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Category: Education

  • MIL-OSI: A Survey by Spruce Reveals Social Media’s Growing Influence on Gen Z’s Financial Decisions, Highlighting a Generational Divide in Learning about Money

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    KANSAS CITY, Mo., March 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Designated as National Financial Literacy Month, April is intended to raise awareness about the importance of financial education and to encourage healthy financial habits. Yet, a survey conducted by Spruce, the mobile banking app built by H&R Block1, 2, reveals many may be relying on platforms where virality is valued over validity. The findings underscore the growing role of digital content in shaping financial habits and the pressing need for reliable, accessible financial education in today’s technology-driven landscape.

    The survey highlights a generational shift in financial education, with younger consumers, particularly Gen Z, increasingly turning to social media for financial tips and education, while older generations more heavily rely on traditional sources like family and banking institutions. The survey also revealed the impact of social media on their financial choices and their confidence in managing money. Despite the digital media shift, financial tools and apps remain essential across all generations.

    “With nearly 70% of Gen Z influenced by financial trends on social media, it’s clear they are open to improving their financial knowledge, but it’s also imperative they have the capacity to discern fact from fiction, which is obviously difficult,” said John Thompson, Vice President, Spruce. “This Financial Literacy Month, we want to empower individuals to take control of their finances by offering a safe and accessible space to manage their money with Spruce as they learn, plan, and build a secure financial future.”

    Financial Education Pivots from Tradition to Trends

    The survey data paints a clear picture: traditional sources of financial education are being supplemented—and in some cases, supplanted—by newer sources, often on platforms where the origin or the validity of the guidance may not be clear.

    Parents and banking institutions remain the most common sources of financial education. While the landscape is evolving, key findings highlight a critical gap in formal education:

    • 31% of respondents cite family members as the main source for financial guidance
    • 29% of respondents turn first to banks
    • only 13% of respondents reported learning about personal finance in school, highlighting a critical gap in financial literacy programs.

    Social media, however, has become an increasingly popular source of financial information, particularly among younger generations, with 16% of all respondents looking to social media for financial education.

    • Gen Z leads the charge as 33% note that they look to social media for financial education
    • Millennials follow closely behind at 23%

    Viral Tips on Social Sway Financial Behaviors

    The survey also explored the impact of social media trends on financial behavior, examining the influence of viral concepts, which includes ideas like soft saving, loud budgeting, cash stuffing, and doom spending on consumer choices.

    These viral trends have proven to play a significant role in shaping financial behaviors, with 37% of respondents admitting they have been swayed by social media and tried a finance trend they discovered online.

    • The influence of these trends varies dramatically across generations, with Gen Z impacted the most at 68%
    • 51% of Millennials and 27% of Gen X cite being inspired to try social media finance trends
    • While not as likely as other generations, 12% of Boomers still noted being influenced to partake in a financial trend

    Among the platforms driving this shift, TikTok (39%) and Instagram (34%) are the most popular sources of financial information for Gen Z, followed by Facebook (23%) and even podcasts (17%). These findings highlight the growing impact of digital content on personal finance decisions, particularly among younger generations.

    Digital Tools Bolster Financial Management

    Online financial tools and apps have become essential for money management, with Millennials and Gen Z being the most likely to utilize them for everyday matters such as keeping track of a budget, planning for the future or establishing savings. Credit score monitoring emerged as the most common use case among respondents (38%). Budgeting was cited as a key priority, with 29% of respondents using financial tools or apps to track their expenses.

    However, reliance on digital financial tools extends beyond convenience—confidence in making major financial decisions is bolstered by the use of online tools or apps. From our findings, 66% of Gen Z share that they are not confident or only somewhat confident in making large decisions without digital assistance. These findings highlight the increasing role of technology in empowering individuals across all generations to manage their finances with greater confidence and ease.   Furthermore, many of the traditional rules-of-thumb for financial management are becoming out of reach, and tools to support decision-making become even more critical when thinking through more nuanced choices in a more complicated financial world.

    With 70% of American households working to become “financially healthy,”3 selecting the right resources that promote sound financial practices is essential. According to John Thompson for many people this can start with selecting a mobile banking solution with no sign-up fees, no minimum balance requirements, and no monthly fees, while also offering features, such as the Watchlist budget tracker and multiple saving goals, that can aid in financial planning and management.

    “We purposefully designed Spruce to remove barriers to accessing useful banking tools, such as the ability to customize saving goals, earn high-yield interest and provide access to innovative tools and features that can help improve financial wellness such as the ability to set spending guardrails, jumpstart savings with a tax refund allocation, and view credit score insights4 at any time,” said Thompson. “By opting into savings with 3.50% APY,5 you can build your savings faster than at the national average rate6.”

    To learn more about Spruce’s saving, budgeting, spending, and other financial-planning features, and how you can make your money go further, visit sprucemoney.com. To take advantage of the many secure and innovative tools offered through Spruce, sign up here. To get access to financial articles vetted by experts, head over to sprucemoney.com/resource-center/news/.

    1Spruce fintech platform is built by H&R Block, which is not a bank. Spruce℠ Spending and Savings Accounts established at, and debit card issued by, Pathward®, N.A., Member FDIC, pursuant to license by Mastercard®. Mastercard and the circles design are registered trademarks of Mastercard International Incorporated.

    2Research conducted with Morning Consult via online research on the omnibus fielded in March 2025 among a national sample of 2,200 adults. All data are weighted to their respective representative sample on age, ethnicity/race, education, and region based on in-market available data (such as the U.S. Census). Results from the full survey have a margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points.

    3Research conducted by the Financial Health Network: Financial Health Pulse® 2024 U.S. Trends Report.

    4Credit score is FICO® Score 8 based on Experian data. Your lender or insurer may use a different FICO Score than FICO Score 8, or another type of credit score altogether. FICO® is a trademark of Fair Isaac Corporation. This is a separate service from your Spruce Spending and Savings accounts, provided by Pathward®, N.A., Member FDIC.

    5The Annual Percentage Yield (APY) is accurate as of 04/02/2025. This rate is variable and can change without notice. Fees may reduce earnings. To start earning interest on your Spruce Savings Account, simply opt in through the Spruce app or at sprucemoney.com.

    6Based on FDIC average national savings rate as of 04/02/2025.

    About H&R Block
    H&R Block, Inc. (NYSE: HRB) provides help and inspires confidence in its clients and communities everywhere through global tax preparation services, financial products, and small-business solutions. The company blends digital innovation with human expertise and care as it helps people get the best outcome at tax time and also be better with money using its mobile banking app, Spruce. Through Block Advisors and Wave, the company helps small-business owners thrive with year-round bookkeeping, payroll, advisory, and payment processing solutions. For more information, visit H&R Block News.   

    About Spruce
    Spruce helps you stay in control of your money through spending and savings accounts backed by technology that provides budgeting tools, automatic saving options, and financial insights that help you be good with money. To learn more, see sprucemoney.com/features.

    About Pathward®
    Pathward®, N.A., a national bank, is a subsidiary of Pathward Financial, Inc. (Nasdaq: CASH). Pathward is a U.S.-based financial empowerment company driven by its purpose to power financial inclusion. Pathward strives to increase financial availability, choice and opportunity across our Partner Solutions and Commercial Finance business lines. The strategic business lines provide support to individuals and businesses. Learn more at Pathward.com.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: RateUniversity Hosts Free First-Time Homebuyer Education Event in Boston

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    BOSTON, March 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Rate, a leader in fintech mortgage solutions, reinforces its dedication to expanding homeownership access by hosting RateUniversity Boston, a free first-time homebuyer education event on Saturday, April 26, 2025, from 10 AM to 1 PM at Roxbury Community College, Building 3.

    Visit Rate.com to Register Today

    RateUniversity is more than just a financial literacy event—it’s a unique, interactive experience designed to bridge the financial knowledge gap that affects adults from all backgrounds. While many financial workshops focus on underserved communities, RateUniversity recognizes that a lack of financial education is a widespread issue, even among college graduates and working professionals. The program is structured to provide practical, strategic knowledge about credit, mortgages, and financial tools that empower individuals to build wealth through homeownership.

    “RateUniversity is not just another financial workshop. It’s about filling the massive knowledge gap for so many adults, regardless of their background or education level,” said Shant Banosian, President of Rate Mortgage. “Most people graduate high school, college, and even advanced degree programs. But, they never learn how credit works, how to leverage a mortgage, or how financial products can be a tool for building wealth. That’s a huge problem. RateUniversity is designed to change that by making financial education accessible, engaging, and directly applicable to people’s lives. We want to give people the knowledge they need to make informed decisions, take control of their financial future, and ultimately, build generational wealth.”

    Originally launched in Chicago, RateUniversity continues to expand into new cities, bringing financial education to diverse communities in an engaging, culturally relevant, and interactive format. Attendees of the Boston event will participate in bilingual workshops in English and Spanish, covering essential financial topics such as building credit, understanding mortgage options, and accessing specialized affordable lending programs. Bilingual loan officers will be available for one-on-one consultations, answering questions and assisting with pre-approvals.

    RateUniversity attendees can expect:

    • Free educational workshops in English and Spanish
    • One-on-one consultations with bilingual loan officers
    • Expert guidance on homebuying programs and financial planning
    • Access to nonprofit resources focused on homebuyer assistance and grants
    • Networking opportunities with real estate professionals and community partners
    • Complimentary food and refreshments

    In addition, attendees who complete the program and proceed with a home purchase will be eligible for a $500 closing cost credit.

    “At Rate, we are committed to making financial wellness an integral part of homeownership,” said Arlyn Kalinski, SVP of Fair & Equitable Lending Strategies for Rate. “RateUniversity isn’t just about learning the basics of credit and mortgage lending—it’s about empowering people with the tools and strategies they need to build a stronger financial future. By delivering expert guidance in multiple languages and partnering with community organizations, we’re creating real opportunities for more families to achieve homeownership.”

    Media Availability

    The Rate team will be available for media interviews. Please contact press@rate.com for direct coordination.

    For more information or to register for RateUniversity, visit rate.com/rateuniversity.

    About Rate

    Rate Companies is a leader in mortgage lending and digital financial services. Headquartered in Chicago, Rate has over 850 branches across all 50 states and Washington D.C. Since its launch in 2000, Rate has helped more than 2 million homeowners with home purchase loans and refinances. The company has cemented itself as an industry leader by introducing innovative technology, offering low rates, and delivering unparalleled customer service.

    Honors and awards include Best Mortgage Lender for First-Time Homebuyers by NerdWallet for 2023; HousingWire’s Tech100 award for the company’s industry-leading FlashClose℠ digital mortgage platform in 2020, MyAccount in 2022, and Language Access Program in 2023; the most Scotsman Guide Top Originators for 11 consecutive years; Chicago Agent Magazine’s Lender of the Year for seven consecutive years; and Chicago Tribune’s Top Workplaces list for seven straight years.

    Visit rate.com for more information.

    Media Contact

    press@rate.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Broadcom Advances Optical Connectivity for AI Infrastructure with Industry-Leading Solutions at OFC 2025

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    PALO ALTO, Calif., March 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) today announced the expansion of its portfolio of optical interconnect solutions to enable AI infrastructure. These innovative technologies, including advancements in co-packaged optics (CPO), 200G/lane DSP and SerDes, 400G optics, and PCIe Gen6 over optics, will be showcased at the 2025 Optical Fiber Communications Conference and Exhibition (OFC). Broadcom’s demonstrations highlight the company’s roadmap towards 200T optical interconnect solutions.

    AI workloads are rapidly increasing, driving the need for higher bandwidth, lower latency, and more power-efficient optical interconnects. Broadcom is meeting these evolving demands with a comprehensive portfolio of innovative solutions designed to support the growth and scalability of AI clusters. These solutions include low-power, high-bandwidth DSP, SerDes and CPO for reduced power consumption and improved signal integrity, and PCIe Gen6 over optics for enhanced connectivity between AI accelerators and other system components.

    At OFC, Broadcom is showcasing a wide range of novel technologies underscoring our commitment to developing cutting-edge solutions for AI infrastructure:

    • XPU-CPO: Industry’s first 6.4-Tbps optics attach for custom AI accelerator (XPU) enabling high bandwidth, long reach scale-up fabric connectivity for AI servers.
    • Sian3: State-of-the-art 3nm 200G/lane DSP delivering industry’s lowest power consumption with enhanced performance for 800G and 1.6T optical transceivers over SMF.
    • Sian2M: Industry’s first 200G/lane DSP with integrated VCSEL drivers enabling low power, short reach MMF links in AI clusters.
    • 200G/lane Lasers: Leading-edge 200G VCSEL, EML and CWL technologies facilitating high speed interconnects for front-end and back-end networks of large-scale AI clusters.
    • 400G EML: Industry’s first demonstration of 400G EML technology for next-generation AI optical interconnects.
    • PCIe Gen6 over Optics: Industry’s first demonstration of PCIe Gen6 optical connectivity for AI scale-up fabric using Broadcom’s market-proven 100G VCSEL and photodetector.
    • LPO / BCM957608 NIC: Industry-leading 400G PCIe Ethernet NIC connecting with LPO module to enable scalable AI networks with high performance and efficiency.
    • Co-Packaged & Near-Packaged Copper: State-of-the-art 200G/lane copper link solutions enabling cost-effective, high-bandwidth connectivity in emerging AI architectures.
    • 7m+ AEC for 800G: Industry’s first 800G AEC retimer solution extending DAC cable reach beyond 7 meters.

    “OFC’s 50th anniversary provides the opportunity to recognize the industry’s many achievements, including Broadcom’s industry-first contributions to this field,” said Charlie Kawwas, Ph. D., President, Semiconductor Solutions Group, Broadcom. “A year ago, Broadcom committed to pushing technical boundaries to pioneer new open, scalable and power-efficient technologies to enable AI infrastructure. Our portfolio of optical interconnect solutions, highlighted at OFC 2025, paves the way to 200T by addressing the performance, power, and scalability challenges of AI clusters.”

    In addition, Broadcom is collaborating with more than 15 partners to demonstrate a wide array of its industry-leading solutions across the show floor. Throughout the conference, Broadcom is speaking on the technical challenges and advancements in optical networking and communications. Key talks and technical panel sessions this year include:

    • High Power and Multi-Wavelength Laser Light Sources: How Can They Address the Needs of AI/ML Interconnect?, Sunday, March 30, 1:00pm – 3:30pm, Room 215.
    • How Do Co-Packaged Optics Become Manufacturable?, Sunday, March 30, 4:00pm – 6:30pm, Rooms 203-204.
    • Short and Sweet: How Do We Cost-Optimize a 10-Meter Link for Scaling Up Machine Learning Clusters?, Sunday, March 30, 4:00pm – 6:30pm, Rooms 211-212.
    • Towards 400G/λ IM-DD: How to Pick up the Next Factor of 2?, Sunday March 30, 4:00pm – 6:30pm, Rooms 213-214.
    • The Evolution from Copper to Optical – Where is the line?, Monday, March 31, 1:00pm – 2:00pm, Optica Executive Forum.
    • Optimized Interconnect for AI Scale-Out and Scale-Up, Tuesday April 1, 12:15pm – 12:45pm, Expo Theater III.
    • Modular Structures with EML Thin Film LN and Ring-Based, Tuesday, April 1, 2:00pm – 4:00pm, Room 301.

    The 2025 conference takes place in San Francisco from March 30 to April 3. To learn more about these technical speaking sessions, joint partner demonstrations, technology showcases, key Broadcom news, and other activities at OFC, please visit here.

    About Broadcom
    Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) is a global technology leader that designs, develops, and supplies a broad range of semiconductor, enterprise software and security solutions. Broadcom’s category-leading product portfolio serves critical markets including cloud, data center, networking, broadband, wireless, storage, industrial, and enterprise software. Our solutions include service provider and enterprise networking and storage, mobile device and broadband connectivity, mainframe, cybersecurity, and private and hybrid cloud infrastructure. Broadcom is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. For more information, go to www.broadcom.com.

    Broadcom, the pulse logo, and Connecting Everything are among the trademarks of Broadcom. The term “Broadcom” refers to Broadcom Inc., and/or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

    Press Contact:
    Khanh Lam
    Global Communications
    press.relations@broadcom.com
    Telephone: +1 408 433 8649

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI USA: An Interview with Foreign Law Intern at the Law Library of Congress, Yuri Rattanaboonsen

    Source: US Global Legal Monitor

    Today’s blog post is an interview with a foreign law intern at the Law Library of Congress, Panicha Rattanaboonsen. She works with foreign law specialist Sayuri Umeda in the Global Legal Research Directorate. 

    Describe your background.

    My name is Panicha Rattanaboonsen, also known as Yuri. I am originally from Thailand and come from an overseas Chinese family. I moved to Bangkok during high school, where I attended Triam Udom Suksa School. I am fluent in Thai and English and have basic proficiency in Mandarin and Lao.

    What is your academic/professional history?

    Currently, I am an LL.M. candidate in the Environmental and Energy Law program at Georgetown University Law Center. Before pursuing my graduate studies, I had experience in the public sector at the national level in Thailand, contributing to policies and measures addressing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting energy innovation. I also worked as a legal analyst and adviser, focusing on renewable energy projects and energy policy.

    My professional background includes my role as a business tax associate, where I provided strategic tax advisory services to international clients, and my internship in the legal department of a big consulting firm, as well as my experience in arbitration and mediation at the Thai Arbitration Center, where I gained expertise in resolving complex domestic and international disputes.

    How do you describe your job to other people?

    I am a foreign law intern at the Global Legal Research Directorate of the Law Library of Congress. I conduct legal research and analysis on Thailand’s legal framework, including monitoring global legal articles and assessing Thai laws and regulations updates. Additionally, I have contributed to legal reports that will be published by the Law Library, such as Thailand: Civic Space Legal Framework, which examines legal policies affecting civic engagement and is set to be published at a later date.

    Why did you want to work at the Library of Congress?

    The Library of Congress houses one of the world’s most extensive and valuable collections of legal resources. Contributing to the development of reports and articles that serve organizations, scholars, and policymakers is a unique and meaningful opportunity. Moreover, working on the legislative research for Congress provides me with invaluable life experience.

    What is the most interesting fact that you’ve learned about the Library?

    I was fascinated to learn that the Law Library of Congress holds one of the world’s largest collections of legal materials. I was particularly intrigued to discover that Thai legal books and collections are also preserved there.

    What’s something that most of your co-workers don’t know about you?

    Beyond my work in law and policy, I am also interested in finance and investment. I am currently pursuing a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) certification.

    Subscribe to In Custodia Legis – it’s free! – to receive interesting posts drawn from the Law Library of Congress’s vast collections and our staff’s expertise in U.S., foreign, and international law.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Security: NATO reaffirms its commitment to Western Balkans stability, as Secretary General Rutte wraps up visits to Sarajevo and Pristina

    Source: NATO

    On 10 and 11 March 2025, NATO’s Secretary General, Mark Rutte, visited Sarajevo and Pristina. In Sarajevo, he met high-level officials from Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the Chair and members of the Presidency, the Chair of the Council of Ministers, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Defence, and the Acting Minister of Security, as well as with the Commander of NATO Headquarters Sarajevo, the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Commander of the EUFOR mission. The Secretary General also engaged with students at the University of Sarajevo.

    During his visit, Mr. Rutte highlighted that “NATO remains firmly committed to the stability of this region and to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of Bosnia and Herzegovina.” He added that “the Dayton Peace Agreement is the cornerstone of peace in this country and must be respected; and we support the Office of the High Representative; any actions that undermine Dayton, the constitutional order, or national institutions are unacceptable; inflammatory rhetoric and actions are dangerous; they pose a direct threat to Bosnia and Herzegovina stability and security.” The NATO Secretary General also underscored the need for political leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina “to do their share” and “take responsibility” for the progress and stability of their country. He made it clear that “this is not 1992” and that NATO and its international partners are present and engaged in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and “will not allow a security vacuum to emerge.” Finally, he emphasised that the Alliance stands committed to its cooperation with Bosnia and Herzegovina. “We already have a solid partnership, and we are prepared to build on NATO’s long-standing support to a unified BiH Armed Forces and to defence and security reforms, through our Headquarters in Sarajevo, our newly established Political Cell, and our Defence Capacity Building Package,” he said. 

    In Pristina, the Secretary General led a visit of the North Atlantic Council and troop contributing partners to the NATO-led KFOR mission and the NATO Advisory and Liaison Team. Together with the NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ms Radmila Shekerinska, and the Chair of NATO’s Military Committee, Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, they met with the leadership and personnel of KFOR and the NATO Advisory and Liaison Team (NALT). They also had an exchange of views with the Heads of Mission of the European Union, the EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX), the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of Mission of UNMIK, and the Acting Head of Mission of the OSCE. Furthermore, the Secretary General met with representatives of the Institutions in Kosovo, for bilateral discussions.

    “NATO has supported peace and stability in the Western Balkans region for thirty years; our commitment remains strong today, spearheaded by KFOR, which is our longest and currently largest mission. Under the excellent leadership of Major General Enrico Barduani, our KFOR troops work relentlessly to ensure a safe and secure environment for all people and communities living in Kosovo, in line with KFOR’s long-standing UN mandate; and the NATO Advisory and Liaison Team continues to support the security organisations in Kosovo, through capacity-building, education and training coordination; a secure Western Balkans region means more security across the whole Euro-Atlantic area,” Secretary General Rutte said. “NATO will continue to play its part, in close coordination with the Kosovo Police and the EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo, in our respective roles as security responders,” he added. “The solution leading to long-lasting peace is political; NATO will continue to fully support the normalisation of relations between Belgrade and Pristina, led by the European Union; this is the only way to solve pending issues, and secure a stable future, ensuring that the rights of all communities are respected and safeguarded; to move the Dialogue forward, both sides must show flexibility, make the necessary compromises, and focus on the long-term gains,” he pointed out.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Applications now open for the Grow Your Own grant scheme

    Source: Scotland – City of Edinburgh

    Community groups in Edinburgh are being invited to apply for funding from a £50,000 pilot scheme by the City of Edinburgh Council to establish new food growing projects.

    The “Grow Your Own” community grant initiative will welcome applications from projects aimed at establishing new community growing projects. Applications for funding are invited to help the creation of new growing spaces, supporting the establishment of growing groups, and promoting education around urban food production.

    Grants of up to £5,000 will be awarded to constituted voluntary and community groups across the city. With projects running for up to 12 months.

    The £50,000 funding has been allocated from the Flood Prevention/Biodiversity (including food growing) budget, which was approved in the Council’s budget on 22 February 2024. This fund aims to provide smaller community groups with essential support to establish community growing initiatives.

    Funding can be used for a variety of purposes, including:

    • Purchasing seeds, plants, and tools
    • Equipment for community garden cooking areas
    • Education and training activities
    • Personal protective equipment
    • Staff time directly related to establishing the growing area

    Culture and Communities Convener Val Walker said:

    This is a wonderful opportunity for Edinburgh communities to get involved in urban food growing. The city already hosts over 45 allotment sites with over 1,700 council-managed plots, along with more than 70 community growing projects. Through Edinburgh’s Food Growing Strategy (2021- 2026) and Allotment Strategy (2017 – 2027) we aim to expand local food growing initiatives.

    This year’s scheme will operate as a pilot program, and its impact will be assessed. If successful, and funding permitting, we could see this becoming an annual initiative.

    To apply, groups must meet the Council’s Standard Conditions of Grants. Full details can be found on the City of Edinburgh website. The application process will be administered through the City of Edinburgh Council’s Your Voice platform, designed to ensure a simple and efficient application experience.

    The deadline for applications is noon on 12 May.
     

    Published: March 31st 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI: Investview, Inc. (“INVU”) Reports Full Year 2024 Financial Results, Operational Highlights and a Year-End Message from the CEO

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    $55.4M in Gross Revenue | $8.3M in Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities | Strong Balance Sheet |Share Repurchase Program and Strategic Expansion- for the year ended December 31, 2024

    Haverford, PA, March 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Investview, Inc. (OTCQB: INVU), a diversified financial technology services company that offers multiple business units across key sectors, including a financial education division offering tools, products and content through a global network of independent distributors; a manufacturing division focused on proprietary aesthetics, health, nutrition, & cognitive wellness products for wholesale and retail markets, with strategic plans for global expansion; an early-stage online trading platform that intends to offer self-directed retail brokerage services; and a business unit that owns and operates a sustainable blockchain business focused on bitcoin mining, today reported its full-year 2024 financial results and shared highlights of key operational progress, strategic milestones, and forward-focused initiatives.

    Summary Consolidated Financial Highlights:

    Results of Operations and Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities – Twelve Months Ended December 31, 2024 vs December 31, 2023

    • Gross Revenue (a Non-GAAP measure) decreased 24.0% to $55.4 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2024, as compared to $72.9 million for the comparable prior year period.
    • Net Revenue decreased 22.9% to $52.4 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2024, as compared to $67.9 million for the comparable prior year period.
    • Net income from operations decreased 63.2% to $1.7 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2024, as compared to $4.6 million for the comparable prior year period.
    • Net cash provided by operating activities increased 36.9%, reaching $8.3 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2024, as compared to $6.1 million for the comparable prior year period, reflecting the results of our disciplined business model.

    Balance Sheet Data-December 31, 2024, vs December 31, 2023

    • Cash and cash equivalents increased by 7.4%, reaching $22.5 million for twelve months ended December 31, 2024, an increase of $1.6 million from $20.9 million at December 31, 2023, even after having repurchased $3.4 million of common stock and $1.1 million for the acquisition of substantially all the assets of Renu Laboratories Inc. during 2024. Our cash balances provide us with working capital that we can direct towards our strategic initiatives and growth investments.
    • Total assets at December 31, 2024 were $31.6 million, a decrease of $2.1 million from $33.7 million of assets at December 31, 2023, mainly due to non-cash depreciation and impairment charges relating to our mining servers and a decrease in deposits with vendors, partially offset by an increase our cash balance, an increase in Bitcoin holdings and the addition of a goodwill balance related to the acquisition of substantially all the assets of Renu Laboratories Inc.
    • Working Capital Balance increased by 30.8% to $16.2 million at December 31, 2024, an increase of $3.8 million from December 31, 2023.
    • Current Ratio is strong, up 14.3%, reaching 2.32 at December 31, 2024, an increase of 0.29 from our previous current ratio of 2.03 at December 31, 2023, confirming our strong balance sheet position.
    • Outstanding debt decreased by 10.0%, to $3.2 million at December 31, 2024, a decrease of $0.4 million, from the $3.6 million of debt at December 31, 2023, with total liabilities also decreasing by $0.5 million during the comparative period.
    • Total stockholders’ equity at December 31, 2024 was $17.2 million, a decrease of $1.6 million or 8.5% from the $18.8 of stockholders’ equity at December 31, 2023, mainly due to the repurchase of common shares during 2024.
    • Common stock issued and outstanding decreased by approximately 20.3% to 1.859 billion shares at the end of December 31, 2024, a decrease of 474 million shares from 2.333 billion shares at December 31, 2023, primarily attributable to strategic stock repurchases aimed at further reducing outstanding share count in an effort to enhance shareholder value.

    Comments on our industry segments and business units

    Our Financial Education and Technology Segment

    iGenius recognized net revenue for the twelve months ending December 31, 2024, of $47.1 million. This reflects a decrease of 16.8% or $9.5 million less than the comparable prior year period. The decrease was largely attributable to a combination of shifts in consumer behavior and demand following the COVID-19 pandemic as individuals re-evaluated their spending priorities, lifestyle habits, and engagement preferences, as well as broader global macroeconomic changes that have caused a general slowdown in direct sales and home-based business. Despite the drop in revenue, we are hopeful that over time we can regain some of the ground that we have lost as we try to build our sales network organically and develop additional product and service offerings that we offer into our sales network. We firmly believe our direct selling model has broad scalable potential beyond financial education. As part of our strategic vision, we expect to be able to expand the product suite available through our sales network—particularly through the introduction of offerings from our myLife Wellness- health, beauty, and wellness division.

    Our Blockchain Technology and Crypto Mining Products and Services Segment

    SAFETek recognized net revenue for the twelve months ending December 31, 2024, of $5.2 million. This reflects a decrease of 54.2% or $6.2 million less than the comparable prior year period. The decrease in net revenue was the result of Bitcoin halving, which cut block rewards by 50%, an increase in network difficulty over 29%, and a government-mandated energy curtailment resulting from low hydroelectric reservoir levels in our host country.

    Despite the challenging environment in which we now operate, in 2024, SAFETek produced 85.92 Bitcoin, navigating industry-wide headwinds including the April halving event, a sharp rise in network difficulty, and a government energy curtailment. While these factors impacted output, they also helped reduce power costs, turning a challenge into a cost-management initiative that we expect will serve us well over time.

    Further, in 2024, we implemented strategic enhancements, including the retirement of older miners, deployment of next-gen ASICs, and consolidation of operations, significantly lowering our hash cost and strengthening our market position. As a result, we remain debt-free on all equipment purchases and maintain flexibility with our strong balance sheet, as we evaluate future expansion opportunities.

    Despite the challenging environment, our long-term view of BTC mining remains cautiously optimistic, and we are maintaining a disciplined and strategic posture while preparing for future expansion should the economic environment return to prior levels.

    Our Manufacturing and Development of Health, Beauty and Wellness Products Segment

    In October 2024, we entered the over-the-counter health, beauty, and wellness market when our subsidiary, myLife Wellness Company (“myLife Wellness”), acquired the business of Renu Laboratories, Inc. (“Renu Labs”), a contract developer and manufacturer, producing both proprietary and non-proprietary health, beauty, and wellness products for third-party clients. This move creates the potential for us to extend our platform into consumer verticals, with a focus on aesthetics, nutrition, and cognitive health. Since the acquisition, we’ve strategically accelerated investment in Renu Labs’ technology, equipment, and talent, resulting in measurable improvements in production and operational efficiency.

    myLife Wellness will serve as both the marketing and e-commerce platform engine for the products developed and manufactured by Renu Labs, with a focus on aesthetics, health, nutrition, and cognitive wellness. These products are expected to be distributed through both retail and wholesale channels. In addition to operating as a standalone platform, myLife Wellness also expects to be able to leverage retail, wholesale, and direct-to-consumer channels through collaboration with our affiliated business platform, iGenius, to promote and offer myLife wellness products to its global membership base and its customers, expanding reach and creating new revenue opportunities.

    We plan to further the development and growth of both Renu Labs and myLife Wellness in 2025, as well as establishing our presence in the health and wellness industry and supporting our broader global growth objectives.

    Our Financial Services Initiatives

    March 2024 marked a major milestone in our fintech initiatives with the acquisition of Opencash Securities LLC—an early-stage registered broker-dealer. Although it has not yet achieved commercial operations, it is our objective to develop Opencash as a modern, mobile-first platform for low-cost, and commission-free trading of stocks, ETFs, and options, targeting accessibility and simplicity for retail investors worldwide. Currently, Opencash is progressing through clearing integration, infrastructure buildout, and testing in preparation for launch.

    Our Opencash initiative is intended to complement our proprietary MPower Trading Systems- Prodigio trading engine, acquired in 2021, and once fully developed, may be expected to yield two synergistic platforms: Opencash for everyday users and OpencashPro for advanced traders. Together, they will offer a seamless, data-driven trading experience.

    Message from Investview’s CEO – Victor Oviedo

    2024 was a transformative year for Investview—one marked by strategic discipline and a focused commitment to delivering long-term shareholder value. Aligned with our capital allocation priorities, we successfully reduced our outstanding debt by 10%, or $0.4 million, bringing it to $3.2 million by year-end. Simultaneously, we advanced our shareholder-focused strategy through a significant reduction in common stock by repurchasing and retiring approximately 474 million shares, a 20.3% decrease in issued and outstanding shares, at a blended 53% discount to the market.

    These actions reflect our continued focus on building intrinsic value while enhancing capital structure efficiency. Importantly, even after executing these initiatives, we concluded the year with a strong cash position of $22.5 million, providing us with both the resilience and flexibility to pursue appropriate investment opportunities, should they arise, pursue strategic acquisitions, and fund the continued development of our platforms.

    Further, the Company recently announced in March 2025 the launch of a $1 million share repurchase program, reaffirming its confidence in the long-term value of its business. This initiative reflects management’s belief that the current market price of its common stock does not accurately reflect the Company’s underlying strength and growth potential.

    Despite a challenging macroeconomic environment and industry headwinds, Investview continues to demonstrate resilience, adaptability, and long-term vision across its dynamic portfolio of business units—including financial education, wellness product manufacturing, sustainable blockchain mining, and a soon-to-launch online trading platform.

    As we look to the future, our aspirations are clear: scale our highest-potential business segments, maintain financial strength, and unlock new sources of value across our ecosystem.

    Entering the Wellness Market with myLife Wellness and Renu Labs

    Our entry into the over-the-counter health, beauty, and wellness market reflects a strategic step in broadening our platform and aligning with growing consumer demand in key wellness categories. This expansion began when our subsidiary, myLife Wellness Company (“myLife Wellness”), acquired the business of Renu Laboratories, Inc. (“Renu Labs”), a contract developer and manufacturer of both proprietary and non-proprietary health, beauty, and wellness products for third-party clients.

    The acquisition provides a pathway for us to extend into consumer verticals with a focus on aesthetics, nutrition, and cognitive health areas that complement our broader long-term growth objectives.

    In addition to myLife Wellness operating as a standalone platform, myLife Wellness also expects to be able to leverage retail, wholesale, and direct-to-consumer channels through collaboration with our affiliated business platform, iGenius, to promote and offer myLife wellness products to its global membership base and its customers, expanding reach and creating new revenue opportunities.

    Since the acquisition, we have made targeted investments in Renu Labs’ technology, equipment, and team. These enhancements have already contributed to improved production capacity and operational efficiency, laying a solid foundation for continued growth and development in this space.

    Positioned for a Breakout Year in 2025 and Beyond

    As we move into 2025, Investview is looking to accelerate growth and drive innovation across all verticals. Our key priorities include:

    • Launching the Opencash trading platform
    • Expanding iGenius’ global distribution network
    • Investing in new products and technology
    • Pursuing strategic and synergistic acquisitions
    • Maintaining a strong cash position and balance sheet discipline
    • We remain cautiously optimistic as to the long-term value of Bitcoin mining, and we intend to take deliberate steps to stabilize operations until favorable conditions return to support the business expansion.

    We enter 2025 with a clear vision, and a strong sense of purpose. Our leadership team is aligned around innovation, execution, and long-term value creation. With $22.5 million in cash, reduced debt, and a motivated team, we are anxious to pursue new opportunities and unlock shareholder value.”

    At Investview, we are not just building for today—we are shaping a future defined by possibility. We believe the best is yet to come.

    About Investview, Inc.

    Investview, Inc., a Nevada corporation, operates a financial technology (FinTech) services company, offering several different lines of business, including a Financial Education and Technology business that delivers a series of products and services involving financial education, digital assets and related technology, through a network of independent distributors; and a Blockchain Technology and Crypto Mining Products and Services business, including leading-edge research, development and FinTech services involving the management of digital asset technologies with a focus on Bitcoin mining and the new generation of digital assets. In addition, we are planning to create a Brokerage and Financial Markets business within the investment management and brokerage industries by, among others, commercializing on a proprietary trading platform we acquired in September 2021. For more information on Investview, please visit: www.investview.com.

    About Opencash Securities LLC

    Brokerage services are provided by Opencash Securities LLC, a member of FINRA and SIPC. Options involve risk and are not suitable for all investors. Please review Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options prior to engaging in options trading. Opencash Securities LLC does not provide investment advice. Please consult with investment, tax, or legal professionals before making any investment decisions. All investments involve risks, including the possible loss of capital. Check the background of this investment professional on BrokerCheck. Opencash Securities LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Investview, Inc.

    Forward-Looking Statement

    All statements in this release that are not based on historical fact are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements, which are based on certain assumptions and describe our future plans, strategies, and expectations, can generally be identified by the use of forward-looking terms such as “believe,” “expect,” “may,” “should,” “could,” “seek,” “intend,” “plan,” “goal,” “estimate,” “anticipate” or other comparable terms. These forward-looking statements are based on Investview’s current beliefs and assumptions and information currently available to Investview and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Our forward-looking statements expect that we will ultimately be able to develop retail brokerage operations at Opencash, although it is currently in the pre-revenue and early stage of its operations. We plan to do this by, among others, investing the funds we believe are necessary to develop the infrastructure necessary to achieve retail operations. This includes, among others, the on-boarding of customer support personnel and software developers, the development and implementation of a marketing strategy, the securing of necessary securities clearing arrangements, and the continued development of the online Opencash trading platform and completing its integration with the proprietary algorithmic trading platform we acquired in September 2021. Despite our best efforts, there can be no assurance that we will be able to achieve these objectively on a timely basis, if at all, as the development of an early-stage securities brokerage business involves inherent regulatory and operational risks and uncertainties. Our forward-looking statements also assume that the curtailment in our hydroelectric energy supply will be addressed within the near term and will not continue to have a long-term negative impact on our Bitcoin mining operations, although we are unable to predict when our mining levels will return to pre-2024 levels. More information on potential factors that could affect Investview’s financial results is included from time to time in Investview’s public reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and Current Reports on Form 8-K. The forward-looking statements made in this release speak only as of the date of this release, and Investview, Inc. assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements to reflect actual results or changes in expectations, except as otherwise required by law.

    Investor Relations
    Contact: Ralph R. Valvano
    Phone Number: 732.889.4300
    Email: pr@investview.com

    Reconciliation of Gross Revenue to Net Revenue (unaudited)

    As used in this report, Gross Revenues are not a measure of financial performance under United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”). Gross Revenues are presented as they are used by management to understand the total revenue before certain items such as refunds, incentives, credits, chargebacks and amounts paid to third party providers. The non-GAAP Gross Revenue measure is a supplement to the GAAP financial information. A reconciliation between Gross Revenue (non-GAAP) and Net Revenue is presented in the table below.

    Gross Revenue (non-GAAP) to Net Revenue reconciliation for the twelve months ended December 31, 2024 is as follows:

        Membership
    revenue    		     Mining revenue     Health and wellness product sales     Other Revenue     Total  
    Gross billings/receipts   $ 50,086,839     $ 5,186,606     $ 110,856     $ 23,404     $ 55,407,705  
    Refunds, incentives, credits, and chargebacks     (3,025,549 )     –       (185 )     –       (3,025,734 )
    Net revenue   $ 47,061,290     $ 5,186,606     $ 110,671     $ 23,404     $ 52,381,971  

    Gross Revenue (non-GAAP) to Net Revenue reconciliation for the twelve months ended December 31, 2023 is as follows:

        Membership
    Revenue    		     Cryptocurrency Revenue     Mining Revenue     Miner Repair Revenue     Total  
    Gross billings/receipts   $ 60,516,836     $ 990,785     $ 11,348,156     $ 23,378     $ 72,879,156  
    Refunds, incentives, credits, and chargebacks     (4,480,784 )     –       –       –       (4,480,784 )
    Amounts paid to supplier     –       (477,500 )     –       –       (477,500 )
    Net revenue   $ 56,036,052     $ 513,285     $ 11,348,156     $ 23,378     $ 67,920,871  

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Brag House Announces Strategic Innovation Initiatives Following Nasdaq Public Listing

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    NEW YORK, March 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Brag House Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: TBH), a pioneering media-tech platform at the intersection of gaming, college sports, and brand engagement, today announced its latest innovation roadmap following its successful public listing on Nasdaq. The company is enhancing its leadership in Gen Z engagement by integrating machine learning (ML) technology and expanding strategic data partnerships to deliver deeper proprietary insights for brands.

    “An important part of our vision has always been to create a seamless connection between brands and the next generation of consumers,” said Lavell Juan Malloy II, CEO & Co-Founder of Brag House. “With our upcoming enhanced AI capabilities and through our partnerships, we are setting a new standard for authentic engagement in the gaming and college sports ecosystem. This marks a pivotal moment for Brag House as we continue our commitment to deliver innovation at scale.”

    Strategic Data Partnership with Artemis Ave and Evemeta

    To further strengthen its data-driven approach, Brag House has entered into a strategic partnership with Artemis Ave and Evemeta, two industry leaders in social-video engagement, AI-powered behavioral insights and data infrastructure. These collaborations will enhance Brag House’s ability to deliver anonymized, actionable insights to brands, offering a smarter, more efficient way to connect with Gen Z.

    Gregory Butler, CEO of ZuCasa (also known as Artemis Ave), commented:
    “The Gen Z audience requires a fundamentally different approach to engagement, one that prioritizes authenticity, relevance, and interactivity. Our partnership with Brag House is a game-changer—bringing AI-powered insights to their clients without sacrificing real human connection. It’s something that is usually overlooked in the digital age that Brag House is committed to solving.”

    Evemeta’s cutting-edge data infrastructure solutions will further optimize Brag House’s real-time analytics capabilities, ensuring scalable and cost-efficient operations for its growing platform.

    Advancing Data-Driven Engagement with AI & Machine Learning

    Brag House is investing in ML-driven engagement tools that will provide brands with deeper insights into Gen Z behavior. These innovations will allow brands to predict user engagement trends, personalize brand interactions, and optimize marketing performance within Brag House’s dynamic gaming and social ecosystem. Additionally, Brag House will offer these insights through a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution, equipping brands with the tools to leverage behavioral data beyond the platform.

    Through predictive analytics and proprietary data modeling, Brag House aims to set a new benchmark for community-driven brand engagement, ensuring that marketing efforts align seamlessly with Gen Z’s evolving digital habits.

    Scaling the Future of Gen Z Engagement

    Brag House has already proven its ability to deliver high-impact engagement and cost-effective brand reach to millions of college students. The platform, to date, drove 1.75X longer view times (19 minutes vs. 11-minute industry average), achieved a 3X lower cost-per-click (CPC) ($0.24 vs. $0.70 industry average), and offered 2X lower cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) ($3.10 vs. $5.64 industry average). By combining social gaming, AI-driven insights, and strategic brand activations, Brag House is redefining how brands connect with the next generation of consumers—offering measurable engagement at scale.

    As part of its long-term strategy, Brag House will continue expanding its platform capabilities, optimizing its B2B data subscription model, and leveraging Nasdaq listing proceeds to fuel further innovation and global market penetration.

    About ZuCasa

    Holding the exclusive rights for entertainment and gaming to Evemeta’s proprietary Eve encoding, ZuCasa is revolutionizing video engagement for their clients globally through an extensive tech stack of solutions that improve the efficiencies of data modeling and streaming on the back end, while delivering powerful social tools like watch parties and video chat to the end users.

    About Brag House

    Brag House Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: TBH) is a next-generation engagement platform that leverages social gaming, AI-driven insights, and collegiate sports to connect brands with Gen Z. Through a community-first approach, Brag House provides immersive experiences, authentic data-driven brand activations, and a scalable engagement model tailored for the modern digital consumer.

    Forward-Looking Statements
    This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to the company’s ability to scale its platform, integrate new technologies, and generate sustainable revenue growth. For a full discussion of these risks, please refer to Brag House’s SEC filings.

    Media Contact:
    Fatema Bhabrawala
    Director of Media Relations
    fbhabrawala@allianceadvisors.com

    Investor Relations Contact:
    Adele Carey
    VP, Investor Relations
    ir@thebraghouse.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Global: 23% of South Africa’s children suffer from severe hunger: we tested some solutions – experts

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Leila Patel, Professor of Social Development Studies, University of Johannesburg

    A 2024 Unicef report found that 23% of South African children experience severe food poverty, eating less than two of the recommended five food groups per day. Unemployment, food insecurity, limited access to basic services and a lack of knowledge about nutrition all contribute to this. The lead researcher of this multidisciplinary study, Leila Patel, and collaborating researchers Matshidiso Sello and Sadiyya Haffejee suggest ways to tackle this dire situation.

    What’s in place to protect children from poverty?

    Since a call for prioritising the needs of children was adopted by the Mandela government in 1994, much progress has been made in expanding access to education, to immunisations, other primary healthcare services and social grants. Just over 13 million children now receive a child support grant. This has reduced child hunger rates from the high levels seen during the apartheid and immediate post-apartheid eras.

    But the grant doesn’t get to all the children who qualify for it. Around 17.5% of eligible children still don’t receive it. Reasons include a lack of proper documentation, lack of awareness of eligibility criteria and insufficient outreach by government agencies to reach vulnerable populations.

    Also, the grant isn’t close enough to the food poverty line, which is R796 (about US$43) per month per person based on the daily energy intake that a person needs. From 1 April 2025, the child support grant will increase to R560 (about US$30) per month per child.

    Secondly, although school feeding schemes are in place, many children fall outside the net. Close to 10 million children in low income communities in South Africa have access to a school lunch via the National School Nutrition Programme. This programme is an excellent intervention which improves the health of children. However, in 2024, about a quarter of the children who are eligible did not receive school meals. Some of the reasons are procurement issues, funding delays, problems with provisioning, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, when school feeding ceased. Uptake has recovered to some extent but there is a need to improve the quality and effectiveness of the school feeding programme to improve nutritional outcomes.

    You designed a system to help alleviate child poverty: what did it involve?

    The South African Research Chairs Initiative and the Centre for Social Development in Africa at the University of Johannesburg implemented a study to strengthen social and care systems across health, education and social development. The project, which was started in 2020, involved tracking early grade learners and their caregivers in Johannesburg over a three-year period, looking at their health, material circumstances, food security, educational performance and mental health. Our research revealed a concerning picture of child hunger in Johannesburg, Africa’s wealthiest city.

    The number of children in our study who went to bed hungry in the past week decreased from 13.7% in 2020 to 4.9% in 2022. Zero hunger was achieved in 2021 but it increased again in 2022 due to broader economic pressures like rising food prices and unemployment. While stunting rates showed a slight downward trend over the three years (from 13.5% in 2020 to 11.1% in 2022), we observed worrying increases in wasting, a severe form of malnutrition (from 5.6% in 2020 to 20.3% in 2022), and underweight (from 5.6% in 2020 to 11.4% in 2022).

    Increases in wasting may be due to the COVID-19 pandemic and slow economic recovery. Nevertheless, the fluctuating figures underscore the complex interplay of factors contributing to severe child hunger.

    The teams who worked on the project – called the Community of Practice intervention – set about creating a tighter, more supportive net around children experiencing severe and moderate risk. This integrated approach brought together government agencies, NGOs, schools, social workers, families and community leaders, to build sustainable solutions for child wellbeing.

    The focus was on strengthening existing systems and fostering collaboration to ensure that children’s needs were identified and addressed effectively. On average, 157 children were reached each year over a three year period.



    Read more:
    COVID-19 has hurt some more than others: South Africa needs policies that reflect this

    What did you find?

    Several promising practices emerged from the collaborations, demonstrating the potential for positive change. These included:

    • Strengthening school nutrition programmes by improving the quality and consistency of meals received and providing nutrition education through radio and WhatsApp messaging. More children had access to school meals.

    • Tailored interventions: The team conducted screenings to assess the needs of children and their families. Children requiring specific interventions were referred to appropriate services such as child protection services and grants. Caregivers facing mental health challenges were connected to psychosocial support services, and families experiencing hunger were provided with food parcels by NGOs. Providing food top-ups for children resulted in zero hunger in the second year of the pandemic.

    The number of children experiencing learning and social and emotional difficulties decreased between 2020 and 2022. Access to food and nutrition improved, higher vaccination rates were achieved and caregivers were more responsive to their health needs.

    What does this tell you about what needs to change?

    A significant barrier in addressing severe child poverty is the fragmentation of services across the Departments of Health, Basic Education and Social Development. Since the departments run standalone programmes, the synergies between the different social systems are not optimised. Children and their families who need additional support are often referred to the appropriate services, but there is poor follow-up.

    The Integrated School Health Policy of 2012 makes provision for better coordination between these departments. But implementation has been uneven and poor in some instances. Improving and strengthening these inter-connected social systems of service provision across government departments is critical to improving child food poverty outcomes.

    While managing food inflation, economic growth, job creation, and reduced inequality are important longer-term goals, immediate interventions are essential to address severe child food poverty. Failure to do so will compromise school progression and delay their overall health and social wellbeing. Simply improving economic indicators will not automatically translate to food on the table for every child; targeted interventions are vital.

    Ending severe child hunger in South Africa demands a comprehensive and coordinated response, involving government, NGOs, community organisations, schools, and families themselves.

    Leila Patel receives funding from the National Research Foundation for the Communities of Practice (CoP) study for social systems strengthening for better child wellbeing outcomes.

    Matshidiso Valeria Sello receives funding from the Centre of Excellence in Human Development for a project on Household Economic Shocks.

    Sadiyya Haffejee receives funding from the National Research Foundation.

    – ref. 23% of South Africa’s children suffer from severe hunger: we tested some solutions – experts – https://theconversation.com/23-of-south-africas-children-suffer-from-severe-hunger-we-tested-some-solutions-experts-252566

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: 23% of South Africa’s children suffer from severe hunger: we tested some solutions – experts

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Leila Patel, Professor of Social Development Studies, University of Johannesburg

    A 2024 Unicef report found that 23% of South African children experience severe food poverty, eating less than two of the recommended five food groups per day. Unemployment, food insecurity, limited access to basic services and a lack of knowledge about nutrition all contribute to this. The lead researcher of this multidisciplinary study, Leila Patel, and collaborating researchers Matshidiso Sello and Sadiyya Haffejee suggest ways to tackle this dire situation.

    What’s in place to protect children from poverty?

    Since a call for prioritising the needs of children was adopted by the Mandela government in 1994, much progress has been made in expanding access to education, to immunisations, other primary healthcare services and social grants. Just over 13 million children now receive a child support grant. This has reduced child hunger rates from the high levels seen during the apartheid and immediate post-apartheid eras.

    But the grant doesn’t get to all the children who qualify for it. Around 17.5% of eligible children still don’t receive it. Reasons include a lack of proper documentation, lack of awareness of eligibility criteria and insufficient outreach by government agencies to reach vulnerable populations.

    Also, the grant isn’t close enough to the food poverty line, which is R796 (about US$43) per month per person based on the daily energy intake that a person needs. From 1 April 2025, the child support grant will increase to R560 (about US$30) per month per child.

    Secondly, although school feeding schemes are in place, many children fall outside the net. Close to 10 million children in low income communities in South Africa have access to a school lunch via the National School Nutrition Programme. This programme is an excellent intervention which improves the health of children. However, in 2024, about a quarter of the children who are eligible did not receive school meals. Some of the reasons are procurement issues, funding delays, problems with provisioning, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, when school feeding ceased. Uptake has recovered to some extent but there is a need to improve the quality and effectiveness of the school feeding programme to improve nutritional outcomes.

    You designed a system to help alleviate child poverty: what did it involve?

    The South African Research Chairs Initiative and the Centre for Social Development in Africa at the University of Johannesburg implemented a study to strengthen social and care systems across health, education and social development. The project, which was started in 2020, involved tracking early grade learners and their caregivers in Johannesburg over a three-year period, looking at their health, material circumstances, food security, educational performance and mental health. Our research revealed a concerning picture of child hunger in Johannesburg, Africa’s wealthiest city.

    The number of children in our study who went to bed hungry in the past week decreased from 13.7% in 2020 to 4.9% in 2022. Zero hunger was achieved in 2021 but it increased again in 2022 due to broader economic pressures like rising food prices and unemployment. While stunting rates showed a slight downward trend over the three years (from 13.5% in 2020 to 11.1% in 2022), we observed worrying increases in wasting, a severe form of malnutrition (from 5.6% in 2020 to 20.3% in 2022), and underweight (from 5.6% in 2020 to 11.4% in 2022).

    Increases in wasting may be due to the COVID-19 pandemic and slow economic recovery. Nevertheless, the fluctuating figures underscore the complex interplay of factors contributing to severe child hunger.

    The teams who worked on the project – called the Community of Practice intervention – set about creating a tighter, more supportive net around children experiencing severe and moderate risk. This integrated approach brought together government agencies, NGOs, schools, social workers, families and community leaders, to build sustainable solutions for child wellbeing.

    The focus was on strengthening existing systems and fostering collaboration to ensure that children’s needs were identified and addressed effectively. On average, 157 children were reached each year over a three year period.

    Read more: COVID-19 has hurt some more than others: South Africa needs policies that reflect this

    What did you find?

    Several promising practices emerged from the collaborations, demonstrating the potential for positive change. These included:

    • Strengthening school nutrition programmes by improving the quality and consistency of meals received and providing nutrition education through radio and WhatsApp messaging. More children had access to school meals.

    • Tailored interventions: The team conducted screenings to assess the needs of children and their families. Children requiring specific interventions were referred to appropriate services such as child protection services and grants. Caregivers facing mental health challenges were connected to psychosocial support services, and families experiencing hunger were provided with food parcels by NGOs. Providing food top-ups for children resulted in zero hunger in the second year of the pandemic.

    The number of children experiencing learning and social and emotional difficulties decreased between 2020 and 2022. Access to food and nutrition improved, higher vaccination rates were achieved and caregivers were more responsive to their health needs.

    What does this tell you about what needs to change?

    A significant barrier in addressing severe child poverty is the fragmentation of services across the Departments of Health, Basic Education and Social Development. Since the departments run standalone programmes, the synergies between the different social systems are not optimised. Children and their families who need additional support are often referred to the appropriate services, but there is poor follow-up.

    The Integrated School Health Policy of 2012 makes provision for better coordination between these departments. But implementation has been uneven and poor in some instances. Improving and strengthening these inter-connected social systems of service provision across government departments is critical to improving child food poverty outcomes.

    While managing food inflation, economic growth, job creation, and reduced inequality are important longer-term goals, immediate interventions are essential to address severe child food poverty. Failure to do so will compromise school progression and delay their overall health and social wellbeing. Simply improving economic indicators will not automatically translate to food on the table for every child; targeted interventions are vital.

    Ending severe child hunger in South Africa demands a comprehensive and coordinated response, involving government, NGOs, community organisations, schools, and families themselves.

    – 23% of South Africa’s children suffer from severe hunger: we tested some solutions – experts
    – https://theconversation.com/23-of-south-africas-children-suffer-from-severe-hunger-we-tested-some-solutions-experts-252566

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Secretary General reaffirms transatlantic unity in Warsaw: There is no alternative to NATO

    Source: NATO

    NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte visited Warsaw on Wednesday (26 March 2025), where he met Polish President Andrzej Duda, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski. The Secretary General then gave a speech at a public event co-hosted by the Warsaw School of Economics and the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

    Secretary General Rutte praised Poland for its leadership within the Alliance, including its strong support to Ukraine and record-high defence spending, set to reach 4.7% of GDP this year. “Poland’s investment in defence is an example to all Allies. Not only do you top the NATO charts, you plan to spend even more,” he said. 
     
    In his keynote speech, the Secretary General underlined the strength of the transatlantic bond and laid out NATO’s path to the upcoming Summit in The Hague.
     
    “When it comes to keeping Europe and North America safe, there is no alternative to NATO,” he said, stressing that it is not possible to imagine the defence of Europe without the Alliance.

    As Russia’s war against Ukraine rages on and its military cooperation with China, Iran, and North Korea intensifies, Mr Rutte warned that President Putin “has not given up on his ambition to reshape the global security order.” He underlined that a strong transatlantic Alliance remains the foundation of European security and that stronger European Allies are a unique strategic asset to the United States – allowing America, he said, to “promote peace through strength on the global stage.”

    Secretary General Rutte reiterated his confidence in the United States’ continued commitment to NATO and Article 5. “Listen to President Trump, who has repeatedly stated his commitment to a strong NATO. Listen to the strong bipartisan support in the US Congress,” he said. “And listen to the American people,” three-quarters of whom support NATO according to a recent Gallup poll.

    Mr Rutte also emphasised that the US commitment to NATO comes with a clear expectation: that European Allies and Canada take on greater responsibility for our shared security.

    Looking ahead to the NATO Summit in The Hague, the Secretary General said the Alliance would “begin a new chapter for our transatlantic Alliance. Where we build a stronger, fairer and more lethal NATO, to face a more dangerous world.”

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI: Justin Sun: Forbes Cover Marks New Beginning, Vows 40-Year Commitment to Crypto Industry

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    SINGAPORE, March 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Justin Sun, Global Advisor of HTX and Founder of TRON, has been featured on the Forbes Digital Assets Daily Cover, which lauds him as a “Crypto Billionaire Who Helped The Trumps Make $400 Million.” This marks a historic moment as Sun becomes the second Chinese entrepreneur—after Jack Ma—to be featured on Forbes’ English digital asset spotlight. On the evening of March 28, Sun joined a live broadcast session hosted by HTX titled “Justin Sun Featured on Forbes! Another Legendary Moment for Crypto?” to share his thoughts and experiences. The livestream also featured Molly, Spokesperson of HTX, along with several well-known Chinese crypto influencers and representatives from leading industry media.

    Showcasing Chinese Leadership on the Global Crypto Stage

    Sun views this recognition as an opportunity to represent both himself and the broader crypto industry on the global stage. “This helps the public better understand who I am, what the crypto industry stands for, and can potentially reshape public perception,” said Sun. “It’s also a great opportunity for the industry’s growth in China. We can now prove to the world that the crypto sector can represent Chinese voices and interests on a global level.”

    “This is definitely a milestone, but it’s just the beginning,” he added. Prior to him, only CZ, Brian Armstrong, and SBF had received this level of recognition. “This validates the achievements we’ve made in the industry, and also enhances the visibility and reputation of brands like HTX and TRON. In the business world, Forbes’ endorsement brings credibility and trust to our work.”

    Forbes Recognition to Accelerate HTX’s Global Expansion

    The three previously recognized crypto leaders corresponded to Binance, Coinbase, and FTX. Now, Sun represents HTX. “Not long ago, Forbes named HTX one of the world’s most trustworthy crypto exchanges. This, along with the latest feature, strongly supports our global expansion,” said Sun. “Since rebranding to HTX, our platform has become easier for international users to recognize and connect with. I’m very optimistic about HTX’s next phase of growth.”

    Sun has also praised HTX on social media, citing steady trading volume increases, successful asset launches, and over $100 million in net inflows for three consecutive months. “Based on current liquidity levels, HTX ranks around sixth globally,” he said. “With sustained effort, we have a real opportunity to return to the global top three.”

    A Vision to Build the Industry for the Next 40 Years

    March 28 also marks the 10th anniversary of Jack Ma’s Lakeside University. As an alumnus, Sun noted: “The biggest difference is, when Jack Ma appeared on Forbes, Alibaba was already a household name. But blockchain is still in its early stages. Out of 7 billion people worldwide, TRON has only 300 million users—we’re still early.”

    Looking ahead, Sun remains ambitious. “I believe I can contribute to the industry for at least another 40 years. I entered the crypto space in 2012—it’s been just 13 years. If given three times more time, I’m confident I can help elevate the industry to new heights.”

    About HTX

    Founded in 2013, HTX has evolved from a virtual asset exchange into a comprehensive ecosystem of blockchain businesses that span digital asset trading, financial derivatives, research, investments, incubation, and other businesses.

    As a world-leading gateway to Web3, HTX harbors global capabilities that enable it to provide users with safe and reliable services. Adhering to the growth strategy of “Global Expansion, Thriving Ecosystem, Wealth Effect, Security & Compliance,” HTX is dedicated to providing quality services and values to virtual asset enthusiasts worldwide.

    To learn more about HTX, please visit HTX Square or https://www.htx.com/, and follow HTX on X, Telegram, and Discord.

    For further inquiries, please contact:
    Ruder Finn Asia
    glo-media@htx-inc.com.

    Disclaimer: This press release is provided by HTX. The statements, views, and opinions expressed in this content are solely those of the content provider and do not necessarily reflect the views of this media platform or its publisher. We do not endorse, verify, or guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information presented. This content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, investment, or trading advice. Investing in crypto and mining related opportunities involves significant risks, including the potential loss of capital. Readers are strongly encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. However, due to the inherently speculative nature of the blockchain sector–including cryptocurrency, NFTs, and mining–complete accuracy cannot always be guaranteed. Neither the media platform nor the publisher shall be held responsible for any fraudulent activities, misrepresentations, or financial losses arising from the content of this press release.Speculate only with funds that you can afford to lose.Neither the media platform nor the publisher shall be held responsible for any fraudulent activities, misrepresentations, or financial losses arising from the content of this press release. In the event of any legal claims or charges against this article, we accept no liability or responsibility.

    Legal Disclaimer: This media platform provides the content of this article on an “as-is” basis, without any warranties or representations of any kind, express or implied. We do not assume any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information presented herein. Any concerns, complaints, or copyright issues related to this article should be directed to the content provider mentioned above.

    A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3f568896-43a1-4685-898f-04524880fc09

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: Professor Galina Tokunova awarded the title of “Honored Worker of Higher Education”

    Translartion. Region: Russians Fedetion –

    Source: Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering –

    By decree of the President of Russia, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Management of SPbGASU Galina Tokunova was awarded the honorary title of “Honored Worker of Higher Education of the Russian Federation”.

    Galina Fedorovna is a Doctor of Economics, author and co-author of more than 100 published scientific and educational works, including three monographs, 93 scientific articles and three educational and methodological manuals.

    We congratulate Galina Fedorovna on being awarded the honorary title and wish her further success in her scientific and teaching activities.

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

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI: iRhythm Unveils New Real-World Data at ACC.25 Demonstrating the Benefits of Zio® Long-Term Continuous Monitoring for Arrhythmia Detection

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    SAN FRANCISCO, March 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — iRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) today announced results from two large real-world retrospective analyses presented at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) 2025 Scientific Sessions in Chicago, IL. Drawing on data from more than 1.1 million patients who used iRhythm’s Zio® long-term continuous monitoring (LTCM) ECG devices, these studies demonstrate that short-term (24–48-hour) monitoring, such as with Holter devices, fails to detect a significant proportion of actionable arrhythmias—even in patients reporting “daily symptoms”—and that Symptom–Rhythm Correlation (SRC) is notably low for most arrhythmias, underscoring that selection of monitoring duration based on the frequency of symptoms alone can lead to undetected (missed) actionable1 arrhythmias. Together, these findings highlight the benefits of Zio® long-term continuous monitoring (LTCM)2 and the limitations in 24–48-hour Holter monitoring still prevalent in current clinical practices and payer policies.

    Zio LTCM “Daily Symptoms” Study: Gaps in Short-Term Holter Monitoring

    • 64% Undetected in the First 48 Hours: Among daily-symptom patients—those with daily or greater symptom frequency— diagnosed with actionable arrhythmias, nearly two-thirds went undetected through two days monitoring—indicating that 24–48-hour monitoring, such as with Holter, would have failed to detect them.
    • Higher Yield for Non-Daily Symptom Patients: Non-daily symptom patients—those with symptoms occurring with a frequency less than once per day—had an 80.9% arrhythmia yield versus 69.1% in daily-symptom patients, demonstrating that greater symptom frequency does not necessarily reflect increased arrhythmia burden.
    • Mean Time to First Episode Exceeds 48 Hours: Across all arrhythmia types, the mean time to the first detected episode was greater than 48 hours—regardless of symptom frequency—underscoring the limitations of short-term monitoring.

    Zio LTCM “Symptom–Rhythm Correlation (SRC)” Study: Symptoms Alone Are Unreliable

    • Less Than 20% Correlation: In most arrhythmia types, fewer than one in five patients in the analysis documented a symptom coinciding with an arrhythmic episode. Symptom-rhythm correlation was higher for patients reporting daily vs. non-daily symptoms.
    • AF Often Asymptomatic: Even for atrial fibrillation (AF)—the most commonly symptomatic arrhythmia—over half of all cases were asymptomatic.
    • Serious Arrhythmias Frequently Not Correlated with Symptoms: Ventricular tachycardia, AV block, and significant pauses were frequently detected by Zio LTCM without patient-reported symptoms, suggesting that selection of monitor duration should not be based on symptom frequency alone, and that long-term continuous monitoring may offer advantages over other monitoring types with shorter duration or those which rely on patient triggered events to initiate recording.

    “These findings challenge the long-held assumption that frequent symptoms justify short-duration monitoring,” said Mintu Turakhia, MD, iRhythm Chief Medical and Scientific Officer and EVP of Product Innovation. “They reinforce the limitations of Holter-duration monitoring and highlight the value of Zio long-term continuous monitoring up to 14 days. Once again, iRhythm’s real-world data are contributing evidence that can help guide both clinical practice and payer policy.”

    Arrhythmias: A Growing Burden for Patients and Health Systems

    Up to five percent of the general population—around 16 million Americans—experience arrhythmias,3 in which the heart may beat too quickly, too slowly, or sporadically. If left untreated, certain arrhythmias can damage the heart, brain, or other organs4 and increase the risk of stroke or death.5,6,7   Beyond these clinical concerns, the financial toll of undiagnosed arrhythmias is substantial. It’s estimated that undiagnosed atrial fibrillation alone costs the U.S. $3 billion per year,8 while heart failure costs could reach $70 billion by 2030.9 Taken together, these figures illustrate both the clinical urgency and health-economic rationale for long-term continuous monitoring.

    Implications for Clinical Care and Payer Policy

    While 24–48-hour Holter monitoring is widely used in current clinical practice and historically supported by payer policies—especially for patients reporting daily symptoms—these new findings indicate that 64% of daily-symptom patients with actionable arrhythmias remain undetected following the first 48 hours of monitoring, which could lead to missed diagnoses and delayed care. In contrast, Zio LTCM provides uninterrupted, continuous monitoring for up to 14 days, enabling more accurate and timely detection of actionable arrhythmias. The Cardiac Ambulatory Monitor EvaLuation of Outcomes and Time to Events (CAMELOT) study, published in the American Heart Journal, further demonstrated that Zio LTCM service had the highest yield of specified arrhythmia diagnosis and the lowest likelihood of repeat testing compared to all other monitoring services.10,11,12,13 As healthcare systems increasingly adopt value-based care models, extending monitoring beyond 48 hours can improve patient outcomes, reduce missed diagnoses, and help contain healthcare resource utilization.

    New Data Add to iRhythm’s Clinical Evidence Base for LTCM

    These new data build on iRhythm’s comprehensive clinical evidence program, encompassing more than 125 original research manuscripts,14 insights derived from over 2 billion hours of curated heartbeat data15 and more than 10 million patient reports posted since the company’s inception—underscoring the company’s ongoing commitment to expanding evidence that supports improved patient outcomes.

    About the iRhythm Studies Presented at ACC.25

    “Arrhythmias in Patients with Daily vs. Non-Daily Symptoms Undergoing Long-Term Continuous Patch ECG Monitoring”

    Holter monitoring of 24-48 hours remains in common use for patients with frequent or daily symptoms based on clinician or payer preferences. This retrospective cohort study sought to determine the percentage of arrhythmias detected by LTCM before and after 48 hours of monitoring in patients with daily (≥ 1/day) and non-daily (<1/day) symptoms. Researchers compared yield in patients ≥18 years prescribed a Zio® monitor or Zio® XT LTCM worn for >7 to 14 days from June 2023 to July 2024. These devices include a patient-activated button to document symptomatic episodes. Symptom frequency was measured as button presses/day and stratified by daily (≥1/day) or non-daily (<1/day). ECG data was analyzed via a deep-learned AI algorithm and confirmed by cardiographic technicians. Nearly two thirds (64%) of daily-symptom patients with actionable arrhythmias were undetected in the first 48 hours and the man time to first detected arrhythmia was >48 hours for all arrhythmia types, regardless of symptom frequency, suggesting that Holter (<48 hour) may be inadequate even for these patients.

    “Symptom-Rhythm Correlation Patterns in Patients Undergoing Ambulatory ECG Monitoring: Analysis of Over 1 Million Patients”

    Symptoms are the most common indication for ambulatory cardiac monitoring, yet Symptom–Rhythm Correlation (SRC) has not been well described across various arrhythmias. Researchers assessed SRC in patients ≥18 years who wore a Zio® monitor or Zio® XT LTCM for >7 to 14 days between June 2023 and July 2024. These devices include a patient-activated button to mark symptomatic episodes, and episodes within ±45 seconds of a recorded arrhythmia were considered rhythm-correlated. ECG data was analyzed via a deep-learned AI algorithm and confirmed by cardiographic technicians. Atrial fibrillation (AF) and ectopic beats were the rhythms most-correlated with patient symptoms. Overall symptom-rhythm correlation was low (i.e., <20% for most rhythms), but higher for patients with Daily Symptoms than Non-Daily Symptoms.

    About iRhythm Technologies
    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, please visit https://www.irhythmtech.com/.

    Media Contact
    Kassandra Perry
    irhythm@highwirepr.com

    Investor Contact
    Stephanie Zhadkevich
    investors@irhythmtech.com

    1 Actionable Arrhythmias defined as Atrial Fibrillation ≥30 sec, Supraventricular Tachycardia ≥90 bpm & ≥30s, Ventricular Tachycardia ≥100 bpm & ≥4 beats, any Ventricular Fibrillation, Pause ≥3 sec, and/or Atrioventricular Block (any 2nd Degree or Complete Heart Block).
    2 The Zio monitor is a prescription-only, single-use ECG monitor that continuously records data for up to 14 days. It is indicated for use on patients who may be asymptomatic or who may suffer from transient symptoms such as palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, lightheadedness, pre-syncope, syncope, fatigue, or anxiety.                                
    3 Desai et al. Arrhythmias. In: StatPearls. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; June 5, 2023. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32644349/
    4 National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Arrhythmias – What Is an Arrhythmia? www.nhlbi.nih.gov. Published March 24, 2022. Accessed April 25, 2024. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/arrhythmias
    5 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
    6 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
    7 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
    8 Turakhia et al. Economic Burden of Undiagnosed Nonvalvular Atrial Fibrillation in the United States. The American Journal of Cardiology. 2015;116(5):733-739. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjcard.2015.05.045
    9 Heidenreich et al. Forecasting the Impact of Heart Failure in the United States: A Policy Statement From the American Heart Association. Circulation: Heart Failure. 2013;6(3):606-619. doi:https://doi.org/10.1161/hhf.0b013e318291329a
    10 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
    11 A specified arrhythmia refers to an arrhythmia encounter diagnosis as per Hierarchical Condition Categories (HCC) 96.

    12 Based on previous generation Zio XT device data. Zio monitor utilizes the same operating principles and ECG algorithm. Additional data on file.
    13 Zio LTCM service refers to Zio XT and Zio monitor service.
    14 Data on file. iRhythm Technologies, 2025.
    15 Data on file. iRhythm Technologies, 2024.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Global: As ‘right to die’ gains more acceptance, a scholar of Catholicism explains the position of the Catholic Church

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mathew Schmalz, Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross

    In recent years, euthanasia and assisted death rates have risen worldwide. Cavan Images / Raffi Maghdessian via Getty images

    An individual’s “right to die” is becoming more accepted across the globe. Polls show that most Americans support allowing doctors to end a patient’s life upon their request. Assisted suicide is now permitted in 10 U.S. states and in Washington. In 2025,five more states are set to consider “right to die” legislation.

    The “right to die” can refer to several means of dying. In “euthanasia,” death can either be “voluntary” – when a physician administers lethal drugs with the patient’s consent – or “nonvoluntary,” without a person’s consent, as when a person is in a vegetative state. In such cases, consent is usually given by a legal guardian or relative.

    By contrast “assisted suicide” refers to a person being aided in ending their life by being given lethal drugs and then administering the dose themselves. This practice is sometimes called “assisted dying.” These terms make crucial distinctions between who carries out the final act of ending life.

    Worldwide, euthanasia and assisted death rates have risen in recent years.

    In 2023, almost 1 in 20 deaths in Canada were from assisted dying; in the Netherlands, the number reached 5.4% from assisted dying and euthanasia. The Netherlands has also legalized assisted dying related to mental disorders, not just terminal illnesses.

    In November 2024, an assisted dying bill passed the British parliament, with a similar bill now pending in Scotland. Assisted suicide and euthanasia are already legal in Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg, among other countries in Europe and Latin America.

    The right-to-die debate

    Advocates of a person’s right to die argue that individuals should make their own end-of-life decisions because it is their life – and their death. Advocates also maintain that euthanasia and assisted suicide not only prevent further suffering, but also safeguard an individual’s dignity by avoiding senseless pain and severely diminished quality of life.

    However, right-to-die advocates have critics; among the more forceful ones is the Roman Catholic Church. For example, speaking about the potential legalization of euthanasia in France in 2022, Pope Francis argued that euthanasia, in all its forms, only leads to “more killing.”

    But as a scholar of Catholic thought and practice, I also recognize that the Catholic position is a nuanced one. It opposes euthanasia and assisted dying, but it does not support extraordinary or disproportionate treatments when unavoidable death is close at hand.

    ‘A sin against God’

    Francis has called euthanasia and assisted suicide “a sin against God.” He also has linked euthanasia to abortion, saying, “you don’t play with life, not at the beginning, and not at the end.”

    The fullest, most recent explanation of the Catholic view on the right to die can be found in the 2020 Vatican letter “The Good Samaritan,” a title that refers to the biblical story of a stranger who was the only one to assist a man beaten and stripped by robbers.

    The parable of The Good Samaritan.
    David Teniers the Younger/ The Metropolitan Museum of Art

    Agreeing with many other Christian denominations, “The Good Samaritan” letter makes the point that our lives are not our own but belong to God. As God’s creations, we do not have the right to end our own lives. Euthanasia also involves a doctor actively killing their own patient. Euthanasia and assisted suicide thus violate the biblical commandment “thou shalt not kill.”

    Beyond this basic point, the letter maintains that euthanasia undermines society because the right to life is the basis of all other rights. Also, debates about “quality of life” can lead to the idea that “poor-quality” lives have no right to continue.

    A failure of love

    “The Good Samaritan” letter observes that human beings are joined together by compassion – a word that literally means “co-suffering.” In the letter’s words, which have been repeated by Francis many times, euthanasia is “false compassion” because it ignores the “spiritual and interpersonal aspects” of human life such as accompanying – or simply being with – someone in and through their suffering.

    Connected to this opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide is a point that Francis often makes about “throwaway culture,” which “discards” the poor, needy and dependent. In Francis’ words, euthanasia is “a failure of love.”

    End-of-life care

    Given the Catholic church’s stand against assisted suicide and euthanasia, it might seem surprising that the church does allow refusing “overzealous” treatments that prolong suffering in the face of unavoidable death. Such procedures could include mechanical ventilation or dialysis, for example.

    Catholic ethics would point out that killing is a basic part of the act of assisted suicide and euthanasia. Killing is also the intent behind the action.

    But declining disproportionate treatment is not intended to kill the patient, although death is the foreseeable outcome. Death is the result of the disease, not the result of a method that actively ends the patient’s life. Also, even in terminal cases, normal care, such as providing nutrition and hydration, should be continued unless it causes additional pain.

    A difference that matters

    In the Catholic Church’s view, it matters that there is a difference between assisted suicide and euthanasia, on the one hand, and discontinuing disproportionate care, on the other. The difference lies in the nature of particular actions and the intent behind them.

    And the difference also matters in a broader sense. In the debate between right-to-die advocates and those who, like Francis, oppose them, there are very different understandings of how society should respond to those who suffer.

    Mathew Schmalz is a Roman Catholic and registered as an Independent.

    – ref. As ‘right to die’ gains more acceptance, a scholar of Catholicism explains the position of the Catholic Church – https://theconversation.com/as-right-to-die-gains-more-acceptance-a-scholar-of-catholicism-explains-the-position-of-the-catholic-church-146737

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Massive cuts to Health and Human Services’ workforce signal a dramatic shift in US health policy

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Simon F. Haeder, Associate Professor of Public Health, Texas A&M University

    The new plan will shrink the Health and Human Services workforce from more than 82,000 to 62,000 employees. Sarah Stierch via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

    On March 27, 2025, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced plans to dramatically transform the department. HHS is the umbrella agency responsible for pandemic preparedness, biomedical research, food safety and many other health-related activities.

    In a video posted that afternoon, Kennedy said the cuts and reorganization to HHS aim to “streamline our agency” and “radically improve our quality of service” by eliminating rampant waste and inefficiency. “No American is going to be left behind,” the health secretary told the nation.

    As a scholar of U.S. health and public health policy, I have written about administrative burdens that prevent many Americans from accessing benefits to which they are entitled, including those provided by HHS, like Medicaid.

    Few experts would deny that the federal bureaucracy can be inefficient and siloed. This includes HHS, and calls to restructure the agency are nothing new

    Combined with previous reductions, these cuts may achieve some limited short-term savings. However, the proposed changes dramatically alter U.S. health policy and research, and they may endanger important benefits and protections for many Americans. They may also have severe consequences for scientific progress. And as some policy experts have suggested, the poorly targeted cuts may increase inefficiencies and waste down the line.

    Health and science in a big-budget agency

    HHS is tasked with providing a variety of public health and social services as well as fostering scientific advancement.

    Originally established as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953, HHS has seen substantial growth and transformation over time. Today, HHS is home to 28 divisions. Some of these are well known to many Americans, such as the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Others, such as the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and the Administration for Community Living, may fly under the radar for most people.

    HHS oversees Medicare, through which 68 million Americans, primarily adults age 65 and older, receive health insurance benefits.
    Richard Bailey/Corbis Documentary via Getty Images

    With an annual budget of roughly US$1.8 trillion, HHS is one of the largest federal spenders, accounting for more than 1 in 5 dollars of the federal budget.

    Under the Biden administration, HHS’s budget increased by almost 40%, with a 17% increase in staffing. However, 85% of that money is spent on 79 million Medicaid and 68 million Medicare beneficiaries. Put differently, most of HHS’ spending goes directly to many Americans in the form of health benefits.

    A new direction for Health and Human Services

    From a policy perspective, the changes initiated at HHS by the second-term Trump administration are far-reaching. They involve both staffing cuts and substantial reorganization.

    Prior to the March 27 announcement, the administration had already cut thousands of positions from HHS by letting go probationary employees and offering buyouts for employees to voluntarily leave.

    Now, HHS is slated to lose another 10,000 workers. The latest cuts focus most heavily on a handful of agencies. The FDA will lose an additional 3,500 employees, and the NIH will lose 1,200. The CDC, where cuts are steepest, will lose 2,400 positions.

    In all, the moves will reduce the HHS workforce by about 25%, from more than 82,000 to 62,000. These changes will provide savings of about $1.8 billion, or 0.1% of the HHS budget.

    Along with these cuts comes a major reorganization that will eliminate 13 out of 28 offices and agencies, close five of the 10 regional offices, reshuffle existing divisions and establish a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America.

    In his latest message, Kennedy noted that this HHS transformation would return the agency to its core mission: to “enhance the health and well-being of all Americans”. He also announced his intention to refocus HHS on his Make America Healthy Again priorities, which involve reducing chronic illness “by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water and the elimination of environmental toxins.”

    How HHS’ new reality will affect Americans

    Kennedy has said the HHS overhaul will not affect services to Americans. Given the magnitude of the cuts, this seems unlikely.

    HHS reaches into the lives of all Americans. Many have family members on Medicaid or Medicare, or know individuals with disabilities or those dealing with substance use disorder. Disasters may strike anywhere. Bird flu and measles outbreaks are unfolding in many parts of the country. Everyone relies on access to safe foods, drugs and vaccines.

    The plan to restructure HHS will trim its budget by 0.1%.

    In his announcement, the health secretary highlighted cuts to HHS support functions, such as information technology and human resources, as a way to reduce redundancies and inefficiencies. But scaling down and reorganizing these capacities will inevitably have implications for how well HHS employees will be able to fulfill their duties – at least temporarily. Kennedy acknowledged this as a “painful period” for HHS.

    However, large-scale reductions and reorganizations inevitably lead to more systemic disruptions, delays and denials. It seems implausible that Americans seeking access to health care, help with HIV prevention or early education benefits such as Head Start, which are also administered by HHS, will not be affected. This is particularly the case when conceived rapidly and without transparent long-term planning.

    These new cuts are also further exacerbated by the administration’s previous slashes to public health funding for state and local governments. Given the crucial functions of HHS – from health coverage for vulnerable populations to pandemic preparedness and response – the American Public Health Association predicts the cuts will result in a rise in rates of disease and death.

    Already, previous cuts at the FDA – the agency responsible for safe foods and drugs – have led to delays in product reviews.

    Overall, the likelihood of increasing access challenges for people seeking services or support as well as fewer protections and longer wait times seems high.

    A fundamental reshaping of American public health

    The HHS restructuring should be viewed in a broader context. Since coming to office, the Trump administration has aggressively sought to reshape the U.S. public health agenda. This has included vast cuts to research funding as well as funding for state and local governments. The most recent cuts at HHS fit into the mold of rolling back protections and reshaping science.

    The Trump administration has already announced plans to curtail the Affordable Care Act and roll back regulations that address everything from clean water to safe vaccines. State programs focused on health disparities have also been targeted.

    HHS-funded research has also been scaled back dramatically, with a long list of projects terminated in research areas touching on health disparities, women’s and LGBTQ-related health issues, COVID-19 and long COVID, vaccine hesitancy and more.

    The HHS reorganization also revamps two bodies within HHS, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, that are instrumental in improving U.S. health care and providing policy research. This change further diminishes the likelihood that health policy will be based on scientific evidence and raises the risk for more politicized decision-making about health.

    More cuts are likely still to come. Medicaid, the program providing health coverage for low-income Americans, will be a particular target. The House of Representatives passed a budget resolution on Feb. 25 that allows up to $880 billion in cuts to the program.

    All told, plans already announced and those expected to emerge in the future dramatically alter U.S. health policy and roll back substantial protections for Americans.

    A vision for deregulation

    Regulation has emerged as the most prolific source of policymaking over the last five decades, particularly for health policy. Given its vast responsibilities, HHS is one of the federal government’s most prolific regulators. Vast cuts to the HHS workforce will likely curtail this capability, resulting in fewer regulatory protections for Americans.

    At the same time, with fewer experienced administrators on staff, industry influence over regulatory decisions will likely only grow stronger. HHS will simply lack the substance and procedural expertise to act independently. More industry influence and fewer independent regulators to counter it will also further reduce attention to disparities and underserved populations.

    Ultimately, the Trump administration’s efforts may lead to a vastly different federal health policy – with fewer benefits, services and protections – than what Americans have become accustomed to in modern times.

    Dr. Simon F. Haeder has previously received funding from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) .

    – ref. Massive cuts to Health and Human Services’ workforce signal a dramatic shift in US health policy – https://theconversation.com/massive-cuts-to-health-and-human-services-workforce-signal-a-dramatic-shift-in-us-health-policy-253316

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Doctor shortages have hobbled health care for decades − and the trend could be worsening

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Rochelle Walensky, Bayer Fellow in Health and Biotech, American Academy in Berlin, Senior Fellow in the Women and Public Policy Program, Harvard Kennedy School

    Specialists across numerous fields of medicine are in short supply. sudok1/iStock via Getty Images

    Americans are increasingly waiting weeks or even months to get an appointment to see a health care specialist.

    This delay comes at a time when the population of aging adults is rising dramatically. By 2050, the number of adults over 85 is expected to triple, which will intensify the strain on an already stretched health care system. We wrote about this worsening challenge and its implications for the health care workforce in a January 2025 report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    We are health care scholars who are acutely aware of the severe shortfall of specialists in America’s health care system. One of us, Rochelle Walensky, witnessed the consequences of this shortage firsthand as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from January 2020 to June 2023, during the critical early years of the pandemic.

    The COVID-19 pandemic brought the physician and overall health care workforce shortage to the forefront. Amid the excess daily deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19, many people died of potentially preventable deaths due to delayed care for heart attacks, deferred cancer screenings and overwhelmed emergency departments and intensive care units.

    Even before the pandemic, 80% of U.S. counties lacked a single infectious disease physician. Before going to the CDC, I – Dr. Walensky – was chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital. When COVID-19 hit our hospitals, we were in desperate need of more infectious disease expertise. I was just one of them.

    At the local level, these infectious disease-trained subspecialists provide essential services when it comes to preventing and controlling transmissible outbreaks, carrying out diagnostic testing, developing treatment guidelines, informing hospital capacity planning and offering resources for community outreach. Each of these experts plays a vital role at the bedside and in systems management toward effective clinical, hospital and community responses to infectious disease outbreaks.

    Uneven health care outcomes and access

    For decades, experts have warned of an impending decline in the physician workforce.

    Now, Americans across all regions, specialties and socioeconomic backgrounds are experiencing that decline firsthand or personally.

    The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis projects a national shortage of 140,000 physicians by 2036, with that shortfall spanning multiple specialties, including primary care, obstetrics, cardiology and geriatrics.

    However, some geographic areas in the country – especially some of those with the poorest health – are disproportionately affected. The brunt of the effect will be felt in rural areas: An estimated 56% shortage is predicted in nonmetro areas, versus only 6% in metro areas.

    States such as Massachusetts, New York and Maryland boast the highest density of physicians per 100,000 people, while states such as Idaho, Mississippi and Oklahoma rank among those with the lowest. And even in states with the highest physician density, demand may still overwhelm access.

    Although doctor shortages do not necessarily cause poor health outcomes, regions with fewer physicians tend to have lower life expectancy. The mean life expectancy in Mississippi is six years lower than that of Hawaii and more than four years below the national average. This underscores the substantial differences in health outcomes depending on where you live in the U.S.

    Notably, areas with fewer doctors also see higher rates of chronic conditions such as chronic pulmonary disease, diabetes and poor mental health. This crisis is further exacerbated by the aging baby boomer population, which places increasing demand on an already strained health care system due to rising rates – especially among those over 85 – of multiple chronic diseases, complex health care needs and the concurrent use of multiple medications.

    Rural areas have always had lower access to medical care compared with urban centers, and this divide could get far worse with the looming physician shortage.
    Chalabala/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    How the US reached this point

    Some of these workforce challenges stem from the unintended consequences of policy changes that were originally aimed at improving the rigor of medical education or curtailing a once-anticipated physician glut.

    For example, the 1910 Flexner Report was commissioned to restructure American medical education with the goals of standardizing curricula and improving quality. While the report succeeded at those goals, it was shortsighted in important ways. For instance, it recommended closing rather than strengthening 89 of the 155 existing medical schools at the time. This created medical school deserts that persist in some U.S. regions to this day.

    Additionally, the report further divided the study of medicine, focused on disease, from the study of public health, which is focused on health care systems, populations and society. This separation has led to siloed communication and data systems that continue to hinder coordinated responses to public health crises.

    Decades after the Flexner Report, in 1980, policymakers anticipated a physician oversupply based on medical school enrollment projections and government investments in the medical workforce. In response, funding constraints were introduced by Congress to limit residency and fellowship training slots available after medical school.

    But by the early 2000s, discussions shifted to concerns about physician shortages. Despite the calls for reforms to address the issues more than a decade ago, the funding and training constraints have remained largely unchanged. These have created a persistent bottleneck in postgraduate medical training that requires acts of Congress to reverse.

    Primary care doctors provide continuity for patients; without them, people tend to experience more complex health care needs and poorer outcomes.

    Forces shaping the physician bottleneck

    In the wake of the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, states with restrictive abortion policies are now facing an emerging and troubling workforce challenge: It may get more difficult to recruit and retain tomorrow’s medical school grads.

    Research surveys suggest that 82% of future physicians, not just obstetricians, prefer to train and work in states that uphold abortion access. While it may seem obvious that obstetricians would want to avoid the increasing liabilities associated with the Dobbs decision, another point is less obvious: Most medical trainees are between the ages of 25 and 35, prime childbearing years, and may themselves want access to a full range of obstetric care.

    And given that 20% of physicians are married to other physicians and an additional 25% to other health professionals, marriage within the health care workforce may also play a substantial role. A physician choosing not to practice in one of the 14 states with limited abortion access, many of which already rank among the poorest in health outcomes and lowest in physician densities, may not only take their expertise but also their partner’s elsewhere.

    Shifting the trajectory

    The doctor shortage requires a combination of solutions, starting with addressing the high cost of medical education and training. Medical school enrollment has increased by only 10% over the past decade, far insufficient to address both the shortage today and the projected growth of the aging population needing care.

    In addition, many students carry large amounts of debt, which frequently limits who can pursue the profession. And existing scholarship and compensation programs have been only modestly effective in incentivizing providers to work in high-need areas.

    In our New England Journal of Medicine report, we laid out several specific strategies that could help address the shortages and the potential workforce crisis. For instance:

    Rather than the traditional medical education model – four years of broad medical training followed by three to seven years of residency – medical schools could offer more specialized training pathways. These streamlined programs would focus on the skills needed for specific medical specialties, potentially reducing training duration and costs.

    Reforming physician compensation could also help address imbalances in the health care system. Specialists and subspecialists typically earn substantially more than primary care doctors, despite the high demand for primary care. Raising primary care salaries and offering incentives, such as student loan forgiveness for physicians in high-need areas, could encourage more doctors to practice where they are needed most.

    Additionally, addressing physician burnout is crucial, particularly in primary care, where administrative burdens such as billing and charting contribute to stress and attrition. Reducing these burdens, potentially through novel AI-driven solutions, could allow doctors to focus more on patient care and less on paperwork.

    These are just an assortment of strategies we propose, and time is of the essence. One thing is certain: The U.S. urgently needs more doctors, and everyone’s health depends on it.

    Dr Rochelle P. Walensky is the Bayer Fellow in Health and Biotech, American Academy in Berlin. She reported receiving personal fees from Madryn Asset Management for serving as a senior policy advisor, Consonance Capital for serving as a senior advisory board member, and Doris Duke Foundation for serving as a trustee; consulting fees from Infectious Diseases Society of America; and nonfinancial support from The Carter Center for being a member of the board of directors outside the submitted work.

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

    – ref. Doctor shortages have hobbled health care for decades − and the trend could be worsening – https://theconversation.com/doctor-shortages-have-hobbled-health-care-for-decades-and-the-trend-could-be-worsening-251222

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans to El Salvador sparks legal questions likely to reach the Supreme Court

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jennifer Selin, Associate Professor of Law, Arizona State University

    Prisoners stand in a cell as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a tour of the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 26, 2025. AP Photo/Alex Brandon

    A federal appeals court on March 26, 2025, upheld a temporary block on President Donald Trump’s deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants, including alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

    The court was skeptical of Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to defend the deportations. The act, passed in 1798, gives the president the power to detain and remove people from the United States in times of war.

    On March 28, Trump asked the Supreme Court for permission under the act to resume deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador while legal battles continue.

    Attorney General Pam Bondi previously said the deportations are necessary as part of “modern-day warfare” against narco-terrorists.

    Nanya Gupta, policy director of the American Immigration Council, is among experts who note that the Trump administration’s evidence against the migrants, which relied in part on the immigrants’ tattoos and deleted social media pictures, is “flimsy.”

    Those who are challenging Trump’s actions in court say the administration has violated constitutional principles of due process. That’s because it gave the migrants no opportunity to refute the government’s claims that they were gang members.

    But what is due process? And how does the government balance this important right against national security?

    As a constitutional law professor who studies government institutions, I recognize the delicate balance government must strike in protecting civil rights and liberties while allowing presidential administrations to preserve national security and foreign policy interests.

    Ultimately, the U.S. Constitution’s framers left it to the courts to determine this balance.

    Due process explained

    The phrase “due process of law” goes back to at least 1215. That’s when England’s Magna Carta established the principle that government is not above the law.

    This principle guided the framers of the U.S. Constitution. The Fifth Amendment and 14th Amendment, for example, prohibit federal and state governments from depriving people of their “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

    But what constitutes due process has varied over time.

    Government officials see the limits of their power from one lens. People affected by the exercise of that power view it differently.

    To combat this problem, the Constitution’s framers placed the judiciary in charge of determining what due process means and when people’s due process rights have been violated.

    Court decisions on the issue traditionally weigh the government’s interests in taking specific actions against claims that those actions violate people’s civil rights and liberties.

    Even when the law authorizes the president to detain people, historically the Supreme Court has held that those people should receive notice of the reason for their detention, and they should have a fair opportunity to rebut the government’s claims.

    When the high court, for example, heard cases about the rights of detainees held in Guantanamo Bay by President George W. Bush after 9/11, it ruled that principles of due process apply to noncitizens and even those whom the government designates as enemy combatants.

    One of the important considerations in legal analysis of the procedures the government must follow when depriving people of their liberty is the risk that the government will make a mistake in its decision-making.

    For example, some representatives of the deported Venezuelan migrants argue that they have been falsely accused of having ties to Tren de Aragua based on their country of origin and tattoos. They claim that without more investigation, including an opportunity for the migrants to present their evidence refuting the government’s claims, there is a large risk that government will mistakenly deport people.

    When can the president avoid due process?

    In some cases, the president can skirt traditional due process considerations in pursuit of broader policy concerns.

    As put by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in his initial order blocking the deportations, the president’s action in this area implicate “a host of complicated legal issues, including fundamental and sensitive questions about the often-circumscribed extent of judicial power in matters of foreign policy and national security.”

    Before Trump took executive action using the Alien Enemies Act, the measure had only been used three times – all during times of war.

    The act was part of a series of four laws passed in 1798 known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. These laws, among other things, gave the president the power to deport any noncitizen thought to be dangerous.

    A woman holds a sign during a rally on March 18, 2025, in Caracas, Venezuela, to protest the deportation from the U.S. of alleged members of a Venezuelan gang, who were transferred to an El Salvador prison.
    AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos

    President Thomas Jefferson allowed most of the acts to expire. But Jefferson and subsequent presidents kept in place the provisions that empowered the president to detain or deport noncitizens in times of war, “invasion” or “predatory incursion” by foreign powers.

    Today, the law authorizes the president to apprehend and remove people over the age of 14 that the administration determines to be “alien enemies.” However, it places procedural requirements on the president.

    Notably, the president’s ability to act requires a declared war against or an “invasion or predatory excursion” by a foreign nation. In such an event, the president must issue a proclamation saying he plans on using the act against perceived enemies.

    To justify the Venezuelan deportations, Trump issued a proclamation on March 15 claiming Tren de Aragua is perpetrating and threatening an invasion against the U.S.

    But the act also says people considered alien enemies must be given reasonable time to settle their affairs and voluntarily depart from the country. And it gives the courts power to regulate whether such persons even fall within the definition of “alien enemies.”

    The Venezuelan migrants claim Trump has violated these parts of the act.

    The current fight

    This is where things become complicated.

    All parties in the case acknowledge that the Alien Enemies Act grants the president authority to act. However, the argument is whether the government has given people the opportunity to challenge the government’s decision to classify them as “alien enemies.”

    Trump claims Tren de Aragua is a foreign terrorist organization engaged in warfare against the U.S. in the form of narco-terrorism – the use of drug trade to influence government operations.

    His administration argues that it doesn’t have to tell migrants it considers them alien enemies. And the administration says it’s not required to give them time to ask the courts to step in before they are deported.

    In a March 24 hearing on the issue, D.C. Circuit Court Judge Patricia A. Millet noted that during World War II, even the “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act.”

    The dispute has prompted international questions about the legality of the U.S. government’s deportation procedures and its treatment of the migrants.

    And Democratic members of Congress have called for an investigation into the administration’s deportation practices.

    The case will most likely head to the Supreme Court to determine what due process means and when the president can act in the name of national security to limit people’s due process rights. That’s just as the framers of the Constitution intended.

    Jennifer L. Selin has received funding and/or support for her research on the executive branch from the Administrative Conference of the United States. The views in this piece are those of the author and do not represent the position of the Administrative Conference or the federal government.

    – ref. Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans to El Salvador sparks legal questions likely to reach the Supreme Court – https://theconversation.com/trumps-use-of-the-alien-enemies-act-to-deport-venezuelans-to-el-salvador-sparks-legal-questions-likely-to-reach-the-supreme-court-253011

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Jets from powerful black holes can point astronomers toward where − and where not − to look for life in the universe

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By David Garofalo, Professor of Physics, Kennesaw State University

    Black holes, like the one in this illustration, can spray powerful jets. S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF), CC BY-SA

    One of the most powerful objects in the universe is a radio quasar – a spinning black hole spraying out highly energetic particles. Come too close to one, and you’d get sucked in by its gravitational pull, or burn up from the intense heat surrounding it. But ironically, studying black holes and their jets can give researchers insight into where potentially habitable worlds might be in the universe.

    As an astrophysicist, I’ve spent two decades modeling how black holes spin, how that creates jets, and how they affect the environment of space around them.

    What are black holes?

    Black holes are massive, astrophysical objects that use gravity to pull surrounding objects into them. Active black holes have a pancake-shaped structure around them called an accretion disk, which contains hot, electrically charged gas.

    The plasma that makes up the accretion disk comes from farther out in the galaxy. When two galaxies collide and merge, gas is funneled into the central region of that merger. Some of that gas ends up getting close to the newly merged black hole and forms the accretion disk.

    There is one supermassive black hole at the heart of every massive galaxy.

    Black holes and their disks can rotate, and when they do, they drag space and time with them – a concept that’s mind-boggling and very hard to grasp conceptually. But black holes are important to study because they produce enormous amounts of energy that can influence galaxies.

    How energetic a black hole is depends on different factors, such as the mass of the black hole, whether it rotates rapidly, and whether lots of material falls onto it. Mergers fuel the most energetic black holes, but not all black holes are fed by gas from a merger. In spiral galaxies, for example, less gas tends to fall into the center, and the central black hole tends to have less energy.

    One of the ways they generate energy is through what scientists call “jets” of highly energetic particles. A black hole can pull in magnetic fields and energetic particles surrounding it, and then as the black hole rotates, the magnetic fields twist into a jet that sprays out highly energetic particles.

    Magnetic fields twist around the black hole as it rotates to store energy – kind of like when you pull and twist a rubber band. When you release the rubber band, it snaps forward. Similarly, the magnetic fields release their energy by producing these jets.

    The accretion disk around a black hole can form a jet of hot, energetic particles surrounded by magnetic field lines.
    NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI), CC BY

    These jets can speed up or suppress the formation of stars in a galaxy, depending on how the energy is released into the black hole’s host galaxy.

    Rotating black holes

    Some black holes, however, rotate in a different direction than the accretion disk around them. This phenomenon is called counterrotation, and some studies my colleagues and I have conducted suggest that it’s a key feature governing the behavior of one of the most powerful kinds of objects in the universe: the radio quasar.

    Radio quasars are the subclass of black holes that produce the most powerful energy and jets.

    You can imagine the black hole as a rotating sphere, and the accretion disk as a disk with a hole in the center. The black hole sits in that center hole and rotates one way, while the accretion disk rotates the other way.

    This counterrotation forces the black hole to spin down and eventually up again in the other direction, called corotation. Imagine a basketball that spins one way, but you keep tapping it to rotate in the other. The tapping will spin the basketball down. If you continue to tap in the opposite direction, it will eventually spin up and rotate in the other direction. The accretion disk does the same thing.

    Since the jets tap into the black hole’s rotational energy, they are powerful only when the black hole is spinning rapidly. The change from counterrotation to corotation takes at least 100 million years. Many initially counterrotating black holes take billions of years to become rapidly spinning corotating black holes.

    So, these black holes would produce powerful jets both early and later in their lifetimes, with an interlude in the middle where the jets are either weak or nonexistent.

    When the black hole spins in counterrotation with respect to its accretion disk, that motion produces strong jets that push molecules in the surrounding gas close together, which leads to the formation of stars.

    But later, in corotation, the jet tilts. This tilt makes it so that the jet impinges directly on the gas, heating it up and inhibiting star formation. In addition to that, the jet also sprays X-rays across the galaxy. Cosmic X-rays are bad for life because they can harm organic tissue.

    For life to thrive, it most likely needs a planet with a habitable ecosystem, and clouds of hot gas saturated with X-rays don’t contain such planets. So, astronomers can instead look for galaxies without a tilted jet coming from its black hole. This idea is key to understanding where intelligence could potentially have emerged and matured in the universe.

    Black holes as a guide

    By early 2022, I had built a black hole model to use as a guide. It could point out environments with the right kind of black holes to produce the greatest number of planets without spraying them with X-rays. Life in such environments could emerge to its full potential.

    Looking at black holes and their role in star formation could help scientists predict when and where life was most likely to form.

    Where are such conditions present? The answer is low-density environments where galaxies had merged about 11 billion years ago.

    These environments had black holes whose powerful jets enhanced the rate of star formation, but they never experienced a bout of tilted jets in corotation. In short, my model suggested that theoretically, the most advanced extraterrestrial civilization would have likely emerged on the cosmic scene far away and billions of years ago.

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

    – ref. Jets from powerful black holes can point astronomers toward where − and where not − to look for life in the universe – https://theconversation.com/jets-from-powerful-black-holes-can-point-astronomers-toward-where-and-where-not-to-look-for-life-in-the-universe-251560

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why do dogs love to play with trash?

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Nancy Dreschel, Associate Teaching Professor of Small Animal Science, Penn State

    Dogs will be dogs. Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty Images

    Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

    Why do dogs love to play with trash? – Sarah G٫ age 11٫ Seguin٫ Texas

    When I think about why dogs do something, I try to imagine what motivates them. What does a dog get out of playing with trash? As a veterinarian and a professor who teaches college students about companion animals, I believe there’s an easy answer: Garbage smells delicious and tastes good to dogs.

    Dogs have an amazing sense of smell. They have 300 million receptors for smell in their noses, while humans have only 6 million. People can make use of this sniffing ability to train dogs to detect illegal drugs, explosives and endangered species, and to help locate people lost in the woods.

    While you might not like how your trash smells, to your dog it is an appealing buffet brimming with apple cores, banana peels, meat scraps and stale bread. Even used napkins and paper towels are tempting to dogs, when they are smeared with and carry the smell of yesterday’s lunch.

    Because dogs can find trace amounts of explosives or a person buried under 6 feet (1.8 meters) of snow after an avalanche, they are certainly capable of locating last night’s pizza crust and chicken bones in the kitchen garbage can.

    Sometimes it’s hard to see what the attraction is. My Australian cattle dog mix, Sparky, loves to eat used tissues – gross, right?

    Even empty cans smell inviting to dogs. Trash cans in kitchens and bathrooms are often at their nose level, too, making for easy access. Add to that the fact that if the dog got into the garbage once and found something tasty, they will likely keep searching with the hope of being rewarded again.

    A Colombian police officer uses a drug-sniffing dog to search packages of flowers prior to export at El Dorado International Airport in Bogota on Feb. 5, 2025.
    Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty Images

    Thrill of the hunt

    Searching and digging around for food is natural for dogs because it provides some of the thrill of the hunt, even if they just ate and aren’t hungry.

    The most successful prehistoric dogs ate the bones and scraps that humans left behind more than 10,000 years ago. Hanging around humans and their garbage was a way they could get plenty to eat. Even your pup today has some of those same old searching instincts.

    While our trash has changed from the days of hunting and gathering, the discarded paper napkins, plastic wrappers and food scraps we throw away all still smell like food to dogs. And this scavenging behavior is still hardwired in our pampered pets. Although it may look to us like they’re playing, our dogs’ sniffing out and tearing things up from the trash and tossing them around mimics what their ancestors did when they tugged on and tore up an animal carcass they had found.

    Many people take advantage of this instinct and use “snuffle mats” – cloth or paper where food is hidden – or puzzle feeding toys to keep their pups’ minds active. Having to hunt for and find their food helps them use their noses and sharpens their skills.

    Annoying or even dangerous

    While spreading trash all over the home may be natural for dogs, cleaning it up is no fun for the people they live with. And if your dog pokes its nose in a garbage can, it could be in danger. Eating plastic bags, string, chicken bones, chemicals or rotten food can cause blockages, diarrhea and poisoning. Commonly referred to as “garbage gut,” garbage poisoning can be life-threatening.

    I’ve treated dogs that cut their tongues and mouths on cans or broken glass. I once performed surgery to remove a corncob from the intestines of a dog that had eaten it a month earlier. He was certainly relieved when he woke up.

    How can you keep your dogs away from the trash?

    It can be hard to train a dog to leave garbage alone, especially if they have found a tasty morsel or two by raiding the trash can in the past. I recommend that you invest in a garbage can with a lid closed by a latch that they can’t open. If that fails, you can put garbage – especially food scraps – out of reach in a closet, cupboard or behind a closed door.

    My trash cans are all behind closed doors, and the bathroom doors are always shut, which also keeps my cat, Penny, from unrolling the toilet tissue. But that’s another story. Our kitchen trash is in a latched cupboard.

    No one knows exactly what goes through dogs’ minds. And yet looking at what motivates your canine companion and how dog behaviors have evolved may help explain why these animals do the things they do.

    Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

    And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

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

    – ref. Why do dogs love to play with trash? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-dogs-love-to-play-with-trash-247081

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: SPbGASU entered the premier league of the National Aggregated Rating for the second year in a row

    Translartion. Region: Russians Fedetion –

    Source: Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering –

    Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering has strengthened its position and re-entered the Premier League National Aggregate Rating 2025.

    The rating is being published for the seventh time and has effectively become a single scale for assessing Russian universities, helping applicants, experts, and the educational institutions themselves navigate the diversity of higher education in the country. The rating also contributes to the development of the universities themselves, expanding the range of opportunities to determine their strengths, identify weaknesses, and develop programs that will allow them to remain competitive in the rapidly changing world of education.

    Portal Best-Ded.ru continues to improve, making the research results available to a wider audience. Thanks to the mobile version of the site, all interested parties, including applicants, parents, teachers and university representatives, can now get acquainted with the rating and its data.

    In 2025, NAR included 708 universities, which, according to the rules and criteria of the ranking, are divided into 10 leagues. The most prestigious is the Premier League, the “green zone” of the ranking.

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

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Crystal Visions

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    In 2022, a multi-institutional team of American scientists traveled to Tokyo to take a spin on a high-powered X-ray laser. 

    Led by UConn chemistry assistant professor J. Nathan “Nate” Hohman, they hoped to use the machine’s unique capabilities to study new materials whose molecular structure had never been understood before. The team had been awarded 60 hours of highly coveted “beam time” on the SPring-8 Angstrom Compact free-electron LAser X-FEL laser (referred to as SACLA). 

    “They were going to let us squirt through the nozzle anything we wanted,” Hohman says, “as long as we told them the name of the chemical first.”

    The research team included five scientists working in chemical synthesis, X-ray crystallography, and AI-powered data interpretation – all prepared for the scientific equivalent of an ultramarathon. Once the machine powered on, they needed to work continuously until the 60 hours had elapsed.  

    “If we ran out of stuff to shoot, we were going to be wasting those precious photons,” Hohman explains. So, the team brought as many samples of new materials as they could.  

    David Moreau and a SACLA scientist working with the machine. (Courtesy of Phil MacDonald)

    Working in round-the-clock shifts, they carefully prepared their samples and loaded them into the machine. SACLA shot jets of their crystalline molecular samples into a chamber where they were struck by an intense beam of X-ray light.  

    Like prisms throwing rainbows, these crystal samples diffracted the light, each into its own signature pattern. By analyzing the light pattern, the scientists could determine the precise molecular makeup of the crystals they were studying. 

    By the end of their three-day journey with SACLA, the researchers had solved the structures of four materials – and have gone on to solve more than 50 in eight more experiments around the world over the last two years.  

    This scientific breakthrough is chronicled in the new short documentary “BEAMTIME: Crystal Hitters,” co-directed by Jonathan Turton and Phil MacDonald. 

    [embedded content]

    Small Scale, Huge Payoff

    High-profile projects like this are nothing new to Hohman, whose research has been sponsored by the US Department of Energy for its potential to unlock new, better sources of energy.  

    Hohman doesn’t work on the quantum technology side of things – using new materials to assemble devices like quantum computers and lasers – but the semiconductors he studies are integral to this process. 

    “Every new technology has a new material at its core,” he says. 

    Hohman’s specialty is self-assembly. His work revolves around understanding the geometry of molecules, planning how they crystallize, and using that to influence their properties. The materials he’s interested in tend to form crystals at the microscopic level, thousands of times smaller than grains of sand. 

    Understanding the structure of these crystals – what’s known as “solving” the crystal structure – is the key to understanding how these materials can be used in technological applications spanning energy production, quantum computing, and beyond.  

    A famous example of crystallography is Rosalind Franklin’s discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. Since no microscope was powerful enough to allow her to literally see the double-helix, Franklin relied on X-ray crystallography to mathematically solve the structure. 

    For this project, Hohman deployed a unique approach called small-molecule serial femtosecond crystallography, or smSFX. 

    “Our collaboration led the first-ever use of serial crystallography to fully solve true unknown crystal structures of small-molecule systems,” Hohman says. “This solved a huge problem in our field – before, if you were making materials that formed small crystals, then you couldn’t easily solve the crystal structure.” 

    Before using this technique, Hohman jokes, “life with my tiny crystals was mostly just despair.” 

    The materials he was interested in studying – known as MOChas, or metal–organic chacogenolates – would form crystals that were simply too small to solve using conventional methods. They possessed interesting properties, like luminescence, that seemed potentially useful in applications like solar cells or LEDs; but without understanding their molecular structure, scientists couldn’t figure out how to harness these properties. 

    “You can control all the photonic, electronic, and quantum properties of systems synthetically in the laboratory by editing a molecule or changing the design of that molecule,” Hohman says. “But if you don’t know what the structure of something is, then all you have is a little pile of stuff that sort of glows when you shine a UV light on it.” 

    The team’s “big breakthrough” was using smSFX to solve the structures of very small molecules. They are hopeful that this will pave the way for developing new materials for green energy and climate change mitigation technologies. Some of the materials they solved show potential for applications like solar power and carbon sequestration.  

    More broadly, the smSFX technique could be used in future trials to analyze all manner of new materials, from quantum semiconductors to cancer treatments. 

    Hohman is now turning his focus to publishing the library of materials solved on this trip.  

    “The materials are really quite cutting-edge; it’s hard to say exactly what they will be used for,” Hohman says. “The scientific community, collectively, is just starting to discover this stuff.” But he notes that the materials his group has solved may offer “a lot of material advantages” for quantum information science. 

    The Tokyo Shift

    Clockwise from center: Vanessa Oklejas, Nate Hohman, Aaron Brewster, Maggie Willson, and Masha Aleksich share a meal in Tokyo. (Courtesy of Phil MacDonald)

    Hohman was joined on the 2022 trip to SACLA by colleagues from various institutions, including Aaron Brewster, Daniel Paley, and David Mittan-Moreau of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Elyse Schriber, a then-graduate student researcher in Hohman’s lab who is now a project scientist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; and Vanessa Oklejas, who has moved to a new role at Lockheed Martin. 

    Three current members of Hohman’s lab were also on the team: Maggie Willson, Patience Kotei, and Masha Aleksich, now third- and fourth-year doctoral students. 

    For Willson, who received her bachelor’s degree at the University of Central Oklahoma, it was her first time traveling out of the country. 

    “That whole trip was very surreal for me,” she says. “I had graduated the May before that trip, so I hadn’t even started grad school yet.” 

    As Hohman tells it, one of the first things he asked Willson to do after accepting her into his lab was “hop on a plane to Japan.” Thankfully, she rose to the occasion – and gained experience that proved pivotal in her career path. 

    “After this trip, I have done seven more of these experiments (in CA, the UK, and another in Japan) and have dedicated the majority of my work here in grad school to these types of crystallography experiments,” Willson says. “Before graduate school, I was planning on becoming a professor at a primarily undergraduate institution in order to focus on teaching, but I am now working towards a career at a synchrotron or an X-ray free electron laser in order to do these types of experiments for other research groups.” 

    For Kotei, who received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Kwame Nkruma University of Science and Technology in Ghana, the trip was similarly propulsive. 

    “My graduate research primarily focuses on serial crystallography, and my visit to SACLA broadened my perspective on ultrafast dynamics and advanced structural characterization techniques,” says Kotei. “Experiencing world-class research infrastructure firsthand reinforced my motivation to pursue high-impact research. Currently, I am in discussions with leading scientists and experts at SACLA regarding potential research opportunities after completing my degree.” 

    Aleksich, a fourth-year chemistry PhD candidate specifically focusing on MOChas, credits the trip to Tokyo with shifting her goals and her understanding of herself as a scientist. 

    “Having the opportunity to conduct research at this level as a second-year graduate student really grew my confidence and took off any limitations I have had about the caliber of research I would be able to work on in my lifetime,” she says. “Growing up, of course I looked up to the greats like Marie Curie and Rosalind Franklin, but I figured that I was not qualified to truly advance the scientific field. But this experience showed me that if an idea is there, and it’s able to be well communicated, then people are interested in funding it. And for every one great scientist we remember, there were hundreds who helped along the way.” 

    “BEAMTIME: Crystal Hitters” is available to stream on YouTube.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: Intetics Ranks Among America’s Most Innovative Companies for 2025 – A True Tech Leader

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    Intetics, a leading global technology company, has once again been recognized by Fortune as one of America’s Most Innovative Companies in 2025.

    NAPLES, Fla., March 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — America’s Most Innovative Companies honors 300 companies headquartered in the United States that are reshaping industries from the inside out. The list is determined based on independent scores in three key categories — product innovation, process innovation, and innovation culture — all of which are at the heart of the services we provide to our clients.

    To create this esteemed list, Fortune collaborated with market research firm Statista, which evaluated over 10,000 companies across the U.S. The evaluation included input from more than 40,000 survey participants and a panel of 2,500 industry experts. The top 300 companies with the highest overall scores were recognized, and we are proud to be among them.

    “Intetics has once again been recognized as one of Fortune’s Most Innovative Companies in America! My head is spinning from such an honor. This recognition reaffirms our commitment to creating groundbreaking solutions and driving meaningful impact. A huge thank you to our incredible team, partners, and clients who make an innovative part of our DNA every day. We’re proud to be on this list and will keep pushing forward.”
    Boris Kontsevoi, CEO & President of Intetics

    Intetics entered the Top 43 global leaders in the Technology category, standing alongside significant industry players such as Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, Cisco Systems, Intel, eBay, and others. This remarkable achievement underscores our role as a leader in technological innovation.

    For more than 30 years, innovation has been the cornerstone of Intetics, fueling our position as an AI-driven tech leader. From pioneering a revolutionary team formation model to introducing our AI-powered Enterprise Knowledge Assistant, we’ve consistently pushed the limits of technology.

    With a deep focus on understanding our clients’ unique challenges, we provide cutting-edge, cost-effective IT solutions that leverage AI, Machine Learning (ML),  AR/VR, Blockchain, geospatial technologies, and other tech competencies. Whether creating sophisticated enterprise software or building intuitive mobile applications, we collaborate closely with clients to deliver tailored solutions that meet both engineering and business objectives.

    Discover more about how you can help your business thrive by leveraging innovative tech and efficient dedicated development teams.

    About Fortune

    Fortune is a global media organization dedicated to helping its readers, viewers, and attendees succeed big in business through unrivaled access and best-in-class storytelling.

    About Statista

    Statista is an online platform specialized in market and consumer data, which offers statistics and reports, market insights, consumer insights and company insights in German, English, Spanish and French.

    About Intetics Inc.

    Intetics Inc. is a leading American technology company providing custom software application development, distributed professional teams creation, software product quality assessment, and “all-things-digital” solutions built with SMAC, RPA, AI/ML, IoT, blockchain, and GIS/UAV/LBS technologies. 

    Based on proprietary pioneering business models of Offshore Dedicated Team® and Remote In-Sourcing®, an advanced Technical Debt Reduction Platform (TETRA™) and measurable SLAs for software engineering, Intetics helps innovative organizations capitalize on global talent with our in-depth engineering expertise based on our Predictive Software Engineering framework.  

    At Intetics, our outcomes do not just meet clients’ expectations, they have been exceeding them for a quarter of a century. Intetics is ISO 9001 (quality) and ISO 27001 (security) certified and a Microsoft Gold, Amazon, and UiPath Silver partner.  The company’s innovation and growth achievements are reflected in winning prestigious titles and awards, including Inc5000, Software 500, CRN 100, American Business, Deloitte Fast 50, European IT Excellence, Best European BPO, Stevie People’s Choice, Clutch and ACQ5 Awards, IAOP Global Outsourcing 100 and Fortune Innovative 300 lists. You can find more information at https://intetics.com.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Global: UK nuclear deterrent: the mutual defense agreement is at risk in a Trumpian age

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Becky Alexis-Martin, Peace Studies and International Development, University of Bradford

    Keir Starmer aboard one of the UK’s Vanguard class submarines. CC BY-NC-ND

    Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently boarded one of the UK’s four nuclear-armed submarines for a photo call as part of his attempts to demonstrate the UK’s defence capabilities as tensions with Russia continue.

    However, Starmer faces a problem. The submarine, and the rest of the UK’s nuclear fleet, is heavily reliant on the US as an operating partner. And at a time when the US becomes an increasingly unreliable partner under the leadership of an entirely transactional president, this is not ideal. The US can, if it chooses, effectively switch off the UK’s nuclear deterrent.

    British and US nuclear history is irrevocably interwoven. The US and UK cooperated on the Manhattan project, under the 1943 Quebec agreements and the 1944 Hyde Park aide memoire. This work generated the world’s first nuclear weapons, which were deployed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

    It also led to the first rupture. In 1946, the US classified UK citizens as “foreign” and prevented them from engaging in secret nuclear work. Collaboration with the UK immediately ceased.

    The UK decided to develop its own arsenal of nuclear weapons. The successful detonation of the “Grapple Y” hydrogen bomb in April 1958 cemented its position as a thermonuclear power.

    In the meantime, however, Russia’s launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 had demonstrated the lethal reach of Soviet nuclear technology. This brought the US and UK back together as nuclear partners.

    Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.

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    Talks on how to counter the Russian threat became the foundation of an atomic partnership that endures to the present day. This mutual defence agreement, signed in 1958, has provided the UK with affordable access to the latest nuclear technology and a reliable western ally. The treaty has been amended and adapted over time to reflect changes in the US-UK working relationship and the two are now so entangled that it is very hard to leave the co-dependent relationship.

    Both sides have benefited from security and protection, especially during the cold war. However, Trump’s new “special relationship” with Russia’s Vladimir Putin has reconfigured the global order of geopolitics.

    Serious concerns are now being raised about the UK’s nuclear capacity, given the unpredictability and potential unreliability of the new US administration. Trump could ignore or threaten to terminate the agreement in a show of power or contempt.

    The UK’s nuclear subs

    The UK’s Trident nuclear deterrence programme consists of four Vanguard nuclear-powered and armed submarines. The UK has some autonomy, as it is operationally independent and controls the decision to launch.

    However, it remains dependent on the US because the nuclear technologies at the heart of the Trident system are US designed and leased by Lockheed Martin – and there is no suitable alternative. The Trident system therefore relies on the US for support and maintenance.

    The UK is currently in the process of upgrading the current system. But its options seem limited. If the US were to renege on its commitments, the UK would either have to produce its own weapons domestically, collaborate with France or Europe or disarm. Each scenario creates new issues for the UK. Manufacturing nuclear weapons from scratch in the UK, for example, would be a costly and protracted activity.

    Technical collaboration with France seems the most plausible back-up option at the moment. The two countries already have a nuclear collaboration treaty in place. France has taken a similar submarine-based approach to deterrence as the UK and French president Emmanuel Macron has suggested its deterrent could be used to protect other European countries. Another alternative would be to spread the cost across Europe and create a European deterrence – but both strategies just re-embed the UK’s current nuclear reliance.

    The UK is reliant on others for its nuclear deterrent.
    Number 10/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

    While these weapons may deter a hostile nuclear strike, they have failed to prevent broader acts of aggression. Nuclear weapons have not been used in warfare for 80 years. Perhaps it is time to completely and permanently unshackle the UK from nuclear deterrence, and consider alternative forms of defence.

    The UK’s nuclear arsenal is expensive to maintain. The cost of replacing Trident is £205 billion. In 2023, the Ministry of Defence reported that the anticipated costs for supporting the nuclear deterrent would exceed its budget by £7.9 billion over the next ten years. This funding could be channelled into more pressing security threats, such as cybersecurity, terrorism or climate change.

    Nuclear weapons will become strategically redundant if the UK cannot act independently. As Nato and the US dominate the global nuclear stage, the UK’s capacity to respond has become contested. The time has come to decide whether the US is really our friend – or a new foe.

    Becky Alexis-Martin 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. UK nuclear deterrent: the mutual defense agreement is at risk in a Trumpian age – https://theconversation.com/uk-nuclear-deterrent-the-mutual-defense-agreement-is-at-risk-in-a-trumpian-age-252674

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Donald Trump likes tariffs, but they damage the economies of everyone involved

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Muhammad Ali Nasir, Associate Professor in Economics, University of Leeds

    Donald Trump is calling April 2 2025 “Liberation Day”. For the rest of the world it will just be the day when they discover the details of his latest round of tariffs.

    Those tariffs have already become the stand out economic feature of Trump’s second term in the White House. And frankly, it’s been hard to keep track.

    There have been tariffs imposed and then lifted, tariffs with exemptions, tariffs on metal and tariffs on wood. Now Trump has announced a 25% tariff on all imported cars to take effect on April 2, when he also plans to reveal his “reciprocal tariffs” on other trading partners.

    Trump thinks the US has been “ripped off for decades by nearly every country on Earth”. He also counts “tariff” as his favourite word, and a tool which is “”very powerful, both economically and in getting everything else you want”.

    Whether or not the president gets everything he wants remains to be seen. But the frequent changes in tariff policies over the past few weeks have definitely created uncertainty in trade with the US, which research shows can be harmful in itself.

    And the evidence clearly shows that the reasons for the US trade deficit are more to do with domestic issues such as productivity and fiscal discipline than international trade.

    So what are the possible outcomes if Trump continues to pursue this policy?

    The worst case

    Our analysis shows that in the worst-case scenario, non-reciprocated tariffs on Canada and Mexico could result in a significant fall in GDP for all three countries. Canada would be the worst affected (a dip of 16.5%) followed by Mexico (6.6%). GDP in the US would fall by 0.19%.

    Canada is particularly dependent on selling its oil and gas – and the US is heavily reliant on its northern neighbour for its fuel supply. In 2024, total trade between the two nations reached US$762.1 billion (£589 billion).

    The impact on Mexico would also be devastating. Over 40% of the country’s GDP is derived from exports – and 80% of those exports go to the US.

    High tariffs and subsequent retaliations would quickly reduce the confidence of companies on both sides. Costs passed on to consumers would reduce demand and then profits, forming a vicious cycle of economic recession. Trade protectionism could then rise further, potentially even turning a recession into a depression

    Middle ground

    We also found that even if the economic effects of tariffs were less severe, no nation involved would manage to achieve GDP growth. And Canada and Mexico would still suffer the most.

    In this situation, some kind of stalemate could emerge, where tariffs lead to rising inflation, reducing the political appetite for escalation. Trade friction would likely continue until 2026, when a renegotiation of the trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada is due to take place.

    Best case

    Even under the best-case scenario, with reduced economic impact, GDP for all three countries still falls. Put simply, imposing tariffs creates no winners.

    Since the tariff has been seen as a bargaining chip, the best option for Canada and Mexico will be to enter trade negotiations with the US, aiming for a balanced trade policy that is beneficial to all parties.



    Read more:
    Donald Trump is planning more trade barriers if he becomes president – but they didn’t work last time

    In the meantime, they should cooperate with other economies affected by US tariffs – such as the EU and China – in the hope that this encourages Trump to make concessions.

    All three countries could then revert to their original low-tariff levels before the trade war. This constitutes the optimal scenario within our projected framework – and could be what happens eventually.

    US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has said that Trump’s second favourite word is “reciprocal”. If that’s true, then it is possible that the Trump administration has the overall intention of cooling down the intensity of this trade war ahead of negotiating a new version of its trade deal with Canada and Mexico – and a new one with China too.

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

    – ref. Donald Trump likes tariffs, but they damage the economies of everyone involved – https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-likes-tariffs-but-they-damage-the-economies-of-everyone-involved-252322

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Autistic stimming explained – and why stopping it can lead to burnout

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aimee Grant, Senior Lecturer in Public Health and Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow, Swansea University

    Many autistic people use everyday objects in repetitive ways. engagestock/Shutterstock

    Stimming – short for “self-stimulatory behaviour” – is a form of self-soothing commonly seen in autistic people. It can involve repetitive movements, sounds, or actions and is commonly regarded in medical literature as part of “rigid and repetitive behaviour”.

    This type of framing tends to cast stimming in a negative light, leading health professionals, teachers and even parents to try to stop it. But stimming is a vital self-protective strategy for autistic people, and suppressing it can have serious consequences.

    While stimming isn’t unique to autism, autistic people tend to stim more frequently and sometimes in more noticeable ways. It often involves physical movements such as hand-flapping, rocking, spinning or tiptoeing. Many autistic people also use different objects in repetitive ways, such as lining them up in patterns or keeping their hands busy with everyday items or stim toys.

    But stimming goes beyond movement – it can involve any of the senses. Some people stim through sound, repeating words or phrases because they are satisfying to say or hear. Others engage in “scripting,” like having conversations that follow a set pattern or re-watching favourite films for the comfort of predictability. Oral stims, such as chewing on pens, clothing or “chewllery” are also common.

    When considered in this broader sense, many people – autistic or not – have at least one form of stimming. Yet autistic children are often encouraged to stop theirs, with alternatives like keeping their hands in their pockets suggested instead. These substitutes don’t offer the same sensory input, however, and can make self-regulation more difficult.

    Many autistic adults report having lost their natural stims over time. This is either through conscious suppression or because they were conditioned to stop in childhood. Some still suppress stimming out of fear of negative reactions from others, despite it being beneficial to their wellbeing. There is also evidence that some autistic people are discouraged from stimming in the workplace.

    Masking

    The exact mechanisms behind stimming aren’t fully understood yet. But it is widely acknowledged that it provides soothing sensory input, helping autistic people cope with overwhelming environments. Suppressing stimming is uncomfortable and is one aspect of “masking”, which is the conscious or unconscious act of not doing natural autistic traits to avoid negative social consequences.

    Masking is particularly common among autistic women and has been linked to increased anxiety, burnout and even suicide. It can also affect education, work, relationships and overall quality of life.

    It’s crucial for society – especially parents, teachers and employers – to become more accepting of stimming. Research shows that greater understanding leads to greater acceptance.

    The only instances where intervention might be necessary are when stimming is self-injurious or poses a risk to others, in which case a safer alternative stim should be encouraged. Otherwise, the best response is simple – let people stim freely. And if you’re autistic, research shows you can use it to bond with other autistic people.

    So, if you see an autistic child or adult stimming, there’s no need to comment or intervene. My mum used to say that “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” – that principle that applies here too.

    Aimee Grant receives funding from receives funding from UKRI, the Wellcome Trust and the Morgan Advanced Studies Institute. She is a non-executive director of Disability Wales.

    – ref. Autistic stimming explained – and why stopping it can lead to burnout – https://theconversation.com/autistic-stimming-explained-and-why-stopping-it-can-lead-to-burnout-252088

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Climate change isn’t fair but Tony Juniper’s new book explains how a green transition could be ‘just’

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alix Dietzel, Senior Lecturer in Climate Justice, University of Bristol

    Tony Juniper. Jason Bye, CC BY-NC-ND

    Inequality – between the rich and poor or between the powerful and the weak – is the main factor stalling action on environmental problems including biodiversity loss, pollution and climate change, according to British environmentalist Tony Juniper.

    In his new book, Just Earth: How a Fairer World Will Save the Planet, he argues that “if we want to build a secure future, both environmental priorities and social justice must be pursued together”. Much of this is about how decisions are made: “Disadvantaged groups rarely have a say, while those deciding on policy continue to comprise a narrow social segment.”

    It is interesting to see Juniper’s views on the topic of a just transition, given his decades of experience. Juniper has served as the executive director of environmental charity Friends of the Earth, he was a Green party parliamentary candidate in the 2011 general election and previously led The Wildlife Trusts. He is currently chair of Natural England, the official government organisation working for the conservation and restoration of the natural environment.

    His views on this subject certainly matter. His key message that social justice is at the heart of solving environmental problems helps to explain why we have collectively failed to address these.

    This injustice is an issue that has been raised for decades by those most affected by environmental issues, those who work in the environment sector and academics like me who focus on environmental justice.

    The UK environment sector, for example, is notoriously one of the least diverse, with only 3.5% of those working in environmental jobs identifying as an ethnic minority. In addition, the climate change movement is sometimes portrayed by the media as a middle-class preoccupation. Research shows a tendency for mainstream media to position environmentalism as a position of the wealthy. That’s reflected by the use of distancing terminology such as “middle-class tree huggers”.

    However, 39% of UK working class voters experience climate anxiety. That’s only slightly below the 42% of middle-class voters.

    Levels of climate concern have stayed high throughout both the COVID-19 pandemic and cost of living crises, while support for government action on climate mitigation policies, such as decreased meat consumption and flying, has remained steady.

    At the global level, there have always been tensions between developed and developing countries in terms of what is “fair”. Entrenched power dynamics ensure that developed countries have historically won out when deciding what a fair future looks like.

    Most recently, those tensions have been evident in the lack of clarity around how loss and damage will be funded and managed – who will pay out when an island disappears, or a village becomes inhabitable to due drought, for example? There’s also much debate around how a new finance goal should be defined, with huge disagreements between the developed and developing countries.

    As Juniper explains, not only is it unclear what fairness means at global negotiations, there is clear evidence that these tend to favour the more powerful countries, such as the US or members of the EU, and create an unjust regime. Steven Vanderheiden, one of the earliest climate justice philosophers, claims that developing nations are usually offered a “take it or leave it” deal, such as the new finance goal of US$300 billion (£232 billion) or about half of what developing countries were asking for, once developed nations have made decisions without them.

    A fairer vision

    In response to these inequalities and ongoing tensions, Juniper sets out a vision for a fairer, greener society – also known as a just transition.

    A just transition is hard to define. It was once a relatively well demarcated and clearly grounded concept associated with worker’s rights.

    Over time, it has become an increasingly all-encompassing policy objective, untethered from any specific policies, political objectives or priorities. Indeed, while there are certainly overlaps between the different visions of a just transition, significant aspects directly contradict one another.

    Just Earth by Tony Juniper is out now.
    CC BY-NC-ND

    Many of the messages in Juniper’s book have been shouted by those less privileged for decades. By using his platform to amplify the importance of climate justice, he is striving to make a difference. However, the voices of those from affected communities in developing countries, the working class in richer countries, and women (who will be hardest hit by climate change) are somewhat absent.

    Juniper neatly encompasses 40-plus years of global negotiations on climate change and biodiversity, reflecting on core issues blocking progress, such as populism and fossil fuel interests. Getting your head around negotiations is a complex task – and it’s one that Juniper executes very well.

    Juniper also discusses rising inequality, especially post-COVID, and the intersecting relationship between affluence and environmental destruction, with the richest consuming far more than the poorest and the top 10% wealthiest individuals having emitting more greenhouse gases than the poorest 50%.

    He sets out the impacts of consumption, particularly of the wealthiest, and the unfairness of those being hit hardest consuming the least. He carefully dissects why indefinite growth of GDP can no longer be taken as a given.

    Then he sets out his vision for a just transition with a ten-point agenda, including new measures of progress. He suggests focusing on wellbeing and sustainable consumption, not GDP.

    He highlights the importance of financing the future and raising the transition war chest – that involves carbon tax regimes and additional public resources for environmental protection to build climate resilience. He advises switching subsidies to green energy rather than fossil fuels, and also advocates for the use of ecocide law to protect future generations.

    While progress is possible, Juniper is a realist. He outlines how much our culture needs to shift away from consumption, competition, devaluing nature, and towards a fairer society for all. As he puts it: “We have nowhere else to go. There is just Earth.”

    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Alix Dietzel 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. Climate change isn’t fair but Tony Juniper’s new book explains how a green transition could be ‘just’ – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-isnt-fair-but-tony-junipers-new-book-explains-how-a-green-transition-could-be-just-250671

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How viruses blur the the boundaries of life

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Heshmat Borhani, Lecturer in in Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Nottingham

    Cryptographer/Shutterstock

    When people talk about the coronavirus, they sometimes describe this invisible entity as if it has a personality and even a conscience. If you ask a biology or medical student what a virus is, they will tell you that a virus is not a living organism, or at most that it exists at the border between living and dead – a kind of walking dead.

    For biologists who specialise in virology, however, this view is not clear-cut. Scientists still disagree on whether viruses are truly alive or not.

    What scientists can agree on is that a virus adapts to new conditions, evolves and sometimes harms humans. It is also an infectious agent that can only replicate within a host organism such as bacteria, plants or animals.

    The boundary between being alive and dead is a concept with no specific criteria. So to help you think about whether viruses are alive, I will talk you through some of the different definitions of life in science.

    Throughout history, scientists have debated the definition of life and researchers from different fields still disagree. This debate shapes scientific understanding and influences public health decisions – for example, defining whether viruses are “alive” affects how we design vaccines and strategies to stop their spread.

    Biologists may refer you to Erwin Schrödinger’s definition of life. Schrödinger was an Austrian Nobel-prize winning physicist who published a book in 1944 called What is Life? He was one of the first scientists to try to define life and is perhaps better known in popular culture for his “Schrödinger’s cat” thought experiment.

    He proposed that life is a form of negative “entropy”, a scientific concept that explains how disordered something is. A physical system will always increase in entropy/disorder unless we insert energy to change this process. Schrödinger thought living things create and maintain order by using energy.

    For example, a messy bedroom doesn’t clean itself, but a person can tidy it. Organisms do something similar at the molecular level. DNA is highly structured, allowing it to store genetic information. Proteins fold into specific shapes to function properly. In contrast, after an organism dies, its molecules break down, increasing disorder.

    Schrödinger later revised his view – around the 1950s – suggesting that life depends on free energy. Free energy is the energy that drives chemical reactions in living things. This marked a shift from focusing on order (negative entropy) to emphasising energy as essential for life.

    The coronavirus took on a personality for many people.
    creativeneko/Shutterstock

    In the mid-20th century, scientists switched from defining life to describing its key characteristics. Studying organisms such as bacteria, plants and animals, they identified common traits, setting a precedent still followed today.

    Rather than seeking a single definition, researchers classify entities based on these traits. To decide whether a virus is alive, researchers assess how well it meets these criteria.

    According to biology, the smallest unit of life is the cell. A cell is an independent unit which makes functional molecules (such as proteins and enzymes). Cells can use their own molecules to replicate genetic material independently. A virus also has genetic material but needs to use the host cell’s enzymes to make functional molecules or replicate its genetic material.

    Put simply, a virus does not replicate or function independently. So by the biological definition, a virus cannot be categorised as a living organism.

    But from a genetic and evolutionary point of view a living organism is defined by its ability to reproduce. A person who does not have children is still considered to be alive as they are part of the gene pool and descended from people who did have children. From this view a virus is alive, since it can produce similar offspring.

    Some scientists also focus on metabolism and energy production as criteria for life. Metabolism includes catabolism (breaking down molecules like sugars during digestion) and anabolism (building molecules like muscle tissue), linking energy and material. These reactions require molecular structures to generate or use energy – structures viruses lack.

    Does that mean viruses aren’t alive? An amoeba, for instance, uses nutrients and enzymes to sustain itself, while viruses rely entirely on a host. From this perspective, viruses don’t meet the metabolic criteria for life. However, some argue that since viruses hijack a host’s metabolism to replicate, they show life-like behaviour.

    If we consider nutrients to be sources of free energy, a cell uses energy from the environment to build what it needs. As the cell absorbs energy from the environment, it builds and maintains its internal structures – like proteins and membranes.

    It also releases a byproduct – carbon dioxide – that contributes to disorder in the external environment. Viruses also do this. They make their structures by using the external environment, a host cell in this case. The viruses’ byproducts may be what makes us sick.

    As we explore the complexities of biology, it becomes clear that defining life itself is anything but straightforward. Viruses display both life-like and non-living traits, which influences how we approach treatments like antiviral drugs designed to block their replication inside host cells.

    Heshmat Borhani 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. How viruses blur the the boundaries of life – https://theconversation.com/how-viruses-blur-the-the-boundaries-of-life-230802

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Europe: ASIA/SOUTH KOREA – Archbishop Nappa celebrates the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean Pontifical Mission Societies in Seoul

    Source: Agenzia Fides – MIL OSI

    Don Marco Kim

    Seoul (Agenzia Fides) – “It is with great emotion that I visit this land of martyrs that is Korea, a unique country in the history of the Church, where the faith took root spontaneously before the arrival of the missionaries.” With these words, Archbishop Emilio Nappa began his homily at the commemorative Mass for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Korean National Direction of the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS). The Eucharistic concelebration was presided over this morning, Monday, March 31, by Bishop Mathias Iong-hoon Ri, President of the Korean Bishops’ Conference, in the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Seoul, in Myeongdong.Archbishop Nappa, current Secretary General of the Governorate of the Vatican City and former President of the Pontifical Mission Societies, concelebrated the Mass at 10 a.m., in the presence of Cardinal Andrea Yeom, Archbishop Emeritus of Seoul; Archbishop Giovanni Gaspari, Apostolic Nuncio to South Korea; and numerous prelates, priests, former national directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies, religious sisters and lay missionaries, as well as hundreds of faithful. “Your ancestors in the faith,” said Archbishop Nappa, “kept their faith under severe persecution, dreaming of eternal life. Nobles and servants sat together, calling each other brothers and sisters.” The former PMS president “gave thanks and praise to God” for all those who have served the Korean PMS throughout their history, inviting the faithful to “implore with the same ardent intention […] so that the steadfast faith that animated your ancestors in the faith may be awakened in you.”In his welcoming address, Cardinal Andrew Soo-jung Yeom, Archbishop Emeritus of Seoul, retraced the history of the Korean PMS, recalling that the Pontifical Mission Societies of Korea were established on June 29, 1965, under the name ‘Pontifical Commission for the Propagation of the Faith’.He also emphasized that in 60 years, we have moved from a “Church that receives” (referring to the period when Korea was still poor and seminaries benefited from PMS subsidies) to a “Church that gives.” Indeed, “the Church on mission,” the Cardinal explained, “is a Church on the move, a Church that spreads the fragrance of Christ through the charity of daily life.”The Eucharistic celebration was followed by a conference on mission and several testimonies from consecrated and lay missionaries. Thomas Aquinas Seong-ho Song and Rosa Eun-hyung Rosa Yang, a Consolata lay missionary couple and grandparents of three grandchildren, recounted how they were called at the age of 60 to a mission in Tanzania after a previous experience in Mozambique. “Living with people and loving them” in order to “be able to proclaim Christ” were the main characteristics of the mission witnessed by the couple. As administrators at the Mission Center, he and her vice-directors, Thomas and Rosa, also reiterated the importance of learning the language and obtaining a driver’s license to begin interacting with the local community and becoming accustomed to its cultural expressions. They also emphasized that the situation they have embraced is “a place where it is difficult to live without prayer.”Another significant testimony came from Sister Anna Kang, a member of the Conceptionist Teaching Missionaries and a missionary in the Philippines from 2018 to 2023. With the help of the PMS and thanks to the support of many other donors, Sister Anna continued a daycare project, created specifically to provide a place of welcome and education for children who come from these homes where “a single room serves as a kitchen, dormitory, and bathroom.”During the lecture given by Father Peter Dong Won Kim, head of the Department of Mission ad Gentes of the Archdiocese of Seoul, he recounted his missionary experience in Taiwan, working with an aboriginal parish in the mountains, emphasizing that “missionary travel is not dictated by personal preferences (even if it seems so), but by the missionary’s response to God’s call.””We hope that the missionary spirit you experienced as President of the Pontifical Mission Societies will continue to accompany you in fulfilling your new mission,” expressed Father Marco Sungsu Kim, official of the Dicastery for Evangelization (section for the First Evangelization and the New Particular Churches), who accompanied the Archbishop during his visit to Japan and South Korea. The former President of the PMS took the time, at the end of his homily, to thank the Korean Church, which places its priests at the disposal of the universal Church.Archbishop Nappa’s visit to South Korea began on March 26 with a visit to the Apostolic Nunciature and a meeting with the Nuncio, Msgr. Giovanni Gaspari, and ended this morning. During his stay, Archbishop Nappa participated with a message of good wishes in the Mass celebrated on March 26, also in Myeongdong, for the 12th anniversary of the papal election of Pope Francis, with all the Korean bishops gathered for the Ordinary Plenary Assembly of the Korean Bishops’ Conference.The Archbishop also celebrated a Mass with the Salesian Sisters (about 30 sisters) on March 27 and took the opportunity to thank them for their commitment to North Korean youth. On the same day, he visited the Korean Bishops’ Conference where he was welcomed with “deep gratitude” by Secretary General Stefano Cheol-soo Lee and conveyed the greetings of Cardinal Tagle, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization.The day’s program concluded with a meeting with Catholic secondary school students. On March 28, he then visited the Diocese of Daegu, where he celebrated Mass, had a brief meeting with Bishop Thaddeus Hwan-kil Cho, and visited the Daegu Archdiocesan Major Seminary, Gwandeokjung (Museum of Martyrdom), the cathedral, the headquarters of ‘Catholic Times’, and the regional headquarters of the ‘Catholic Peace Broadcasting Corporation’. On the 29th, he visited the Diocese of Suwon, where Bishop Mathias Iong-hoon Ri, president of the Korean Bishops’ Conference, is bishop. In the afternoon, after visiting the Marian Shrine of Namyang (dedicated first to the anonymous martyrs, and later, in 1991, to the Virgin Mary), he concelebrated Mass with approximately 200 children at the parish of St. Pio of Pietrelcina in Hwaseong (Dongtan Bansong-dong Catholic Church). He then returned to the Seoul Major Seminary on Sunday, March 30, and visited the Seosomun Martyrs’ Shrine, the site where many early Korean Catholics were martyred, including the first to be baptized, Peter Seung-hun Yi.The gifts that Archbishop Nappa brought to the bishops and collaborators in Japan and Korea consisted of a wooden reproduction of the crucifix offered by Saint John Mary Vianney to Blessed Pauline Jaricot (prepared by the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith, POPF) and booklets on the life of the foundress of the societies and of Jeanne Bigard (foundress of the Pontifical Society of Saint Peter the Apostle, POSPA), as well as the missionary rosaries of the Dicastery. (PR) (Agenzia Fides, 31/3/2025)
    Don Marco Kim

    Don Marco Kim

    Don Marco Kim

    Don Marco Kim

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    MIL OSI Europe News –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: UK adults dial up importance of mobile phones

    Source: Anglia Ruskin University

    A new survey reveals that the UK public considers the mobile phone to be the second most important invention of all time, with the majority of people admitting they couldn’t live without theirs.

    The poll, carried out on behalf of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) by OnePoll, surveyed 2,000 UK adults between 19-24 March and coincides with the launch of the Connecting Worlds research hub at ARU, to highlight the university’s groundbreaking research and innovation, and make it more accessible to the public.

    The survey found that 52% of respondents view their mobile phones as indispensable, with this figure rising to 65% among those under 45.

    When asked to name the most important invention ever, the wheel topped the list at 31%, ahead of the mobile phone at 15%. Interestingly, among the under-45s, the mobile phone was the clear winner at 26%, rising to 33% among people aged 18-24.

    Early research into mobile phone technology was led by researchers at the Chelmer Institute in Essex, which later became Anglia Ruskin University, and these pioneering prototypes were featured in the 1970s on popular TV shows such as Blue Peter and Tomorrow’s World.

    When questioned about the most significant scientific discovery ever made, a third of those surveyed said electricity (33%), followed by penicillin, the first antibiotic (26%), and then DNA, the genetic code of living organisms (16%).

    Looking to the future, just over a third of people (34%) believe that finding a cure for cancer will be the biggest scientific breakthrough to occur over the next century. More “out of this world” breakthroughs such as colonising Mars and discovering alien life were selected by only 4% and 5% of people, respectively.

    At ARU, senior researchers are leading important research into different new cancer treatments, including for breast cancer and bowel cancer, and are also instrumental in work to provide cancer screenings for homeless people.

    Despite the impactful work being carried out at universities, the survey revealed that 43% of people were unaware that most UK universities engage in important, life-changing research alongside providing undergraduate and postgraduate education to students.

    “Crucially, our survey found that a high proportion of people aren’t aware of the twin roles of most UK universities – research and education. Our new Connecting Worlds research hub highlights that ARU, like many universities in the UK, carries out world-class research that benefits all parts of society.

    “It’s really important for us that our research activities are of the highest quality and contribute to knowledge and understanding in the academic literature. However, just as important for us is that we can continue to work in collaboration with partners, funders, policy makers, industry and civic leaders to undertake research which will have real and positive impact on the everyday experiences of individuals, communities, the professions and industry both locally and globally.

    “At ARU, this ranges from developing new treatments for cataracts, to helping to save the UK from future food shortages, to highlighting discrimination in the labour market and working to revive endangered languages. We encourage everyone to explore the innovative work being carried at ARU.”

    Professor Yvonne Barnett, Deputy Vice Chancellor at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU)

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –