Category: Germany

MIL-OSI Economics: Samsung Sets New Benchmark in TV Security With FIPS 140-3 Certification

Source: Samsung

Samsung Electronics today announced that its proprietary cryptography module, Samsung CryptoCore,1 has earned the prestigious FIPS 140-3 certification2 from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This certification underscores Samsung’s commitment to providing industry-leading security and data protection for Smart TV users.

“As home entertainment systems become more connected, it becomes critical for technology companies to safeguard the personal data that enables the seamless connectivity enjoyed by so many,” said Yongjae Kim, Executive Vice President and Head of the R&D Team, Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “By integrating the FIPS 140-3-certified CryptoCore into our Smart TVs, Samsung is taking our commitment to secure home entertainment a step further and ensuring that our users can freely experience the value of our products.”

Beginning in 2025, Samsung CryptoCore will be fully integrated into Tizen OS,3 Samsung’s Smart TV operating system, enhancing the security of key products such as TVs, monitors and digital signage. With Samsung CryptoCore embedded in Tizen OS, personal data linked to Samsung accounts will be securely encrypted, SmartThings authentication information will be protected from external hacking threats and content viewed on TVs will benefit from enhanced copyright protection.

Since 2015, Samsung has equipped its Smart TVs with Samsung Knox,4 a security platform that has earned Common Criteria (CC) certification5 for 10 consecutive years. But with its newly acquired FIPS 140-3 certification, Samsung has strengthened its defenses against hacking and data breaches even further, proactively protecting personal information with advanced encryption technology.

Recognized by governments in 10 countries,6 the FIPS 140-3 certification requires comprehensive testing of cryptographic modules to ensure their security, integrity and reliability. For users, this means Samsung Smart TVs offer cutting-edge protection against privacy breaches, allowing them to enjoy their content, connect smart devices and engage with IoT services securely and without concerns.

1 Samsung CryptoCore is a software library that encrypts and decrypts data during both transmission and storage.2 Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-3 covers the security requirements for cryptographic modules.3 Tizen OS 9.0.4 Samsung Knox provides privacy protection on its Smart TVs through features like Tizen OS Monitoring, Phishing Site Blocking and Knox Vault. Knox Vault is available only on the QN900D and QN800D models.5 Common Criteria (CC) certification is a global security standard recognized by 31 countries for IT product integrity.6 Recognized in the United States, Canada, UK, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

MIL OSI Economics –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Economics: Bladder cancer diagnosed incident cases across 8MM to reach 0.34 million in 2033, forecasts GlobalData

Source: GlobalData

Bladder cancer diagnosed incident cases across 8MM to reach 0.34 million in 2033, forecasts GlobalData

Posted in Pharma

The diagnosed incident cases of bladder cancer in the eight major markets (8MM*) are set to register an annual growth rate (AGR) of 2.24% from 0.28 million in 2023 to 0.34 million in 2033, forecasts GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

GlobalData’s latest report, “Bladder Cancer – Epidemiology Forecast to 2033,” reveals that the US will have the highest number of diagnosed incident cases of bladder cancer among the 8MM at 0.10 million cases, whereas France will have the lowest number at 0.02 million cases in 2033.

Antara Bhattacharya, Associate Project Manager, Epidemiology team at GlobalData, comments: “In 2023, men are more affected than women with approximately 78% men and 22% women.”

Older adults in ages 60 years and above accounted for almost 87% of the diagnosed incident cases of bladder cancer in the 8MM in 2023, while younger adults in ages 18–59 years accounted for approximately 13% of the cases.

GlobalData estimates that in 2023, approximately 45% of the incident cases of bladder cancer were diagnosed in the early stages by AJCC TNM staging, whereas only 6% of cases had a delayed diagnosis. Additionally, approximately 79% of the incident cases by tumor “T” stage at diagnosis were diagnosed in earlier stages, whereas only 4% cases were in severe stages.

The high rate of diagnosis at earlier stages can be attributed to the success of increasing rates of cystoscopy, which is an invasive and expensive procedure. Approximately 74% of diagnosed prevalent cases of NMIBC relapse or recurred to MIBC.

Bhattacharya concludes: “Bladder cancer is the ninth most common cancer type, and timely detection of the disease is both challenging and expensive. Diagnosis relies mainly on cystoscopy, which is an invasive procedure and difficult in low-resource settings. Even after being diagnosed in early stages when the disease is highly treatable, the relapse and recurrence rates are high.

“Hence, adequate research and medical interventions are needed to facilitate different medical approaches for the timely detection and treatment. Epidemiological studies focusing on bladder cancer stages with relapse or recurrence can improve treatment outcomes. Additionally, bladder cancer treatment requires a multifaceted approach that integrates medical and surgical interventions, lifestyle modifications, ongoing support, along with immunotherapy, targeted therapy, clinical trials, and follow-up care.”

*8MM: The US, 5EU (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK), Japan, and urban China.

MIL OSI Economics –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: On foreign policy, Trump opts for disruption and Harris for engagement − but they share some of the same concerns

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Garret Martin, Senior Professorial Lecturer, Co-Director Transatlantic Policy Center, American University School of International Service

Who will represent the U.S. better on the global stage? Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

According to conventional wisdom, U.S. voters are largely motivated by domestic concerns and especially the economy.

But the upcoming presidential election may be somewhat of an outlier. In a September 2024 poll, foreign policy actually ranks quite high in voters’ concerns – with more Democrats and Republicans combined saying it was “very important” to their vote than, say, immigration and abortion.

As such, understanding where Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic rival Kamala Harris stand on the significant international issues of the day is important. And we can do so by looking at the records of their respective administrations in the three regions they prioritized: the Indo-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East.

Donald Trump: Disrupter-in-chief

In his 2017 inaugural address, Trump painted a dark picture of the U.S. In his telling, his country was being taken advantage of by other nations, especially in trade and security, while neglecting domestic challenges.

To disrupt this, Trump promised an “America First” approach to guide his administration.

And in practice, his foreign policy certainly proved disruptive. He showed a clear willingness to buck traditions and undid some of former President Barack Obama’s signature policies, such as the Iran nuclear deal, which exchanged sanctions relief for restrictions on Tehran’s domestic nuclear program, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

In so doing, he ruffled the feathers of allies and foes alike.

Trans-Atlantic relations were tense under Trump, especially because of his hostility toward NATO. After deriding the Atlantic alliance on the campaign trail, Trump stuck to the same tune while in office. He routinely insulted allies at high-level summits and allegedly came close to withdrawing from the alliance altogether in 2018.

While NATO did make inroads in bolstering its Eastern flank in that period, the alliance was primarily defined by internal turmoil and limited cohesion during Trump’s time in office. U.S. relations with the European Union hardly fared better. In 2018, the U.S. imposed steel and aluminum tariffs on the European Union, citing national security concerns.

Trump also broke with previous U.S. presidents in his administration’s Asia policy. One of his first moves in 2017 was to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal negotiated by Obama. Trump’s late 2017 national security strategy also announced a major shift toward China, labeling it as a “strategic competitor” – implying a greater emphasis on containing China as opposed to cooperating with it.

This hawkish turn played out especially in the field of trade. Trump’s administration imposed four rounds of tariffs in 2018-19, affecting US$360 billion of Chinese goods. Beijing, of course, responded with tariffs of its own. The two countries did sign a so-called phase-one deal in January 2020 that sought to lower the stakes of this trade war. But the COVID-19 pandemic nullified any chance of success, and relations soured further with each Trump utterance of the pandemic being a “Chinese virus.”

Trump showcased somewhat contradictory impulses toward the Middle East and other issues. He pushed for disengagement and to undo Obama’s major policies. Besides withdrawing from the Paris climate accords in 2017, Trump abandoned the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. His administration also signed a deal to end the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, and it withdrew forces from northern Syria.

But at the same time, Trump continued the bombing campaign against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq and authorized the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani in 2020. The latter was consistent with a policy that aimed to pressure and isolate Iran economically and diplomatically. The key example of the diplomatic pressure came through especially via the Abraham Accords through which Trump helped facilitate the establishment of normal diplomatic ties between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco.

Kamala Harris: Alliance and engagement

Although not taking a driving role in foreign policy, Harris has been part of an administration that has committed the U.S. to repairing alliances and engaging with the world.

This came across by undoing some major actions from the Trump administration. For example, the U.S. quickly rejoined the Paris climate accords and overturned a decision to leave the World Health Organization.

But in other areas, the Biden administration has shown more continuity with Trump than many expected.

For instance, the U.S. under Biden has not fundamentally deviated from strategic competition with China, even though the tactics have differed a little. The administration maintained Trump’s tariff approach, even adding its own targeted rounds against Beijing on electric vehicles.

Moreover, it cultivated different diplomatic platforms in the Indo-Pacific to act as a counterweight to China. This included the cultivation of the Quad dialogue with Australia, India and Japan, and the AUKUS deal with Australia and the U.K., both of which attempted to further the Biden administration’s strategy of containing China’s influence by enlisting regional allies. Finally, the Biden administration did maintain some channels of communication with China at the highest level as well, with Biden meeting Xi Jinping twice during his presidency.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy walks alongside Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House compound on Sept. 26, 2024.
Tom Brenner/Getty Images

The Biden administration’s Middle Eastern policy displayed significant continuity with Trump’s approach – at first. While it turned out to be chaotic, the U.S. completed the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan in summer 2021, as had been agreed under Trump. The Biden administration also embraced the format and goals of the Abraham Accords. It even tried to build on them, with the goal of fostering Israeli-Saudi diplomatic ties.

Of course, the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel completely changed the equation in the Middle East. Preventing the spiral of violence in the region has become an all-consuming task. Since then, Biden and Harris have tried, largely unsuccessfully, to balance support for Israel with mediation efforts to liberate the hostages and to ensure a cease-fire.

Trans-Atlantic relations, however, are an area where there were marked differences in the past four years. The tone of the Biden-Harris administration has been in sharp contrast with that of Trump, reaffirming frequently its clear commitment to NATO. And once Russia launched its illegal invasion in February 2022, the U.S. placed itself at the forefront of supporting Ukraine.

Harris has suggested that she would continue Biden’s policy of providing Kyiv with extensive and continuous military support. In conjunction with allies, the White House of Biden and Harris also implemented a broad range of sanctions against Russia. But the U.S. under Biden has not yet been willing to support Ukraine’s immediate entry into NATO.

What next?

Based on their records, what could we expect of a Trump or Harris presidency?

It’s unlikely either candidate will abandon strategic competition with China. But Trump is more likely to seriously escalate the trade war, promising extensive tariffs against Beijing. Trump’s commitment to defending Taiwan is also more ambiguous in comparison with Harris’ pledges.

U.S. policy toward Europe will largely depend on the results of the election. Harris has frequently underlined her steadfast support for NATO, as well as for Ukraine. Trump, on the other hand, is showing signs that he is unwilling to further aid the regime in Kyiv.

And for the Middle East, it remains to be seen whether either Trump or Harris would be able to better shape events in the region.

Garret Martin receives funding from the European Union for the research institute he co-directs, the Transatlantic Policy Center.

– ref. On foreign policy, Trump opts for disruption and Harris for engagement − but they share some of the same concerns – https://theconversation.com/on-foreign-policy-trump-opts-for-disruption-and-harris-for-engagement-but-they-share-some-of-the-same-concerns-238847

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: How Trump’s racist talk of immigrant ‘bad genes’ echoes some of the last century’s darkest ideas about eugenics

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Shannon Bow O’Brien, Associate Professor of Instruction, The University of Texas at Austin

Donald Trump speaks at Madison Square Garden in New York on Oct. 27, 2024. John Salangsang/Invision/AP

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly denounced immigrants who enter the U.S. illegally and the danger he says that poor immigrants of color pose for the U.S. – often using hateful language to make his point.

In early October 2024, Trump took his comments a step further when he questioned immigrants’ faulty genes, saying without support that “Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they are now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

It was far from the first time Trump has invoked eugenics – a false, racist theory that some people, and even some races, are genetically superior to others.

In 1988, for example, Trump told Oprah Winfrey during an interview: “You have to be born lucky in the sense that you have to have the right genes.”

In 2016, Trump said that his German roots are the reason behind his greatness:

“I always said that winning is somewhat, maybe, innate. Maybe it’s just something you have; you have the winning gene. Frankly it would be wonderful if you could develop it, but I’m not so sure you can. You know, I’m proud to have that German blood, there’s no question about it. Great stuff.”

And in 2020, Trump again alluded to his belief that bloodlines convey excellence:

“I had an uncle who went to MIT who is a top professor. Dr. John Trump. A genius. It’s in my blood. I’m smart.”

Trump’s repeated and countless comments about white people’s racial superiority to people of color have prompted some comparisons to the Nazis and their ideology of racial superiority.

The Nazis are indeed the most infamous believers of the false idea that white, blue-eyed, blonde-haired people were superior to others – and that the human population should be selectively managed to breed white people.

But the Nazis didn’t originate these ideas. In fact, the Nazis were so impressed with many American eugenic ideas that they incorporated them into their racist, antisemitic laws.

Root of eugenics

The British scientist Francis Galton, a cousin of the evolutionist Charles Darwin, first developed the theory of eugenics in the 1860s, and it gained a foothold in the U.S. and Britain around this time.

Eugenics sets racial identity, and especially white identity, as the most desirable and worthy.

By the dawn of the early 1900s, much of the American eugenics scholarship looked down on American immigrants from any place other than Scandinavia, thus coining the term “Nordicism.”

In the late 19th and early 20th century, immigration to the U.S. was at its peak. In 1890, 14.8% of people living in the U.S. were immigrants. Many people felt concerned about immigration in the U.S., and there were many prominent eugenicists in America. Two of the most famous were Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard.

Both were avowed white supremacists who advocated for scientific racism. They wrote popular and widely read books that helped shape American and German law in the 1920s and 1930s.

Grant, Stoddard and other theorists in the U.S. embraced eugenics as a way to justify racial segregation, restrict immigration, enforce sterilization and uphold other systemic inequalities.

Stoddard attacked the United States’ immigration policies in his 1920 book, “The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy.” He wrote: “If the present drift is not changed, we whites are all ultimately doomed. … We now know that men are not, and never will be equal. We now know that environment and education can only develop what heredity brings.”

Another prominent eugenicist was Harry H. Laughlin, an educator and superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office, a now-defunct research group that gathered biological and social information about the American population.

Laughlin wrote an influential 1922 book, “Eugenical Sterilization in the United States,” which included a chapter on model sterilization laws. The Third Reich used his book and laws as a template when implementing them in Germany during the height of the Nazi period.

Laughlin also regularly testified before U.S. Congress, with this 1922 testimony representative of his message to lawmakers: “Immigration is essentially and fundamentally a racial and biological problem. There are many factors to consider, but, from the standpoint of the future, immigration is primarily a long time national investment in human family stocks.”

Eugenicists, including Laughlin, have long been specifically preoccupied with Norwegian genetics – believing that America is under attack when immigration occurs from non-Nordic countries.

In November 1922, Laughlin said, “Some of our finest and most desirable immigrants are from Norway.”

In 1924, Congress approved the Immigration Act, which severely limited immigration to the U.S., established quotas for immigrants based on nationality and barred immigrants from Asia.

It was only following the end of World War II and the Holocaust that eugenics fell out of favor and lost its prominence in American thinking.

Trump’s recycling of history

Fears over foreign immigrants weakening the U.S. were popular a century ago, and Trump and many of his followers still embrace them today.

Trump has promised that he will carry out mass deportations of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, forcibly detaining immigrants in camps and removing 1 million people a year.

In April 2024, Trump used dehumanizing language to express his apparent belief that immigrants are unworthy of empathy. “The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans, they’re animals.’”

Trump has also promoted eugenicists’ obsession with Scandinavia and the superiority of white people.

In 2018, Trump spoke about immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and Africa, saying “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

In the same meeting, Trump also reportedly suggested that the U.S. should instead draw in more people from countries like Norway.

In April 2024, Trump again embraced this idea of Scandinavian superiority, saying that he wants immigrants from “Nice countries. You know, like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”

A dangerous flash to the past

A person running for president in 1924 would seem more likely than a candidate in 2024 to espouse this now-discredited point of view.

President Calvin Coolidge ran for election on an “America First” platform in 1924, with the slogan only falling out of favor after groups like the Ku Klux Klan embraced it around the same time.

The idea of America First, at the time, denoted American nationalism and exceptionalism – but also was linked to anti-immigration and fascist movements.

When Coolidge signed the heavily restrictive 1924 Immigration Act into law he stated, “America must remain American.”

One hundred years later, Trump calls to mind an America First mentality, including when he regularly reads the lyrics to a song called “The Snake” during his rallies as a way to explain the dangers of welcoming immigrants into the U.S. The civil rights activist Oscar Brown wrote this poem in 1963, and his family has said that Trump misinterprets the song’s words.

‘I saved you,’ cried that woman.

‘And you’ve bit me even, why’

‘You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die.’

‘Oh shut up, silly woman,’ said the reptile with a grin,

‘You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.’

I have written a book on this and I used many of my citations in Chapter 4 to help develop this piece though I reworded or reframed it.

– ref. How Trump’s racist talk of immigrant ‘bad genes’ echoes some of the last century’s darkest ideas about eugenics – https://theconversation.com/how-trumps-racist-talk-of-immigrant-bad-genes-echoes-some-of-the-last-centurys-darkest-ideas-about-eugenics-241548

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Israel’s ban on UNRWA continues a pattern of politicizing Palestinian refugee aid – and puts millions of lives at risk

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Nicholas R. Micinski, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, University of Maine

The Israeli parliament’s vote on Oct. 28, 2024, to ban the United Nations agency that provides relief for Palestinian refugees is likely to affect millions of people – it also fits a pattern.

Aid for refugees, particularly Palestinian refugees, has long been politicized, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, has been targeted throughout its 75-year history.

This was evident earlier in the current Gaza conflict, when at least a dozen countries, including the U.S., suspended funding to the UNRWA, citing allegations made by Israel that 12 UNRWA employees participated in the attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. In August, the U.N. fired nine UNRWA employees for alleged involvement in the attack. An independent U.N. panel established a set of 50 recommendations to ensure UNRWA employees adhere to the principle of neutrality.

The vote by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to ban the UNRWA goes a step further. It will, when it comes into effect, prevent the UNRWA from operating in Israel and will severely affect its ability to serve refugees in any of the occupied territories that Israel controls, including Gaza. This could have devastating consequences for livelihoods, health, the distribution of food aid and schooling for Palestinians. It would also damage the polio vaccination campaign that the UNRWA and its partner organizations have been carrying out in Gaza since September. Finally, the bill bans communication between Israeli officials and the UNRWA, which would end efforts by the agency to coordinate the movements of aid workers to prevent unintentional targeting by the Israel Defense Forces.

Refugee aid, and humanitarian aid more generally, is theoretically meant to be neutral and impartial. But as experts in migration and international relations, we know funding is often used as a foreign policy tool, whereby allies are rewarded and enemies punished. In this context, we believe Israel’s banning of the UNRWA fits a wider pattern of the politicization of aid to refugees, particularly Palestinian refugees.

What is the UNRWA?

The UNRWA, short for United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, was established two years after about 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes during the months leading up to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war.

Palestinians flee their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Pictures from History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Prior to the UNRWA’s creation, international and local organizations, many of them religious, provided services to displaced Palestinians. But after surveying the extreme poverty and dire situation pervasive across refugee camps, the U.N. General Assembly, including all Arab states and Israel, voted to create the UNRWA in 1949.

Since that time, the UNRWA has been the primary aid organization providing food, medical care, schooling and, in some cases, housing for the 6 million Palestinians living across its five fields: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, as well as the areas that make up the occupied Palestinian territories: the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The mass displacement of Palestinians – known as the Nakba, or “catastrophe” – occurred prior to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which defined refugees as anyone with a well-founded fear of persecution owing to “events occurring in Europe before 1 January 1951.” Despite a 1967 protocol extending the definition worldwide, Palestinians are still excluded from the primary international system protecting refugees.

While the UNRWA is responsible for providing services to Palestinian refugees, the United Nations also created the U.N. Conciliation Commission for Palestine in 1948 to seek a long-term political solution and “to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation.”

As a result, UNRWA does not have a mandate to push for the traditional durable solutions available in other refugee situations. As it happened, the conciliation commission was active only for a few years and has since been sidelined in favor of the U.S.-brokered peace processes.

Is the UNRWA political?

The UNRWA has been subject to political headwinds since its inception and especially during periods of heightened tension between Palestinians and Israelis.

While it is a U.N. organization and thus ostensibly apolitical, it has frequently been criticized by Palestinians, Israelis as well as donor countries, including the United States, for acting politically.

The UNRWA performs statelike functions across its five fields, including education, health and infrastructure, but it is restricted in its mandate from performing political or security activities.

Initial Palestinian objections to the UNRWA stemmed from the organization’s early focus on economic integration of refugees into host states.

Although the UNRWA officially adhered to the U.N. General Assembly’s Resolution 194 that called for the return of Palestine refugees to their homes, U.N., U.K. and U.S. officials searched for means by which to resettle and integrate Palestinians into host states, viewing this as the favorable political solution to the Palestinian refugee situation and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this sense, Palestinians perceived the UNRWA to be both highly political and actively working against their interests.

In later decades, the UNRWA switched its primary focus from jobs to education at the urging of Palestinian refugees. But the UNRWA’s education materials were viewed by Israel as further feeding Palestinian militancy, and the Israeli government insisted on checking and approving all materials in Gaza and the West Bank, which it has occupied since 1967.

A protester is removed by members of the U.S. Capitol Police during a House hearing on Jan. 30, 2024.
Alex Wong/Getty Images

While Israel has long been suspicious of the UNRWA’s role in refugee camps and in providing education, the organization’s operation, which is internationally funded, also saves Israel millions of dollars each year in services it would be obliged to deliver as the occupying power.

Since the 1960s, the U.S. – the UNRWA’s primary donor – and other Western countries have repeatedly expressed their desire to use aid to prevent radicalization among refugees.

In response to the increased presence of armed opposition groups, the U.S. attached a provision to its UNRWA aid in 1970, requiring that the “UNRWA take all possible measures to assure that no part of the United States contribution shall be used to furnish assistance to any refugee who is receiving military training as a member of the so-called Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) or any other guerrilla-type organization.”

The UNRWA adheres to this requirement, even publishing an annual list of its employees so that host governments can vet them, but it also employs 30,000 individuals, the vast majority of whom are Palestinian.

Questions over links of the UNRWA to any militancy has led to the rise of Israeli and international watch groups that document the social media activity of the organization’s large Palestinian staff.

In 2018, the Trump administration paused its US$60 million contribution to the UNRWA. Trump claimed the pause would create political pressure for Palestinians to negotiate. President Joe Biden restarted U.S. contributions to the UNRWA in 2021.

While other major donors restored funding to the UNRWA after the conclusion of the investigation in April, the U.S. has yet to do so.

‘An unmitigated disaster’

Israel’s ban of the UNRWA will leave already starving Palestinians without a lifeline. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said banning the UNRWA “would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.” The foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the U.K. issued a joint statement arguing that the ban would have “devastating consequences on an already critical and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, particularly in northern Gaza.”

Reports have emerged of Israeli plans for private security contractors to take over aid distribution in Gaza through dystopian “gated communities,” which would in effect be internment camps. This would be a troubling move. In contrast to the UNRWA, private contractors have little experience delivering aid and are not dedicated to the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality or independence.

However, the Knesset’s explicit ban could, inadvertently, force the United States to suspend weapons transfers to Israel. U.S. law requires that it stop weapons transfers to any country that obstructs the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid. And the U.S. pause on funding for the UNRWA was only meant to be temporary.

The UNRWA is the main conduit for assistance into Gaza, and the Knesset’s ban makes explicit that the Israeli government is preventing aid delivery, making it harder for Washington to ignore. Before the bill passed, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Matt Miller warned that “passage of the legislation could have implications under U.S. law and U.S. policy.”

At the same time, two U.S. government agencies previously alerted the Biden administration that Israel was obstructing aid into Gaza, yet weapons transfers have continued unabated.

Sections of this story were first used in an earlier article published by The Conversation U.S. on Feb. 1, 2024.

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

– ref. Israel’s ban on UNRWA continues a pattern of politicizing Palestinian refugee aid – and puts millions of lives at risk – https://theconversation.com/israels-ban-on-unrwa-continues-a-pattern-of-politicizing-palestinian-refugee-aid-and-puts-millions-of-lives-at-risk-242379

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Husky Back on Football Field Thanks to UConn Health Sports Medicine

Source: US State of Connecticut

Like most children in Germany, Alex Honig played soccer, but he fell in love with football. Following in the footsteps of his father, who played football in Germany, he moved onto flag football, then tackle around age 13. He was rated the No. 1 quarterback and overall player in Germany, and excelled for the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns, one of the top American football youth teams in Germany.

His college career started at Texas Christian University (TCU) and in 2023 he transferred to UConn. He played tight end in the first two games of the 2023 season before he suffered an injury during a routine block at Georgia State, costing him the rest of the season.

Dr. Robert Arciero, Sports Medicine Division chief in UConn Health’s Department of Orthopedic Surgery and head orthopedic team physician at UConn, saw Honig when the team returned.

Dr. Robert Arciero, Sports Medicine Division chief in UConn Health’s Department of Orthopedic Surgery and head orthopedic team physician at UConn

“It was obvious on the physical exam that Honig tore the ligament holding the kneecap,” Arciero says. “He’s a big man and plays in a rough sport, where you hit people on purpose, so it became obvious, to get him back and have him not have a recurrent dislocating patella, that we needed to fix it by repairing the ligament. And in his case, augmenting it with a graph to make it stronger.”

The team physicians from UConn Health help maximize performance, prevent injuries and get UConn athletes back on the field or court after illness or injury.

Arciero explains that every individual athlete gets the same level of care, which includes a topflight training staff at UConn, where trainers are with the athletes every time they are on the court or field. When they get injured, the team physicians are on speed dial. In Storrs, the team physicians see the athletes once a week and are able to see an athlete within hours of an injury. At UConn Health, advanced imaging capabilities enable prompt MRIs and CT scans.

“Frankly our surgery center has some of the most experienced anesthesiologists, surgical techs, nurses, and staff, which is why I bring my athletes here,” says Arciero ” because I know I am going to give them the best shot I can. It all comes from a mindset and dedication, but then having all these pieces in place that can respond make it top notch.

“We get many people back to being active, but getting athletes back to the elite level at the same professional level is the thing that drives us.”

If you play sports, you are potentially going to get hurt. The team physicians rapidly evaluate, diagnose and put treatment into place whether it is nonsurgical, rehabilitative, or in-depth surgery.

“The goal: They are happy and can return to their sport at the same level,” Arciero says. “That’s the key.”

Alex Honig, UConn Football (Photo Credit: UConn Athletics)

When Honig was taken out of the game, he realized he had a long road to recovery.

“Dr. Arciero walked me through the injury and laid out what I needed to recover,” says Honig. “I never had surgery before, and he was really good at explaining everything to me, including the surgery and the recovery process.”

“You have a discussion. Some people would argue that you can fix this without an operation, and that would be applicable to someone who is sedentary, where you let the ligament try to heal on his own, but this does not define Alex, who works out every day and plays a collision sport. So, it became a discussion with him. I told him we could choose not to operate on it, but if we chose that route, it would become a recurrent problem,” explains Arciero.

Trust is crucial for team physicians and athletes, and in addition to reputation, Arciero says the other part of trust is face time.

“Being with the team, showing up early on a travel flight, talking to the kids and coaches, and balancing that with being like paint on the wall, because no one likes the team doctor,” Arciero says. “We are like the grim reaper: We usually have bad news, and the only time we have good news is when we tell them they can go back to play.

“It’s important to talk to them about their problems, they are pretty smart, they have a lot of resources, and they will challenge you, but you need to sit with them, look them in the eye and answer their questions, and really make an effort that they understand – that’s how you build trust. You also have to be able to bring the goods and have good outcomes.”

According to Honig, the first few days were tough. Using crutches, sleeping and moving around were hard. He had to relearn how to walk, and the rehab was different from what he was used to when working out with heavy weights.

Honig says he had lots of support, listened to his body and talked with the doctors regularly, including weekly check-ins with Arciero to make sure rehab was going well. Honig found it easy to set goals and work toward them.

“It’s scary, but following the guiding hands of the doctors and the trainers who have been here before and are supportive, their confidence is contagious, and you trust them,” says Honig.

He adds: “Football is unique: you practice and prepare all year and have 12 chances to play the game after preparing all year. It was important for me to find a way to support the team while focusing on rehab.”

By January he felt confident running again. By spring practice in March, he was cleared to practice and play in the spring game while wearing a brace.

“It felt good and got the excitement going again. Personally, I feel like I have developed and changed my perspective,” says Honig.

Honig is back on the field, playing well in what has become an exciting season for the football team. He feels faster and stronger this season.

“Nothing makes me happier to see the player back on the field, when you see them on the sideline coming back after an injury and they say, ‘It’s all you, doc.’ That’s all I need,” says Arciero. “That’s what keeps a sports physician taking care of athletes.”

UConn Health Orthopedics and Sports Medicine has a long tradition of providing medical care for the UConn Huskies, professional sports teams, and other organizations, and is proud to help keep some of the world’s top athletes on the field, on the court, and in the game.

And the best news? You don’t have to be a Husky to be seen by a Husky. UConn Health believes that everyone deserves world-class orthopedic care whether you’re an elite athlete, weekend warrior, or you hurt your shoulder while mowing the lawn.

Learn more about UConn Health Orthopedics and Sports Medicine or request an appointment with a doctor.

MIL OSI USA News –

January 25, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Gender is playing a crucial role in this US election – and it’s not just about Kamala Harris

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carol Johnson, Emerita Professor, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Adelaide

Having a female presidential candidate has made gender obvious in this US presidential election, even to many who normally neglect its role. The specific contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, along with the prominence of issues such as abortion, has resulted in a particularly large gender voting gap. Far more women have consistently indicated support for Harris and far more men for Trump.

However, gender has always been crucial in US presidential elections, not just because of gender voting patterns but because competing performances of masculinity have always played a major role.

Role of masculinity in 2020 election

The last presidential election saw Joe Biden’s form of kind and caring protective masculinity being explicitly contrasted with Trump’s divisive, hyper-masculine one.

Furthermore, strong male leaders are meant to protect the people from physical, social and economic harm. I have argued that one factor that contributed to Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat was a protective masculinity failure, especially in regard to COVID.

For example, former President Barack Obama argued that, unlike Biden, Trump could not be counted on to protect Americans:

Eight months into this pandemic, new cases are breaking records. Donald Trump isn’t going to suddenly protect all of us. He can’t even take the basic steps to protect himself […]. Joe understands […] that the first job of a president is to keep us safe from all threats: domestic, foreign, and microscopic.

Trump’s re-energised protective masculinity

However, since his 2020 electoral defeat, Trump has resurrected himself as a strong masculine protector. He claims that “our enemies” are trying to use legal charges to take away his freedom and silence him because he “will always stand” in the way of their attempt to silence the American people and take away their freedom.

He will also be a vengeful protector, declaring:

I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution. I will totally obliterate the deep state.

Trump has long appealed to men who feel that traditional masculinity, and its related entitlements, are under threat.

He is currently courting white males, the youth manosphere, “techno bros”, “crypto bros”, conservative male unionists threatened by globalisation and offshoring, and conservative black and Latino men.

He has been explicitly mobilising misogyny, including by making lewd references to Harris. JD Vance has assisted Trump’s efforts.

Nonetheless, Trump claims that he will be a strong male protector of women, protecting them from illegal immigrants, crime, foreign threats and other anxieties:

You will be protected and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free.

Trump has even promised that, as a result, women “will no longer be thinking about abortion.” This is all despite his own alleged history of sexual assault.

Harris, gender and the women’s vote

By 2024, Biden’s apparent physical and cognitive decline meant that he was no longer a convincing masculine protector (or viable ongoing presidential candidate).

The choice of Harris as his replacement candidate had advantages, but it was also a gamble given the combined roles of gender and race. After all, despite the long history of US racism, it still proved easier to elect a black man (Obama) to the presidency than a white woman (Hillary Clinton).

However, the women’s vote is particularly important this election. As well as Harris’ appeal to younger and black women, Democrats have emphasised the importance of her appeal to white women, including some who previously voted Republican. Anti-Trump Republicans such as Liz Cheney are assisting Harris in appealing to the latter.

Issues such as abortion are crucial. The overturning of Roe v Wade abortion rights, enabled by Trump stacking the Supreme Court, also puts IVF at risk by not clarifying when life begins (with implications for frozen embryos). Senate Republicans have twice blocked a vote on a Democrat-led bill designed to protect IVF. Harris has pledged to sign a law protecting abortion rights (if Congress passes it).

Trump claims he supports IVF, won’t bring in a national ban on abortion and believes in abortion “exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother”.

However, Trump Republicans are courting, and influenced by, the American religious right on abortion. There aren’t such exceptions in several Republican states, as Harris’s heartrending accounts of the impact on women and their health reveals. Furthermore, Missouri, Kansas and Idaho are also trying to drastically reduce legal access to the abortion drug mifepristone.

Harris also emphasises other issues of particular significance for women, such as affordable childcare and better pay for care workers.

Harris and “tonic” masculinity

Given the role of competing masculinities in US presidential elections, Harris’ campaign has intentionally appealed to a very different form of protective masculinity from Trump’s.

Vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz’s, “America’s dad” image (of being a warm, caring but sports loving coach, national guard serving, gun owning, hunter) is used to contrast his “tonic masculinity” with Trump’s “toxic” masculinity. Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, is depicted as a supportive “wife-guy” who has “reshaped the perception of masculinity” (while strongly denying allegations he once slapped a woman).

Despite conservative claims of men being economically left behind, the Biden/Harris administration argues it has revitalised manufacturing and male jobs along with it and Harris will continue to do so. Meanwhile, Obama has urged black men to get behind Harris and the Harris campaign has highlighted its policies benefiting black men.

Can Harris mobilise protective femininity?

Given the major role of gender in US presidential elections, a key issue is whether Harris can successfully evoke a caring, motherly, protective femininity that promises security and economic benefits to voters and helps to counter Trump’s protective masculinity.

Other women politicians have been able to (for example, Germany’s Angela Merkel). Women leaders particularly mobilised protective femininity during the COVID health crisis (for example, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern). However, it always seemed likely masculinist leadership stereotypes would re-emerge once the economy needed rebuilding after the pandemic.

Harris has pledged she will “create an opportunity economy” and “protect our fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do”. She promises to be the kind of president “who cares about you and is not putting themselves first”. Whether such electoral pitches are successful remains to be seen.

Why the outcome of this election is crucial for gender equality.

A woman US president is long overdue after 46 male ones. A Trump victory would have major implications for abortion, IVF and women’s rights generally, including progress on the Biden/Harris National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality. Immigrant and black women will be particularly vulnerable. A Trump victory would also have major implications for which models of masculinity are publicly endorsed.

A Trump victory would embolden conservative so-called anti-gender ideology campaigns. The Trump campaign has recently spent US $21 million (A$31.9 million) on ads associating Harris with LGBTIQ+ equality, especially transgender rights.

The Trump campaign asserts that “Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you.” While Trump has also pledged that “we will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools.”

A Trump victory will influence the future US economy, including risking increasing gender inequality in an Elon Musk-style unregulated technopoly.

Finally, academic commentators have drawn attention to the way in which socially conservative views on gender have been mobilised to support new forms of authoritarian regimes in Europe and elsewhere.

In short, this presidential election is a crucial one for the American people generally, but for the female half of the population in particular.

Carol Johnson 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. Gender is playing a crucial role in this US election – and it’s not just about Kamala Harris – https://theconversation.com/gender-is-playing-a-crucial-role-in-this-us-election-and-its-not-just-about-kamala-harris-242113

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Australia: Minister Shorten interview on ABC News Breakfast with Bridget Brennan

Source: Ministers for Social Services

29 October 2024

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

SUBJECTS: Israel restricting UNWRA; NDIS Commission reforms; disability foundational supports

BRIDGET BRENNAN, HOST: We’re going to bring in Bill Shorten now, the Minister for the NDIS. We’ll get to the new penalties for those caught rorting the NDIS in a moment. But first Bill Shorten, welcome to News Breakfast. Can we get your reaction to Israel’s decision to cut ties with UNWRA?

BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Well, there’s a lot of Palestinian people who are not members of Hamas who are suffering, and we’ve got to make sure they’re getting food and aid. Obviously, this is a breaking decision. I’ll find out what our foreign affairs people are saying, but there’s innocent civilians caught up in this and they’ve got to get food and aid. I think that’s just a – like, there’s no there’s no way around that. And that’s got to happen.

BRENNAN: Well, Australia was part of a coalition of Western governments, including Canada, France, Germany calling on Israel to halt this legislation. The UK’s foreign Secretary says in his view, this is a rebuke to every friend of Israel. Why is Israel not listening to its allies, Bill Shorten?

SHORTEN: Well, you’d have to ask Israel that. I’m aware that there were some employees of UNWRA who were connected to Hamas, but what you’ve got is you’ve got hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, and they’re the ones who are suffering, and they’re the ones who we’ve got to prioritise. And if that’s the case, I guess the international community has got to put to Israel that you’ve got to look after the civilians. You’ve got to try and help them. It’s not their fault.

BRENNAN: No. All right. Well, let’s move to the crucial reforms of the NDIS. This is another stage of that. We know there are grifters, shonks, criminals accessing the NDIS, trying to infiltrate the NDIS. What will be the penalties now for people doing the wrong thing?

SHORTEN: Well, I must say at the outset, the NDIS is changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people with profound and severe disabilities for the better, and most service providers are doing an outstanding job. But the sad fact is that where there’s government money, some, there is opportunistic, unethical and at times illegal behaviour going on where people with disabilities are being treated as human ATMs.

We’ve been cracking down and making a record investment to tighten up the payment system to go after the shonks, we’ve proposed yesterday, new laws, which we’ll talk to the liberals and the states about, and the disability sector, where we want to increase the penalties. We want to make the NDIS a no-go zone for crooks, and we will do whatever it takes to make sure that the social licence of the NDIS is unimpeachable.

As I say, most people are delivering great services and participants are getting benefits, but the fact is that there is a proportion of illegal behaviour and we want to make sure that we’re emphasising the safety and quality for participants, not seeing ill-gotten profits made by a minority of sharks who are bottom dwellers and ripping off people with disability and taxpayers.

BRENNAN: So, Bill Shorten, who’s the cop on the beat here? How does the investigation take place? Where should people refer allegations to?

SHORTEN: Great question. We have what’s called the National Quality and Safeguards Commission, the NDIS, the agency administers the funds, and the Safeguards Commission is meant to handle complaints. Since I’ve been the Minister, we’ve tripled the number of people working at the Complaints Commission, and we’ve introduced proper modern IT so we can track, you know, criminal behaviour and inappropriate conduct. We’ve also set up a Fraud Fusion Task Force. This is 21 Commonwealth agencies for the first time talking to each other, plus state police. None of this was going on before I became the Minister. People were able to just put in invoices and just get cash transactions without an explanation. So, there were – to be honest, it was too tempting. There was a complete neglect, negligence and naivety under my predecessors about when you have a government scheme with billions of dollars, there just really was no checks and balances.

We’ve now, over the last two and a half years been putting that in. We’ve now got 56 people before the courts, hundreds of investigations, and we’re now dealing with complaints on a much larger scale. I noticed Peter Dutton had a bit of a chip at me in his sort of trademark negativity. He said, oh, it should have happened earlier. Well, Pete, your party were in power for eight years and you did two bits of bugger all. We’re now getting on with the job of making sure the scheme has integrity.

BRENNAN: Hey, Bill Shorten, does it worry you that there are still families of children with disabilities saying they can’t get on the NDIS?

SHORTEN: It worries me when Australians with disability are not included in society. The NDIS wasn’t for every Australian with a disability though. I know, I was there at the before the start of it. The scheme is for people with severe and profound disabilities. What’s being – so I think there’s two points to what you say. One is I think there has been a problem that the scheme sometimes is a two-class scheme. If you live in the cities, if you know, you know lots of allied health professionals, you can get on the scheme. But if you’re in the bush, if your first language isn’t English, if you don’t have access to a whole lot of health professionals, then it’s harder to get on the scheme. So, what we’re trying to do is create a consistent entry point. We want to have needs assessments, which are consistent, done by the government so that whoever you are, whatever your circumstance, you get the same, you know, equal access to the front door of the scheme, the other thing we’re doing is that it’s been great.

We’ve been working with the states, Peter Malinauskas in particular, has led the states on this very well, but all of them participate. We want to set up some services for people with disability who don’t require the full orchestra of the NDIS, but still need some support. We’re calling these foundational supports. In the next year we hope to get some of them established. My colleague Amanda Rishworth is working with the states, to set up services for people who don’t need the full NDIS, but still need some support. And we’re going to start with the kids.

BRENNAN: Great to talk to you Bill Shorten. Have a good day.

SHORTEN: Outstanding. Thank you.

MIL OSI News –

January 25, 2025

MIL-OSI Economics: Lufthansa Group reports an operating profit of 1.3 billion euros for the third quarter following a strong summer travel season

Source: Lufthansa Group

Carsten Spohr, Chairman of the Executive Board and CEO of Deutsche Lufthansa AG:

“Today, we are reporting on another strong summer travel season, with a record seat load factor of 88 percent in August. Particularly in view of the fact that global air traffic again reached its capacity limits this summer, I would like to thank our employees for their efforts and our customers for the patience we sometimes had to ask for.
Global demand remains intact and bookings for the fourth quarter are also at a high level compared to the previous year, particularly in the premium classes.

With all passenger airlines operating at a profit, Eurowings, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines even generated record results in the third quarter. Lufthansa Technik and Lufthansa Cargo also remain on track.
At the same time, delayed aircraft deliveries, punctuality issues at our hubs in Germany and regulatory disadvantages are impacting our core brand. Lufthansa Airlines has therefore launched the “Turnaround” program to address these and structural internal challenges.

Across the group, we are continuing to invest in the largest fleet modernization in our history, in premium offers for our guests and in an even more international positioning. These three central pillars of our strategy will enable us to further expand our role as the leading airline group in Europe.”

Results
The Group increased its revenue by five percent year-on-year to 10.7 billion euros (previous year: 10.3 billion euros) in the third quarter due to the higher number of flights and the revenue growth at Lufthansa Technik. This was the strongest quarter in terms of revenue in the history of the Lufthansa Group. The Group generated an operating profit (Adjusted EBIT) of 1.3 billion euros (previous year: 1.5 billion euros), resulting in an operating margin of 12.5 percent (previous year: 14.3 percent). The year-on-year decline was due to significant cost increases, particularly in fees, MRO expenses and personnel. Net profit fell to 1.1 billion euros (previous year: 1.2 billion euros).

Lufthansa Group Passenger Airlines expand capacity

The Lufthansa Group airlines welcomed more than 40 million guests on board their aircraft in the third quarter, an increase of six percent over the previous year. At 94 percent of available capacity (prior-year period: 88 percent), the seat load factor rose to 87 percent in the third quarter (previous year: 86 percent). In terms of the seat load factor, August was the strongest month in the company’s history, with a load factor of 88 percent.

Due to the industry-wide capacity growth, average yields fell by 3.5 percent compared to the previous year, although the development in the various traffic regions was mixed: While average yields in continental traffic in the third quarter remained almost at the previous year’s level (-0.4 percent), they fell significantly by 14 percent in the Asia/Pacific region. Due to the improved passenger load factor, the decline in unit revenues (RASK) was less pronounced at minus 2.7 percent. Unit costs increased by 4.5 percent compared to the previous year due to higher fees, as well as higher material and personnel costs.

Overall, the Group’s passenger airlines generated an Adjusted EBIT of 1.2 billion euros in the third quarter (previous year: 1.4 billion euros). The decline in the operating profit of the passenger airlines is mainly driven by the 234 million euros decline in the result of Lufthansa Airlines. Delays in the delivery of new aircraft and the associated need to continue operating older aircraft, increased location costs, higher staff costs and expenses for compensation payments following flight irregularities had an above-average impact on the result of Lufthansa Airlines.

Turnaround program at Lufthansa Airlines is making progress

Lufthansa Airlines is consistently implementing its Turnaround program. The aim is to increase efficiency, reduce complexity and improve product quality, thereby making the airline fit for the future. Among other things, the Turnaround plan envisages shifting more short-haul traffic to more cost-efficient flight operations. Further efficiency gains are to be achieved by optimizing the network and increasing flexibility and automation. By 2026, the measures will have a gross EBIT effect of around 1.5 billion euros.

Till Streichert, Chief Financial Officer of Deutsche Lufthansa AG:

“The Lufthansa Group will continue to focus on generating cash flow and creating value for our shareholders. For this, the Turnaround program at Lufthansa Airlines and the fleet modernization are core elements. I am confident that on this basis we will position all our passenger airlines to be sustainably efficient and profitable.”

Lufthansa Technik’s result on par with last year, positive performance at Lufthansa Cargo

In the third quarter, Lufthansa Technik continued to benefit from the high demand for air travel and the associated increase in demand from airlines worldwide for maintenance and repair services. Lufthansa Technik generated an Adjusted EBIT of 167 million euros in the third quarter (previous year: 168 million euros).

The airfreight business continued to recover in the third quarter compared with the previous quarter. Lufthansa Cargo achieved an operating profit of 38 million euros (previous year: 1 million euros) in the traditionally seasonally weak third quarter for air freight. This trend confirms the anticipated normalization in the air freight market. Furthermore, Lufthansa Cargo is optimally positioned to benefit from strong e-commerce business with Asia, which has prompted Lufthansa Cargo to shift capacity from the transatlantic to the Asia/Pacific region.

Adjusted free cash flow clearly positive, balance sheet further strengthened

The Lufthansa Group generated an operating cash flow of 635 million euros in the third quarter of 2020 (previous year: 1.2 billion euros). After deducting net capital expenditure, primarily for new fuel-efficient aircraft, the Group recorded an Adjusted free cash flow of 128 million euros in the quarter. In the first nine months, the Adjusted free cash flow was 1.0 billion euros (previous year: 1.7 billion euros).

The Group continued to strengthen its balance sheet during the first nine months of the year, supported by the positive cash flow. At 5.1 billion euros, net debt was below the year-end level 2023 (December 31, 2023: 5.7 billion euros). Net pension liabilities decreased to 2.6 billion euros (December 31, 2023: 2.7 billion euros). Compared to the beginning of the year, available liquidity increased by around 1 billion euros to 11.4 billion euros and was therefore well above the target range of 8-10 billion euros as of the reporting date.

Outlook

The Lufthansa Group expects demand for air travel to remain strong in the remaining months of the year. The load factors booked for November and December are well above the levels observed at the same time last year. Demand remains particularly high in the premium classes, i.e. Business Class and First Class.

The Lufthansa Group plans to increase its capacity in the fourth quarter further compared to the previous year. For the full year 2024, it expects a capacity of around 91 percent compared to the pre-crisis level.

The Group also expects to report a positive operating result in the fourth quarter. Overall, the Lufthansa Group is therefore confirming its expectation of achieving an Adjusted EBIT of 1.4 to 1.8 billion euros for the full year.

Further information

Further information on the results of individual business segments will be published in the report for the third quarter of 2024. This will be published at the same time as this press release on October 29, 2024, at 7:00 a.m. at

https://investor-relations.lufthansagroup.com/en/investor-relations.html.

The traffic figures for the third quarter of 2024 will also be published at 7:00 a.m. at https://investor-relations.lufthansagroup.com/en/financial-reports-publications/traffic-figures.html

		Jan. – Sept. 2024	Jan. – Sept. 2023	Change in %	July – Sept. 2024	July – Sept. 2023	Change in %
Revenue and result
Total revenue	€m	28,137	26,681	5	10,738	10,275	5
Of which traffic revenue	€m	23,578	22,583	4	9,246	8,832	5
Adjusted EBIT	€m	1,177	2,280	-48	1,340	1,468	-9
Adjusted EBIT margin	%	4.2%	8.5%	-4.3%p	12.5	14.3	-1.8%p
EBIT	€m	1,249	2,218	-44	1,461	1,441	1
Net profit / loss	€m	830	1,606	-48	1,095	1,192	-8
Earnings per Share	€	0,69	1,34	-49	0,92	1,00	-8
Key balance sheet and cash flow statement figures
Total assets	€m	46,439	46,591	0	–	–	–
Cash flow from operating activities	€m	3,423	4,320	-21	635	1,220	-48
Net capital expenditures	€m	1,815	2,421	-25	61	550	-89
Adjusted free cash flow	€m	1,006	1,663	-40	128	592	-78
Employees
Employees as of 30 September	Number	100,518	117,187	-14	–	–	–

MIL OSI Economics –

January 25, 2025

MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: MOFA thanks countries that have publicly expressed concern over Taiwan Strait situation and stressed importance of cross-strait peace and stability in concerted effort to safeguard rules-based international order

Source: Republic of China Taiwan 3

MOFA thanks countries that have publicly expressed concern over Taiwan Strait situation and stressed importance of cross-strait peace and stability in concerted effort to safeguard rules-based international order

Date：2024-10-19
Data Source：Department of Policy Planning

October 19, 2024
No. 359

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) sincerely appreciates that the administrations and friendly members of parliament of more than 30 countries, as well as the European Union, have publicly expressed concern over the cross-strait situation or stressed the importance of maintaining peace and stability after China once again recently launched military drills to intimidate Taiwan. Countries including Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Lithuania, and the Republic of Korea variously urged China to exercise restraint and stated that differences should be resolved through dialogue and not the threat of force or coercion.

The maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is in the common interests of both sides of the strait and the international community. There is a high degree of consensus within global society over the importance of preserving peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and throughout the Indo-Pacific. MOFA once again calls on China to face up to the reality of the existence of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and to respect the Taiwanese people’s choice of a free and democratic way of life, willingness to engage in international cooperation alongside China, and goodwill toward maintaining regional security and pursuing peace and shared prosperity. It urges China to stop using use military provocation or other means to threaten and suppress Taiwan and disrupt the regional status quo. Only this can facilitate the positive development of cross-strait relations and satisfy the expectations of the international community.

MOFA calls on all nations to continue to voice concern over the cross-strait situation and support Taiwan. Taiwan will further work with its diplomatic allies and like-minded partners to safeguard the rules-based international order and jointly advance regional peace, stability, and prosperity. (E)

MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI: Webcast details for Orrön Energy’s Q3 presentation
Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

Orrön Energy AB (“Orrön Energy”) will publish its financial report for the third quarter 2024 on Wednesday, 6 November 2024 at 07:30 CET, followed by a webcast at 14.00 CET.

Listen to Daniel Fitzgerald, CEO and Espen Hennie, CFO commenting on the report and describing the latest developments in Orrön Energy at a webcast on 6 November 2024 at 14:00 CET, followed by a question-and-answer session.

Registration for the webcast presentation is available on the website and the below link:
https://vimeo.com/event/4678321/54544efc16

For further information, please contact:

Robert Eriksson
Director Corporate Affairs and Investor Relations
Tel: +46 701 11 26 15
robert.eriksson@orron.com

Jenny Sandström
Communications Lead
Tel: +41 79 431 63 68
jenny.sandstrom@orron.com

Orrön Energy is an independent, publicly listed (Nasdaq Stockholm: “ORRON”) renewable energy company within the Lundin Group of Companies. Orrön Energy’s core portfolio consists of high quality, cash flow generating assets in the Nordics, coupled with greenfield growth opportunities in the Nordics, the UK, Germany and France. With significant financial capacity to fund further growth and acquisitions, and backed by a major shareholder, management and Board with a proven track record of investing into, leading and growing highly successful businesses, Orrön Energy is in a unique position to create shareholder value through the energy transition.

Forward-looking statements
Statements in this press release relating to any future status or circumstances, including statements regarding future performance, growth and other trend projections, are forward-looking statements. These statements may generally, but not always, be identified by the use of words such as “anticipate”, “believe”, “expect”, “intend”, “plan”, “seek”, “will”, “would” or similar expressions. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainty because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that could occur in the future. There can be no assurance that actual results will not differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements due to several factors, many of which are outside the company’s control. Any forward-looking statements in this press release speak only as of the date on which the statements are made and the company has no obligation (and undertakes no obligation) to update or revise any of them, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Attachment
- Orrön Energy – Webcast details Q3 Results – 29-10-24en
The MIL Network –
January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI China: MOFA thanks countries that have publicly expressed concern over Taiwan Strait situation and stressed importance of cross-strait peace and stability in concerted effort to safeguard rules-based international order
Source: Republic of Taiwan – Ministry of Foreign Affairs

MOFA thanks countries that have publicly expressed concern over Taiwan Strait situation and stressed importance of cross-strait peace and stability in concerted effort to safeguard rules-based international order
- Date：2024-10-19
- Data Source：Department of Policy Planning
October 19, 2024

No. 359

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) sincerely appreciates that the administrations and friendly members of parliament of more than 30 countries, as well as the European Union, have publicly expressed concern over the cross-strait situation or stressed the importance of maintaining peace and stability after China once again recently launched military drills to intimidate Taiwan. Countries including Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Lithuania, and the Republic of Korea variously urged China to exercise restraint and stated that differences should be resolved through dialogue and not the threat of force or coercion.

The maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is in the common interests of both sides of the strait and the international community. There is a high degree of consensus within global society over the importance of preserving peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and throughout the Indo-Pacific. MOFA once again calls on China to face up to the reality of the existence of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and to respect the Taiwanese people’s choice of a free and democratic way of life, willingness to engage in international cooperation alongside China, and goodwill toward maintaining regional security and pursuing peace and shared prosperity. It urges China to stop using use military provocation or other means to threaten and suppress Taiwan and disrupt the regional status quo. Only this can facilitate the positive development of cross-strait relations and satisfy the expectations of the international community.

MOFA calls on all nations to continue to voice concern over the cross-strait situation and support Taiwan. Taiwan will further work with its diplomatic allies and like-minded partners to safeguard the rules-based international order and jointly advance regional peace, stability, and prosperity. (E)

MIL OSI China News –
January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi addresses Rozgar Mela

Source: Government of India (2)

Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi addresses Rozgar Mela

It is a matter of great joy to have handed over appointment letters for government jobs to 51 thousand youth in the Rozgar Mela, Best wishes to all the youth who are taking a step towards nation building:PM

It is our commitment that the youth of the country should get maximum employment: PM

Today India is moving towards becoming the third largest economy in the world: PM

We promoted Make in India in every new technology,We worked on self-reliant India: PM

Under the Prime Minister’s Internship Scheme, provision has been made for paid internships in the top 500 companies of India: PM

Posted On: 29 OCT 2024 11:53AM by PIB Delhi

The Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi addressed the Rozgar Mela and distributed more than 51,000 appointment letters to newly appointed youth in Government departments and organizations via videoconferencing today. Rozgar Mela highlights the Prime Minister’s commitment to prioritizing employment generation. It will empower the youth by providing them with meaningful opportunities to contribute to nation-building.

Addressing the occasion, the Prime Minister noted the auspicious occasion of Dhanteras and conveyed his best wishes on the occasion. Underlining that this year’s Diwali would be a special one, the Prime Minister said that it is the first Diwali since Lord Shri Ram has been seated in his magnificent temple in Ayodhya after 500 years. He said that several generations have waited for this Diwali, while many have sacrificed their lives for it or faced adversities. The Prime Minister emphasized that the present generation is extremely fortunate to witness and become a part of such celebrations. In the atmosphere of festivity, said the Prime Minister, 51,000 youth are being handed out recruitment letters for government jobs. He congratulated the new recruits and conveyed his best wishes to them.

The Prime Minister highlighted that offering permanent Government jobs to lakhs of youths has been a legacy which is continuously going on. He added that lakhs of youths were handed appointment letters even in the states being governed by BJP and NDA allies. Shri Modi emphasized that in Haryana there is a festive atmosphere with 26,000 youths getting jobs by the newly formed government . Shri Modi said their Government in Haryana had a special identity of giving jobs without any expense or recommendation. He greeted the 26,000 youths of Haryana who will be handed over their appointment letters today apart from 51,000 jobs in today’s Rozgar Mela.

The Prime Minister reiterated the government’s commitment that the youth of the country should get maximum employment. Noting that the policies and decisions of the government have a direct impact on job creation, the Prime Minister highlighted the development of expressways, highways, roads, rail, ports, airports, laying of fiber cables, setting up of mobile towers and expansion of new industries in all parts of the country. Referring to laying of water and gas pipelines, establishing of new schools, colleges and universities and reducing logistics cost by spending on infrastructure, Shri Modi said that it is not only benefitting the citizens but also creating new job opportunities.

Recalling his visit to Vadodara in Gujarat yesterday, the Prime Minister mentioned inaugurating an aircraft manufacturing facility for the defence sector. He said that thousands of citizens would get direct employment while MSME industries would hugely benefit from the manufacturing of spare parts and other equipment, creating a huge network of supply chains. Noting that a single aircraft comprises 15,000 to 25,000 parts, Shri Modi emphasized that thousands of smaller factories would play an active role in fulfilling the demands of a mega factory, thereby benefiting India’s MSMEs.

The Prime Minister remarked that whenever a scheme is launched, the focus is not just only on the benefits accrued to the citizens, but also develop an entire ecosystem of employment generation using it as a medium by thinking in a broader scope. Citing an example of PM Suryaghar Muft Bijli Yojana, he said in the last 6 months, around 2 crore customers had registered for the scheme, more than 9,000 vendors were associated with scheme, solar panels were already installed in more than 5 lakh houses and in the near future, there was a plan to create 800 Solar villages as model under this scheme. He also noted that 30,000 people had undergone training for roof-top solar installation as well. Therefore, he added, this one scheme of PM Suryaghar Muft Bijli Yojana has created a host of employment opportunities for manufacturers, vendors, assemblers and repairers across the country.

Noting that the Khadi industry of India has been transformed by the policies of the government in the last 10 years and impacted the people in the villages, the Prime Minister informed that Khadi Gram Udyog’s business has surpassed 1.5 lakh crores today. Drawing parallels from 10 years ago, the Prime Minister exclaimed that the sale of Khadi has grown up to 400 percent, thereby benefiting artists, weavers and businesses and also creating new employment opportunities. Shri Modi also touched upon the Lakhpati Didi scheme where new employment and self-employment opportunities are provided to rural women. “More than 10 crore women have joined self-help groups in the last decade”, he added, noting that 10 crore women are now engaged in economic activities. He credited the support provided by the government in every step and reiterated the commitment to creating 3 crore lakhpati didis. “More than 1.25 crore women have already become Lakhpati Didis so far making their annual income above Rs 1 lakh”, he added.

The Prime Minister stated that India is moving towards becoming the world’s third-largest economy. Reflecting on the country’s progress, he noted the inquisition by the youth of India who often ask why the country didn’t achieve this pace earlier. Underlining that the answer lies in the lack of clear policies and intent in previous governments, the Prime Minister pointed out that India had been lagging behind in several sectors, particularly technology. He recalled that India used to wait for new technologies from around the world and what was considered outdated in the West would eventually reach the nation. He pointed out the long withstanding belief that modern technology could not be developed in India not only set India back in terms of growth but also deprived the country of crucial job opportunities.

Highlighting the steps taken to free the country from this old thinking, the Prime Minister stated that efforts were initiated to break free from this old mindset in sectors like space, semiconductors, electronics and electric vehicles by promoting Make in India. The Prime Minister underscored the importance of technological advancement and investment, adding that the PLI scheme was launched to bring new technology and foreign direct investment to India, which has accelerated job creation when combined with the Make in India initiative. He noted that every sector is now receiving a boost providing opportunities for youth across different fields. “Today, India is witnessing massive investment, and record opportunities are being created”, he said, adding that in the last eight years, over 1.5 lakh startups have been launched, making India the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem. He further added that these sectors are offering our youth a chance to grow and gain employment.

The Prime Minister reiterated that the government is very focused on skill development today to increase the capacity of the youth of India. Therefore, he added, Government started missions like Skill India and youth were being trained in many skill development centers. Shri Modi remarked that arrangements were made to ensure that India’s youth need not have to wander for experience and opportunity. Citing the Pradhan Mantri Internship Yojana, Shri Modi said provisions were made for paid internships in the top 500 companies of India, where every intern would be given Rs 5,000 per month for one year. He added the Government’s target was to ensure one crore youth get internship opportunities in the next 5 years. This, he said, would give the youth a chance to connect with the real-life business environment in different sectors and add a beneficial experience to their career.

The Prime Minister remarked that the Indian government was creating new opportunities to make it easier for Indian youth to get jobs abroad. Citing the recently released Germany’s Skilled Labour Strategy for India, Shri Modi informed that Germany had increased the number of visas given to skilled Indian youth every year from 20 thousand to 90 thousand. He added that India’s youth will benefit greatly from this. Shri Modi also mentioned that India had signed agreements related to migration and employment with 21 countries in recent years, including countries like Japan, Australia, France, Germany, Mauritius, Israel, UK and Italy, apart from Gulf countries. He noted that every year 3 thousand Indians can get a 2-year visa to work and study in the UK while 3 thousand Indian students will get the opportunity to study in Australia. “India’s talent will not only give direction to India’s progress but also to the world’s progress”, exclaimed Shri Modi. He added that India was moving ahead in that direction.

Shri Modi emphasized that the role of the government today was to create a modern system where every youth gets an opportunity and can fulfill their aspirations. Therefore, he urged the newly appointed youths in various positions that their goal should be to provide maximum facilities to the youth and citizens of India.

The Prime Minister emphasized the crucial role of taxpayers and citizens in securing government jobs and stated that the government exists because of the citizens and is appointed to serve them. He reiterated that the primary duty is to serve the nation, be it in the position of a postman or a professor. Shri Modi underlined that the new recruits have joined the government at a time when the country has resolved to become developed. Therefore, said the Prime Minister, to achieve this goal, we must excel in every sector and contribute fully. He urged the new recruits to not only perform well but to strive for excellence. “Government employees in our country should set an example recognized worldwide”, he asserted. The Prime Minister stressed that the nation has high expectations from them and said that these expectations must be met to deliver on the commitments.

The Prime Minister remarked on the new journey that appointees are embarking on with their positions, urging them to always remain humble and to maintain the habit of learning throughout their journey. He highlighted the availability of various courses for government employees on the iGOT Karmayogi platform and encouraged them to utilize this digital training module at their convenience. “Once again, I congratulate the candidates receiving their appointment letters today”, the Prime Minister concluded.

Background

Rozgar Mela is being organized at 40 locations across the country with new recruits joining the Central Government across various Ministries and Departments such as the Department of Revenue, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare among others.

Newly appointed recruits will have the opportunity to undertake foundational training through ‘Karmayogi Prarambh,’ an online module available on the iGOT Karmayogi portal. Over 1400 e-learning courses are available which will equip recruits with essential skills to serve in their roles effectively and work towards building a Viksit Bharat.

रोजगार मेले में 51 हजार नौजवानों को सरकारी नौकरी के नियुक्ति पत्र सौंप कर हर्ष की अनुभूति हो रही है। राष्ट्र निर्माण में कदम रखने वाले सभी युवाओं को ढेर सारी शुभकामनाएं।https://t.co/VijSRzGpZV

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) October 29, 2024

आज भारत दुनिया की तीसरी सबसे बड़ी अर्थव्यवस्था बनने की दिशा में आगे बढ़ रहा है: PM @narendramodi pic.twitter.com/IglW9zAgdB

— PMO India (@PMOIndia) October 29, 2024

हमने हर नई तकनीक में Make in India को आगे बढ़ाया।

हमने आत्मनिर्भर भारत पर काम किया: PM @narendramodi pic.twitter.com/vvMH2nJ0Ju

— PMO India (@PMOIndia) October 29, 2024

प्रधानमंत्री इंटर्नशिप योजना के तहत भारत की टॉप 500 कंपनीज में पेड इंटर्नशिप का प्रावधान किया गया है: PM @narendramodi pic.twitter.com/9Otush3bDw

— PMO India (@PMOIndia) October 29, 2024

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MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: English rendering of PM’s address at the laying of foundation stone and inauguration of development works in Amreli, Gujarat

Source: Government of India (2)

Posted On: 28 OCT 2024 10:47PM by PIB Delhi

Bharat Mata ki – Jai!

Bharat Mata ki – Jai!

Present on the dais are Honorable Governor of Gujarat, Acharya Devvrat ji, Chief Minister of Gujarat, Bhupendrabhai Patel ji, my colleague in the Union government, C. R. Patil ji, my brothers and sisters of Gujarat, and especially my brothers and sisters of Amreli.

Diwali and Dhanteras are around the corner. This is a time of auspicious occasions. On one side, we have the celebration of ‘Sanskriti’ (culture); on the other, a celebration of ‘Vikas’ (progress)—this is the new mark of Bharat. The work of ‘Virasat’ (preserving heritage) and ‘Vikas’ (fostering development) goes hand in hand. Today, I had the opportunity to lay the foundation and inaugurate several development projects related to Gujarat. Before coming here, I was in Vadodara, where we inaugurated Bharat’s first factory of its kind, which will produce ‘Made in India’ aircraft for our Air Force right here in Gujarat, in Vadodara. Our Amreli belongs to the Gaekwads, and Vadodara also belongs to the Gaekwads. It’s a moment of pride! And today, here, I had the chance to inaugurate Bharat Mata Sarovar, and from this platform, we have laid the foundation stones and inaugurated multiple long-term projects related to water, roads, and railways. All these projects are intended to ease the lives of people in Saurashtra and Kutch and these projects will propel development forward. The projects that we inaugurated and laid the foundation for today are for the welfare of our farmers, for the prosperity of those in agriculture, and for job opportunities for our youth. My best wishes to all my brothers and sisters in Kutch, Saurashtra, and Gujarat for these many projects.

Friends,

The land of Saurashtra and Amreli has given birth to many gems. Whether historically, culturally, in literature, or politics, Amreli’s past has been glorious. This is the land that gave us Yogi ji Maharaj, the same land that gave us Bhoja Bhagat, and it is rare for a single evening to pass in Gujarat without the mention of Dula Bhaya Kag. Every folk tale and poetry remembers Kag Bapu. And today, the soil here, which holds memories of poet Kalapi and his famous line रे पंखीडा सुखथी चणजो (Fly freely, little bird), finds fulfillment with the arrival of water. This is Amreli, a magical land that has produced K. Lal, poet Rameshbhai Parekh, and our first Chief Minister of Gujarat, Jivrajbhai Mehta. The children here have faced challenges and have stood strong in the face of adversities. Those who choose the path of strength instead of bowing to natural disasters are the children of this earth. Some of them have emerged as entrepreneurs who not only made their district proud but also Gujarat and Bharat. And they have tried to do whatever they can for the society. And our Dholakia family continues to carry forward this legacy.

With the government’s 80/20 water scheme, the BJP government in Gujarat has prioritised water from the very beginning. These efforts include 80/20 scheme and public participation, building check dams, building farm ponds, deepening lakes, building water temples, digging ponds, etc. I remember when I would go to attend meetings in Delhi as Chief Minister and mention how a significant portion of our budget goes toward water resources, chief ministers and leaders from other states would look at me with surprise. I would tell them that Gujarat has many people who are awash with talents and if we get water once, Gujarat will flourish. This tradition belongs to our Gujarat. Many people have joined the 80/20 scheme. Everyone, including communities and villages, participated; my Dholakia family adopted it on a large scale, bringing the rivers to life. And this is the way to keep the rivers alive. We were connected to 20 rivers from the Narmada River. And the idea came to our minds to create small ponds in the rivers, so we could conserve water for miles. And once the water seeps into the ground, it will not remain without turning into nectar, brothers. The people of Gujarat, Saurashtra or Kutch don’t need books to explain the importance of water; they have experienced the hardships firsthand. They know exactly their problems; they know what types of problems there are. We have seen people from Saurashtra and Kutch migrating due to lack of water. We have seen the days when eight-eight people were forced to share a room in the cities. And now, we have created the country’s first Ministry of Jal Shakti because we know its importance. Today, we see the fruits of years of effort as the water from Narmada reaches every village.

I remember a time when one would gain ‘punya’ from the Narmada Parikrama (circumambulation). The era has changed, and Mother Narmada herself is going from village to village, distributing ‘punya’ and water. The water conservation schemes, such as the SAUNI Yojana, which I launched, were met with disbelief and skepticism. Nobody was ready to believe that it could be possible. Some crooked people even criticised it as a publicity stunt by Modi ahead of elections. But all these schemes have breathed new life into Kutch and Saurashtra, allowing people to witness their dreams of green fields come true. This is an example of how a resolution made with sacred spirit gets fulfilled. I remember when I talked about laying pipes large enough for a Maruti car to pass through; people were astonished. Today, those pipes carry water throughout Gujarat. This is what Gujarat has accomplished. We need to increase the depth of the river, so we have to build check dams, or at the very least, create barrages. We need to go to that extent to save water. The people of Gujarat have wholeheartedly embraced water conservation, and this has led to improvements in drinking water quality, health, and the ambitious goal of supplying water to every home and farm. This is a fact which is very satisfying. The 18-20-year-olds today may not even realize how difficult life was without water. Turning on the tap to shower is routine for them, unlike the past when mothers had to walk several kilometers with utensils to fetch water.

The work done by Gujarat is now proving to be an example for the entire country. The campaign to bring water to every home and every field in Gujarat is still being carried out with such dedication and purity. Today, projects are being inaugurated and their foundations laid with hopes of benefiting millions. The Navda-Chavand Bulk Pipeline Project will bring water to around 1,300 villages and over 35 towns. People from Amreli, Botad, Rajkot, Junagadh, and Porbandar will benefit from an additional 30 crore liters of water every day. Today the foundation stone for the second phase of the Pasvi Augmentation Water Supply Scheme has also been laid. Mahuva, Talaja, and Palitana are the three talukas which will benefit largely from this scheme. Palitana is a significant pilgrimage and tourist site that sustains the state’s economy. Over 100 villages will directly benefit from these projects.

Friends,

Today, the inauguration and foundation laying of water projects symbolize the partnership between government and society. This is a remarkable example, and we emphasize public participation because water initiatives will only succeed through collective efforts. When we celebrated 75 years of independence, the government could have organized numerous events, placing boards with Modi’s name on them, but we chose not to. Instead, we launched a plan to create “Amrit Sarovars” (lakes) in villages, aiming to build 75 lakes in each district. As per the latest information, work is underway on nearly 75,000 such lakes, with over 60,000 lakes already brimming with life. Serving future generations in this way has significantly helped raise the water table in neighbouring areas. We ran the “Catch the Rain” campaign. When I went to Delhi, this experience was very useful. Today it has become a successful model. To encourage water conservation, be it at the family, village, or colony level, people must be inspired to save water. We are fortunate to have C.R. Patil in our cabinet now, who brings his expertise in water management from Gujarat. Now this is being followed in the entire country. He has made “Catch the Rain” one of his key initiatives, and thousands of recharge wells have already been constructed with public involvement in states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, MP, and Bihar. Recently, during a video conference program in Surat, South Gujarat, we saw people building recharge wells in their ancestral villages, that restores some family wealth to the village. This is an exciting new initiative: keeping the village’s water within the village and the border’s water within the border. These campaigns are significant steps forward. These efforts to retain local water are part of a broader mission, as seen in other countries with minimal rainfall, where they conserve every drop of water. If you visit Mahatma Gandhi’s home in Porbandar, you’ll find a 200-year-old underground water storage tank, showing how our ancestors valued water centuries ago.

Friends,

The availability of water has made farming easier. Our motto is “Per Drop More Crop.” In Gujarat, we promoted micro-irrigation, especially sprinklers, which farmers of Gujarat welcomed. Today, wherever Narmada water has reached, farmers can reap three crops in areas where cultivating even one crop was once difficult. This has brought happiness and prosperity to households. Amreli district is advancing in agriculture, with crops like cotton, peanuts, sesame, millet, and bajra (pearl millet) from Jafrabad. I appreciate this initiative during my meetings in Delhi. Amreli’s Kesari mango has now received a GI tag, giving it a unique identity worldwide. Amreli is also gaining recognition for its natural farming, and our governor is working on this mission mode. Farmers in Amreli are dedicated to this experiment, committed to producing quick, viable crops. In our Halol, different universities for natural farming have been developed. The first college for natural farming under that university has been established in Amreli. The reason for this is that the farmers here are committed to this new experiment. Therefore, if they conduct experiments here, their crops will be ready immediately. Our goal is for farmers to engage more in animal husbandry, particularly cattle farming, benefiting from natural farming. In our Amreli, regarding the dairy industry, I remember that there used to be laws that considered setting up a dairy as a crime. We removed restrictive laws on dairy farming, facilitating the establishment of the dairy industry in Amreli, leading to rapid growth through cooperative efforts. I remember when Amar Dairy was founded in 2007, only 25 cooperative societies were part of it. Today, over 700 villages have joined, collecting around 1.25 lakh liters of milk daily, reflecting a true revolution and the adoption of various development pathways.

Friends,

I have another joy; I mentioned this many years ago, said it in front of everyone, and I called for a white revolution, a green revolution, but now we need to have a sweet revolution. We need to produce honey; honey should not just be something to talk about at home, brothers. We need to produce honey in the fields so that farmers can earn more. Our Dilip Bhai and Rupala ji raised this issue in the Amreli district, and now beekeeping has started in the fields, and people have learned about it. Now, the honey here is establishing its own identity. This is a joyful thing. Environmental efforts, like tree planting under the ‘Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam’ campaign, have been embraced nationwide and even globally, with admiration for this unique approach. Everybody is associating with this campaign. This is a great effort as far as environment is concerned. And second important work relating to environment is that we are striving to eliminate electricity bills by implementing the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana, a free solar electricity scheme that can save families Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 30,000 annually. Not only that they are earning additional income by selling the electricity which they are saving. Nearly 1.5 crore families have registered for this initiative, and over 200,000 homes in Gujarat now have rooftop solar panels, producing electricity and selling the surplus electricity. Amreli district has also made significant progress in energy, with Dudhda village, led by Govindbhai, close to becoming a solar-powered village. Six months ago, Govindbhai told me that he has to make his village ‘Surya Ghar’ (solar-powered village) and this is nearing completion. This initiative is expected to save the village Rs. 75,000 per month in electricity bills, with each household saving Rs. 4,000 annually. Congratulations to Govindbhai and Amreli for making Dudhda the first solar village in the district.

Friends,

Water and tourism are closely linked; where there is water, tourism naturally follows. Just now, while looking at Bharat Mata Sarovar, I thought that migratory birds that usually visit Kutch may find a new address here this December. When the Flamingos start coming here, it will attract more tourists. Amreli district is blessed with several pilgrimage sites that people visit with devotion. We saw the potential in the Sardar Sarovar Dam, which was initially built for water storage. By adding the world’s tallest statue of Sardar Patel, we created a monument that attracted nearly five million visitors last year, not just for the dam but to pay homage to the statue. With Sardar Patel’s 150th birth anniversary approaching on October 31, I will return to Gujarat soon to pay my respects. I will return to Delhi today, but will come back again day after tomorrow to pay my obeisance at the feet of Sardar Sahab. As usual, we celebrate his birth anniversary with a Unity Run, but this year, as Diwali falls on October 31, we have scheduled it for October 29. I hope that the Unity Run events will be held widely across Gujarat, and I will be attending the National Unity Parade in Kevadia.

Friends,

In the coming days, the newly established Kerly Recharge Reservoir is set to become a significant centre for eco-tourism, as I predict today. I see a great potential for adventure tourism there. Kerly Bird Sanctuary will gain international recognition, attracting birdwatchers and nature lovers from across the globe. Birdwatchers often spend days with cameras in hand, immersed in forests, creating an income source through tourism. Gujarat’s coastline, once known for its salty waters and seen as a challenge, is being transformed into a gateway to prosperity. We are prioritizing work to make Gujarat’s coastline not only a regional asset but a national hub for wealth and development. Our fishing communities will benefit greatly, as will our ports, steeped in centuries of heritage, which we are revitalizing. Lothal—an ancient city, over 5,000 years old— has not gained prominence after Modi came to power. It has always held a special place in my vision since I became Chief Minister of Gujarat, and I wanted to bring it to the world map of tourism. And now we are establishing the world’s largest maritime museum there. When we go from Amreli to Ahmedabad, it comes on the way, it is not very far, we have to go a little further.

Our attempt is to showcase Bharat’s maritime heritage to the world, highlighting the legacy of our ancient seafarers. Our efforts are also aligned with the Blue Revolution to enhance marine resource development, and port-led development is playing a crucial role in advancing the vision of a ‘Viksit Bharat’ (Developed India). Infrastructure in places like Jafrabad and Shiyal Bet is being enhanced, turning Amreli into a prominent regional hub. The modernization of Pipavav port has opened new avenues for thousands of jobs and increased capacity for handling over a million containers and thousands of vehicles. We aim to connect all of Gujarat’s ports with the rest of the country, fostering a seamless network that benefits the economy nationwide.

On the other hand, there is equal concern about the life of a common man. Our infrastructure initiatives extend to providing affordable housing, electricity, railways, roads, gas pipelines, telecommunications, optical fibers, and hospitals. In our third term, because after 60 years the country has given an opportunity to any Prime Minister to serve as Prime Minister for the third time. I cannot be thankful enough for the cooperation with Gujarat in this. We have seen this holistic approach to connectivity has already yielded tremendous results in Saurashtra, attracting large-scale industries. As the infrastructure improves, large-scale industries come in; we have seen the benefits of the RoRo ferry service. I used to hear about it in school: ‘Goga’s ferry, Goga’s ferry,’ but no one had done anything about it. We got the opportunity, and now over 700,000 people have used this RoRo ferry service. More than 100,000 vehicles and over 75,000 trucks and buses have benefited from it. It has saved countless people time and money, and so much petrol smoke has been avoided. If you calculate that, we would all be surprised why such a significant work wasn’t done earlier. I believe such good works were destined for me.

Today, the work is underway to create the Amritsar-Bhatinda Economic Corridor from Jamnagar. The biggest benefits will be gained from it. The states from Gujarat to Punjab will also benefit from it. There are large economic zones being established along that route. Major projects are coming up, and with the inauguration of the road project, the Jamnagar-Morbi area is being developed. I have always said that the Rajkot-Morbi-Jamnagar triangle has the potential to be recognized as Bharat’s manufacturing hub. It has the power to be a mini Japan. When I mentioned this 20 years ago, everyone was mocking it. But today it is happening, and the connectivity work is now associated with it. As a result, the connectivity of the cement manufacturing area will also improve. In addition to this, the pilgrimage sites of Somnath, Dwarka, Porbandar, and the Gir Lions are set to become more accessible and magnificent as tourism destinations. Today, the rail connectivity in Kutch has expanded; this connectivity project for Saurashtra and Kutch has made Kutch a national attraction for tourism. People across the country are worried that there will be delays for tourism and industries in Kutch, and they are rushing to explore it.

As Bharat develops, its pride in the world is increasing. The entire world is looking at Bharat with new hope, and a new perspective is emerging to view Bharat. People are beginning to recognize Bharat’s potential. Today, the whole world is listening to Bharat seriously and attentively. Everyone is discussing the possibilities within Bharat. Gujarat plays a significant role in this; Gujarat has shown the world how much potential lies in the villages of Bharat’s cities. A few days ago, I attended the BRICS summit in Russia, where I had the opportunity to engage in peaceful conversations with many prime ministers and presidents from different countries. The common sentiment among all was that they want to connect with Bharat and be partners in Bharat’s journey of development. All the countries are asking about the investment possibilities in Bharat. When I returned from Russia, the Chancellor of Germany came to Delhi with a large delegation. He brought along industrialists from Germany who invest across Asia. He told them to listen to Modi ji and decide what they want to do in Bharat. This means that Germany is also eager to invest significantly in Bharat. Not only that, he made an important announcement that will benefit our youth. Previously, Germany issued 20,000 visas; he announced that they will now issue 90,000 visas and that they need young people for their factories. The strength of Indian youth is immense, and the people of Bharat are law-abiding and live peacefully together. They stated that they need 90,000 people here and have announced the issuance of 90,000 visas every year. Now it is an opportunity for our youth to prepare according to this need. Today, the President of Spain was here, and Spain plans to invest significantly in Bharat. This will greatly benefit small industries in Gujarat, especially with the establishment of a transport aircraft manufacturing factory in Vadodara. The small factories in Rajkot that produce various tools will also contribute to this aircraft production. People working on small lathe machines from every corner of Gujarat will provide small parts, as thousands of components are needed in an aircraft, and each factory specialises in specific parts. This work will be beneficial for the entire Saurashtra region, where the structure of small industries exists. This opens up numerous employment opportunities.

Friends,

When I had the opportunity to serve Gujarat, my mission was to drive both Gujarat’s and Bharat’s development. My guiding principle was that Gujarat’s progress leads to Bharat’s progress. By building a ‘Viksit Gujarat’ (Prosperous Gujarat), we pave the way for a ‘Viksit Bharat’ (Developed India).

Friends,

Today, after a long time, I find myself among many familiar faces, and it fills me with joy to see everyone smiling and happy. Once again, I encourage my dear friend Savjibhai to shift his focus from Surat and instead, focus on ensuring water reaches every corner of Gujarat. Let’s bring the full benefits of the 80/20 schemes to Gujarat. My best wishes to all of you.

Join me in saying:

Bharat Mata ki – Jai!

Bharat Mata ki – Jai!

Bharat Mata ki – Jai!

Thank you, friends.

(Disclaimer – Original speech is in Gujarati. This is the approximate translation in English language).

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Read this release in: Hindi

MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

January 25, 2025

MIL-OSI: CECO Environmental Reports Third Quarter 2024 Results

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

Company Produces Record Q3 Bookings and Highest-Ever Backlog
Q3 Revenue and Income Impacted by Customer-Driven Project Delays
Announced the Acquisition of Profire Energy (Nasdaq: PFIE) for $125 Million
Completed Acquisition of WK, in Early October
Updates FY24 Guidance and Introduces 2025 Outlook

DALLAS, Oct. 29, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — CECO Environmental Corp. (Nasdaq: CECO) (“CECO”), (the “Company”), a leading environmentally focused, diversified industrial company whose solutions protect people, the environment, and industrial equipment, today reported its financial results for the third quarter of 2024. In addition, CECO, announces it has completed the acquisition of WK, an Industrial Air company headquartered in Germany, in early October. Additionally, the Company announced the acquisition of Profire Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ: PFIE) (“Profire”), a leader in burner management technology and combustion control systems that provide mission-critical combustion automation and control solutions and services to improve environmental efficiency, safety and reliability for industrial thermal applications globally.

Third Quarter Summary⁽¹⁾

Orders of $162.3 million, up 12 percent
Backlog of $437.5 million
Revenue of $135.5 million, down 9 percent
Gross profit of $45.3 million, up 5 percent; Gross margin of 33.4 percent, up 460 basis points
Net income of $2.1 million, down 36 percent; non-GAAP net income of $5.2 million, down 32 percent
GAAP EPS (diluted) of $0.06; non-GAAP EPS (diluted) of $0.14, down 36 percent
Adjusted EBITDA of $14.3 million, down 5 percent
Free cash flow of $11.1 million, down $17.4 million

Subsequent to the Quarter

Completes the acquisition of WK in early October
Announces the acquisition of Profire; expected to close by January 2025

⁽¹⁾ All comparisons are versus the comparable prior year period, unless otherwise stated.
Reconciliations of GAAP (reported) to non-GAAP measures are in the attached financial tables.

Todd Gleason, CECO’s Chief Executive Officer commented, “While our third quarter produced very strong orders and a new record backlog, we were disappointed that we fell short of the anticipated quarterly revenue and income outlook as a handful of customer-driven delays in larger projects could not be overcome by continued progress with margin expansion and other actions. These delayed projects are expected to begin activity over the coming months and the impact is reflected in our updated full year 2024 and newly introduced full year 2025 outlook. We are excited to have been awarded several large energy transition and general industrial orders in the quarter and we anticipate this trend to continue as we are forecasting a very strong fourth quarter bookings period.”

Third quarter operating income was $7.2 million, down $0.7 million or 9 percent when compared to $7.9 million in the third quarter 2023. On an adjusted basis, non-GAAP operating income was $11.0 million, down $1.8 million or 14 percent when compared to $12.8 million in the third quarter of 2023. Net income was $2.1 million in the quarter, down $1.2 million or 36 percent when compared to $3.3 million in the third quarter of 2023. Non-GAAP net income was $5.2 million, down $2.4 million or 32 percent when compared to $7.6 million in the third quarter of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA of $14.3 million, reflecting a margin of 10.6 percent, was down 5 percent compared to $15.1 million in the third quarter of 2023. Free cash flow in the quarter was $11.1 million, down $17.4 million compared to $28.5 million in the third quarter of 2023.

Completes Acquisition of WK

CECO today announced that in early October it completed the acquisition of Germany-based, WK – a leading industrial air business with well-established global customers and a strong Asia-Pacific presence, based out of Singapore. WK designs, engineers and supplies a broad range of cutting-edge technical equipment and systems for process and environmental and surface technology applications, as well as innovative sustainable solutions. This acquisition strengthens CECO’s footprint and capabilities within the industrial processing solutions segment and further advances the Company’s Industrial Air and leadership positions. WK is expected to deliver full year 2024 sales of approximately $15 million with the potential for high-teen EBITDA margins.

“I would like to welcome the WK organization to our portfolio of leading industrial air solutions businesses,” said Mr. Gleason. “Together we will advance our joint capabilities to better serve global customers while penetrating markets with solutions and services from across our diverse enterprise.”

Announces Acquisition of Profire Energy, Inc. (Nasdaq: PFIE)

“I am excited that today we announced the acquisition of Profire in an all-cash transaction that we expect will close in January 2025. Profire expects to generate approximately $60 million in revenues with adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 20 percent in the full year 2024. With an installed base approaching 100,000 burner management systems and a growing industrial market product offering, we look forward to accelerating their global market expansion and introducing their high-efficiency solutions to more customers in the industrial air and water markets. We are confident the increased scale and combined corporate organizations will generate meaningful efficiencies and synergies. The addition of Profire is another important step in our ongoing execution of programmatic M&A and we expect it will further advance our position as the leading environmental solutions provider in industrial markets,” added Mr. Gleason.

Updates 2024 Full Year Guidance

The Company updated its 2024 full year revenue guidance to reflect revenue between $575 and $600 million, up approximately 10 percent year over year at the midpoint of the range, and adjusted EBITDA between $65 to $70 million, up approximately 17 percent year over year, at the midpoint of the range. The updated expected full year guidance compares to the previous outlook for revenues of between $600 to $620 million and adjusted EBITDA of between $68 to $72 million. The Company expects 2024 full year bookings guidance to reflect a book to bill rate of or in excess of 1.2x, up from a previous range of 1.05x to 1.1x. The Company maintains its full year outlook for free cash flow of 50% to 70% of adjusted EBITDA.

“Our updated full year 2024 guidance essentially mirrors the initial outlook we provided as we entered 2024. As previously mentioned, unfortunately, the customer-driven delays associated with a handful of larger projects impacted our ability to hit the raised guidance we issued mid-year. This is the first time we have reduced guidance in company history, and although this is disappointing for our short-term results, we remain very pleased with our bookings, margin expansion progress and overall execution. Additionally, the revenue and associated income from the 2024 project delays slide into upcoming quarters, so we remain focused on execution and controlling factors we can influence,” said Mr. Gleason.

Introduces 2025 Full Year Guidance

The Company introduced its 2025 full year guidance to reflect revenue between $700 and $750 million, up approximately 25 percent at the midpoint of the range, and adjusted EBITDA between $90 and $100 million, up approximately 40% at the midpoint of the range. The Company expects full year free cash flow of between 50% to 70% of adjusted EBITDA.

Mr. Gleason concluded, “Our full year 2025 outlook reflects the visibility we have with our record backlog, ongoing strong bookings, 2024 related project push outs, and the impact from already completed acquisitions and the pending transaction with Profire. We continue to drive an aggressive operating model that supports strong organic growth, coupled with steady margin expansion and additions from accretive and strategic acquisitions.”

EARNINGS CONFERENCE CALL

A conference call is scheduled for today at 8:30 a.m. ET to discuss the third quarter 2024 financial results. Please visit the Investor Relations portion of the website (https://investors.cecoenviro.com) to listen to the call via webcast. The conference call may also be accessed by visiting https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/4ui844vi.

A replay of the conference call will be available on the Company’s website for a period of one year. The replay may also be accessed by visiting https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/4ui844vi.

ABOUT CECO ENVIRONMENTAL

CECO Environmental is a leading environmentally focused, diversified industrial company, serving the broad landscape of industrial air, industrial water and energy transition markets globally providing innovative solutions and application expertise. CECO helps companies grow their business with safe, clean, and more efficient solutions that help protect people, the environment and industrial equipment. CECO solutions improve air and water quality, optimize emissions management, and increase energy efficiency for highly-engineered applications in power generation, midstream and downstream hydrocarbon processing and transport, electric vehicle production, polysilicon fabrication, semiconductor and electronics, battery production and recycling, specialty metals and steel production, beverage can, and water/wastewater treatment and a wide range of other industrial end markets. CECO is listed on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “CECO.” Incorporated in 1966, CECO’s global headquarters is in Dallas, Texas. For more information, please visit www.cecoenviro.com.

Company Contact:
Peter Johansson
Chief Financial and Strategy Officer
888-990-6670
investor.relations@onececo.com

Investor Relations Contact:
Steven Hooser and Jean Marie Young
Three Part Advisors, LLC
214-872-2710
investor.relations@onececo.com

CECO ENVIRONMENTAL CORP. AND SUBSIDIARIES
CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS

(in thousands, except per share data)	(unaudited) September 30, 2024			December 31, 2023
ASSETS
Current assets:
Cash and cash equivalents	$	38,700		$	54,779
Restricted cash		226			669
Accounts receivable, net of allowances of $7,214 and $6,460		100,111			112,733
Costs and estimated earnings in excess of billings on uncompleted contracts		68,500			66,574
Inventories, net		37,760			34,089
Prepaid expenses and other current assets		27,143			11,769
Prepaid income taxes		3,826			824
Total current assets		276,266			281,437
Property, plant and equipment, net		32,306			26,237
Right-of-use assets from operating leases		24,690			16,256
Goodwill		220,026			211,326
Intangible assets – finite life, net		51,547			50,461
Intangible assets – indefinite life		9,598			9,570
Deferred income taxes		287			304
Deferred charges and other assets		6,792			4,700
Total assets	$	621,512		$	600,291
LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS’ EQUITY
Current liabilities:
Current portion of debt	$	10,580		$	10,488
Accounts payable		92,316			87,691
Accrued expenses		43,762			44,301
Billings in excess of costs and estimated earnings on uncompleted contracts		64,801			56,899
Notes payable		1,700			2,500
Income taxes payable		—			1,227
Total current liabilities		213,159			203,106
Other liabilities		10,336			12,644
Debt, less current portion		122,818			126,795
Deferred income tax liability, net		9,622			8,838
Operating lease liabilities		19,696			11,417
Total liabilities		375,631			362,800
Commitments and contingencies (See Note 14)
Shareholders’ equity:
Preferred stock, $.01 par value; 10,000 shares authorized, none issued		—			—
Common stock, $.01 par value; 100,000,000 shares authorized, 34,979,018 and 34,835,293 shares issued and outstanding at September 30, 2024 and December 31, 2023, respectively		349			348
Capital in excess of par value		253,590			254,956
Retained earnings (accumulated loss)		1,692			(6,387	)
Accumulated other comprehensive loss		(14,374	)		(16,274	)
Total CECO shareholders’ equity		241,257			232,643
Noncontrolling interest		4,624			4,848
Total shareholders’ equity		245,881			237,491
Total liabilities and shareholders’ equity	$	621,512		$	600,291

CECO ENVIRONMENTAL CORP. AND SUBSIDIARIES
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME
(unaudited)

	Three months ended September 30,						Nine months ended September 30,
(in thousands, except share and per share data)	2024			2023			2024			2023
Net sales	$	135,513		$	149,390		$	399,367		$	391,134
Cost of sales		90,247			106,269			259,921			273,303
Gross profit		45,266			43,121			139,446			117,831
Selling and administrative expenses		34,262			30,439			105,636			86,082
Amortization and earnout expenses		2,617			1,968			7,036			5,988
Acquisition and integration expenses		1,210			1,386			1,876			2,210
Executive transition expenses		—			1,258			—			1,417
Restructuring expenses		(10	)		217			544			217
Asbestos litigation expenses		—			—			225			—
Income from operations		7,187			7,853			24,129			21,917
Other expense, net		(398	)		(216	)		(2,589	)		(670	)
Interest expense		(2,648	)		(3,340	)		(9,315	)		(9,498	)
Income before income taxes		4,141			4,297			12,225			11,749
Income tax expense		1,602			585			2,664			1,577
Net income		2,539			3,712			9,561			10,172
Noncontrolling interest		(453	)		(382	)		(1,482	)		(1,140	)
Net income attributable to CECO Environmental Corp.	$	2,086		$	3,330		$	8,079		$	9,032
Earnings per share:
Basic	$	0.06		$	0.10		$	0.23		$	0.26
Diluted	$	0.06		$	0.09		$	0.22		$	0.26
Weighted average number of common shares outstanding:
Basic		34,966,625			34,771,742			34,910,165			34,612,163
Diluted		36,488,788			35,301,429			36,322,690			35,215,843

CECO ENVIRONMENTAL CORP. AND SUBSIDIARIES
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS

	Nine months ended September 30,
(in thousands)	2024			2023
Cash flows from operating activities:
Net income	$	9,561		$	10,172
Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by (used in) operating activities:
Depreciation and amortization		10,536			8,769
Unrealized foreign currency gain (loss)		201			(138	)
Fair value adjustment to earnout liabilities		400			296
Gain on sale of property and equipment		135			43
Debt discount amortization		357			271
Share-based compensation expense		5,790			3,096
Bad debt expense		404			154
Inventory reserve expense		850			526
Other		77			—
Changes in operating assets and liabilities, net of acquisitions:
Accounts receivable		9,653			(25,961	)
Costs and estimated earnings in excess of billings on uncompleted contracts		(1,498	)		6,006
Inventories		(4,305	)		(10,395	)
Prepaid expense and other current assets		(18,059	)		(8,228	)
Deferred charges and other assets		(2,755	)		(268	)
Accounts payable		15,387			21,162
Accrued expenses		(550	)		7,868
Billings in excess of costs and estimated earnings on uncompleted contracts		7,286			19,330
Income taxes payable		(1,140	)		261
Other liabilities		(9,330	)		(3,473	)
Net cash provided by operating activities		23,000			29,491
Cash flows from investing activities:
Acquisitions of property and equipment		(11,237	)		(5,511	)
Net cash paid for acquisitions		(14,954	)		(48,102	)
Net cash used in investing activities		(26,191	)		(53,613	)
Cash flows from financing activities:
Borrowings on revolving credit lines		58,400			94,200
Repayments on revolving credit lines		(54,800	)		(63,200	)
Repayments of long-term debt		(7,843	)		(2,478	)
Payments on finance leases and financing liability		(692	)		(680	)
Deferred consideration paid for acquisitions		(2,050	)		(1,247	)
Earnout payments		(1,672	)		(1,496	)
Proceeds from employee stock purchase plan and exercise of stock options		846			1,435
Noncontrolling interest distributions		(1,707	)		(1,364	)
Common stock repurchased		(5,000	)		—
Net cash (used in) provided by financing activities		(14,518	)		25,170
Effect of exchange rate changes on cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash		1,187			703
Net (decrease) increase in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash		(16,522	)		1,751
Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash at beginning of period		55,448			46,585
Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash at end of period	$	38,926		$	48,336
Cash paid during the period for:
Interest	$	9,714		$	8,531
Income taxes	$	6,779		$	8,633

CECO ENVIRONMENTAL CORP. AND SUBSIDIARIES
RECONCILIATION OF GAAP TO NON-GAAP MEASURES

	Three months ended September 30,						Nine months ended September 30,
(in millions, except ratios)	2024			2023			2024			2023
Operating income as reported in accordance with GAAP	$	7.2		$	7.9		$	24.1		$	21.9
Operating margin in accordance with GAAP		5.3	%		5.3	%		6.0	%		5.6	%
Amortization and earnout expenses		2.6			2.0			7.1			6.0
Acquisition and integration expenses		1.2			1.4			1.9			2.2
Restructuring expenses		—			0.2			0.5			0.2
Executive transition expenses		—			1.3			—			1.4
Asbestos litigation expenses		—			—			0.2			—
Non-GAAP operating income	$	11.0		$	12.8		$	33.8		$	31.7
Non-GAAP operating margin		8.1	%		8.6	%		8.5	%		8.1	%

	Three months ended September 30,						Nine months ended September 30,
(in millions, except share data)	2024			2023			2024			2023
Net income as reported in accordance with GAAP	$	2.1		$	3.3		$	8.1		$	9.0
Amortization and earnout expenses		2.6			2.0			7.1			6.0
Acquisition and integration expenses		1.2			1.4			1.9			2.2
Restructuring expenses		—			0.2			0.5			0.2
Executive transition expense		—			1.3			—			1.4
Asbestos litigation expense		—			—			0.2			–
Foreign currency remeasurement		0.3			0.8			1.8			(0.1	)
Tax (benefit) expense of adjustments		(1.0	)		(1.4	)		(2.8	)		(2.4	)
Non-GAAP net income	$	5.2		$	7.6		$	16.8		$	16.3
Depreciation		1.4			1.2			4.0			3.5
Non-cash stock compensation		1.9			1.1			5.8			3.1
Other expense, net		0.1			(0.6	)		0.8			0.8
Interest expense		2.6			3.3			9.3			9.5
Income tax expense		2.6			2.0			5.6			4.0
Noncontrolling interest		0.5			0.4			1.5			1.2
Adjusted EBITDA	$	14.3		$	15.0		$	43.8		$	38.4

Earnings per share:
Basic	$	0.06		$	0.09		$	0.23		$	0.26
Diluted	$	0.06		$	0.10		$	0.22		$	0.26

Non-GAAP net income per share:
Basic	$	0.15		$	0.22		$	0.48		$	0.47
Diluted	$	0.14		$	0.22		$	0.46		$	0.46

	Three months ended September 30,						Nine months ended September 30,
(in millions)	2024			2023			2024			2023
Net cash provided by operating activities	$	15.1		$	30.1		$	23.0		$	29.5
Acquisitions of property and equipment		(4.0	)		(1.6	)		(11.2	)		(5.5	)
Free cash flow	$	11.1		$	28.5		$	11.8		$	24.0

NOTE REGARDING NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES

CECO is providing certain non-GAAP historical financial measures as presented above as we believe that these figures are helpful in allowing individuals to better assess the ongoing nature of CECO’s core operations. A “non-GAAP financial measure” is a numerical measure of a company’s historical financial performance that excludes amounts that are included in the most directly comparable measure calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP.

Non-GAAP operating income, non-GAAP net income, non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP earnings per basic and diluted share, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow, as we present them in the financial data included in this press release, have been adjusted to exclude the effects of amortization expenses for acquisition-related intangible assets, contingent retention and earnout expenses, restructuring expenses primarily relating to severance and legal expenses, acquisition and integration expenses which include retention, legal, accounting, banking, and other expenses, foreign currency remeasurement and other nonrecurring or infrequent items and the associated tax benefit of these items. Management believes that these items are not necessarily indicative of the Company’s ongoing operations and their exclusion provides individuals with additional information to better compare the Company’s results over multiple periods. Management utilizes this information to evaluate its ongoing financial performance. Our financial statements may continue to be affected by items similar to those excluded in the non-GAAP adjustments described above, and exclusion of these items from our non-GAAP financial measures should not be construed as an inference that all such costs are unusual or infrequent.

Non-GAAP operating income, non-GAAP net income, non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP earnings per basic and diluted share, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow are not calculated in accordance with GAAP, and should be considered supplemental to, and not as a substitute for, or superior to, financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. Non-GAAP financial measures have limitations in that they do not reflect all of the costs associated with the operations of our business as determined in accordance with GAAP. As a result, you should not consider these measures in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of CECO’s results as reported under GAAP. Additionally, CECO cautions investors that non-GAAP financial measures used by the Company may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies.

In accordance with the requirements of Regulation G issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission, non-GAAP operating income, non-GAAP net income, non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP earnings per basic and diluted share, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow stated in the tables above are reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures.

Non-GAAP measures presented on a forward-looking basis were not reconciled to the comparable GAAP financial measures because the reconciliation could not be performed without unreasonable efforts. The GAAP measures are not accessible on a forward-looking basis because we are currently unable to predict with a reasonable degree of certainty the type and extent of certain items that would be expected to impact GAAP measures for these periods but would not impact the non-GAAP measures. Such items may include amortization expenses for acquisition-related intangible assets, contingent retention and earnout expenses, restructuring expenses primarily relating to severance and legal expenses, acquisition and integration expenses which include retention, legal, accounting, banking, and other expenses, foreign currency remeasurement and other nonrecurring or infrequent items and the associated tax benefit of these items. The unavailable information could have a significant impact on our GAAP financial results.

SAFE HARBOR

Any statements contained in this Press Release, other than statements of historical fact, including statements about management’s beliefs and expectations, 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, both as amended, and should be evaluated as such. These statements are made on the basis of management’s views and assumptions regarding future events and business performance. We use words such as “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “intends,” “estimate,” “forecast,” “project,” “will,” “plan,” “should” and similar expressions to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Potential risks and uncertainties, among others, that could cause actual results to differ materially are discussed under “Part I – Item 1A. Risk Factors” of the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023 and may be included in subsequently filed Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and include, but are not limited to: the parties’ ability to complete the proposed Profire transactions in the anticipated timeframe or at all, the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstance that could give rise to the termination of the Profire transaction agreement between the parties, the effect of the announcement or pendency of the proposed Profire transaction on business relationships, operating results, and business generally, disruption of current plans and operations and potential difficulties in employee retention as a result of the proposed Profire transaction, diversion of management’s attention from ongoing business operations as a result of the Profire transaction, the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted related to the proposed Profire transaction, the amount of the costs, fees, expenses and other charges related to the proposed Profire transaction, the risk that competing offers or acquisition proposals will be made, the achievement of the anticipated benefits of the Profire transaction, the ability of Profire to achieve its 2024 earnings guidance, our ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses and realize the synergies from acquisitions, the sensitivity of our business to economic and financial market conditions generally and economic conditions in our service areas; dependence on fixed price contracts and the risks associated therewith, including actual costs exceeding estimates and method of accounting for revenue; the effect of growth on our infrastructure, resources, and existing sales; the ability to expand operations in both new and existing markets; the potential for contract delay or cancellation as a result of on-going or worsening supply chain challenges; liabilities arising from faulty services or products that could result in significant professional or product liability, warranty, or other claims; changes in or developments with respect to any litigation or investigation; failure to meet timely completion or performance standards that could result in higher cost and reduced profits or, in some cases, losses on projects; the potential for fluctuations in prices for manufactured components and raw materials, including as a result of tariffs and surcharges, and rising energy costs; inflationary pressures relating to rising raw material costs and the cost of labor; the substantial amount of debt incurred in connection with our strategic transactions and our ability to repay or refinance it or incur additional debt in the future; the impact of federal, state or local government regulations; our ability to repurchase shares of our common stock and the amounts and timing of repurchases, if any; our ability to successfully realize the expected benefits of our restructuring program; our ability to successfully identify acquisition targets, integrate acquired businesses and realize the synergies from strategic transactions; and the unpredictability and severity of catastrophic events, including cyber security threats, acts of terrorism or outbreak of war or hostilities or public health crises, as well as management’s response to any of the aforementioned factors. Many of these risks are beyond management’s ability to control or predict. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should the assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary in material aspects from those currently anticipated. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements as they speak only to our views as of the date the statement is made. Except as required under the federal securities laws or the rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission, we undertake no obligation to update or review any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

The MIL Network –

January 25, 2025

MIL-OSI Europe: Germany: EIB supports affordable housing in Bremen
Source: European Investment Bank
- Housing company GEWOBA is building almost 500 new rental flats and is investing to decarbonise its existing housing stock.
- The EIB is providing €125 million in co-financing for the project to increase the supply of affordable housing that meets energy efficiency standards.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is granting a €125 million loan to housing-company GEWOBA AG Wohnen und Bauen in Bremen. The loan supports an extensive €500 million building and renovation project to increase the supply of affordable and climate-friendly housing in Bremen and Bremerhaven by the company that is majority-owned by the two municipalities. The flats will meet the high energy efficiency standards set out by the European Union and at least meet the German energy standard of KfW Efficiency House 55.

According to the current plans, almost 500 new flats will be built, most of which will be accessible for people with reduced mobility. As part of the project, there will be a new kindergarten for around 60 children, as well as assisted-living communities and a day centre for 15 elderly people. In addition, over 2 000 existing flats will undergo energy-related renovation works. The price of rent per square metre for the new flats may not exceed €6.80 for subsidised flats and €9.00 for rent-capped flats.

Bremen is a growing city, with its population expected to rise from today`s 685 000 inhabitants to 705 000 by 2035. Although the state of Bremen is in good economic shape overall, it has the highest unemployment rate of all federal states of Germany at 10%, and a high proportion of its residents earn low incomes.

As in many cities in Germany, rent prices have increased in recent years. As the biggest rental housing provider in Bremen and Bremerhaven, GEWOBA is steering away from this trend, charging an average rent price of €6.94 per square metre (excluding bills) and an average of €7.94 per square metre for new rental contracts in existing flats.

“The project is helping to ensure that a vibrant city can continue to grow and be liveable for families with children and the elderly”, says EIB Vice-President Nicola Beer. “Together with our partner GEWOBA, we are facing up to the social challenge in German and European cities and continuing to create affordable and climate-friendly housing.”

The new flats are set to be highly energy efficient and will contribute to the European Union’s climate and environmental sustainability goals. They will help to reduce the amount of CO₂ emitted from buildings and will support Bremen on its path to climate neutrality. They will also encourage social inclusion, as demonstrated by the emphasis on accessibility, and will create more housing options in the city for people on low and moderate incomes.

“We are pleased to have a partner at our side in the form of the EIB, which is pursuing the same climate and social objectives as we are,” said Member of the Executive Board of GEWOBA Anja Passlack.

Background information

The EIB Group is the long-term lending institution of the European Union. It finances sound investments that contribute to EU policy objectives and works closely with other EU institutions and bodies to advance shared priorities such as equitable growth and a just transition towards climate neutrality. The EIB Group, which also includes the European Investment Fund (EIF), signed a total of €88 billion in new financing in 2023, of which €8.6 billion in Germany.

The EIB Group has been providing financing and advisory services to the housing sector for 25 years. In the last five years alone, it has provided around €13.4 billion to support sustainable urban development and modernisation projects. Together with the European Commission, the EIB will increase its commitment to affordable housing in the coming years.

GEWOBA AG Wohnen und Bauen in Bremen was founded in 1924 with the aim of making decent housing available for broad sections of the population – a mission that is still enshrined in its statute today. With around 43 000 rental apartments, GEWOBA is the largest rental housing provider in the state of Bremen and is majority-owned by the municipality. Its core business is value-based management and looking to the future to further develop its diverse housing portfolio. For decades, it has invested in extensive maintenance and modernisation projects, and expands its portfolio with new, high-quality buildings when required.
MIL OSI Europe News –
January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI: QuestionPro Appoints Chris Robson as Vice President, Managed Services

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 28, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — QuestionPro, a global leader in online survey and research services announces Chris Robson has joined the company in the newly created position of Vice President, Managed Services. Robson will create this new division which is focused on helping QuestionPro customers get the most out of its robust research platform.

Well known as a research industry thought-leader, Robson is a mathematician by training who has worked at both large enterprises as well as startups. Immediately prior to joining QuestionPro, he was the Global Head of Data Science at Human8, a global brand consultancy where he developed new methodologies including the application of Generative AI and LLMs. Earlier in his career he managed advanced research teams and large software teams (70+ people) at HP.

He was also Chief Innovation Officer and Global Head of Research Science at ORC, where he led a team of analysts and statisticians to embrace and adopt new approaches for data-centered insights. Robson also co-founded and ran two successful research analytics agencies: Parametric Marketing and Deckchair Data. He holds a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Mathematics from the Brunel University of London.

Robson will have overall responsibility for establishing and growing QuestionPro’s Managed Services Group which provides services to clients who need assistance to go above and beyond the capabilities of the company’s existing suite of research platforms. This can include project management, study design, custom programming, reporting and analytics. Whether it is providing end-to-end project support, simply customizing the appearance of a single question or running advanced analytic methods the group ensures that clients can get the answers they need for their business decisions.

In particular, Robson will apply his deep expertise in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to not only integrate AI across the QuestionPro platform, but also leverage it for new ways to drive consumer insights through emerging techniques like synthetic data.

“I’ve known and worked with Chris for close to 20 years,” said Vivek Bhaskaran, founder and CEO of QuestionPro. “In fact, he helped build some of our early features like MaxDiff and others. It’s great to have him on board full time to launch a new division and also ensure our customers benefit from the application of AI across our platform.”

About QuestionPro:
Founded in 2006, QuestionPro is a global provider of online survey and research services that help companies make better decisions through data. Our fully integrated online platform includes surveys, research & insights, customer experience (CX) and workforce/employee experience software. We additionally offer polling, journey mapping, employee 360s and data visualization. Our clientele ranges from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies, who rely on us for insights about customers, employees, and the marketplace. With offices in the US, Canada, Mexico, U.K., Germany, Japan, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and India, we offer customers 24-7 access to highly trained support specialists and engineers. More information is available at www.questionpro.com.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c9035859-cb80-41e3-be32-21eab55be2d3

The MIL Network –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI: cBrain lowers expected yearly revenue growth to 10-15%, but maintains EBT margin of 24-28%
Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

Company Announcement no. 10/2024

cBrain lowers expected yearly revenue growth to 10-15%, but maintains EBT margin of 24-28%

Copenhagen, November 28, 2024

cBrain (NASDAQ: CBRAIN) is executing its international growth plan with a financial goal of reaching total revenue of 350 million DKK in 2025. This goal is anchored in two primary revenue streams, referred to as “Base” and “Stepping stones”.

The “Base” stream aims to achieve annual revenue growth of 10-15% by strengthening and expanding existing operations and customer relationships. In parallel, the “Stepping Stones” initiative aims to lift annual revenue growth to 30%, by increasing contract values and winning larger international contracts.

cBrain continues to execute its growth strategy, building a robust pipeline of major opportunities. This is facilitated by a growing number of international pilot projects that set the stage for significant “Stepping Stones” achievements.

In early 2024, cBrain anticipated some of these opportunities, particularly in Germany and the U.S., to yield significant revenue in the second half of the year. cBrain remains highly active in these pursuits and has added further opportunities during the year.

However, not unusually with larger government procurement, delays in decision making mean that cBrain estimates less than a 50% likelihood of substantial revenue from larger international projects materializing in Q4. Consequently, cBrain adjusts its 2024 revenue growth forecast to 10-15%, down from the initial estimate of 20-25%.

In alignment with business planning, cBrain has earmarked financial investments to support “Stepping Stones” projects in Germany and the U.S. Since these projects have not yet materialized, these reserved funds have not been deployed. This provides a positive impact on earnings. cBrain, therefore, maintains its EBT (Earnings Before Tax) guidance at 24-30%.

—

Larger international projects are often structured so that F2 standard software licenses form the majority of the contract value. Due to financial standards for software revenue recognition, larger international orders may, as a result, introduce greater variability in revenue patterns over time.

As cBrain is currently pursuing global opportunities across the USA, Europe, Africa, the UAE, and India, some of these opportunities may still materialize during the fourth quarter, with a positive affect on this year’s revenue.

Best regards

Per Tejs Knudsen, CEO

Inquiries regarding this Company Announcement may be directed to

Ejvind Jørgensen, CFO & Head of Investor Relations, cBrain A/S, ir@cbrain.com, +45 2594 4973

Attachment
- Company Announcement no. 2024-10 (forecast of delayed international project)
The MIL Network –
January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI: Correction: cBrain lowers expected yearly revenue growth to 10-15%, but maintains EBT margin of 24-30%
Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

Company Announcement no. 10/2024

cBrain lowers expected yearly revenue growth to 10-15%, but maintains EBT margin of 24-30%

Copenhagen, November 28, 2024

cBrain (NASDAQ: CBRAIN) is executing its international growth plan with a financial goal of reaching total revenue of 350 million DKK in 2025. This goal is anchored in two primary revenue streams, referred to as “Base” and “Stepping stones”.

The “Base” stream aims to achieve annual revenue growth of 10-15% by strengthening and expanding existing operations and customer relationships. In parallel, the “Stepping Stones” initiative aims to lift annual revenue growth to 30%, by increasing contract values and winning larger international contracts.

cBrain continues to execute its growth strategy, building a robust pipeline of major opportunities. This is facilitated by a growing number of international pilot projects that set the stage for significant “Stepping Stones” achievements.

In early 2024, cBrain anticipated some of these opportunities, particularly in Germany and the U.S., to yield significant revenue in the second half of the year. cBrain remains highly active in these pursuits and has added further opportunities during the year.

However, not unusually with larger government procurement, delays in decision making mean that cBrain estimates less than a 50% likelihood of substantial revenue from larger international projects materializing in Q4. Consequently, cBrain adjusts its 2024 revenue growth forecast to 10-15%, down from the initial estimate of 20-25%.

In alignment with business planning, cBrain has earmarked financial investments to support “Stepping Stones” projects in Germany and the U.S. Since these projects have not yet materialized, these reserved funds have not been deployed. This provides a positive impact on earnings. cBrain, therefore, maintains its EBT (Earnings Before Tax) guidance at 24-30%.

—

Larger international projects are often structured so that F2 standard software licenses form the majority of the contract value. Due to financial standards for software revenue recognition, larger international orders may, as a result, introduce greater variability in revenue patterns over time.

As cBrain is currently pursuing global opportunities across the USA, Europe, Africa, the UAE, and India, some of these opportunities may still materialize during the fourth quarter, with a positive affect on this year’s revenue.

Best regards

Per Tejs Knudsen, CEO

Inquiries regarding this Company Announcement may be directed to

Ejvind Jørgensen, CFO & Head of Investor Relations, cBrain A/S, ir@cbrain.com, +45 2594 4973

Attachment
- Company Announcement no. 2024-10 (forecast of delayed international project)
The MIL Network –
January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI: Alliance Memory to Showcase Expanded Portfolio at electronica 2024

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

KIRKLAND, Wash., Oct. 28, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Alliance Memory will showcase its expanded product portfolio at electronica 2024 from November 12 to 15 in Hall B5, Stand 300 at the Trade Fair Centre Messe München in Munich, Germany. The company will highlight its new DDR4 and LPDDR4X SDRAMs, as well as high-density Serial NOR Flash devices, providing higher density, low power consumption, and fast data transfer rates for a wide range of applications.

“We’re excited to introduce our latest memory solutions that cater to growing market demands,” said David Bagby, President and CEO of Alliance Memory. “Our new DDR4 SDRAMs, LPDDR4X devices, and Serial NOR Flash products offer the performance, reliability, and flexibility our customers require in today’s evolving technology landscape.”

FEATURED PRODUCTS

DDR4 SDRAMs: Alliance Memory has expanded its CMOS DDR4 SDRAM offerings with new 8Gb, 16Gb, and 32Gb devices. These products combine low power consumption with fast clock speeds of up to 1600 MHz and transfer rates up to 3200 MT/s. They are available in 78-ball FBGA and 96-ball FBGA packages, offering enhanced performance for a variety of applications.

LPDDR4X SDRAM: The company’s 16Gb and 32Gb LPDDR4X devices deliver increased clock speeds of up to 2133 MHz and data rates of up to 4266 Mbps, designed for mobile and high-speed applications. Available in the 200-ball FBGA package, the LPDDR4X SDRAMs feature low power ratings, ideal for battery-operated systems.

High-Density Serial NOR Flash Devices: Alliance Memory has introduced new 3.3 V Serial NOR Flash families with densities of 128Mb, 256Mb, and 512Mb. These devices are suited for use in mobile PCs, servers, laptops, digital TVs, printers, and connectivity modules, offering high performance and flexible I/O options.

To schedule an appointment at electronica 2024 or for more information about the new products, please contact Bob Decker at bob.decker@redpinesgroup.com.

About Alliance Memory

Alliance Memory is a worldwide provider of critical and hard-to-find memory ICs for the communications, computing, consumer electronics, medical, automotive, and industrial markets. The company’s product range includes flash, DRAM, and SRAM memory ICs with commercial, industrial, and automotive operating temperature ranges and densities from 64Kb to 128GB. Privately held, Alliance Memory maintains headquarters in Kirkland, Washington, and regional offices in Europe, Asia, Canada, and South America. More information about Alliance Memory is available online at www.alliancememory.com.

Agency Contact:
Bob Decker
Redpines
+1 415 409 0233
bob.decker@redpinesgroup.com

The MIL Network –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Exploring the Future of Cash in Germany — A Foresight Study | Guest contribution in Central Bank Payments News

Source: Deutsche Bundesbank in English

Safeguarding the role of cash …
Many continue to experience the payment landscape in Germany as being shaped by cash. But in Germany, too, the use of cash has been declining for some years now. The coronavirus pandemic has significantly accelerated change processes in payment behaviour. While cash payments accounted for 82.5% of total transactions in 2008, their share fell to 51% in 2023. At the same time, we see an increase in the use of debit cards (27% in 2023) and mobile payments (6% in 2023).
Nevertheless, cash remains an important part of economic life in Germany. Consumers expect to be able to pay with cash and want to maintain the freedom of choice between cash and cashless means of payment. On top of consumers’ preferences in favour of cash, the Bundesbank considers resilience, crisis preparedness, and inclusivity for all groups in society as further reasons why cash should be firmly anchored in the payment landscape. A functioning cash infrastructure with good access to cash and high acceptance rates of cash is crucial for this.
The Bundesbank has a statutory mandate to facilitate the smooth functioning of cash and cashless payments. Together with the other Eurosystem central banks, the Bundesbank works to ensure that euro cash remains generally available and accepted as a means of payment and store of value. That said, some developments such as the declining use of cash for payments and the thinning out of ATM networks suggest that a future with cash cannot be taken for granted.
… calls for future-oriented research
With this in mind, the Bundesbank has turned its attention to exploring what sort of long-term future cash might have in Germany. In order to be able to proactively shape the evolution of cash in light of the trends we are currently seeing, we need an idea of the environment in which cash will be embedded in future. What developments and trends will influence the payment landscape and the cash cycle over the next 15 to 20 years?
To take due account of the intricacies of the way in which cash is embedded in social and economic structures, a future-oriented study design is called for. One option is to take the strategic foresight route. The Bundesbank has therefore commissioned a study looking at the cash of the future, which uses this kind of method.
Future scenarios for Germany’s payment landscape
A commonly used approach in strategic foresight involves the development of future scenarios. These scenarios are hypothetical visions of the future on a set topic. The scenarios presented in the study describe potential futures for cash and the cash cycle in Germany from the perspective of the year 2037. They show alternative development paths and the influencing factors behind them.
The scenarios are based on empirical evidence and were developed by strategic foresight experts working with established academic methods. It is important to appreciate that scenarios are not forecasts and, as such, do not represent precise predictions of a future that will definitely come to pass. What scenarios actually provide us with is a way to orient ourselves. What developments are possible, what are the dependencies between different developments and what are the consequences? The scenarios can thus play a role in decision-making and strategy-building and aid communication with stakeholders and the general public.
A total of three scenarios were developed. In all three scenarios, cash use continues, albeit to different degrees. In all scenarios, cash is the only means of payment available as a fallback option in the event of technical outages.
The hyperdigital payment world — artificially intelligent, convenient, and vulnerable
This scenario is characterised by economic and social transformation aimed at safeguarding peace and prosperity. Geopolitical shifts and far-reaching digitalisation are the driving forces of this transformation. All areas of life are highly digitalised, and that includes making payments. The digital euro has already been introduced as legal tender. The majority of the public has a high degree of confidence in digital solutions, in the government, and in the providers of cashless means of payment. In this scenario, cash serves, at most, as a store of value.
Cash has all but disappeared from everyday payment situations. Only 15% of all transactions are settled using cash in 2037. Payments between individuals are almost exclusively made via payment apps.
Conventional online commerce, in which cash plays virtually no role, continues to grow strongly. When it comes to bricks-and mortar retail, hardly any checkouts are staffed anymore. Only a scarce few self-checkouts still accept cash payments. With a small number of exceptions, local governments, authorities, and public enterprises do not provide facilities for paying in cash either.
Banks have massively thinned out their ATM network. With the disappearance of staffed checkouts in the retail sector and the cutback in cash payment options for customers, in-store cash withdrawal services — which are currently still commonplace — vanish as well. Cost pressures on the cash cycle increase considerably up to the end of the decade. Only a small number of effective measures to cut costs in the cash cycle are implemented.
In accordance with an EU regulation, the Federal Government responds to the massive decline in the use of cash, adopting statutory standards to secure a basic level of cash provision for retailers and the general public. The aim of this move is to maintain the cash infrastructure in case there is a crisis.
In summary, this scenario shows us a highly digitalised world in which cash plays only a minor role. It is barely able to perform its function as a crisis preparedness measure.
The cash renaissance payment world — smart, self-determined, and resilient
The world of this scenario has been shaped by the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, advances in general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) and the war in Ukraine. On the back of recent experiences, the public has become more aware of the need to prepare for disasters and crises.
Moreover, many people fear heteronomy and the notion of being controlled by self-learning AI systems trained on mass data. Ambitious individuals tending towards alternative lifestyles are advocating for the right to an analogue life, drawing attention to the dangers of AI and calling for data minimisation and digital sovereignty.
The benefits of cash are being rediscovered. Cash is associated with values such as sovereignty, independence, and constructive rebellion. This heightened awareness of the benefits of cash gradually spreads into society’s centre ground. Despite the stabilising effects on cash use, cash made up less than 50% of transactions at the end of the 2020s.
Policymakers were aware of the public’s desire for freedom of choice, as well as of the significance of cash for certain groups in society. Considerations around resilience and autonomy in payments prompted the Federal Government to take regulatory steps to strengthen cash as a means of payment. At the beginning of the 2030s, the Federal Government recommended that retailers should, as a basic principle, accept cash. All of the major supermarket chains offer both staffed checkouts and self-checkouts with cash payment modules.
Due to an EU regulation on access to cash, the trend towards branch closures and the thinning out of the ATM network started to slow again from the mid-2020s. Clear regulation for maintaining cash infrastructures gives cash cycle stakeholders greater certainty for investing in innovation and cost-saving measures.
All in all, in this scenario, we see parts of society circling back to cash and its benefits, meaning that cash use is declining only slowly and stabilises in the 2030s.
The vanishing hybrid payment world — pluralistic, segregated, and indifferent
In the 2020s, there was significantly greater individualisation and pluralisation in people’s living standards, lifestyles, and personal environments compared with the 2010s. Members of more progressive milieus, in particular, are regarded as early adopters when it comes to innovations in cashless payment instruments. But still, even those who mainly opt for cashless payments often carry an “emergency stash” of a few notes in their smartphone case or in their bag or pocket.
At the end of the 2030s, cash is still being used by a large part of the population to pay street vendors, when tipping, as a gift to friends or family and when paying smaller amounts. The decline in cash use is gradual (31% of all transactions in 2037).
The remaining bricks-and-mortar retailers are aware of the diverse preferences of their customer base. This means there is huge variation in terms of cashier system facilities and cash acceptance. However, bricks-and-mortar retailers encourage customers to use cashless payment methods. Public authorities are also coming to favour cashless means of payment.
Banks continued to significantly reduce the number of their branches and ATMs throughout the country up to the end of the 2020s. As the share of cash is shrinking, less and less cash is coming into shop tills, meaning that in-store cash withdrawal services
deteriorate. Overall, it becomes harder to access cash.
A major crisis or disaster that could draw society’s attention to cash as a resilient means of payment fails to materialise. A pro-cash movement among the general public cannot be orchestrated in an increasingly segregated society. This means there is no political pressure to act and no resistance against the gradual decline of cash.
A downward spiral is created: the use of cash continues to decline as access to and acceptance of cash become restricted. The fixed costs for the supply and removal of cash appear disproportionately high as cash volumes fall. Options for accessing cash and situations where it is accepted are therefore limited further. A hybrid payment landscape — something desired by large parts of society — slowly but surely disappears as it becomes more and more difficult to actually use cash.
Current developments
Once scenarios have been developed, they should be checked against current developments from time to time. It is important to bear in mind that certain trends already visible today might appear in one scenario or another but this does not necessarily mean that a particular scenario will occur. Nor do these trends make it more likely that one of the scenarios will prevail. This is because the developments described in the scenarios should not be looked at in isolation; it is only through their interplay that they mesh to form a holistic projection of the payment landscape in 2037.
Cashless payments more convenient
Recently published research by the Bundesbank shows that cash currently accounts for 51% of all transactions in Germany. Contactless cards and mobile payment methods are being used more and more frequently. Cashless means of payment are increasingly perceived as more convenient, faster, and easier than cash. These are characteristics regarded as key reasons in deciding for or against a means of payment in the “hyperdigital payment world” and “hybrid payment world” scenarios. On top of this, acceptance of cashless means of payment has risen sharply, including in former cash strongholds such as restaurants and cafés and the services industry. Against this background, the general trend of declining cash usage in the scenarios appears highly plausible.
Cash availability and acceptance declining
Acceptance of cash in Germany remains high, although it is slightly declining. Cash payments are almost universally accepted at retail outlets for day-to-day purchases. At retail outlets for durable goods and in the food services sector, acceptance has somewhat deteriorated. In public administration, meanwhile, cash acceptance is low and falling.
As anticipated in all three scenarios, the number of ATMs and bank offices is declining sharply. The number of ATMs fell by 12% between 2019 and 2023. A weakening of this decline in the mid-2020s does not seem to be on the cards so far. As things currently stand, legal framework conditions creating guaranteed access to cash are lacking. Although more and more people are making use of the option to withdraw cash in shops, Germany’s Retail Federation (Handelsverband) is warning of service constraints if the declining propensity to pay in cash results in there not being enough cash in registers. These developments make a downward spiral of declining cash usage, acceptance of cash, and cash availability highly likely.
Cash should not be taken for granted
Cash use does not increase again in any of the scenarios. While the share of cash payments does slowly stabilise in the “cash renaissance” scenario, it steadily contracts in the other two. That said, neither of those two scenarios anticipate a complete disappearance of cash. But two of three scenarios — as well as the developments that we are currently seeing — suggest that its stabilising function and freedom of choice between cash and digital payments are not fully given anymore.
The Bundesbank considers cash to be its core physical product and takes active measures to safeguard its continued existence and future use alongside its complement, the digital euro. However, the Bundesbank, too, has to adapt to the changing payment landscape. Under its new branch strategy the Bundesbank is aiming to create a more efficient branch network. Branch closures will go hand in hand with extensive investment into new and modern branches. Increased automation and simpler access routes for CIT companies will ensure a secure and efficient supply of cash in the long term.
Society and policymakers called to action
The scenarios also show that the responsibility does not lie solely with the Bundesbank. The Bundesbank’s measures will not be adequate unless they are accompanied by action from policymakers and society. That is why it is initiating further collaborative activities. The National Cash Forum brings the relevant stakeholders to the table to lay the groundwork for enhancing and stabilising the cash cycle. A joint dialogue with various interest groups from society culminated in position papers expressing a clear commitment to cash. We at the Bundesbank are committed to contributing to a future with cash.

MIL OSI

MIL OSI Europe News –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI United Kingdom: UK sanctions Putin’s interference actors
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

The UK has sanctioned three Russian agencies and three senior figures who are attempting to undermine and destabilise Ukraine and its democracy.
UK sanctions Russian disinformation agencies seeking to undermine Ukraine.

Kremlin tasked Social Design Agency (SDA) is exposed for trying to incite anti-Ukraine protests across Europe.

New sanctions also hit three leaders directing the firm’s operations.

Three Russian agencies and three senior figures who are attempting to undermine and destabilise Ukraine and its democracy have been sanctioned today by the UK.

The Social Design Agency (SDA) is tasked and funded directly by the Russian State, and along with its partner company Structura, has attempted to deliver a series of interference operations designed to undermine democracy and weaken international support for Ukraine.

This year, the SDA also attempted to incite protests in half a dozen European countries. However, despite Russian pouring money into these malign organisations’ interference activities, their lies have consistently struggled online, with bots and fake sites getting limited interaction. This has forced the SDA to consider buying social media views.

The Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, said:

Putin is so desperate to undermine European support for Ukraine he is now resorting to clumsy, ineffective efforts to try and stoke unrest.

Today’s sanctions send a clear message; we will not tolerate your lies and interference, and we are coming after you.

Putin’s desperate attempts to divide us will fail. We will constrain the Kremlin, and stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.

These firms and their leadership are responsible for a vast malign online network, also commonly known as Doppelganger, which plagues social media with fake posts, counterfeit documents and deepfake material. These deceitful tactics are designed to mask the truth around Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and distract from the true nature of the war. Their murky actions are part of a co-ordinated attempt to use deceptive information operations to undermine democracy in pursuit of their aims.

These new sanctions demonstrate that no matter how desperate the Russian interference activity has become, the UK is committed to taking action against Russian information manipulation. We will continue to bear down on anyone conducting such activities on behalf of SDA.

The US, Canada, France, European External Action Service (EEAS), Germany and Australia join us in calling out the SDA’s underhand activity globally.

Background:

The full list of those sanctioned today is:

PR agency Social Design Agency (SDA).

PR agency Structura National Technologies.

PR agency ANO DIALOG.

Ilya Andreevich GAMBASHIDZE, the founder of SDA.

Nikolay Aleksandrovich TUPIKIN, the CEO of SDA and owner of Structura.

Andrey Naumovich PERLA, SDA Project Director.

These firms are responsible for a vast malign online network, commonly known as Doppelganger. Content including fake posts, counterfeit documents and deepfake material has been pushed out to audiences in English, German and French through a complex online network. The SDA has crafted a web of at least 120 sites spoofing existing news and government websites, towards which it deceptively redirects unsuspecting social media users. Tactics included avoiding common trigger words to circumvent content moderation tools and evade account takedowns. We are working with social media platforms to ensure they are aware of this activity.

Our international partners have also previously exposed Doppelganger’s malign interference networks, including France and the EEAS. As part of the monitoring and analysis for the 2024 European Parliament Elections. The European External Action Service has detected that an Doppelganger / RRN Media operation actively promoted Russian narratives to disrupt and interfere with the electoral process. This network was previously attributed by META to the SDA and revealed to be running global information operations aimed at weakening support for Ukraine. France has exposed these Russian actors in June 2023 through the publication of a report by its agency, Viginum.

Media enquiries

Email newsdesk@fcdo.gov.uk

Telephone 020 7008 3100

Contact the FCDO Communication Team via email (monitored 24 hours a day) in the first instance, and we will respond as soon as possible.

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Published 28 October 2024
MIL OSI United Kingdom –
January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Economics: Denis Beau: Perspectives on increasing prominence of digital money
Source: Bank for International Settlements

Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am glad to join you virtually today for the Hong Kong FinTech Week, to share our perspective at the Banque de France on the development of digital payments and its implication for the fulfilment of our mandate to ensure the proper functioning of payment systems.

Although wholesale and retail payments are being transformed by distinct trends, they present similar challenges from a safety and efficiency perspective. To meet these challenges, we have been at the Banque de France simultaneously acting on three key levers. First, the provision of central bank money services. Second, the support to industry initiatives in line with our policy goals. Third, the promotion of adjustments to the regulatory and supervisory framework.

In that context, I would like to explain in my introductory remarks how we consider using our first lever, the provision of central bank money services.

1. Wholesale digital payments

In the wholesale space, the security and efficiency of financial transactions between financial intermediaries importantly hinges on the nature of the settlement asset chosen.

Lessons learned from past financial crises have underlined the critical importance of using secure settlement assets. In response, members of the Bank for International Settlements have committed to promoting the use of central bank money in the wholesale payments space and mitigate both liquidity and counterparty risks. This commitment is reflected in Principle 9 of the CPMI-IOSCO’s Principles for financial market infrastructures (PFMIs), designed to strengthen and preserve financial stability. And they have been successful in the implementation of this policy as central bank money is actually the very dominant settlement asset in the wholesale space.

However, as tokenisation of assets gains momentum, private settlement assets, particularly stablecoins, are being used and are likely to be settlement assets of choice, to settle transactions in tokenised assets, absent the availability of central bank money on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). In addition, the proliferation of uncoordinated settlement solutions resulting from the lack of public sector response to the tokenisation of finance could lead to increased liquidity fragmentation.

This is why we consider that we need to adapt the provision of central bank money to the demands of an increasingly digital financial system, particularly as transactions involving tokenised assets gain prominence, to prevent regression in the safety and efficiency of wholesale transactions.

Accordingly, the Banque de France was one of the first central banks to launch an ambitious experimental program focused on the use of wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) in various settlement processes for varied assets.

In addition, in an evolving landscape, where traditional infrastructures are likely to coexist with new DLT systems, interoperability will be crucial in preventing market fragmentation and central bank money can help ensure it. The Payment-vs-Payment (PvP) experiment in CBDC we recently conducted with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority is an illustration of this, with an interoperability mechanism supported by SWIFT to ensure synchronised settlement of both legs of the transaction.

Since May 2024, the Eurosystem has also been testing various interoperable solutions for settling tokenised financial assets via central bank money and we are actively contributing to it. Looking further ahead, the BIS has put forward the vision of a global unified ledger-a long-term vision that could begin with the establishment of regional unified ledgers, such as a European Unified Ledger. Project Agorá is likely to be an important building block in an exploratory approach to make this vision concrete and test it, and we are also taking part in it.

2. Retail digital payments

In the retail space, contrary to the wholesale one, we observe the coexistence and complementarity of central bank money – in the form of cash – and private money. While their respective role has evolved over time with users’ habits, in Europe it has undergone very rapid and significant changes in the past few decades, in relation with the development of the digital economy. The use of cash has steadily declined: in 2022, cash was used in 50% of in-store payments in France, compared with 68% in 2016. Meanwhile, cashless payment solutions have rapidly developed, boosted by the growth of e-commerce and innovative solutions such as contactless and mobile payments.

These changes bring many benefits for consumers, with payments becoming increasingly convenient, faster and innovative. The Banque de France therefore strongly supports and encourages innovation by payments stakeholders and the private sector.

However, digitalisation also comes with challenges for central banks.
- First, regulatory and supervisory frameworks need to be adopted to foster innovation in a trusted environment. This is what we have done in the case of private digital assets in Europe where the MiCA regulation has provided a clear, harmonised regulatory framework for crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) and stablecoins issuers, with the support of the Banque de France.
- Second, the development of digital payments comes with increased dependence on a few dominant non-EU players – international card schemes and global technology providers (BigTechs). Those stakeholders exploit large network effects and own many proprietary standards used in retail payments. In Europe, that trend raises issues in terms of operational resilience, market competition and innovation, and ultimately, challenges the strategic autonomy of European players.
The Banque de France has helped to address those dependency issues with first a clear support, along with the Eurosystem, to the emergence of pan-European solutions for retail payments such as the European Payments Initiative. Their digital wallet called Wero has just been launched in France, after Germany and Belgium, for person-to-person payments in the first stage. It will gradually expand coverage, to other countries and use cases (e-commerce and in-store payments) in the next years.

We have also intensively contributed to the preparation underway of a retail CBDC, namely the digital euro. This new form of public money would be comparable to a “digital banknote”. Its legal tender would make it usable everywhere in the euro area, in all contexts – therefore supporting European integration. It would offer cash-like privacy – notably thanks to the offline functionality that would also strengthen our resilience. The underlying standards and infrastructures would be governed by European players – also supporting our strategic autonomy.

The digital euro is also intended to perpetuate the “public-private partnership” that lies at the heart of our monetary system. It would be distributed by banks and other private intermediaries, with a viable and attractive business model, therefore preserving financial intermediation. It could also facilitate the development of private pan-European projects that could benefit from its open and harmonised standards to extend their scope and benefit from large network effects.

Conclusion

As payments become increasingly digital, central banks face the issue of revisiting the way they provide central bank money services to their economy. At the Banque de France, we consider that the Eurosystem should stand ready to adapt its provision of central bank money both in the wholesale and retail spaces. We see this as necessary to maintain the ‘singleness of money’ in our economy and the robustness of our monetary system, both from a stability and sovereignty perspective. On the wholesale side, a CBDC would appropriately accompany and secure a trend towards the tokenisation of financial assets. It could also be a first step towards the provision of a new and decentralised form of infrastructure, a European Unified Ledger. In the retail sphere, we see the deployment of a digital euro as a natural evolution of, and complement to cash, whose success should be built on a strong public-private partnership.
MIL OSI Economics –
January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: NASA Successfully Integrates Coronagraph for Roman Space Telescope

Source: NASA

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has successfully completed integration of the Roman Coronagraph Instrument onto Roman’s Instrument Carrier, a piece of infrastructure that will hold the mission’s instruments, which will be integrated onto the larger spacecraft at a later date. The Roman Coronagraph is a technology demonstration that scientists will use to take an important step in the search for habitable worlds, and eventually life beyond Earth.
This integration took place at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where the space telescope is located and in development. This milestone follows the coronagraph’s arrival at the center earlier this year from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California where the instrument was developed, built, and tested.

The Roman Coronagraph Instrument is a technology demonstration that will launch aboard the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA’s next flagship astrophysics mission. Roman will have a field of view at least 100 times larger than the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope and explore scientific mysteries surrounding dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. Roman is expected to launch no later than May 2027.
The mission’s coronagraph is designed to make direct observations of exoplanets, or planets outside of our solar system, by using a complex suite of masks and active mirrors to obscure the glare of the planets’ host stars, making the planets visible. Being a technology demonstration means that the coronagraph’s goal is to test this technology in space and showcase its capabilities. The Roman Coronagraph is poised to act as a technological stepping stone, enabling future technologies on missions like NASA’s proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory, which would be the first telescope designed specifically to search for signs of life on exoplanets.
“In order to get from where we are to where we want to be, we need the Roman Coronagraph to demonstrate this technology,” said Rob Zellem, Roman Space Telescope deputy project scientist for communications at NASA Goddard. “We’ll be applying those lessons learned to the next generation of NASA flagship missions that will be explicitly designed to look for Earth-like planets.”

A Major Mission Milestone
The coronagraph was successfully integrated into Roman’s Instrument Carrier, a large grid-like structure that sits between the space telescope’s primary mirror and spacecraft bus, which will deliver the telescope to orbit and enable the telescope’s functionality upon arrival in space. Assembly of the mission’s spacecraft bus was completed in September 2024.
The Instrument Carrier will hold both the coronagraph and Roman’s Wide Field Instrument, the mission’s primary science instrument, which is set to be integrated later this year along with the Roman telescope itself. “You can think of [the Instrument Carrier] as the skeleton of the observatory, what everything interfaces to,” said Brandon Creager, lead mechanical engineer for the Roman Coronagraph at JPL.
The integration process began months ago with mission teams from across NASA coming together to plan the maneuver. Additionally, after its arrival at NASA Goddard, mission teams ran tests to prepare the coronagraph to be joined to the spacecraft bus.

During the integration itself, the coronagraph, which is roughly the size and shape of a baby grand piano (measuring about 5.5 feet or 1.7 meters across), was mounted onto the Instrument Carrier using what’s called the Horizontal Integration Tool.
First, a specialized adapter developed at JPL was attached to the instrument, and then the Horizontal Integration Tool was attached to the adapter. The tool acts as a moveable counterweight, so the instrument was suspended from the tool as it was carefully moved into its final position in the Instrument Carrier. Then, the attached Horizontal Integration Tool and adapter were removed from the coronagraph. The Horizontal Integration Tool previously has been used for integrations on NASA’s Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope.
As part of the integration process, engineers also ensured blanketing layers were in place to insulate the coronagraph within its place in the Instrument Carrier. The coronagraph is designed to operate at room temperature, so insulation is critical to keep the instrument at the right temperature in the cold vacuum of space. This insulation also will provide an additional boundary to block stray light that could otherwise obscure observations.
Following this successful integration, engineers will perform different checks and tests to ensure that everything is connected properly and is correctly aligned before moving forward to integrate the Wide Field Instrument and the telescope itself. Successful alignment of the Roman Coronagraph’s optics is critical to the instrument’s success in orbit.

This latest mission milestone is the culmination of an enduring collaboration between a number of Roman partners, but especially between NASA Goddard and NASA JPL.
“It’s really rewarding to watch these teams come together and build up the Roman observatory. That’s the result of a lot of teams, long hours, hard work, sweat, and tears,” said Liz Daly, the integrated payload assembly integration and test lead for Roman at Goddard.
“Support and trust were shared across both teams … we were all just one team,” said Gasia Bedrosian, the integration and test lead for the Roman Coronagraph at JPL. Following the integration, “we celebrated our success together,” she added.
The Roman Coronagraph Instrument was designed and built at NASA JPL, which manages the instrument for NASA. Contributions were made by ESA (European Space Agency), JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany. Caltech, in Pasadena, California, manages NASA JPL for the agency. The Roman Science Support Center at Caltech/IPAC partners with NASA JPL on data management for the Coronagraph and generating the instrument’s commands.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
By Chelsea GohdNASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, Calif.
Media Contact:Claire Andreoliclaire.andreoli@nasa.govNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.301-286-1940

MIL OSI USA News –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Five reasons Warhammer 40,000 should be considered a great work of science fiction

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mike Ryder, Lecturer in Marketing, Lancaster University

Games Workshop, the British company behind the tabletop war game Warhammer and its futuristic counterpart Warhammer 40,000 (also known as Warhammer 40k), is now worth in the region of £3.75 billion. And it counts among its fans celebrities like Henry Cavill, Brian May and the late Robin Williams.

The original Warhammer (known as Warhammer Fantasy Battle) was a fantasy tabletop miniature war-game. Released in 1983 it featured J.R.R. Tolkien-esque orc, goblin, dwarf and elf characters. A few years later, Games Workshop launched a science fiction version of the game, Warhammer 40k, where many of the fantasy races were re-imagined for a futuristic science fiction setting.

Historically, many fans of science fiction have looked down on Warhammer 40k as something of a niche interest, the darker, grimier cousin of the clean-cut American franchises of Star Wars and Star Trek. But things are starting to change. Warhammer 40k is now so much more than a simple tabletop battle game. It is a whole universe of rich and diverse characters of great depth, and it is supported by a body of literature.

Here are five reasons the Warhammer 40k franchise is as worthy of science fiction fandom as its American cousins.

1. The grand scope of its format

Warhammer 40k is no longer just a miniatures game. Rather, it is a complete fictional universe far grander in scope than any other science fiction universe that exists today.

This multi-modal format means that fans don’t just have to collect model miniatures to enjoy it. There are so many different formats available, including animations, role-playing and video games, as well as comic books and the extensive literary publications from the Black Library, the publishing arm of Games Workshop.

2. The franchise’s scale

Warhammer 40k universe is huge. And I mean, seriously huge. The Horus Heresy series – the key saga that sets the context for the “present day” universe – spans some 54 books, with a further ten books mapping out the series’ conclusion.

This is arguably the biggest single collective literary undertaking in all of science fiction. The series started in 2006 with the novel Horus Rising, and has now reached its conclusion, with just the final few books awaiting their paperback release.

3. Depth of storytelling

Make no mistake, Warhammer 40k is no simple battle of good versus evil. Rather, it is a universe of deep politics, philosophy and nuance, where even the so-called “good guys” are forced to make difficult choices in the name of survival.

This tension is encapsulated in the leader of the Imperium (humanity), known as The Emperor, who has sat atop his golden throne for more than 10,000 years. He is sustained by the ritual daily sacrifice of thousands of souls, who give up their lives in order that he continue his psychic battle with the forces of chaos in the psychic realm, known as The Warp.

Such depth has helped the universe flourish over many decades, providing a constant stream of ideas for fans to engage with, and characters to explore.

4. The grimdark aesthetic

Such has been the impact of the Warhammer 40k universe that it has even spawned its own unique sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy, known as grimdark. Spearheaded by legendary artist John Blanche, grimdark is characterised by its bleak aesthetic that calls back to a kind of primordial existence, where day-to-day survival is not guaranteed.

This sub-genre extends far beyond the realms of Warhammer, even shaping the work of bestselling fantasy novelists such as Joe Abercrombie, author of The First Law trilogy.

5. Research potential

Researchers are also now starting to take Warhammer seriously. In September, Germany hosted the world’s first academic conference dedicated to all things Warhammer. The conference attracted almost 60 speakers, with academics from across the globe looking at the universe through their own particular academic lens.

Meanwhile, the depth of academic literature on Warhammer is also growing rapidly. In my own research I often write about science fiction and its potential to help us think about complex problems in new ways. With Warhammer, I have been able to explore what it means to be a soldier, and the symbolic relationship between the soldier and the state. I do this by exploring the portrayal of 40k’s most iconic characters, the space marines – genetically enhanced super-soldiers who live a monk-like existence committed to waging endless war against the enemies of mankind.

The Prime series Secret Level will feature a Warhammer 40k episode.

Time to go mainstream

While it is fair to say that Warhammer 40k has so far been fairly underrepresented in science fiction circles, it seems the tide is finally starting to turn. Just last year Games Workshop signed a deal with Amazon to produce a TV series. There will also be a Warhammer 40k animation, due for release in December 2024. There have also been several important critical successes for 40k in the realm of video games, the most recent example being Space Marine II.

With the growth of the tabletop hobby, the continued success of licensed video games and with an Amazon series on the horizon, we are now at a point where Warhammer is about to go mainstream. No longer is it merely a game of rolling dice, and painting model miniatures. Rather now, it is a huge and deeply significant work of science fiction, and one that is worthy of being spoken about in the same way as its American peers.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

Mike Ryder 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. Five reasons Warhammer 40,000 should be considered a great work of science fiction – https://theconversation.com/five-reasons-warhammer-40-000-should-be-considered-a-great-work-of-science-fiction-241040

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Floods in Poland – P-001841/2024(ASW)
Source: European Parliament
The Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC)[1] works on a 24 hours/7 days basis to carry out its mandate that includes, among other tasks, monitoring of unfolding or potential disasters and their impact.

In this context, the ERCC daily monitors the forecast estimates for potential flooding across Europe, through the dedicated European Flood Awareness System (EFAS)[2] of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service.

The EFAS complements national systems, contributing to monitoring and raising awareness about floods and related events, while retaining the supporting role that the Commission has in this field.

As of 13 September 2024, due to the heavy rains and strong winds which affected large parts of Central and Eastern Europe, Member States such as Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania pro-actively activated the Rapid Mapping of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service[3] for floods. Poland activated the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM)[4] on 18 September 2024.

From the onset, the ERCC was in contact with the national civil protection authorities of Austria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania and Slovakia to raise awareness about possible upcoming floods and offered support through the UCPM.

[1] https://civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu/what/civil-protection/emergency-response-coordination-centre-ercc_en

[2] https://www.copernicus.eu/en/european-flood-awareness-system

[3] https://emergency.copernicus.eu/mapping/ems/rapid-mapping-portfolio

[4] https://civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu/what/civil-protection/eu-civil-protection-mechanism_en
Last updated: 28 October 2024
MIL OSI Europe News –
January 25, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Is Donald Trump a fascist? No – he’s a new brand of authoritarian
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff M Boucher, Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Deakin University

Is Donald Trump a fascist? General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, thinks so. Trump is “fascist to the core,” he warns.

John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, agrees. So does Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent in this year’s presidential election.

But political commentators who have a grounding in history are not so sure. Writing in The Guardian, Sidney Blumenthal calls Trump “Hitlerian” and his rallies “Naziesque”, but stops short of calling him a fascist.

Michael Tomasky of The New Republic understands the reservations, but he is tired spending time debating the difference between “fascistic” and just plain “fascist”. “He’s damn close enough,” Tomasky writes, “and we’d better fight”.

I understand this logic. It’s the reason Harris uses the term “fascist” to describe Trump – to send “a 911 call to the American people”. But there’s a problem.

I have spent the past six years researching right-wing, authoritarian political communication in America. I can say with confidence how these kinds of labels can misfire. They can very easily be made to look like liberal hysteria, playing straight into the hands of the far right.

Here are the two reasons why it is crucial to call Trump exactly what he is.
1. Calling Trump a fascist, and then instantly adding, “or close enough,” plays directly into the hands of the far right. “See?” they might say. “Anytime anyone steps outside the liberal consensus, they get labelled a fascist. This is how political correctness silences dissent.”
2. Trump’s kind of authoritarianism thrives on ambiguity about what sort of right-wing populist figure he is. Its success depends on the fact that “fascist” is the only name we have right now for authoritarian politics.
In my view, Trump is not a fascist. Rather, he is part of a “new authoritarianism” that subverts democracy from within and solidifies power through administrative, rather than paramilitary, means.

Why the ‘fascism’ label is unhelpful

This brand of new authoritarianism hides in plain sight because there is no name for it yet. It looks like something else – for example, right-wing populism that is anti-liberal, but not yet anti-democratic. And then suddenly, it shows itself as anti-democratic extremism, as Trump did in refusing to accept the 2020 election result and encouraging the storming of the Capitol.

This moment starkly revealed Trump as a new authoritarian. Supplementary debate about whether Trump is like Adolf Hitler risks being pointless. But the problem is that fascism is the only name we have now for anti-democratic extremism.

All fascists are authoritarians. But not all authoritarians are fascists. It’s crucial to understand there are other types of authoritarianism – and how they differ.

This is not just important for preventing Trump from seeking to subvert American democracy. It is also vital for stopping Trump imitators, who will now spring forth in other democracies. If there is still no name for what they are other than “fascist,” then they, too, will thrive on ambiguity.

What is ‘new authoritarianism’?

I suggest we focus on what Trump actually is – an anti-democratic, “new authoritarian” – and understand what this means and how he is gaining wider support using right-wing populism.

The new authoritarians don’t necessarily take a sledgehammer to a nation’s institutions, for example, by doing away with elections. Rather, they hollow out democracy from within, so it becomes a façade draped over a one-party state.

We have many examples of this kind of ruler today: Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko, Tunisia’s Kais Saied and, of course, the poster-figure for the new authoritarians, Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s admiration for Putin is a matter of public record. For alt-right thinkers who are influential with Trump, such as Steve Bannon, Putin provides a blueprint for how new authoritarianism works.

Authoritarians like Putin must govern through the state, not the people, because, as social psychologist Bob Altemeyer explains, they ultimately represent a tiny minority of the population.

Military dictatorships rule through the armed forces. The fascist regimes of 20th century Europe were ultimately police states. They relied on converting paramilitary death squads into secret police (like the Gestapo) and state security (the SS in Nazi Germany).

The new authoritarians, however, govern through the transformation of the civil service into their own personal political machines.

That is why Trump is obsessed with the “deep state”, by which he means the way in which democratic institutions have built-in legal safeguards defended by civil servants, who can potentially frustrate executive orders. The new authoritarian strategy is to appoint a stratum of political loyalists to key positions in their administrations, who can circumvent institutional checks. But that is no easy matter.

If Trump is elected, he has vowed to “crush the deep state”, for example, by purging thousands of nonpolitical civil service employees. As part of this, he has pledged to establish a “truth and reconciliation commission” oriented to punishing those he thinks opposed him the past.

Trump has been following this new authoritarian playbook for nearly his entire political career. These are the three steps he is taking to lay the groundwork for authoritarian rule:

1) Undermine electoral integrity

The first key to new authoritarianism: subvert democracy by undermining electoral integrity. The acid test here? Authoritarians do not accept election results when the opposition has won. As Trump has very bluntly put it, “I am a very proud election denier”.

Trump’s opening move in this regard was to take over the Republican Party. He used election denialism to do this, while also marginalising any moderates who opposed him.

The Trump Republican Party is now a minority party, oriented to white grievance, resentment of immigrants and the anti-democratic idea that a country should be run like a company.

Its only hope for winning government as a minority party is by trying to suppress the vote of its opponents. To do this, pro-Trump Republican states have passed a number of laws since 2020 to make voting more difficult.

These states have also aggressively removed people from the voting rolls. Texas alone has stricken one million voters off its rolls since 2021, only 6,500 of whom were deemed non-citizens.

If Trump wins, he will likely make it even harder for people to vote. Civil rights groups fear he may introduce a citizenship question to the census, use the Department of Justice to conduct a massive purge of voter rolls, and launch criminal investigations of electoral officials.

As a backup, Trump will likely resurrect the “election integrity commission” he established in 2017 to justify his claims of alleged voter fraud in the 2016 election and support his election denialism narrative.

2) Weaken the legislative and judicial branches

The second key to new authoritarianism: circumventing the checks-and-balances function of the legislative branch of government. The goal here is to rule by executive fiat or govern through a stacked legislative majority.

The new authoritarians often govern through executive orders, including the use of emergency powers. For instance, Trump has envisaged a scenario in which a Republican Congress could enact emergency powers to empower the president to overturn the authority of state governors to fire their prosecutors and use the National Guard for law enforcement.

Such a development would depend on a number of factors, including the complicity of the judiciary. This is why new authoritarians also attempt to stack the judiciary with loyalists.

In his first term, Trump not only appointed three Supreme Court justices, he also placed judges to the federal appeals courts, district courts and circuit courts.

3) Attack their enemies

This leads to the third pillar of new authoritarianism: decapitating the political opposition and suppressing dissent.

Trump’s threats to investigate and prosecute his enemies, including leading figures in the Democratic Party, should be taken very seriously. His calls to target the “enemy from within” were pointedly directed at what he deemed “radical left lunatics”.

Journalists and the news media would also likely be targeted. Trump’s statement that the broadcast licenses of national networks should be revoked, for example, needs to be understood in the context of his pledges to dismantle federal regulatory agencies if elected.

That matters, because the next step for new authoritarians to solidify their power is through suppressing dissent. Trump has proposed using the military in civil contexts to target criminals and prevent illegal immigration. He has reportedly even questioned why the military couldn’t “just shoot” protesters.

It is important to understand how this differs from fascism, because it is central to Trump’s ability to retain electoral support.

Classical fascism under dictators like Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini was based on street-fighting, paramilitary movements, which used violence to intimidate and crush the opposition. The equivalents of this today are right-wing militias such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

Trump keeps one foot on the edge of this camp. But alt-right figures like Bannon understand that swastika flags and paramilitary uniforms are a political liability. Their preference is for new authoritarianism, which is able to push
a right-wing extremist agenda by reducing democracy to sham elections, rather than openly setting up a totalitarian regime.

As such, Trump can dodge accusations of being a “fascist” by telling the Proud Boys to “stand by”, while throwing up a smokescreen of equivocations about the January 6 Capitol insurrection. He can distance himself from kind of paramilitary violence that is reminiscent of classical fascism.

It is about time to call things by their true names. Trump has the anti-democratic tendencies of a new authoritarian – and, as his opponents point out, he seems likely to put his words into actions if elected a second time.

Geoff M Boucher 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. Is Donald Trump a fascist? No – he’s a new brand of authoritarian – https://theconversation.com/is-donald-trump-a-fascist-no-hes-a-new-brand-of-authoritarian-241586
MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –
January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi lays foundation stone and inaugurates various development projects worth over Rs 4,900 crore in Amreli, Gujarat

Source: Government of India

Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi lays foundation stone and inaugurates various development projects worth over Rs 4,900 crore in Amreli, Gujarat

These projects will significantly improve the ease of living for the people and accelerate the region’s growth : PM

Posted On: 28 OCT 2024 7:45PM by PIB Delhi

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone and inaugurated various development projects worth over Rs 4,900 crores in Amreli, Gujarat today. Today’s development projects comprise rail, road, water development and tourism sectors. They will benefit the citizens of Amreli, Jamnagar, Morbi, Devbhoomi Dwarka, Junagadh, Porbandar, Kachchh and Botad districts of the state.

Addressing the gathering, the Prime Minister highlighted the festive spirit of Dhanteras and Diwali noting that while these festivals celebrate culture, the ongoing progress in development is equally significant. He shared updates on several major projects across Gujarat mentioning his visit to Vadodara where he inaugurated India’s first factory dedicated to manufacturing Made in India aircraft for the Indian Air Force. The Prime Minister mentioned inaugurating Bharat Mata Sarovar in Amreli earlier today and said that several large projects related to water, roads and railways have been inaugurated and the foundation laid here. He said that these projects would ease the lives of people in Saurashtra and Kutch, accelerate regional development, enrich local farmers and create new employment opportunities for the youth. He congratulated everyone on the development projects of today.

Remarking that the land of Amreli in Saurashtra had given many gems to India, the Prime Minister said that Amreli has a glorious past in every way, historically, culturally, literary- related and politically. He added that Amreli is the karmabhoomi of Shri Yogiji Maharaj and Bhoja Bhagat as well as folk singer and poet Dulabhayya Kag, poets like Kalapi, world-famous magician, K Lal and the leader of modern poetry, Ramesh Parekh. He further added that Amreli has also given Gujarat its first Chief Minister, Shri Jivraj Mehta ji. Shri Modi noted that the children of Amreli have also earned a big name in the business world with huge contributions to the society. He added that this tradition has been strengthened by the Dholkaiya Family, which was associated with the 80/20 schemes related to water conservation of the Gujarat government. The Prime Minister also noted that the changes were evident due to the continuous efforts in the last two and a half decades.

The Prime Minister emphasized the importance of water, particularly for the people of Gujarat and Saurashtra who have long faced water-related challenges. He reflected on the past when Saurashtra was known for migration due to water scarcity and said, “Today, the situation has transformed. Now, Narmada water reaches villages” as he lauded government initiatives like Jalsanchay and the Sauni scheme that have significantly raised groundwater levels. He said that the issue of floods can be mitigated and rainwater can also be stored effectively with river deepening and the construction of check dams. He further added that issues related to drinking water in surrounding areas would also be addressed benefitting millions of people.

The Prime Minister highlighted Gujarat’s remarkable progress over the past two decades in ensuring water reaches every household and farm, setting an example for the entire nation. He said that the state’s continuous efforts to provide water to every corner are ongoing and today’s projects will further benefit millions of people in the region. Shri Modi informed that the Navda-Chavand Bulk Pipeline project would benefit nearly 1,300 villages and over 35 cities impacting districts like Amreli, Botad, Junagadh, Rajkot, and Porbandar. He said that the initiative would supply an additional 30 crore liters of water every day to these regions. Referring to the foundation stone laying for the second phase of the Pasvi Group Saurashtra Regional Water Supply Scheme, the Prime Minister said that it would address the needs of Talaja, Mahuva, and Palitana talukas. “Once completed, around 100 villages will directly benefit from this project”, he informed.

The Prime Minister said that the water projects of today exemplify the collaborative power of government and society with public participation at the core. He highlighted the success of linking India’s 75th year of independence with water conservation initiatives through the creation of at least 75 Amrit Sarovars in each district. Shri Modi expressed happiness over 60,000 Amrit Sarovars constructed across villages leaving behind a legacy for future generations. He praised the Catch the Rain campaign, which is gaining momentum under the leadership of Shri C R Patil. The Prime Minister informed that the campaign is making significant strides in states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar with thousands of recharge wells being constructed through community participation. Shri Modi also acknowledged the enthusiasm of people coming forward to build recharge wells in their ancestral villages, stressing how the initiative ensures local water retention in villages and fields. He noted the commencement of hundreds of projects today, aimed at promoting agriculture and livestock through water conservation.

The Prime Minister underscored that now due to the availability of more water, farming had become easier and with the water of Narmada, three-season farming was now possible in Amreli. “Today, Amreli district has emerged as a leader in the field of farming”, exclaimed the PM. He noted that cultivation of crops like cotton, groundnut, sesame and millet was getting a boost and Amreli’s pride, Kesar mango, had received a GI tag. He added that GI tag status meant Amreli’s identity was associated with Kesar mango, wherever it was sold in the world. The Prime Minister also emphasized that Amreli was rapidly emerging as a major center of natural farming and the country’s first Natural Farming University was being built in Halol. He added that under this university, Amreli had got Gujarat’s first Natural Farming College. Shri Modi said that the effort was to ensure more and more farmers can engage in animal husbandry and also be benefitted from natural farming. Highlighting that Amreli’s dairy industry has grown tremendously in recent years, Shri Modi said it was possible only due to the joint efforts of the government and cooperatives. Reminiscing the inception of Amar Dairy in 2007 when government committees of 25 villages were associated with it, Shri Modi said “Today more than 700 cooperative societies were associated with Amar Dairy and about 1.25 lakh liters of milk was being collected every day”.

Touching upon Amreli’s rise to fame in the sweet revolution, Shri Modi said honey production had given the farmers an additional source of income. He noted that hundreds of farmers of Amreli had started businesses related to honey after being trained in beekeeping.

Speaking about the PM Surya Garh Yojana to eliminate electricity bills and generate income from electricity ensuring an annual savings of ₹25,000 to ₹30,000 for each family, the Prime Minister informed that approximately 200,000 solar panels have been installed on rooftops across Gujarat in just a few months since its implementation. He highlighted that Amreli district is rapidly advancing in solar energy exemplified by Dudhala village, where hundreds of households have solar panels installed. As a result, the Prime Minister said, the village is saving around Rs 75,000 per month in electricity bills with each home benefiting from an annual saving of ₹4,000. “Dudhala is quickly becoming Amreli’s first solar village”, he added.

Noting that Saurashtra is a significant hub for tourism hosting numerous sacred sites and places of faith, the Prime Minister emphasized the importance of Sardar Sarovar Dam as a major tourist attraction. He informed that over 50 lakh visitors came to see the world’s tallest statue of Sardar Patel last year. He spoke about visiting the site in two days for Sardar Saheb’s Jayanti and witnessing the Rashtriya Ekta Parade.

The Prime Minister emphasized that Kerly Recharge Reservoir would become a major centre of eco-tourism in the times to come and Adventure tourism will get a big boost. He further added that it would also give a new identity to Kerly Bird Sanctuary in the world.

Highlighting the long coastline of Gujarat, Shri Modi remarked that the development along with preservation of heritage was the priority of the Government. Therefore, he added, that the centuries-old heritage related to fisheries and ports was being revived. The Prime Minister noted the approval of the construction of the National Maritime Heritage Complex in Lothal by the Government and said that the move would introduce and inspire the country and the world to India’s glorious maritime heritage.

“Our endeavor is that the blue water of the ocean should give impetus to the blue revolution”, stated Shri Modi. He added that Port-led development should strengthen the resolve of a developed India. The Prime Minister informed that better infrastructure was being expanded for fishermen in Jafrabad, Shiyalbet; while the modernisation of the Pipavav port in Amreli had created new employment opportunities for thousands of people today along with the capacity to handle more than 10 lakh containers and thousands of vehicles. Shri Modi emphasized the Government’s endeavor to modernize the connectivity of Pipavav port and every such port in Gujarat with other parts of the country.

The Prime Minister reiterated that infrastructure such as pucca homes for the poor, electricity, roads, railways, airports and gas pipelines is essential for building a Viksit Bharat. He affirmed that the government in its third term is working swiftly on infrastructure development. He highlighted that the benefits of improved infrastructure connectivity in Saurashtra have significantly boosted industrial growth. “Launch of the ro-ro ferry service has simplified connectivity between Saurashtra and Surat with over 7 lakh people benefiting from it in recent years. More than 1 lakh cars and over 75,000 trucks and buses have been transported, saving both time and money”, he added.

The Prime Minister also mentioned the rapid progress in constructing the economic corridor from Jamnagar to Amritsar-Bhatinda, stating, “This project will benefit all states from Gujarat to Punjab. Today’s inaugurations and foundation-laying of road projects will improve connectivity for major industrial centers like Jamnagar and Morbi, enhancing access to cement factories as well as facilitating easier pilgrimages to Somnath and Dwarka.” He further added that the expansion of railway connectivity in Kutch will further strengthen tourism and industrialization in Saurashtra and Kutch.

“As India is developing rapidly, India’s pride in the world is also increasing continuously”, said the Prime Minister. He added that today the world was looking at India with a new perspective and recognizing India’s potential and listening to India seriously. Noting that everyone was discussing India’s possibilities these days, Shri Modi emphasized that Gujarat had a huge role in it. He remarked that Gujarat had shown the world about the potential India has in every city and village. Mentioning his recent visit to the BRICS conference in Russia, Shri Modi emphasized that everyone wanted to connect and invest in India. The Prime Minister also mentioned the recent visit of the Chancellor of Germany and the signing of many agreements with him. He added that Germany had now increased the annual visa quota to 90 thousand as against the current 20 thousand which would benefit the Indian youth. Shri Modi also highlighted today’s visit of the President of Spain to Gujarat and the huge investment of Spain in the form of a transport aircraft manufacturing factory in Vadodara. He added that it would give a boost to thousands of small and micro industries in Gujarat along with the development of a complete ecosystem for aircraft manufacturing leading to creation of lakhs of new employment opportunities.

Concluding the address, the Prime Minister said, “When I was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, I used to say that the country develops through the development of Gujarat. A Viksit Gujarat will strengthen the path to a Viksit India”, as he congratulated everyone for the development projects of today.

Governor of Gujarat, Shri Acharya Devvrat, Chief Minister of Gujarat, Shri Bhupendra Patel, Union Minister of Jal Shakti, Shri C R Patil and Member of Parliament, Shri Parshottam Rupala were present on the occasion among others.

Background

The Prime Minister inaugurated the Bharat Mata Sarovar in Dudhala, Amreli. This project was developed through a collaboration between the Government of Gujarat and the Dholkaiya Foundation under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model. Dholkaiya Foundation improved a check dam, which originally, the dam could hold 4.5 crore litres of water but after deepening, widening, and reinforcing it, the capacity has increased to 24.5 crore litres. This improvement has raised water levels in nearby wells and bores which will help local villages and farmers by providing better irrigation.

Further, the Prime Minister inaugurated and laid the foundation stone of projects worth around Rs 4,900 Crore at Amreli, Gujarat. These projects will benefit the citizens of Amreli, Jamnagar, Morbi, Devbhoomi Dwarka, Junagadh, Porbandar, Kachchh, and Botad districts of the state.

The Prime Minister inaugurated and laid the foundation stone for various road projects worth more than Rs 2,800 crores. The projects include four-laning of various sections of NH 151, NH 151A and NH 51 and the Junagadh bypass. The foundation stone for the four-laning project of the remaining section from the Dhrol bypass in Jamnagar district to Amran in Morbi district, will also be laid.

The Prime Minister dedicated to the nation Bhuj-Naliya Rail Gauge Conversion Project, completed at a cost of around Rs 1,100 crores. This extensive project features 24 major bridges, 254 minor bridges, 3 road overbridges and 30 road underbridges, and will play a crucial role in enhancing the socio-economic development of Kachchh district.

The Prime Minister inaugurated and laid the foundation stone for various development projects worth over Rs 700 crore of the water supply department from Amreli district. Projects inaugurated include Navda to Chavand bulk pipeline which will provide an additional 28 crore litres of water to approximately 67 lakh beneficiaries across 36 cities and 1,298 villages of Botad, Amreli, Junagadh, Rajkot, and Porbandar districts. The foundation stone of Pasavi Group Augmentation Water Supply Scheme Phase 2 in Bhavnagar district will also be laid which will benefit 95 villages in the Mahuva, Talaja, and Palitana talukas, in Bhavnagar district.

The Prime Minister also laid the foundation stone for tourism-related development initiatives which includes transforming the Karli Recharge Reservoir at Mokarsagar in Porbandar district into a world-class sustainable eco-tourism destination, among others.

Speaking at the launch of development works in Amreli. These projects will significantly improve the ease of living for the people and accelerate the region’s growth.https://t.co/xNpu3ZV3RG

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) October 28, 2024

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MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Is Donald Trump a fascist? Here’s what an expert thinks

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Benedetta Carnaghi, British Academy Newton International Fellow, Department of History, Durham University

Gen. John Kelly, Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, went public this week with his concerns that the former president met the definition of a fascist. Speaking to the New York Times, Kelly declared that Trump “would govern like a dictator if allowed”. Days later in an interview vice-president Kamala Harris agreed with him.

Trump replied in his usual style. On Truth Social, he called Kelly a “degenerate … who made up a story out of pure Trump Derangement Syndrome Hatred”. He also posted on X, falsely accusing Harris of “going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind”. In fact, Harris has not called him “Hitler”. Funnily enough, it was his own running mate, J.D. Vance, who once called him “America’s Hitler” in a private text message.

Helpfully, Kelly also provided a surprisingly rigorous definition of fascism, a term famously flexible as both a political concept and a political insult. He described it as “a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterised by a dictatorial leader, centralised autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy”.

This is remarkably close to widely accepted historical definitions of the political tendency that arose with the foundation of Italy’s fascist movement in 1919 and spread across interwar Europe. Federico Finchelstein, professor of history at the New School for Social Research, has summed it up as “a political ideology that encompassed totalitarianism, state terrorism, imperialism, racism, and, in Germany’s case … the Holocaust”.

Historians on fascism

Historians have been debating whether the term applies to Trump since his first presidential campaign and his election on November 9 2016. Very early on, in a 2015 conversation with a Vice reporter, Cornell University history professor Isabel Hull stated that Trump was “not principled enough to be a fascist”. She described him as more of a “nativist-populist”.

Finchelstein wrote an entire book to explain the difference between historical fascism and contemporary populism. While they share many features, he argued fascism is a form of dictatorship while populism functions within the boundaries of democracy.

Yet, populism can turn into fascism when it resorts to the practices of identifying and persecuting internal enemies. Timothy Snyder, a professor of history and global affairs at Yale University, has repeatedly stated that Trump is indeed a fascist, recently telling Vanity Fair that Americans might just quietly adapt to the “banality” of tyranny.

Read more:
How Elon Musk has become a powerful figure in US politics

Finchelstein’s own perspective evolved after January 6 2021, when Trump appeared to incite his supporters to attack the United States Capitol, in order to prevent a peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden. In response, Finchelstein wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in which he argued that Trump had outgrown the populist camp and was now assuming the fascist mantle as a definitive threat to democracy.

And Finchelstein was not the only one to consider January 6 an irrevocable turning point. Robert Paxton, Mellon professor emeritus of social sciences at Columbia University, also changed his mind, writing that the “[fascist] label now seems not just acceptable but necessary”.

Others remain unconvinced. Richard Evans, an emeritus professor at Cambridge University, feels that Trump was not a fascist, arguing in the New Statesman that “6 January was not a coup” and “the attack on Congress was not a pre-planned attempt to seize the reins of government”.

According to Evans, Trump doesn’t display the classic fascist hunger for conquest and expansionist violence, and it is politically unwise for his opponents to fixate on a past category rather than analysing his politics as a new phenomenon.

Meanwhile, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, remains more divided on the issue. She wrote in an essay that “in some ways, the label of Fascism is too reductive for Trump” because he “praises Communist dictators as much as he praises the Fascistic leaders”, but “it is beyond doubt that Trump has provided a new stage and a new context for fascist ideologies and practices”.

Kamala Harris has called Donald Trump a fascist.

I believe that Trump would act as fully-fledged fascist if he could. The question is: will the American people let him do so? He has, in fact, enacted fascist-lite policies to the extent that his power allowed.

He attempted to overturn a democratic election; he nominated Supreme Court justices to effectively overturn Roe v Wade and govern women’s bodies. He also created additional procedural barriers to prevent immigrants from seeking asylum in America, some of which are reminiscent of fascist racial laws. He also threatened to deploy the military and law enforcement to target political opponents.

However, he has so far been forced to operate within the boundaries of the democratic rule of law. If the American people vote him into power a second time, there is no guarantee that those boundaries will hold. If fascism repeats itself, it will be as tragedy again — not farce.

Benedetta Carnaghi receives funding from the British Academy as a Newton International Fellow at Durham University.

– ref. Is Donald Trump a fascist? Here’s what an expert thinks – https://theconversation.com/is-donald-trump-a-fascist-heres-what-an-expert-thinks-242243

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

January 25, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Chair’s Statement Fiftieth Meeting of the IMFC – Mr. Mohammed Aljadaan, Minister for Finance of Saudi Arabia
Source: IMF – News in Russian

October 25, 2024

In the context of the Fiftieth Meeting of the IMFC that took place in Washington, D.C. on 24th and 25th October, several IMFC members discussed the global macroeconomic and financial impact of current wars and conflicts, including with regard to Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, and in other places. IMFC members underscored that all states must act in a manner consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter in its entirety. They acknowledged, however, that the IMFC is not a forum to resolve geopolitical and security issues which are discussed in other fora.

****

IMFC members agreed on the following text:

Securing a soft landing and breaking from the current low growth-high debt path are the policy priorities for the global economy. We welcome the IMF’s efforts to enhance its surveillance, lending toolkit, and capacity development, and become more representative. Looking ahead, we remain committed to multilateral cooperation to promote global prosperity and address shared challenges.
1. The global economy has moved closer to a soft landing. Economic activity has proven resilient, with global growth steady and inflation continuing to moderate. However, this masks important divergences across countries. Uncertainty remains significant and some downside risks have increased. Ongoing wars and conflicts continue to impose a heavy burden on the global economy. Medium-term growth prospects remain weak, and global public debt has reached record highs.
1. We will work to further secure a soft landing while stepping up our reform efforts to shift away from a low growth-high debt path and address other medium-term challenges. Fiscal policy should pivot toward consolidation, where needed, to ensure debt sustainability and rebuild buffers. Consolidation should be underpinned by credible medium-term plans and institutional frameworks while protecting the vulnerable and supporting growth-enhancing public and private investments. Monetary policy must ensure inflation returns durably to target, consistent with central bank mandates, remain data-dependent, and be well communicated. Financial sector authorities should continue to closely monitor risks in banks and non-banks, including from property markets. We will continue to enhance financial regulation and supervision, including via timely finalization and implementation of internationally agreed reforms, and harness the benefits of financial and technological innovation, while mitigating the risks. We will pursue well-calibrated and sequenced growth-enhancing structural reforms to ease binding constraints to economic activity, boost productivity, increase labor market participation, promote social cohesion, and support the climate and digital transitions.
1. We remain committed to international cooperation to improve the resilience of the global economy and build prosperity, while ensuring the smooth functioning of the international monetary system. We reiterate our commitments on exchange rates, addressing excessive global imbalances, and our statement on the rules-based multilateral trading system, as made in April 2021, and reaffirm our commitment to avoid protectionist measures.
1. We will continue to support countries as they undertake reforms and address debt vulnerabilities and liquidity challenges. We welcome the progress made on debt treatments under the G20 Common Framework (CF) and beyond. We remain committed to addressing global debt vulnerabilities in an effective, comprehensive, and systematic manner, including stepping up the CF’s implementation in a predictable, timely, orderly, and coordinated manner, and enhancing debt transparency. We look forward to further work at the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable on ways to address debt vulnerabilities and restructuring challenges. We encourage the IMF and the World Bank to develop further their proposal to support countries with sustainable debt but experiencing liquidity challenges.
1. We welcome the policy priorities set out in the Managing Director’s Global Policy Agenda, and welcome the start of Ms. Kristalina Georgieva’s second five-year term as Managing Director.
1. We support the IMF’s surveillance focus on country-tailored advice to help members assess risks, bolster policy and institutional frameworks, and calibrate macrofinancial and macrostructural policies to enhance resilience, ensure debt sustainability, and boost inclusive and sustainable growth. We look forward to the Comprehensive Surveillance Review that will set future surveillance priorities.
1. We welcome the recent reforms to the lending toolkit. We welcome the completion of the review of PRGT facilities and financing that aims to bolster the IMF’s capacity to support low-income countries in addressing their balance of payments needs, mindful of their vulnerabilities, while restoring the self-sustainability of the Trust. We welcome the Review of Charges and the Surcharge Policy, which will alleviate the financial cost of Fund lending for borrowing countries, while preserving their intended incentives and safeguarding the Fund’s financial soundness. We welcome the enhanced cooperation with the World Bank on climate action, and with the World Bank and the World Health Organization on pandemic preparedness, which will further enhance the effectiveness of IMF support through the Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST). We look forward to the Review of the GRA Access Limits, the Review of Program Design and Conditionality, the Review of the Short-term Liquidity Line, and the comprehensive Review of the RST. We continue to invite countries to explore voluntary channeling of SDRs, including through MDBs, where legally possible, while preserving their reserve asset status.
1. We support the IMF’s efforts to strengthen capacity development and to secure appropriate financing. We welcome the ongoing work with the World Bank on the Domestic Resource Mobilization Initiative.
1. We reaffirm our commitment to a strong, quota-based, and adequately resourced IMF at the center of the global financial safety net. We have secured, or are working to secure, domestic approvals for our consent to the quota increase under the 16^th General Review of Quotas (GRQ) by mid-November this year, as well as relevant adjustments under the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB). As a safeguard to preserve the Fund’s lending capacity in case of a delay in securing timely consent to the quota increase, creditors for Bilateral Borrowing Agreements are working to secure approvals for transitional arrangements for maintaining IMF access to bilateral borrowing. We acknowledge the urgency and importance of realignment in quota shares to better reflect members’ relative positions in the world economy, while protecting the quota shares of the poorest members. We welcome the Executive Board’s ongoing work to develop by June 2025 possible approaches as a guide for further quota realignment, including through a new quota formula, under the 17^th
1. We welcome the new 25^th chair on the Executive Board for Sub-Saharan Africa, strengthening the voice and representation of the region. We also welcome Liechtenstein as a new member. We appreciate staff’s high-quality work and dedication to support the membership. We encourage further efforts to improve staff diversity and inclusion. We reiterate our commitment to strengthen gender diversity at the Executive Board and will continue to work to achieve the voluntary objectives to increase the number of women in Board leadership positions.
1. We reiterate our strong commitment to the Fund on its 80^th anniversary and look forward to further discussing at our next meeting ways to ensure the Fund remains well-equipped to meet future challenges, in line with its mandate, and in collaboration with partners and other IFIs. We ask our Deputies to prepare for this discussion.
1. Our next meeting is expected to be held in April 2025.
Chair

Mohammed Aljadaan, Minister of Finance, Saudi Arabia

Managing Director

Kristalina Georgieva

Members or Alternates

Ayman Alsayari, Governor of the Saudi Central Bank, Saudi Arabia (Alternate for Mohammed Aljadaan, Minister of Finance, Saudi Arabia)

Mohammed bin Hadi Al Hussaini, Minister of State for Financial Affairs, United Arab Emirates

Antoine Armand, Minister of Economy, Finance, and Industry, France

Luis Caputo, Minister of Economy, Argentina

Jim Chalmers, Treasurer of Australia

Carlos Cuerpo, Minister of Economy, Trade and Enterprise, Spain

Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Canada

Giancarlo Giorgetti, Minister of Economy and Finance, Italy

Fernando Haddad, Minister of Finance, Brazil

Eelco Heinen, Minister of Finance, The Netherlands

Robert Holzmann, Governor of the Austrian National Bank, Austria

Katsunobu Kato, Minister of Finance, Japan

Karin Keller-Sutter, Minister of Finance, Switzerland

Lesetja Kganyago, Governor, South African Reserve Bank, South Africa

Christian Lindner, Federal Minister of Finance, Germany

Mays Mouissi, Minister of Economy and Participations, Gabon

Changneng Xuan, Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China (Alternate for Gongsheng Pan, Governor of the People’s Bank of China)

Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, H.M. Treasury, United Kingdom

Ivan Chebeskov, Deputy Minister of Finance, Russian Federation (Alternate for Anton Siluanov, Minister of Finance, Russian Federation)

Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Finance, India

Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput, Governor, Bank of Thailand

Salah-Eddine Taleb, Governor, Bank of Algeria

Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, Minister for Finance, Norway

Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury, United States

Observers

Agustín Carstens, General Manager, Bank for International Settlements (BIS)

Mohamed bin Hadi Al Hussaini, Chair, Development Committee (DC) and Minister of State for Financial Affairs, United Arab Emirates

Christine Lagarde, President, European Central Bank (ECB)

Paolo Gentiloni, Commissioner for Economy, European Commission (EC)

Klaas Knot, Chair, Financial Stability Board (FSB) and President of De Nederlandsche Bank

Richard Samans, Director, Research Department, International Labour Organization (ILO)

Mathias Cormann, Secretary-General, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Mohannad Alsuwaidan, Economic Analyst, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

Ahunna Eziakonwa, Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Assistant Administrator, United Nations (UN)

Penelope Hawkins, Officer-in-Charge, Debt and Development Finance Branch, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)

Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group, The World Bank (WB)

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General, World Trade Organization (WTO)

IMF Communications Department

MEDIA RELATIONS

PRESS OFFICER: Randa Elnagar

Phone: +1 202 623-7100Email: MEDIA@IMF.org

@IMFSpokesperson

https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/10/25/pr24396-chairs-statement-fiftieth-meeting-of-the-imfc

MIL OSI
MIL OSI Russia News –
January 25, 2025

Category: Germany

Donald Trump: Disrupter-in-chief

Kamala Harris: Alliance and engagement

What next?

Root of eugenics

Trump’s recycling of history

A dangerous flash to the past

What is the UNRWA?

Is the UNRWA political?

‘An unmitigated disaster’

Role of masculinity in 2020 election

Trump’s re-energised protective masculinity

Harris, gender and the women’s vote

Harris and “tonic” masculinity

Can Harris mobilise protective femininity?

Why the outcome of this election is crucial for gender equality.

Jan. – Sept.2024

Jan. – Sept. 2023

Change in %

July – Sept.2024

July – Sept. 2023

Change in %

Revenue and result

Total revenue

€m

28,137

26,681

5

10,738

10,275

5

Of which traffic revenue

€m

23,578

22,583

4

9,246

8,832

5

Adjusted EBIT

€m

1,177

2,280

-48

1,340

1,468

-9

Adjusted EBIT margin

%

4.2%

8.5%

-4.3%p

12.5

14.3

-1.8%p

EBIT

€m

1,249

2,218

-44

1,461

1,441

1

Net profit / loss

€m

830

1,606

-48

1,095

1,192

-8

Earnings per Share

€

0,69

1,34

Jan. – Sept.
2024

July – Sept.
2024