (“Mr. Lube + Tires”) announced today that effective May 1, 2025 the Mr. Lube + Tires royalty pool (the “Mr. Lube + Tires Royalty Pool”) has been adjusted to include the royalties from six new flagship Mr. Lube + Tires locations and remove one flagship Mr. Lube + Tires location that has permanently closed. With the adjustment for these five net new locations, the Mr. Lube + Tires Royalty Pool now includes 149 flagship locations.

    Sean Morrison, President and Chief Executive Officer of DIV, stated, “Mr. Lube + Tires continues to generate strong same-store-sales-growth across its franchise system and is well positioned to continue this impressive growth moving forward”.

    Pamela Lee, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mr. Lube + Tires, stated, “Mr. Lube + Tires is proud of the performance of our franchisees in 2024. We continue to be focused on growing the Mr. Lube + Tires brand, strengthening the store level economics of our franchisees, and continuing to provide best-in-class service to our customers”.

    Additions to the Mr. Lube + Tires Royalty Pool

    Subject to certain performance criteria being met, and the LP Amendment as described further below, the Mr. Lube + Tires Royalty Pool is adjusted annually on May 1 (the “Adjustment Date”) to include new Mr. Lube + Tires locations that have been open since July 1 of the previous reporting period and to remove Mr. Lube + Tires locations that have been permanently closed during the previous year.

    The initial consideration paid to Mr. Lube + Tires for the estimated net additional royalty revenue was $4.0 million, representing 80% of the total estimated consideration of $5.0 million. The initial consideration of $4.0 million was elected by DIV to be paid in the form of 1,460,419 Common Shares of DIV on the basis of the 20-day volume weighted average closing price of the Common Shares for the period ended April 24, 2025 of $2.7363 per Common Share.

    The remaining consideration payable for the additional royalty revenue of the six new Mr. Lube + Tires locations added to the Royalty Pool on May 1, 2025 will be paid to Mr. Lube + Tires on May 1, 2026, the next Adjustment Date, and will be adjusted to reflect the actual system sales of these six new locations for the year ending December 31, 2025, net of the lost system sales of the one permanently closed Mr. Lube + Tires location removed from the Mr. Lube + Tires Royalty pool on May 1, 2025.

    On May 1, 2023, the Mr. Lube + Tires Royalty Pool was adjusted to include royalties from five new flagship Mr. Lube + Tires locations. The initial consideration previously paid by DIV was $4.7 million, which represented 80% of the total estimated consideration for those five locations, which estimate was based on the forecast system sales of these five locations for year ending December 31, 2023. As a result of a previously-announced amendment (the “LP Amendment”) to the amended and restated limited partnership agreement (the “LP Agreement”) of DIV’s direct subsidiary ML Royalties Limited Partnership (“ML LP”), the remaining consideration payable for the additional royalty revenue of the five Mr. Lube + Tires locations (the “2023 True-Up Locations”) added to the Mr. Lube + Tires Royalty Pool on May 1, 2023 was to be paid to Mr. Lube + Tires on May 1, 2025 (as opposed to May 1, 2024), and adjusted to reflect the actual system sales of these five new locations for the year ending December 31, 2024 (as opposed to the actual system sales for the year ending December 31, 2023).

    The actual system sales for the 2023 True-Up Locations added to the Royalty Pool on May 1, 2023 has now been determined for the year ended December 31, 2024 to be $10.1 million. The total consideration payable to Mr. Lube + Tires for the net additional royalty revenue of these 2023 True-Up Locations based on their actual system sales for the year ended December 31, 2024 is $7.1 million. After taking into account the $4.7 million previously paid by DIV to Mr. Lube + Tires on May 1, 2023 for the 2023 True-Up Locations, DIV paid Mr. Lube + Tires the remaining $2.4 million of cash consideration for the net additional royalty revenue of these 2023 True-Up Locations on May 1, 2025.

    For further details with respect to the manner in which annual adjustments of the Mr. Lube + Tires Royalty Pool occur and the agreements underlying the procedures therefor, see DIV’s Annual Information Form dated March 24, 2025 as well as the LP Amendment, copies of each of which are available on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.com.

    May 2025 Cash Dividend

    DIV is pleased to announce that its board of directors has approved a cash dividend of $0.02083 per common share for the period of May 1, 2025 to May 31, 2025, which is equal to $0.25 per common share on an annualized basis. The dividend will be paid on May 30, 2025 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on May 15, 2025.

    Q1 2025 Earnings Release Date

    DIV will release earnings results for the three months ended March 31, 2025 following the closing of regular trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange on May 14, 2025.

    About Diversified Royalty Corp.

    DIV is a multi-royalty corporation, engaged in the business of acquiring top-line royalties from well-managed multi-location businesses and franchisors in North America. DIV’s objective is to acquire predictable, growing royalty streams from a diverse group of multi-location businesses and franchisors.

    DIV currently owns the Mr. Lube + Tires, AIR MILES®, Sutton, Mr. Mikes, Nurse Next Door, Oxford Learning Centres, Stratus Building Solutions and BarBurrito trademarks. Mr. Lube + Tires is the leading quick lube service business in Canada, with locations across Canada. AIR MILES® is Canada’s largest coalition loyalty program. Sutton is among the leading residential real estate brokerage franchisor businesses in Canada. Mr. Mikes operates casual steakhouse restaurants primarily in western Canadian communities. Nurse Next Door is a home care provider with locations across Canada and the United States as well as in Australia. Oxford Learning Centres is one of Canada’s leading franchisee supplemental education services. Stratus Building Solutions is a leading commercial cleaning service franchise company providing comprehensive janitorial, building cleaning, and office cleaning services primarily in the United States. BarBurrito is the largest quick service Mexican restaurant food chain in Canada.

    DIV’s objective is to increase cash flow per share by making accretive royalty purchases and through the growth of purchased royalties. DIV intends to continue to pay a predictable and stable monthly dividend to shareholders and increase the dividend over time, in each case as cash flow per share allows.

    Forward Looking Statements

    Certain statements contained in this news release may constitute “forward-looking information” or “financial outlook” within the meaning of applicable securities laws that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking information or financial outlook. The use of any of the words “anticipate”, “continue”, “estimate”, “expect”, “intend”, “may”, “will”, ”project”, “should”, “believe”, “confident”, “plan” and “intend” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking information and financial outlook, although not all forward-looking information and financial outlook contain these identifying words. Specifically, forward-looking information and financial outlook in this news release includes, but is not limited to, statements made in relation to: the amount and timing of the payment for the remaining consideration payable to Mr. Lube + Tires for the additional royalty revenue from the six Mr. Lube + Tires locations added to the Mr. Lube + Tires Royalty Pool on May 1, 2025; DIV’s belief that Mr. Lube + Tires will continue to generate strong same-store-sales-growth across its franchise system and is well positioned to continue its impressive growth moving forward; Mr. Lube + Tires being focused on growing the Mr. Lube + Tires brand, strengthening the store level economics of its franchisees, and continuing to provide best-in-class service to its customers; the amount and timing of the May 2025 dividend to be paid to DIV’s shareholders; the timing of DIV releasing earnings results for the three months ended March 31, 2025; DIV’s objective to continue to pay predictable and stable monthly dividends to shareholders; and DIV’s corporate objectives. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events, performance, or achievements of DIV to differ materially from those anticipated or implied in such forward-looking information and financial outlook. DIV believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information and financial outlook are reasonable but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct. In particular there can be no assurance that: Mr. Lube + Tires will continue to make royalty payments in the amounts and at the times required, or at all; the amount of, or timing of the payment for, the additional consideration payable to Mr. Lube + Tires for the six additional Mr. Lube + Tires locations added to the Mr. Lube + Tires Royalty Pool on May 1, 2025 will occur in the amount or at the time estimated; that transactions completed with Mr. Lube + Tires for the additions to the Mr. Lube + Tires Royalty Pool will be accretive to DIV shareholders; that Mr. Lube + Tires will realize any of the intended benefits of its growth strategy; that Mr. Lube + Tires will continue to grow its brand; that Mr. Lube + Tires will continue opening new stores, or that such stores will be successful if opened; that Mr. Lube + Tires will succeed in strengthening store level economics of its franchisees; that Mr. Lube + Tires will continue to provide best-in-class service to its customers; DIV will be able to make monthly dividend payments to the holders of its common shares; or DIV will achieve any of its corporate objectives. Given these uncertainties, readers are cautioned that forward-looking information and financial outlook included in this news release are not guarantees of future performance, and such forward-looking information and financial outlook should not be unduly relied upon. More information about the risks and uncertainties affecting DIV’s business and the businesses of its royalty partners can be found in the “Risk Factors” section of its Annual Information Form dated March 24, 2025 and in DIV’s most recently filed management’s discussion and analysis, copies of which are available under DIV’s profile on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.com.

    In formulating the forward-looking information and financial outlook contained herein, management has assumed that DIV will generate sufficient cash flows from its royalties to service its debt and pay dividends to shareholders; lenders will provide any necessary waivers required in order to allow DIV to continue to pay dividends; the performance of the Mr. Lube + Tires flagship locations in the Mr. Lube + Tires Royalty Pool will be consistent with DIV’s expectations; and the business and economic conditions affecting DIV and its royalty partners will continue substantially in the ordinary course, including without limitation with respect to general industry conditions, general levels of economic activity and regulations. These assumptions, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect.

    To the extent any forward-looking information in this news release constitutes a “financial outlook” within the meaning of applicable securities laws, such information is being provided to provide investors with an estimate of the financial impact to DIV of transactions with Mr. Lube + Tires described in this news release.

    All of the forward-looking information and financial outlook in this news release is qualified in its entirety by these cautionary statements and other cautionary statements or factors contained herein, and there can be no assurance that the actual results or developments will be realized or, even if substantially realized, that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, DIV. The forward-looking information and financial outlook included in this news release is presented as of the date of this news release and DIV assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise such information to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required by applicable law.

    THE TORONTO STOCK EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR THE ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

    Additional Information

    Additional information relating to the Corporation and other public filings, is available on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.com.

    Contact:
    Sean Morrison, President and Chief Executive Officer
    Diversified Royalty Corp.
    (604) 235-3146

    Greg Gutmanis, Chief Financial Officer and VP Acquisitions
    Diversified Royalty Corp.
    (604) 235-3146

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Maryland Man Sentenced to 20 Years in Federal Prison for Sexual Assault on Baltimore Cruise Ship

    Source: Office of United States Attorneys

    Baltimore, Maryland – Today, U.S. District Judge Julie R. Rubin sentenced Jalen Thomas Kelley, 22, of Abingdon, Maryland, to 20 years in federal prison followed by five years of supervised release. On December 12, 2024, after a two-week trial, a federal jury convicted Kelley of aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, and assault.

    Kelly O. Hayes, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, announced the sentence with Special Agent in Charge William J. DelBagno of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – Baltimore Field Office.

    According to the evidence presented at trial, between January 1 and January 2, 2023, Kelley forcibly raped and assaulted Victim 1 aboard the Carnival Legend. The cruise vessel was scheduled to return to Baltimore on January 2. In addition to the charged offenses, during trial, prosecutors presented testimony from six other individuals who alleged Kelley sexually assaulted them on separate occasions.

    U.S. Attorney Hayes commended the FBI for its work in the investigation, and the Harford County State’s Attorney’s Office; Harford County Sherriff’s Office; Union County, North Carolina, District Attorney’s Office; Wingate University Campus Safety; Wingate, North Carolina Police Department; and Wingate Police Department for their valuable assistance. Ms. Hayes also thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sean R. Delaney and Colleen Elizabeth McGuinn who prosecuted the federal case.

    This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.  Led by the United States Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims.  For more information about Project Safe Childhood, visit www.justice.gov/psc. Click the “Resources” tab on the left side of the page to learn about Internet safety education.

    For more information on the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office, its priorities, and resources available to help the community, please visit www.justice.gov/usao-md and https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/community-outreach.

    # # #

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Governor Polis Signs Bills Into Law Expanding Access to Behavioral Health Care and Higher Education for Military Connected Coloradans

    Source: US State of Colorado

    Governor also signs new laws focused on cell phones in the classroom and increased transparency for library resources 

    DENVER – Today, Governor Polis joined by Lt. Governor Primavera, signed legislation to expand healthcare access and services for veterans and military-connected families, and provide tuition waivers for eligible members of the Colorado National Guard.

    • SB25-247 – Tuition Waiver & Colorado National Guard Members, sponsored by Senators Jeff Bridges and Barbara Kirkmeyer, and Representatives Shannon Bird and Rick Taggart
    • HB25-1132 – Military Family Behavioral Health Grant Program, sponsored by Representatives Sean Camacho and Rebekah Stewart, and Senators Nick Hinrichsen and Jeff Bridges 

    “In Colorado, we are committed to expanding support and opportunities for our valuable military community, by saving military-connected families more money on healthcare and reducing the cost of college for the next step in their careers. Thank you to the sponsors for creating legislation that uplifts and protects Colorado’s important military community,” said Governor Polis. 

    “Colorado has always proudly stood behind those who serve — and today, we’re reaffirming that commitment,” said Lt. Governor Dianne Primavera. “With these bills, we’re taking real steps to continue supporting our military members, their families, and Veterans. We honor your service not just in words, but through meaningful action. Colorado is proud to stand with you and is committed to being the best home for our military-connected communities.” 

    Governor Polis also signed bills into law promoting transparent and healthy educational practices in Colorado to help Colorado students grow academically and succeed. 

    • SB25-063 – Library Resource Decision Standards for Public Schools, sponsored by Senators Lisa Cutter and Dafna Michaelson Jenet, and Representatives Lorena Garcia and Jenny Willford.
    • HB25-1135 – Communication Devices in Schools, sponsored by Representatives Meghan Lukens and Mary Bradfield, and Senators Janice Marchman and Lisa Frizell. 

    “Finding ways to create engaging and productive learning environments for Colorado students that foster stronger learning and bolster student engagement is critically important. This legislation strikes a balance between helping students learn better in the classroom and have access to technology when needed,” said Governor Polis. 

    Governor Polis signed the following bill into law administratively: 

    • HB25-1185 – Child Conceived from Sex Assault Court Proceedings, sponsored by Representatives Meg Froelich and Jenny Willford, and Senator Mike Weissman. This bill is bipartisan. 

    ###

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Congressman Gabe Amo, Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher, and Congressman Mike Quigley Introduce Legislation To Reverse Trump Administration Decision Allowing Federal Agencies To Ban Public Input

    Source: US Congressman Gabe Amo (Rhode Island 1st District)

    Washington, D.C.—Today, Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07), Congressman Mike Quigley (IL-05), and Congressman Gabe Amo (RI-01) introduced a resolution opposing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) proposal to limit public notice and public comment for proposed rules. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), and Senator Angus King (I-ME) introduced this legislation in the U.S. Senate today.

    “For more than half a century, the Department of Health and Human Services — under Democratic and Republican administrations alike — has allowed the American people to weigh in on proposed rules that would affect public property, loans, grants, benefits, and contracts,” said Congressman Gabe Amo. “Secretary Kennedy committed to ‘radical transparency’ during his confirmation hearing, yet his decision to end this public input would eviscerate transparency, undermine public participation, and allow the department to operate in secret. President Trump and Secretary Kennedy’s push to rescind basic transparency in public health begs the question — what are they trying to hide?”

    “For decades, HHS has engaged with the public about policies that directly affect their lives and livelihoods,” said Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher.  “As a result of this input, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have modified proposed rules in response to the issues and concerns exposed through this public comment process, often clarifying a rule’s intended meaning and correcting unforeseen errors.  Banning public comment not only reduces transparency and accountability in the HHS decision-making process, creating uncertainty for health care providers, research institutions, and advocacy groups in grantmaking processes, it also excludes the people from their government. That’s why I am glad to introduce this legislation in the House with Congressman Mike Quigley and Congressman Gabe Amo in partnership with Senator Ron Wyden, Senator Ed Markey, and Senator Angus King to reaffirm the importance of public engagement in our health care and of the people in our government.”

    “For an administration that claims to be transparent, Trump and RFK’s choice to insulate HHS from public input is repugnant,” said Congressman Mike Quigley. “This change reverses years of HHS precedent. As Founder of the Transparency Caucus, I’m proud to lead this resolution to preserve public involvement in HHS decisions.”

    In 1971, HHS adopted the Richardson Waiver to ensure that public notice and comment procedures for HHS would include rules related to public property, loans, grants, benefits, and contracts.  The 1971 directive built on legal requirements laid out by the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (APA) to allow the public greater input in agency matters.  On March 3, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy announced that HHS would rescind this longstanding policy to solicit public comments on proposed rules, effective immediately.

    AFSCME, AFT: Education, Healthcare, Public Services, AI Arthritis, Alliance for Aging Research, America’s Essential Hospitals, American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), American Federation for Aging Research, American Kidney Fund, American Lung Association, Arthritis Foundation, Association of American Medical Colleges, Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, CancerCare, Caring Across Generations, Center for Medicare Advocacy, Center for Reproductive Rights, Center for Reproductive Rights, Children’s Hospital Association, Community Catalyst, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Daily Voice National, Epilepsy Foundation of America, Families USA, Geriatric Circle, Gerontological Society of America, Gillette Children’s, Immune Deficiency Foundation, Justice in Aging, Large Urology Group Practice Association, LeadingAge, Medicare Rights Center, Muscular Dystrophy Association, National Bleeding Disorders Foundation, National Bleeding Disorders Foundation, National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, National Health Council, National Health Law Program, National Kidney Foundation, National MS Society, National Nurses United, National Organization for Rare Disorders, National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation, National Partnership for Women & Families, National Patient Advocate Foundation, National Rural Health Association, National Women’s Law Center Action Fund, PHI National, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Protect Our Care, SEIU, Susan G. Komen, and the United Steelworkers (USW) have endorsed the resolution.

    To read the full text of the resolution, click here.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: iRhythm Launches Zio® Long-Term Continuous Monitoring Service in Japan as the Zio® ECG Recording and Analysis System, Advancing AI-Powered Arrhythmia Detection

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    • iRhythm Zio®Long-Term Continuous Monitoring (LTCM) system — commercially introduced in Japan as the Zio®ECG Recording and Analysis System — brings AI-powered, continuous, uninterrupted ECG monitoring for up to 14 days to Japan
    • Launch is timely amid a growing demand for early, accurate detection of arrhythmias in Japan, the second largest ambulatory cardiac monitoring market in the world, where the prevalence is expected to rise alongside an aging population1-3

    SAN FRANCISCO, May 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — iRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) today announced the commercial launch in Japan of its Zio® long-term continuous ECG monitoring (LTCM) system, commercially introduced in this market as the Zio® ECG Recording and Analysis System. The system provides up to 14 days of continuous, uninterrupted ECG monitoring and leverages a deep-learned artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm approved by Japan’s Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) – and represents a significant advancement over other ambulatory cardiac monitoring options in Japan, including commonly used wired Holter monitors, which capture only 24 to 48 hours of data and other patch-based services that monitor only up to 7 days.

    “We are honored to introduce our AI-powered Zio ECG Recording and Analysis System that provides up to 14 days of continuous, uninterrupted cardiac monitoring to Japan, where we see a meaningful opportunity to help advance arrhythmia detection,” said Quentin Blackford, President and Chief Executive Officer of iRhythm. “Together with our trusted distribution partner, Senko Medical Instrument, we are committed to expanding access to advanced cardiac monitoring that supports clinical excellence and aligns with Japan’s dedication to high-quality, patient-centered care.”

    Advancing Arrhythmia Detection in Japan

    The Zio ECG Recording and Analysis System consists of a prescription-only, patch-based ECG monitoring device (Zio monitor, iRhythm’s latest-generation ECG patch), worn for up to 14 days, and the ZEUS (Zio ECG Utilization Software) system.

    The unique attributes of the Zio ECG Recording and Analysis System offer meaningful advantages for patients and clinicians:

    Zio monitor (Patch ECG Device): Improving Patient Monitoring Experience

    • The latest-generation patch ECG is thinner, lighter, and smaller—designed for comfortable, discreet wear, ease of use,4 and patient satisfaction5,6
    • Enables up to 14 days of continuous, uninterrupted ECG monitoring
    • Demonstrates 99% patient compliance with prescribed wear time6-8 and 99% analyzable data, delivering high-quality, actionable data6,10,11

    Zio Service (End-to-End Monitoring System): Combining Advanced AI with Human Expertise

    • PMDA-approved, deep-learned AI algorithm detects 13 arrhythmia types, as well as sinus rhythm and artifact, and is clinically proven to perform at the level of cardiologists11-14
    • End-of-wear reports are reviewed and validated by certified cardiographic technicians (CCTs), with 99% physician agreement6,8
    • Zio ECG Recording and Analysis System is associated with the highest diagnostic yield and lowest likelihood of retesting compared to other monitoring services, including other LTCMs and 24- to 48-hour duration Holter monitoring services6,8,15-20
    • In clinical settings, the Zio LTCM service may help reduce misinterpretation of ECG data and improve clinical efficiency12

    Zio® monitor by iRhythm Technologies,
    part of the Zio®ECG Recording and Analysis System

    “The Zio service represents a new step forward in how we monitor for arrhythmias in Japan,” said Dr. Kohei Yamashiro, Vice President and Director of the Heart Rhythm Center at Takatsuki General Hospital (Osaka Prefecture), the first hospital in Japan to introduce the Zio ECG Recording and Analysis System. “Its ease of use, extended monitoring period, and clear reporting provide important benefits for both patients and clinicians.”

    Clinically Proven Performance

    The clinical value of the Zio LTCM service has been demonstrated in a robust, growing body of clinical evidence. The Cardiac Ambulatory Monitor EvaLuation of Outcomes and Time to Events (CAMELOT) study, published in the American Heart Journal, found that Zio LTCM service was associated with the highest yield of specified arrhythmia diagnosis and the lowest likelihood of repeat testing compared to all other monitoring services.

    iRhythm’s comprehensive clinical evidence, encompassing more than 125 original research manuscripts21 and insights derived from over 2 billion hours of curated heartbeat data9 and more than 10 million patient reports posted since the company’s inception, underscore the company’s ongoing commitment to expanding evidence that supports improved patient outcomes.

    “The Zio long-term continuous monitoring service offers a clinically validated approach to arrhythmia detection by combining advanced AI with expert clinical review to support accurate and timely diagnoses,” said Dr. Mintu Turakhia, iRhythm Chief Medical Officer, Chief Scientific Officer, and EVP of Product Innovation. “As the need for effective long-term monitoring grows, we believe the introduction of Zio LTCM in Japan presents an opportunity to enhance patient care and support evolving clinical needs in cardiac monitoring—an impact also recognized by the Japanese Heart Rhythm Society.”

    Cardiac Arrhythmias and Prevalence in Japan

    A cardiac arrhythmia is a condition in which the heart beats too quickly, too slowly, or irregularly due to abnormal electrical impulses. If undetected and untreated, some arrhythmias can damage the heart, brain, or other organs and lead to an increased risk of stroke and death.22-24

    These potential complications make accurate, timely arrhythmia detection and diagnosis critical to improving patient outcomes and quality of life.

    The prevalence of cardiac arrhythmias continues to rise globally, and Japan is the second largest ambulatory cardiac monitoring market in the world with an estimated 1.6 million tests prescribed annually. This number is expected to continue to increase based on stroke and cardiovascular disease burden in Japan’s aging population.1-3

    Availability in Japan
    Zio® ECG Recording and Analysis System will be available to healthcare customers beginning May 2025, with nationwide availability anticipated by July 2025, through Senko Medical Instrument, iRhythm’s exclusive distribution partner in Japan.

    Outside of Japan, iRhythm offers its Zio® portfolio of cardiac monitoring solutions in Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the United States, and the UK – and remains dedicated to bringing access to its advanced cardiac monitoring to even more patients, clinicians and healthcare systems around the world.

    About iRhythm Technologies, Inc.
    iRhythm is a leading digital health care company that creates trusted solutions that detect, predict, and prevent disease. Combining wearable biosensors and cloud-based data analytics with powerful proprietary algorithms, iRhythm distills data from millions of heartbeats into clinically actionable information. Through a relentless focus on patient care, iRhythm’s vision is to deliver better data, better insights, and better health for all. To learn more about iRhythm and the Zio® LTCM service in Japan, please visit irhythmtech.com/jp/ja. For additional information about iRhythm, please visit its corporate website at irhythmtech.com.

    Forward-Looking Statements 
    This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. An investor can identify these statements by the fact that they do not relate strictly to historical or current facts. They use words such as ‘anticipate’, ‘estimate’, ‘expect’, ‘intend’, ‘will’, ‘project’, ‘plan’, ‘believe’, ‘target’ and other words and terms of similar meaning in connection with any discussion of future actions or operating or financial performance.  In particular, these include statements regarding the Japanese market opportunity, our ability to penetrate the Japanese market, and expansion of patient access to our products and services in Japan. Such statements are based on current assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, include risks described in the section entitled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in our filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including those on the Form 10-Q expected to be filed on or about May 1, 2025. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof and should not be unduly relied upon. iRhythm disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. 

    Media Contact
    Kassandra Perry
    irhythm@highwirepr.com

    Investor Contact
    Stephanie Zhadkevich
    investors@irhythmtech.com

    —-
    Footnotes

    1. Irie S, Tada H. The Relationship between Holter Electrocardiography and Atrial Fibrillation Diagnosis Using Real-World Data in Japan. Int Heart J. 2023;64(2):178-187.
    2. Matsuda S. Health Policy in Japan – Current Situation and Future Challenges. JMA Journal, 2019.
    3. Annual Pharmaceutical Production Statistics, Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare (“MHLW”).
    4. Data on file. iRhythm Technologies, 2023.
    5. Zio monitor Instructions for Use. iRhythm Technologies, 2023.
    6. Based on US data.
    7. Data on file. iRhythm Technologies, 2022.
    8. Zio service provides continuous, uninterrupted recording and a comprehensive end-of-wear report.
    9. Data on file. iRhythm Technologies, 2024.
    10. Analyzable time is based off median values for a 14-day prescription
    11. Data on file. iRhythm Technologies, 2020.
    12. Hannun et al. Cardiologist-level arrhythmia detection and classification in ambulatory electrocardiograms using a deep neural network. Nat Med. 2019;25:65-69. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-018-0268-3
    13. Deep learned algorithm is only available in the United States, European Union, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and Japan.
    14. FDA 510K clearance, CE mark, UKCA mark, and PMDA-approval.
    15. Reynolds et al. Comparative effectiveness and healthcare utilization for ambulatory cardiac monitoring strategies in Medicare beneficiaries. Am Heart J. 2024;269:25–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ahj.2023.12.002
    16. Diagnostic yield was assessed based upon the evaluation of specified arrhythmias, which refer to an arrhythmia encounter diagnosis as per Hierarchical Condition Categories (HCC) 96.
    17. Based on previous generation Zio XT device data. Zio monitor utilizes the same operating principles and ECG algorithm. Additional data on file.
    18. Zio LTCM service refers to Zio XT and Zio monitor service.
    19. Contraindications: Do not use the Zio monitor for critical care patients or for patients with symptomatic episodes where instance variations in cardiac performance could result in immediate danger to the patients or when real-time or in-patient monitoring should be prescribed. (Refer to the Zio monitor Instructions for Use for the full list of contraindications)
    20. Zio monitor and ZEUS are Japan PMDA approved.
    21. Data on file. iRhythm Technologies, 2025.
    22. Ataklte et al. Meta-analysis of ventricular premature complexes and their relation to cardiac mortality in general populations. The American Journal of Cardiology. 2013;112(8):1263-1270. doi:10.1016/j.amjcard.2013.05.065
    23. Lin et al. Long-term outcome of non-sustained ventricular tachycardia in structurally normal hearts. PLOS ONE. 2016;11(8). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0160181
    24. Wolf et al. Atrial fibrillation as an independent risk factor for stroke: The Framingham Study. Stroke. 1991;22(8):983-988. doi:10.1161/01.str.22.8.983

    A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6ffe8ed2-1063-4455-8784-d0278fd46373

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Jayapal Leads 142 Members in Demanding Answers Regarding the Revocation of Student Visas

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (7th District of Washington)

    WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Ranking Member of the Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee, is leading 142 Members of Congress in demanding answers regarding the termination of students’ legal status. Despite the Trump Administration’s claim last week that it would reverse course, only Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has made any policy change.  While students are no longer immediately deportable, they will be unable to return to the United States once they go home after the semester ends, as the State Department is not restoring students’ visa status. 

    “This is not about national security. It is about using immigration enforcement as a weapon to stifle political dissent, restrict due process, and enforce an exclusionary and nativist vision of America that runs counter to everything our institutions of higher learning stand for,” wrote the Members. “Across the country, students are being picked up – in some cases by masked immigration agents in unmarked cars – and being held in detention facilities with no warning and limited information as to why they are being deported.”

    According to recent reporting, more than 1,800 students and recent graduates across 280 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked. Since Trump took office, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has also confirmed that at least 4,736 have had their legal status terminated in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). However, DHS does not have the authority to terminate this legal status except under very specific circumstances, none of which have been met in the vast majority of these cases.

    “Our campuses have been spaces where students and scholars from around the world come together to challenge assumptions, push the boundaries of knowledge, and foster the innovation that has made our country a global leader,” continued the Members. “But today, the Trump administration’s heavy-handed and politically motivated immigration enforcement is turning university campuses into places of fear, rather than learning, and these actions deter students from coming to study at U.S. institutions.”

    Reporting has also shown that the State Department has been using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to identify students to target through their social media accounts. This aspect is especially troubling as social media accounts may not feature students’ names, and AI facial recognition is often prone to mistakes, at significantly higher rates when identifying people of color.

    The full text of the letter can be read here. 

    The letter was signed by Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Jamie Raskin (MD-08), Gabe Amo (RI-01), Yassamin Ansari (AZ-03), Jake Auchincloss (MA-04), Becca Balint (VT-At Large), Nanette Barragán (CA-44), Joyce Beatty (OH-03), Wesley Bell (MO-01), Ami Bera (CA-06), Donald S. Beyer, Jr. (VA-08), Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01), Shontel Brown (OH-11), Julia Brownley (CA-26), Nikki Budzinski (IL-13), Salud Carbajal (CA-24), André Carson (IN-07), Troy Carter (LA-02), Greg Casar (TX-35), Sean Casten (IL-06), Kathy Castor (FL-14), Joaquin Castro (TX-20), Judy Chu (CA-28), Gilbert Cisneros (CA-31), Yvette Clarke (NY-09), Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05), Steve Cohen (TN-09), Gerald Connolly (VA-11), J. Luis Correa (CA-46), Angie Craig (MN-02), Jason Crow (CO-06), Danny K. Davis (IL-07), Madeleine Dean (PA-04), Diana DeGette (CO-01), Rosa DeLauro (CT-03), Suzan DelBene (WA-01), Chris Deluzio (PA-17), Mark DeSaulnier (CA-10), Maxine Dexter (OR-03), Lloyd Doggett (TX-37), Veronica Escobar (TX-16), Adriano Espaillat (NY-13), Dwight Evans (PA-03), Cleo Fields (LA-06), Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07), Bill Foster (IL-11), Valerie Foushee (NC-04), Laura Friedman (CA-30), Maxwell Frost (FL-10), John Garamendi (CA-08), Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04), Robert Garcia (CA-42), Sylvia Garcia (TX-29), Jimmy Gomez (CA-34), Maggie Goodlander (NH-02), Al Green (TX-09), Jahana Hayes (CT-05), Jim Himes (CT-04), Steven Horsford (NV-04), Val Hoyle (OR-04), Jared Huffman (CA-02), Glenn Ivey (MD-04), Jonathan Jackson (IL-01), Sara Jacobs (CA-51), Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr. (GA-04), Julie Johnson (TX-32), Sydney Kamlager-Dove (CA-37), William Keating (MA-09), Robin Kelly (IL-02), Timothy Kennedy (NY-26), Ro Khanna (CA-17), Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL-08), Rick Larsen (WA-02), John Larson (CT-01), Summer Lee (PA-12), Teresa Leger Fernandez (NM-03), Mike Levin (CA-49), Sam Liccardo (CA-16), Ted Lieu (CA-36), Zoe Lofgren (CA-18), Stephen Lynch (MA-08), Seth Magaziner (RI-02), John Mannion (NY-22), Doris Matsui (CA-07), Jennifer McClellan (VA-04), Betty McCollum (MN-04), James P. McGovern (MA-02), LaMonica McIver (NJ-10), Gregory Meeks (NY-05), Robert Menendez (NJ-08), Dave Min (CA-47), Gwen Moore (WI-04), Joe Morelle (NY-25), Kelly Morrison (MN-03), Seth Moulton (MA-06), Kevin Mullin (CA-15), Jerrold Nadler (NY-12), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), Johnny Olszewski (MD-02), Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Jimmy Panetta (CA-19), Nancy Pelosi (CA-11), Scott Peters (CA-50), Brittany Pettersen (CO-07), Chellie Pingree (ME-01), Mark Pocan (WI-02), Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), Mike Quigley (IL-05), Delia Ramirez (IL-03), Emily Randall (WA-06), Luz Rivas (CA-29), Deborah Ross (NC-02), Andrea Salinas (OR-06), Linda Sánchez (CA-38), Mary Gay Scanlon (PA-05), Jan Schakowsky (IL-09), Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (VA-03), Terri Sewell (AL-07), Lateefah Simon (CA-12), Adam Smith (WA-09), Melanie Stansbury (NM-01), Marilyn Strickland (WA-10), Suhas Subramanyam (VA-10), Eric Swalwell (CA-14), Mark Takano (CA-39), Shri Thanedar (MI-13), Mike Thompson (CA-04), Bennie G. Thompson (MS-02), Dina Titus (NV-01), Rashida Tlaib (MI-12), Jill Tokuda (HI-02), Paul Tonko (NY-20), Lori Trahan (MA-03), Lauren Underwood (IL-14), Juan Vargas (CA-52), Gabe Vasquez (NM-02), Marc Veasey (TX-33), Nydia M. Velázquez (NY-07), Maxine Waters (CA-43), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12), and Nikema Williams (GA-05).

    It was also endorsed by AFL-CIO; American Friends of Combatants for Peace; American Friends Service Committee; Amnesty International USA; Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC; Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago; Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California; Brooklyn for Peace; Center for Constitutional Rights; Center for International Policy Advocacy; Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA); CODEPINK; Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); DAWN; Friends Committee on National Legislation; Habonim Dror North America; Hindus for Human Rights; HIstorians for Peace and Democracy; IfNotNow Movement ; Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; IMEU Policy Project; Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC); Indivisible; International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW); J Street; Jewish Voice for Peace Action; MADRE; Minnesota Peace Project; MPower Change Action Fund; National Immigrant Justice Center; New Jewish Narrative; Nonviolence International; OneAmerica; Partners for Progressive Israel; Peace Action; Presbyterian Church (USA), Office of Public Witness; Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration; Reconsider; Service Employees International Union (SEIU); Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC); Stop AAPI Hate; United Church of Christ.

    Issues: Arts & Education, Immigration

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Trahan, Connolly Demand Answers on DOGE’s Alleged Privacy Act Violations and Data Risks at NLRB

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congresswoman Lori Trahan (D-MA-03)

    WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congresswoman Lori Trahan (MA-03), who previously announced an effort to update the Privacy Act of 1974 to better protect Americans’ sensitive data, and House Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Gerald E. Connolly (VA-11) demanded information from the National Labor Relations Board regarding potential violations of federal privacy laws by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
    “We write with an urgent request for information related to the disclosure by a National Labor Relations Board whistleblower that agency officials possibly affiliated with the Department of Government Efficiency may have illegally exfiltrated multiple gigabytes of sensitive data, including the personal information of Americans who reported unfair labor practices,” the lawmakers wrote. “We are deeply concerned that these actions may constitute violations of the Privacy Act of 1974, which can carry criminal penalties, and the Federal Information Security Modernization Act, which requires agency heads to notify Congress of major data breaches.”
    The request follows a whistleblower at NLRB sounding the alarm about DOGE representatives removing approximately ten gigabytes of sensitive data, including the personal information of Americans who have previously reported unfair labor practices, and then attempting to cover up their actions. The data removed from the agency could also include companies’ proprietary information.
    In addition to concerns about Musk’s conflicts of interest with his company SpaceX currently fighting NLRB complaints, the unverified and unreported exfiltration of Americans’ personal data could constitute violations of both the Privacy Act of 1974, which regulates how the federal government stores and uses Americans’ sensitive data, and the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), which requires that federal agencies notify Congress when Americans’ data is breached.
    “Based on our understanding of the whistleblowers’ disclosure, we are concerned that NLRB officials, especially those affiliated with DOGE, may have violated both the Privacy Act and FISMA. With respect to the Privacy Act, it is overwhelmingly likely that one or more NLRB employees–and not foreign actors or criminals–perpetrated the massive data exfiltration on March 4th, violating the Act’s disclosure requirements. Moreover, it appears that these officials did so without obtaining written consent nor receiving agency approval for an ‘exception’ to the consent requirement, meaning they could be subject to criminal penalties,” the lawmakers concluded. “And with respect to FISMA, it appears that the whistleblower discovered a ‘major incident’ under any definition of the term proposed by OMB. NLRB subsequently failed to notify Congress, in apparent violation of its statutory requirements: as of writing, neither the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee nor House Education & the Workforce Committee have received notification with the required information about the incident.”
    The lawmakers are requesting answers to the following questions by May 16, 2025:

    All reports, communications, and written documentation produced during NLRB’s investigation into Mr. Berulis’s concerns that Tim Bearese, the NLRB’s acting press secretary, confirmed took place in a statement to National Public Radio (NPR).
    A signed attestation that NLRB determined the events which Mr. Berulis discovered qualify as a “major incident” under the definitions proposed by OMB or, alternatively, an explanation of why the NLRB did not make such a determination.
    Why has the NLRB failed to notify relevant Congressional committees as required by FISMA, including the House Oversight and Government Reform and House Education & the Workforce Committees?
    For each official who holds, or has previously held since January 20th, 2025, access to NLRB information technology systems:

    a.    What is the nature of that employee’s relationship with NLRB?
                                          i.        If the employee is full-time, to what other agencies are they detailed?
                                         ii.        If the employee is detailed to NLRB, from what agency are they detailed?
                                        iii.        If the employee is a contractor, what firm do they work for?
    b.    For each NLRB system that the employee previously had access to, currently has access to, or will have access to:
                                          i.        What level of access to the system does the employee currently possess?
                                         ii.        Who provided such access to the system?
                                        iii.        What was the justification for providing such access to the system, especially if no other agency official had previously been granted the same level of access?
                                       iv.        When was access to the system provided?
                                         v.        What training, including security and privacy, were provided to the employee regarding their access to the system? Did this training take place before or after access was provided?
                                       vi.        To the extent that access to the system was provided under a Privacy Act exception, what exception was invoked?
                                      vii.        What security controls were implemented, if any, as a result of your granting the employee their access to the system?
                                     viii.        Did the NLRB official who granted access to the system consider the cyber, operational, or privacy risks before doing so?
                                       ix.        Has the employee modified, copied, shared, or removed any records from the system?
                                         x.        Has the employee modified the system in any way?
                                       xi.        Has the employee granted, revoked, or otherwise modified access to the system for any other users?
    c.     Can you commit to preserving all system logs related to access, development, exfiltration consistent with the Federal Records Act?
    d.    Can you commit to otherwise documenting all critical decisions related to information technology systems at NLRB?
    A copy of the letter sent today can be accessed HERE.
    This request for information follows an effort Trahan led last month requesting an independent investigation into DOGE’s alleged mishandling of Americans’ sensitive data housed in the Treasury Department’s payment system. In March, Trahan announced that she will be introducing legislation to rewrite the Privacy Act for the first time since its passage in 1974.
    ###

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: Skyward Specialty Insurance Group Reports First Quarter 2025 Results

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    HOUSTON, May 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Skyward Specialty Insurance Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SKWD) (“Skyward Specialty” or the “Company”) today reported first quarter 2025 net income of $42.1 million, or $1.01 per diluted share, compared to $36.8 million, or $0.90 per diluted share, for the same 2024 period.

    Adjusted operating income(1) for the first quarter of 2025 was $37.3 million, or $0.90 per diluted share, compared to $31.0 million, or $0.75 per diluted share, for the same 2024 period.

    Highlights for the first quarter included:

    • Gross written premiums of $535.3 million, an increase of 16.7% compared to 2024;
    • Combined ratio of 90.5%;
    • Ex-Cat combined ratio of 88.3%;
    • Annualized return on equity of 20.5%; and,
    • Book value per share of $21.06, an increase of 6% compared to December 31, 2024.
    (1)See “Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures”

    Skyward Specialty Chairman and CEO Andrew Robinson commented, “We delivered outstanding first quarter results, including adjusted operating income(1) which increased over 20% to $37.3 million, which is the best in Company history, and we achieved annualized return on equity of 20.5%. We continued our consistent and strong record of growth in underwriting performance as gross written premiums increased by approximately 17%, and we delivered a 90.5% combined ratio inclusive of 2.2 points of catastrophe losses. Our strong growth this quarter highlights the strength of our diversified business portfolio, with our global agriculture unit and our accident & health division each having a breakout quarter; we have highlighted these two areas as part of our intentional strategy to grow in areas less exposed to the P&C market.”

    “As we look out to the remainder of the year, we remain confident that the strength of our diversified business portfolio, the power of our Rule Our Niche strategy, our investment in technology and talent, and our track record for consistent execution, positions us to continue to deliver strong financial results that create long-term value for our shareholders.”

    Results of Operations

    Underwriting Results

    Premiums            
    ($ in thousands)   Three months ended March 31,
    unaudited     2025       2024     %
    Change
    Gross written premiums   $ 535,326     $ 458,620     16.7 %
    Ceded written premiums   $ (192,055 )   $ (171,520 )   12.0 %
    Net retention     64.1 %     62.6 %   NM (1)
    Net written premiums   $ 343,271     $ 287,100     19.6 %
    Net earned premiums   $ 300,366     $ 236,342     27.1 %
    (1)Not meaningful            
                 

    The increase in gross written premiums for the first quarter of 2025, when compared to the same 2024 period, was driven by double-digit premium growth primarily from the agriculture and credit (re)insurance, accident & health and specialty programs divisions, partially offset by a decrease in gross written premiums in the global property division.

    During the first quarter 2025, the Company updated its underwriting divisions to align with how management currently oversees the business, allocates resources and evaluates operating performance. The Company added a ninth division, Agriculture and Credit (Re)insurance, which includes the Global Agriculture unit, previously reported with Global Property, and the Mortgage and Credit units, and focuses on specialty classes for which reinsurance provides a more attractive market entry. The Industry Solutions division is now the Construction & Energy Solutions division and the Inland Marine unit is now included in the Transactional E&S division. Programs is now Specialty Programs. Prior reporting periods have been conformed to reflect the new presentation.

    Combined Ratio   Three months ended March 31,
    (unaudited)   2025   2024
    Non-cat loss and LAE   60.2 %   60.6 %
    Cat loss and LAE(1)   2.2 %   0.4 %
    Prior accident year development – LPT   0.0 %   (0.1) %
    Loss Ratio   62.4 %   60.9 %
    Net policy acquisition costs   14.8 %   13.6 %
    Other operating and general expenses   14.0 %   16.0 %
    Commission and fee income   (0.7) %   (0.9) %
    Expense ratio   28.1 %   28.7 %
    Combined ratio   90.5 %   89.6 %
    Ex-Cat Combined Ratio(2)   88.3 %   89.2 %
             
    (1)Current accident year
    (2)Defined as the combined ratio excluding cat loss and LAE(1)        
             

    The loss ratio for the first quarter of 2025 increased 1.5 points when compared to the same 2024 period, due to higher catastrophe losses, primarily from convective storms in the Midwest and the California wildfires. Partially offsetting the increase in the cat loss and LAE ratio was improvement in the non-cat loss and LAE ratio driven by the business mix shift.

    The expense ratio for the first quarter improved 0.6 points when compared to the same 2024 period due to earnings leverage partially offset by higher acquisition costs due to the business mix shift.

    The expense ratios for the first quarters of 2025 and 2024 exclude the impact of IPO related stock compensation and secondary offering expenses, which are reported in other expenses in our condensed consolidated statements of operations and comprehensive income.

    Investment Results

    Net Investment Income        
    $ in thousands   Three months ended March 31,
    (unaudited)     2025       2024  
    Short-term investments & cash and cash equivalents   $ 4,041     $ 5,088  
    Fixed income     16,730       12,478  
    Equities     657       627  
    Alternative & strategic investments     (2,097 )     104  
    Net investment income   $ 19,331     $ 18,297  
    Net unrealized gains on securities still held   $ 5,491     $ 8,991  
    Net realized gains (losses)     1,350       (688 )
    Net investment gains   $ 6,841     $ 8,303  
     

    Net investment income for the first quarter of 2025 increased $1.0 million when compared to the same 2024 period, driven by increased income from our fixed income portfolio due to a higher yield and larger asset base. Partially offsetting the increase in income from our fixed income portfolio were (i) losses from the alternative and strategic investments portfolio due to the decline in the fair value of limited partnership investments, and (ii) less income from short-term investments driven by a lower yield.

    Stockholders’ Equity

    Stockholders’ equity was $850.7 million at March 31, 2025 which represented an increase of 7.1% when compared to stockholders’ equity of $794.0 million at December 31, 2024. The increase in stockholders’ equity was primarily due to an increase in the market value of our investment portfolio and net income.

    Conference Call

    At 9:30 a.m. eastern time tomorrow, May 2, 2025, Skyward Specialty management will hold a conference call to discuss quarterly results with insurance industry analysts. Interested parties may listen to the discussion at investors.skywardinsurance.com under Events & Presentations. Additionally, investors can access the earnings call via conference call by registering via the conference link. Users will receive dial-in information and a unique PIN to join the call upon registering.

    Non-GAAP Financial Measures

    This release contains certain financial measures and ratios that are not required by, or presented in accordance with, generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (“GAAP”). We refer to these measures as “non-GAAP financial measures.” We use these non-GAAP financial measures when planning, monitoring, and evaluating our performance.

    We consider these non-GAAP financial measures to be useful metrics for our management and investors to facilitate operating performance comparisons from period to period. While we believe that these non-GAAP financial measures are useful in evaluating our business, this information should be considered supplemental in nature and is not meant to be a substitute for revenue or net income, in each case as recognized in accordance with GAAP. In addition, other companies, including companies in our industry, may calculate such measures differently, which reduces their usefulness as comparative measures. For more information regarding these non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of such measures to comparable GAAP financial measures, see the section entitled “Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures.”

    About Skyward Specialty Insurance Group, Inc.

    Skyward Specialty is a rapidly growing and innovative specialty insurance company, delivering commercial property and casualty products and solutions on a non-admitted and admitted basis. The Company operates through nine underwriting divisions – Accident & Health, Agriculture and Credit (Re)insurance, Captives, Construction & Energy Solutions, Global Property, Professional Lines, Specialty Programs, Surety and Transactional E&S. SKWD stock is traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, which represents the top fourth of all Nasdaq listed companies.

    Skyward Specialty’s subsidiary insurance companies consist of Great Midwest Insurance Company, Houston Specialty Insurance Company, Imperium Insurance Company, and Oklahoma Specialty Insurance Company. These insurance companies are rated A (Excellent) with stable outlook by A.M. Best Company. Additional information about Skyward Specialty can be found on our website at www.skywardinsurance.com.

    Forward-Looking Statements

    Except for historical information, all other information in this news release consists of forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward-looking statements are typically, but not always, identified through use of the words “believe,” “expect,” “enable,” “may,” “will,” “could,” “intends,” “estimate,” “anticipate,” “plan,” “predict,” “probable,” “potential,” “possible,” “should,” “continue,” and other words of similar meaning. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected, anticipated or implied. The most significant of these uncertainties are described in Skyward Specialty’s Form 10-K, and include (but are not limited to) legislative changes at both the state and federal level, state and federal regulatory rule making promulgations and adjudications, class action litigation involving the insurance industry and judicial decisions affecting claims, policy coverages and the general costs of doing business, the potential loss of key members of our management team or key employees and our ability to attract and retain personnel, the impact of competition on products and pricing, inflation in the costs of the products and services insurance pays for, product development, geographic spread of risk, weather and weather-related events, other types of catastrophic events, our ability to obtain reinsurance coverage at prices and on terms that allow us to transfer risk and adequately protect our company against financial loss, and losses resulting from reinsurance counterparties failing to pay us on reinsurance claims. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information to reflect changes in assumptions, the occurrence of unanticipated events, or otherwise.

    Skyward Specialty Insurance Group, Inc.

    Investor contact:
    Natalie Schoolcraft,
    nschoolcraft@skywardinsurance.com
    614-494-4988

    or

    Media contact:
    Haley Doughty
    hdoughty@skywardinsurance.com
    713-935-4944

    Consolidated Balance Sheets        
    ($ in thousands, except share and per share amounts)        
    (unaudited)   March 31,
    2025    		   December 31,
    2024
    Assets        
    Investments:        
    Fixed maturity securities, available-for-sale, at fair value (amortized cost of $1,410,269 and $1,320,266, respectively)   $ 1,397,508     $ 1,292,218  
    Fixed maturity securities, held-to-maturity, at amortized cost (net of allowance for credit losses of $250 and $243, respectively)     37,519       39,153  
    Equity securities, at fair value     108,075       106,254  
    Mortgage loans, at fair value     16,012       26,490  
    Equity method investments     88,588       98,594  
    Other long-term investments     37,646       33,182  
    Short-term investments, at fair value     308,042       274,929  
    Total investments     1,993,390       1,870,820  
    Cash and cash equivalents     112,916       121,603  
    Restricted cash     40,590       35,922  
    Premiums receivable, net     417,542       321,641  
    Reinsurance recoverables, net     902,970       857,876  
    Ceded unearned premium     232,147       203,901  
    Deferred policy acquisition costs     126,439       113,183  
    Deferred income taxes     26,984       30,486  
    Goodwill and intangible assets, net     87,089       87,348  
    Other assets     90,566       86,698  
    Total assets   $ 4,030,633     $ 3,729,478  
    Liabilities and stockholders’ equity        
    Liabilities:        
    Reserves for losses and loss adjustment expenses   $ 1,871,491     $ 1,782,383  
    Unearned premiums     708,347       637,185  
    Deferred ceding commission     45,544       40,434  
    Reinsurance and premium payables     243,083       177,070  
    Funds held for others     113,748       102,665  
    Accounts payable and accrued liabilities     78,154       76,206  
    Notes payable     100,000       100,000  
    Subordinated debt, net of debt issuance costs     19,545       19,536  
    Total liabilities     3,179,912       2,935,479  
    Stockholders’ equity        
    Common stock, $0.01 par value, 500,000,000 shares authorized, 40,402,879 and 40,127,908 shares issued and outstanding, respectively     404       401  
    Additional paid-in capital     721,186       718,598  
    Accumulated other comprehensive loss     (10,047 )     (22,120 )
    Retained earnings     139,178       97,120  
    Total stockholders’ equity     850,721       793,999  
       Total liabilities and stockholders’ equity   $ 4,030,633     $ 3,729,478  
             
    Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations and Comprehensive Income
    ($ in thousands)   Three months ended March 31,
    (unaudited)     2025       2024  
             
    Revenues:        
    Net earned premiums   $ 300,366     $ 236,342  
    Commission and fee income     1,976       2,026  
    Net investment income     19,331       18,297  
    Net investment gains     6,841       8,303  
    Other income     13       —  
    Total revenues     328,527       264,968  
    Expenses:        
    Losses and loss adjustment expenses     187,309       143,914  
    Underwriting, acquisition and insurance expenses     86,551       69,774  
    Interest expense     1,834       2,727  
    Amortization expense     337       388  
    Other expenses     1,061       1,188  
    Total expenses     277,092       217,991  
    Income before income taxes     51,435       46,977  
    Income tax expense     9,377       10,193  
    Net income     42,058       36,784  
    Comprehensive income:        
    Net income   $ 42,058     $ 36,784  
    Other comprehensive income:        
    Unrealized gains and losses on investments:        
    Net change in unrealized gains (losses) on investments, net of tax     12,255       (5,418 )
    Reclassification adjustment for losses on securities no longer held, net of tax     (182 )     (908 )
    Total other comprehensive income (loss)     12,073       (6,326 )
    Comprehensive income   $ 54,131     $ 30,458  
             
    Share and Per Share Data        
    ($ in thousands, except share and per share amounts)   Three months ended March 31,
    (unaudited)     2025       2024  
             
    Weighted average basic shares     40,196,416       39,108,351  
    Weighted average diluted shares     41,680,595       41,085,136  
             
    Basic earnings per share   $ 1.05     $ 0.94  
    Diluted earnings per share   $ 1.01     $ 0.90  
    Basic adjusted operating earnings per share   $ 0.93     $ 0.79  
    Diluted adjusted operating earnings per share   $ 0.90     $ 0.75  
             
    Annualized ROE(1)     20.5 %     21.7 %
    Annualized adjusted ROE(2)     18.2 %     18.3 %
    Annualized ROTE(3)     22.9 %     25.0 %
    Annualized adjusted ROTE(4)     20.3 %     21.1 %
             
        March 31   December 31
          2025       2024  
             
    Shares outstanding     40,402,879       40,127,908  
    Fully diluted shares outstanding     42,234,957       42,059,182  
             
    Book value per share   $ 21.06     $ 19.79  
    Fully diluted book value per share   $ 20.14     $ 18.88  
    Fully diluted tangible book value per share   $ 18.08     $ 16.80  
             
    (1)Annualized ROE is net income expressed on an annualized basis as a percentage of average beginning and ending stockholders’ equity during the period
    (2)Annualized adjusted ROE is adjusted operating income expressed on an annualized basis as a percentage of average beginning and ending stockholders’ equity during the period
    (3)Annualized ROTE is net income expressed on an annualized basis as a percentage of average beginning and ending tangible stockholders’ equity during the period
    (4)Annualized adjusted ROTE is adjusted operating income expressed on an annualized basis as a percentage of average beginning and ending tangible stockholders’ equity during the period


    Adjusted operating income     – We define adjusted operating income as net income excluding the impact of certain items that may not be indicative of underlying business trends, operating results, or future outlook, net of tax impact. We use adjusted operating income as an internal performance measure in the management of our operations because we believe it gives our management and other users of our financial information useful insight into our results of operations and our underlying business performance. Adjusted operating income should not be viewed as a substitute for net income calculated in accordance with GAAP, and other companies may define adjusted operating income differently.        

    ($ in thousands)   Three months ended March 31,
    (unaudited)     2025       2024  
        Pre-tax   After-tax   Pre-tax   After-tax
    Income as reported   $ 51,435     $ 42,058     $ 46,977     $ 36,784  
    Less (add):                
    Net investment gains     6,841       5,594       8,303       6,501  
    Net impact of loss portfolio transfer     —       —       241       189  
    Other income     13       11       —       —  
    Other expenses     (1,061 )     (868 )     (1,188 )     (930 )
    Adjusted operating income   $ 45,642     $ 37,321     $ 39,621     $ 31,024  
                     


    Underwriting income     – We define underwriting income as net income before income taxes excluding net investment income, net realized and unrealized gains and losses on investments, impairment charges, interest expense, amortization expense and other income and expenses. Underwriting income represents the pre-tax profitability of our underwriting operations and allows us to evaluate our underwriting performance without regard to investment income. We use this metric as we believe it gives our management and other users of our financial information useful insight into our underlying business performance. Underwriting income should not be viewed as a substitute for pre-tax income calculated in accordance with GAAP, and other companies may define underwriting income differently.

    ($ in thousands)   Three months ended March 31,
    (unaudited)   2025   2024
    Income before income taxes   $ 51,435   $ 46,977
    Add:        
    Interest expense     1,834     2,727
    Amortization expense     337     388
    Other expenses     1,061     1,188
    Less:        
    Net investment income     19,331     18,297
    Net investment gains     6,841     8,303
    Other income     13     —
    Underwriting income   $ 28,482   $ 24,680
             


    Tangible Stockholders’ Equity     – We define tangible stockholders’ equity as stockholders’ equity less goodwill and intangible assets. Our definition of tangible stockholders’ equity may not be comparable to that of other companies and should not be viewed as a substitute for stockholders’ equity calculated in accordance with GAAP. We use tangible stockholders’ equity internally to evaluate the strength of our balance sheet and to compare returns relative to this measure.

    ($ in thousands)   March 31,   December 31,
    (unaudited)   2025   2024   2024
    Stockholders’ equity   $ 850,721   $ 692,272   $ 793,999
    Less: Goodwill and intangible assets     87,089     88,137     87,348
    Tangible stockholders’ equity   $ 763,632   $ 604,135   $ 706,651
                 
        Three months ended March 31,
    ($ in thousands)   2025   2024   % Change
    Accident & Health   $ 63,169   $ 40,901   54.4 %
    Agriculture and Credit (Re)insurance     87,847     43,321   102.8 %
    Captives     68,401     68,408   — %
    Construction & Energy Solutions     75,571     74,222   1.8 %
    Global Property     46,686     57,312   (18.5) %
    Professional Lines     41,166     42,239   (2.5) %
    Specialty Programs     62,675     52,178   20.1 %
    Surety     37,798     33,842   11.7 %
    Transactional E&S     52,006     46,232   12.5 %
    Total gross written premiums(1)   $ 535,319   $ 458,655   16.7 %
    (1)Excludes exited business            

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-Evening Report: As Dutton champions nuclear power, Indigenous artists recall the profound loss of land and life that came from it

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Josephine Goldman, Sessional Academic, School of Languages and Cultures, Discipline of French and Francophone Studies, University of Sydney

    Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s promise to power Australia with nuclear energy has been described by experts as a costly “mirage” that risks postponing the clean energy transition.

    Beyond this, however, the Coalition’s nuclear policy has, for many First Nations peoples, raised the spectre of the last time the atomic industry came to Australia.

    Indigenous peoples across Oceania share memories of violent histories of nuclear bomb testing, uranium mining and waste dumping – all of which disproportionately affected them and/or their ancestors.

    Two sides of the same coin

    While it may be tempting to separate them, the links between military and civilian nuclear industries – that is, between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy plants – are well established. According to a 2021 paper by energy economists Lars Sorge and Anne Neumann: “In part, the global civilian nuclear industry was established to legitimatise the development of nuclear weapons.”

    The causative links between military and civilian uses of nuclear power flow in both directions.

    As Sorge and Neumann write, many technologies and skills developed for use in nuclear bombs and submarines end up being used in nuclear power generation. Another expert analysis suggests countries that receive peaceful nuclear assistance, in the form of nuclear technology, materials or skills, are more likely to initiate nuclear weapons programs.

    Since the first atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, Indigenous peoples across the Pacific have been singing, writing and talking about nuclear colonialism. Some were told the sacrifice of their lands and lifeways was “for the good of mankind”.

    Today, they continue to use their bodies and voices to push back against the promise of a benevolent nuclear future – a vision that has often been used justify their and their ancestors’ suffering and displacement.

    Black mist and brittle landscapes

    In 2023, Bangarra Dance Company produced Yuldea. This performance centres on the Yooldil Kapi, a permanent desert waterhole.

    For millennia, this water source sustained the Aṉangu and Nunga peoples and a multitude of other plant and animal life across the Great Victorian Desert and far-west South Australia.

    In 1933, Yuldea became the site of the Ooldea Mission. Then, in 1953, when the British began testing nuclear bombs at nearby Emu Field (1953) and Maralinga (1956–57), the local Aṉangu Pila Nguru were displaced from their land to the mission.

    Directed by Wirangu and Mirning woman Frances Rings, Yuldea tells the story of this Country in four acts: act one, Supernova; act two, Kapi (Water); act three, Empire; and act four, Ooldea Spirit.

    The impacts of nuclear testing are directly confronted in a section titled Black Mist (in act three, Empire). Dancers’ bodies twist and spasm as a black mist falls from the sky, representing the fog of radioactive particles that resulted from weapons testing. In reality, this fog could cause lifelong injuries when inhaled or ingested, including blindness.

    But Yuldea is more than just a story of destruction. By exploring Aṉangu and Nunga relationships with Country before and after nuclear testing, it affirms their enduring presence in the region. This is captured in the opening prose:

    We are memory.
    Glimpsed through shimmering light on water.
    A story place where black oaks stand watch.
    Carved into trees and painted on rocks.
    North – South – East – West.
    A brittle landscape of life and loss.

    To acknowledge is to remember

    The podcast Nu/clear Stories (2023-), created by Mā’ohi (Tahitian) women Mililani Ganivet and Marie-Hélène Villierme, uses storytelling to grapple with the consequences of colonial nuclear testing.

    Ganivet and Villierme address the memories of French nuclear testing on the islands of Moruroa and Fangataufa in Mā’ohi Nui (French Polynesia) from 1963 to 1996.

    Rather than using a linear understanding of time, which keeps the past in the past and idealises a future of “progress”, Nu/clear Stories draws on Indigenous philosophies of cyclical or spiral time to insist that by turning to the past, we can understand how history shapes the present and future.

    As Ganivet says when introducing the first episode, Silences and Questions:

    We are part of a long genealogy of people who found the courage to speak before us. […] To acknowledge them here is to remember that without them we would not be able to speak today. And so today, we stand on their shoulders, with the face firmly turned towards the past, but with our eyes gazing deep into the future.

    Protest march against French nuclear testing in the Pacific, Willis Street, Wellington. Evening post (Newspaper. 1865-2002) :Photographic negatives and prints of the Evening Post newspaper.
    Ref: 1/4-020364-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22809366, CC BY-NC

    Stories in the Tomb

    In her 2018 poem video Anointed, Part III of the series Dome, Marshall Islander woman Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner pays homage to Runit Island. This island in the Enewetak Atoll was transformed into a dumping site for waste from US nuclear bomb tests between 1946 and 1958.

    A huge concrete dome was built on Runit Island in the 1970s to cover about 85,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste. The island became known as “the Tomb” to the Enewetak people – a tomb that still leaks nuclear radiation into the ocean today.

    Nuclear bombs were exploded above ground and underwater on the Bikini and Enewetak Atolls. A huge concrete dome on Runit Island, built to contain nuclear waste, has given the island the nickname ‘the Tomb’.
    Wikimedia

    However, like the creators behind Yuldea and Nu/clear Stories, Jetn̄il-Kijiner refuses to remember Runit Island as only a nuclear graveyard. Instead, she approaches it like a long-lost family member or ancestor who she hopes will be full of stories.

    Jetn̄il-Kijiner speaks to the island through her poem, drawing a devastating contrast between what it once was and what it is now:

    You were a whole island, once. You were breadfruit trees heavy with green globes of fruit whispering promises of massive canoes. Crabs dusted with white sand scuttled through pandanus roots. Beneath looming coconut trees beds of ripe watermelon slept still, swollen with juice. And you were protected by powerful irooj, chiefs birthed from women who could swim pregnant for miles beneath a full moon.

    Then you became testing ground. Nine nuclear weapons consumed you, one by one by one, engulfed in an inferno of blazing heat. You became crater, an empty belly. Plutonium ground into a concrete slurry filled your hollow cavern. You became tomb. You became concrete shell. You became solidified history, immoveable, unforgettable.

    While Jetn̄il-Kijiner describes herself as “a crater empty of stories”, she continues to find stories in the Tomb: namely, the legend of Letao, the son of a turtle goddess who turned himself into fire and, in the hands of a small boy, nearly burned a village to the ground.

    Juxtaposing this fire with the US’s nuclear bombs, she ends her poem with “questions, hard as concrete”:

    Who gave them this power?
    Who anointed them with the power to burn?

    The link between past and future

    In their book Living in a nuclear world: From Fukushima to Hiroshima (2022), Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and others explore how “nuclear actors” frame nuclear technology as “indispensable”, “mundane” and “safe” by neatly severing nuclear energy from nuclear history.

    This framing helps nuclear actors avoid answering concrete questions. It also helps to hides the colonial history of nuclear technologies – histories which leak into the present. But not everyone accepts this framing.

    Indigenous artists remind us the nuclear past must be front-of-mind as we look to shape the future.

    During her PhD thesis – funded by the Australian Government Research Training Program – Josephine worked on photographic works by Marie-Hélène Villierme. She has also interviewed Villierme in the past, and worked with her collaboratively on a book chapter on her work (published in Francophone Oceania Today (2024)).

    – ref. As Dutton champions nuclear power, Indigenous artists recall the profound loss of land and life that came from it – https://theconversation.com/as-dutton-champions-nuclear-power-indigenous-artists-recall-the-profound-loss-of-land-and-life-that-came-from-it-249371

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Schools today also teach social and emotional skills. Why is this important? And what’s involved?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristin R. Laurens, Professor, School of Psychology and Counselling, Queensland University of Technology

    DGLImages/Shutterstock

    The school curriculum has changed a lot from when many parents and grandparents were at school.

    Alongside new approaches to learning maths and increasing attention on technology, there is a compulsory focus on social and emotional skills.

    Children start developing these skills by watching and observing others as babies. But they also need to be taught about them more actively – think about parents telling kids to say “thank you” or making sure they take turns when playing with friends.

    How do schools teach social and emotional skills? And why is it important? Our new research shows how these lessons can improve students’ wellbeing and lead to better academic results.

    What do schools teach about social and emotional skills?

    As the Productivity Commission noted in 2023, schools should support students’ social and emotional wellbeing to help them “cope with the various stresses of life”. It also found strong social and emotional skills support students’ ability to engage and learn at school.

    Since 2010, social and emotional skills have been a compulsory part of the Australian Curriculum. This involves four key strands for students from the first year of school to Year 10:

    1. self-awareness: understanding your strengths and limitations and having confidence you can achieve goals

    2. self-management: identifying and managing your emotions, thoughts and behaviours in different situations. This includes managing stress and controlling impulses

    3. social awareness: understanding other perspectives, empathising with others from different backgrounds and cultures and understanding social expectations for behaviour

    4. relationship skills: forming and maintaining healthy relationships, communicating and cooperating. This also includes responsible decision-making and understanding morals and consequences.

    How are these skills taught?

    Teaching these skills can be done in two ways.

    The first is by incorporating them into core academic subjects. For example, an English teacher might ask students to discuss the emotions, behaviours and relationships of characters in a novel. Teachers should also model the skills in their interactions with students.

    To do this effectively, teachers need specific knowledge of how to teach these skills. Busy schools may not prioritise this professional development for teachers because, unlike academic knowledge, these skills are not assessed.

    The second approach is to use a structured program designed to develop these skills. These programs can particularly help teachers with less training in social and emotional teaching.

    However, we know these programs are not always available or implemented adequately in schools. For example, in 2015 we surveyed 600 public, Catholic and independent NSW primary schools. Fewer than two-thirds (60%) taught social and emotional skills using formal programs. And of the programs used, one in three (34%) had either never been tested or showed no positive effects on students’ social-emotional skills.

    Why is this important?

    But research tells us formal programs can work. Our 2025 study looked at the social and emotional skills of 18,600 Year 6 students in NSW government and non-government primary schools. We also used data from their school leaders about the types of social and emotional skills programs they used – or did not use.

    We found students who received structured, evidence-based programs (on average, over three to four years) had better social and emotional skills on our self-report survey than those who did not.

    Students who received these programs had social and emotional skills that were 7-10 percentile points better than those who did not. That is, in a group of 100 students, they ranked 7-10 places higher.

    But it showed there was only a benefit if programs were evidence-based – this means they had been formally tested to check they could be taught effectively by teachers in the classroom.

    Social and emotional skills include being able to identify your emotions and cooperating with others.
    DGLImages/Shutterstock

    There are academic benefits as well

    In another 2025 study, we followed students as they went to high school. We wanted to see how their social and emotional skills in primary school related to their later academic achievement.

    We linked our survey data on NSW Year 6 students’ self-awareness and self-management skills with their NAPLAN reading and numeracy scores in Year 7. We could do this for almost 24,000 students who participated in our survey and in NAPLAN.

    We found increases in these skills were linked to increases in NAPLAN scores. Standard gains ranged between 8–20 percentile points.

    This fits with other research which shows students with strong self-awareness and self-management are more confident about achieving academic goals and more engaged and focused on their learning. This in turn helps them engage and persevere with challenges, so they achieve more academic learning.

    What now?

    Our research shows how programs teaching social and emotional skills can give young people fundamental skills to navigate learning and life beyond school. But implementation is patchy and not always based on evidence. School today involves more than reading, maths and facts. This means all schools need resources and access to effective programs to teach social and emotional skills.

    Kristin R. Laurens received funding for this research from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.

    Emma Carpendale received an Australian Government Research Training Program Stipend scholarship and a Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Health Excellence Top-Up scholarship.

    – ref. Schools today also teach social and emotional skills. Why is this important? And what’s involved? – https://theconversation.com/schools-today-also-teach-social-and-emotional-skills-why-is-this-important-and-whats-involved-253342

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –