NewzIntel.com

Category: Latin America

  • MIL-OSI NGOs: The human cost of the repressive cooperation between the US and El Salvador

    Source: Amnesty International –

    Against the backdrop of President Nayib Bukele’s official visit to the White House on 14 April, Amnesty International released a public statement warning of the deepening human rights crisis in El Salvador and the complicit stance now taken by the United States by partaking in repressive practices that violate international law.

    In the light of the recent arbitrary expulsion of Venezuelan nationals from the United States to CECOT, a Salvadoran mega prison, which has not only worsened the human rights situation in El Salvador, but also sets an alarming precedent of repressive cooperation between governments leading to the enforced disappearance of 261 individuals, Ana Piquer, Americas director at Amnesty International, said:

    “El Salvador is implementing a systematic state policy of massive and arbitrary deprivation of liberty. After three years, more than 85,000 individuals remain behind bars without sufficient admissible evidence, the victims of a judicial system now transformed into a tool for collective punishment and widespread repression. Attempts to export this policy to the situation of Venezuelan migrants and refugees in the United States highlights the lack of protection and the risk that hundreds of thousands of people now face of having their human rights violated by not one, not two, but three different states.

    El Salvador is implementing a systematic state policy of massive and arbitrary deprivation of liberty. (…) Attempts to export this policy to the situation of Venezuelan migrants and refugees in the United States highlights the lack of protection and the risk that hundreds of thousands of people now face of having their human rights violated by not one, not two, but three different states.

    Ana Piquer, Americas director at Amnesty International

    “This repressive cooperation has now led to the enforced disappearance of more than 200 Venezuelan nationals arbitrarily deported to El Salvador’s CECOT. This situation further entrenches the vulnerability of the victims, who have been deliberately deprived of their right to a defence, to due process and contact with their relatives and lawyers, causing deep distress to both those detained and their families. Cooperation between states must be centred on improving the living conditions of the population, not on dismantling their human rights.”

    Amnesty International called on the Salvadoran and US authorities to bring an immediate end to these actions, ensure full respect for human rights, restore due process, guarantee the right to asylum and the principle of non-refoulement, and effectively protect all detainees from torture, incommunicado detention and enforced disappearance.

    Piquer concluded: “We remind the authorities in El Salvador and the United States of America that the rights to freedom, a fair trial, asylum, legal defence and protection against torture and enforced disappearance are not privileges, but rather obligations that their governments must uphold at all times. Security cannot be built on the ashes of justice, nor can models that replace the violence of criminal organizations with institutional violence be considered a success.“

    We remind the authorities in El Salvador and the United States of America that the rights to freedom, a fair trial, asylum, legal defence and protection against torture and enforced disappearance are not privileges, but rather obligations that their governments must uphold at all times. Security cannot be built on the ashes of justice, nor can models that replace the violence of criminal organizations with institutional violence be considered a success

    Ana Piquer, Americas director at Amnesty International

    MIL OSI NGO –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Governor Newsom files lawsuit to end President Trump’s tariffs

    Source: US State of California 2

    Apr 16, 2025

    What you need to know: California today filed a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s authority to unilaterally enact tariffs, which have created economic chaos, driven up prices, and harmed the state, families, and businesses.

    SACRAMENTO – Governor Gavin Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta today filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging President Trump’s use of emergency powers to enact broad-sweeping tariffs that hurt states, consumers, and businesses. The lawsuit argues that President Trump lacks the authority to unilaterally impose tariffs through the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, creating immediate and irreparable harm to California, the largest economy, manufacturing, and agriculture state in the nation. 

    These tariffs have disrupted supply chains, inflated costs for the state and Californians, and inflicted billions in damages on California’s economy, the fifth largest in the world.

    “President Trump’s unlawful tariffs are wreaking chaos on California families, businesses, and our economy — driving up prices and threatening jobs. We’re standing up for American families who can’t afford to let the chaos continue.”

    Governor Gavin Newsom

    “The President’s chaotic and haphazard implementation of tariffs is not only deeply troubling, it’s illegal. As the fifth largest economy in the world, California understands global trade policy is not just a game. Californians are bracing for fallout from the impact of the President’s choices — from farmers in the Central Valley, to small businesses in Sacramento, and worried families at the kitchen table — this game the President is playing has very real consequences for Californians across our state. I am proud to go to bat alongside Governor Newsom to fight for California’s vibrant economy, businesses, and residents.”

    Attorney General Rob Bonta

    The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, requests the court to declare the tariffs imposed by President Trump void and enjoin their implementation. 
     

    The President lacks authority to enact unilateral tariffs

    The lawsuit argues that President Trump lacks the authority to unilaterally impose tariffs against Mexico, China, and Canada or create an across-the-board 10% tariff. The President’s use of the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA) to enact tariffs is unlawful and unprecedented. 
     

    The IEEPA gives the President authority to take certain actions if he declares a national emergency in response to a foreign national security, foreign policy, or economic threat.  The law, which was enacted by Congress in 1977, specifies many different actions the President can take, but tariffs aren’t one of them. In fact, this is the first time a president has attempted to rely on this law to impose tariffs. 
     

    Supreme Court precedent

    The lawsuit invokes the U.S. Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine, which holds that in novel matters of vast economic and political significance, federal agencies and the executive branch must have clear and specific authorization from Congress. In recent years, the Court has applied this standard to strike down major initiatives, including President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, ruling that novel executive actions with broad impacts on the national economy cannot rest on vague statutory authority. 

    It is difficult to imagine a more economically significant set of actions than the one Trump is taking on tariffs, which have inflicted hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses on a whim, using a statute that doesn’t mention tariffs. The Court, applying this doctrine even-handedly, will find that such expansive action absent congressional approval is a clear violation of the law. 

    California is the backbone of the nation’s economy 

    California’s gross domestic product was $3.9 trillion in 2023, making it 50% bigger than the GDP of the nation’s next-largest state, Texas. The state drives national economic growth and also sends over $83 billion more to the federal government than it receives in federal funding. California is the leading agricultural producer in the country and is also the center for manufacturing output in the United States, with over 36,000 manufacturing firms employing over 1.1 million Californians. The Golden State’s manufacturing firms have created new industries and supplied the world with manufactured goods spanning aerospace, computers and electronics, and, most recently, zero-emission vehicles.

    The Golden State is global leader in two-way trade

    California engaged in nearly $675 billion in two-way trade in 2024, supporting millions of jobs throughout the state. California’s economy and workers rely heavily on this trade activity, particularly with Mexico, Canada, and China – our top 3 trade partners. Over 40% of California imports come from these countries, totaling $203 billion of the more than $491 billion in goods imported by California in 2024. These countries are also our top three export destinations, buying nearly $67 billion in California exports, which was over one-third of the state’s $183 billion in exported goods in 2024. 

    Tariffs irreparably harm California businesses and consumers

    As the largest economy in the nation, the largest agriculture state in the nation, and the largest U.S. trading partner, the harm of the tariffs on the state of California is immense. President Trump’s policies have already inflicted hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses. 

    Tariffs have an outsized impact on California businesses, including its more than 60,000 small business exporters. 

    Standing up for California families and businesses 

    Governor Newsom has responded quickly to help reduce negative impacts from the Trump tariffs on California’s economy and maintain California’s strong partnerships worldwide. Today’s lawsuit follows the Governor’s recent announcement of California’s goal to create new strategic trade relationships with international partners aimed at strengthening shared economic resilience and protecting California’s manufacturers, workers, farmers, businesses, and supply chains.  The Governor has also announced a new international campaign to help maintain the strong tourism partnership between California and Canada.

    More opposition to President Trump’s tariffs

    U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas): “Listen, I love President Trump, I’m his strongest supporter, and I think he’s doing incredible things as president. But here’s one thing to understand, a tariff is a tax.”

    U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky): “Every dollar collected in tariff revenue comes straight out of the pockets of American consumers.”

    U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska): “And if the global implications of these tariffs have shown us nothing else, it’s that measures that are as important as these should be considered by the 535 elected individuals that are in tune with the American people, rather than vesting that with just one individual acting unilaterally.”

    Ben Shapiro, political commentator: “The idea that this is inherently good and makes the American economy strong is wrongheaded; it is untrue…”

    U.S. Chamber of Commerce: “What we have heard from business of all sizes, across all industries, from around the country is that these broad tariffs are a tax increase that will raise prices for American consumers and hurt the economy.”

    National Retail Federation: “American consumers could lose between $46 billion and $78 billion in spending power each year if new tariffs on imports to the United States are implemented.”

    The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: “The dumbest trade war in history.”

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    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Europe: The sunny side of green energy

    Source: European Investment Bank

    A combination of characteristics makes Chile a potential leader in the production of green hydrogen in Latin America and the Caribbean (alongside Brazil and Colombia).

    Green hydrogen is produced using electrolysers, which split water into hydrogen and oxygen through a process that requires substantial electricity. To qualify as green, this electricity must come entirely from renewable energy sources.

    “Around 65% of the cost of green hydrogen production is related to electricity,” explains Enrique Rodriguez Flores, an energy transition specialist at the European Investment Bank. “The electricity needs to be green, so we look for places with the best renewable energy conditions for electricity generation. Wind and solar are intermittent by nature, but in some areas of Chile, especially in Patagonia in the south and in Atacama in the north, the conditions are so good that they offer a degree of stability.”

    Chile also has political and economic stability. “Promoting billions of euros in private investment requires a secure environment for making investments,” Rodriguez Flores says. “This includes regulation, government support and other such aspects.”

    The Green Hydrogen Fund for Chile – a Team Europe initiative by the European Investment Bank, the German development bank KfW and the EU delegation in Chile – will support a wide range of hydrogen projects, from water desalination and renewable power generation to storage and transport. As part of this initiative, the European Investment Bank is providing a €100 million loan to Chile to support private sector projects.

    “The plan is to have the private sector develop green hydrogen, initially with the support from the public sector, via subsidies and other support from multilateral development banks, which offer more than just financing,” says Gorriño Larrañaga, the EIB loan officer. “They also offer their expertise and high environmental and social standards.”

    MIL OSI Europe News –

  • MIL-OSI Canada: CBSA seizes over 17 kg of cocaine at Montréal-Trudeau Airport

    Source: Government of Canada News

    Montréal, Québec, April 16th, 2025 – Canada Border Services Agency

    On April 4, 2025, border services officers detected and seized 17.6 kg of cocaine at the Montréal-Trudeau airport. This seizure is the result of a Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) inspection of baggage from a flight from Rio Hato, Panama.

    Border services officers found several bricks of a white substance after examining a suitcase on the baggage carousel. A drug test confirmed the substance to be cocaine. A total of 16 bricks were seized, for an approximate value of $2,193,625.00 CAD. The drugs have been turned over to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and an investigation is currently underway.

    In 2024, the CBSA made 60 cocaine seizures in the Quebec Region for a total of 39.97 kg. Moreover, in 2024, across Canada, the CBSA seized 4,589 kg of cocaine at the border, an increase of 156% from 2023.

    MIL OSI Canada News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: ICE, law enforcement partners arrest more than 200 alien offenders during enhanced immigration enforcement operation in New York

    Source: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

    NEW YORK — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and law enforcement partners apprehended 206 illegal aliens during an enhanced targeted immigration enforcement operation focusing on egregious criminal alien offenders in and around New York City April 6-12.

    “New York is much safer today because of the hard work of ICE and our law enforcement partners,” said acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons. “Working with our partner agencies, ICE officers and agents arrested hundreds of alien offenders and removed them from the streets of New York. Throughout this enhanced enforcement operation, we targeted the most dangerous alien offenders in some of the most crime-infested neighborhoods in and around the city of New York. Our efforts resulted in 206 arrests in just one week. I commend the efforts of everyone involved, as all were truly committed to the success of this operation. ICE remains dedicated to our mission to prioritize public safety by arresting and removing illegal alien offenders from communities throughout this great nation.”

    During the week-long enhanced operation, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, ICE Homeland Security Investigations and their law enforcement partners from the Federal Bureau of Investigations; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; U.S. Marshals Service; U.S. State Department Diplomatic Security Service and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices from the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York targeted egregious criminal alien offenders including transnational criminal organizations known to operate in and around New York. These organizations include the notorious MS-13, Tren de Aragua, Sureños and 18th Street gangs.

    “The success of this enhanced operation highlights the resolve of ICE and our federal partners in keeping our country safe from violent criminal aliens,” said ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations New York City Acting Field Office Director Judith Almodovar. “The majority of the aliens arrested have egregious criminal histories to include manslaughter, rape, assault, drug trafficking and sex assault against minors. I am exceptionally grateful for the professionalism and dedication of our ICE New York City officers and special agents as well as the unwavering support from our partners in the FBI, DEA, ATF, USMS, DSS and the USAOs of both SDNY and EDNY during this week-long operation to remove dangerous alien offenders from our New York City communities.”

    ICE and their federal partners concentrated their efforts in and around the New York City area, but operations extended throughout Long Island and the Lower Hudson Valley region of New York.

    121 of the 206 apprehended had significant criminal convictions or are currently facing charges or for crimes such as murder, assault, arson, sex crimes, drug crimes and firearms crimes. One is a foreign fugitive wanted for crimes in his home country, and one has a conviction of homicide in the Philippines.

    ICE and their law enforcement partners made many of the apprehensions after local jurisdictions refused to honor immigration detainers and released the alien offenders back into their communities.

    Among those arrested during the enhanced targeted operation include:

    • Camilo Cesar Gonzales-Encalada, 23, an illegally present Spanish national and member of the Sureños gang whose criminal history includes convictions for assault, criminal possession of a loaded firearm and criminal possession of a controlled substance. Officers with ICE New York arrested Gonzales April 6.

    • Alexander Steven Jimbo-Perez, 25, an illegally present Ecuadoran national whose criminal history includes arrests assault with intent to cause physical injury, act in a manner to injure a child less than 17, criminal possession stolen property and harassment physical contact. Officers with ICE New York arrested Jimbo April 6.

    • Derrick Alphonso Roberts, 60 an illegally present Jamaican national whose criminal history includes convictions for manslaughter with intent to cause serious physical injury, criminal possession of controlled substance, criminal solicitation, corruption of minors, possessing an instrument of crime, terrorist threats, criminal conspiracy, cocaine possession with intent to distribute, carrying a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Officers with ICE New York City arrested Roberts April 7.

    • Luis Olmedo Quishpi-Poalasin, 35, an illegally present Ecuadoran national whose criminal history includes a conviction for rape: forcible compulsion, sexual abuse: contact by forcible compulsion, rape: anal sexual contact with a person incapable of consent, unlawful imprisonment, forcible touching – touch sexual/intimate parts of another person, sexual misconduct: engage in vaginal sexual contact without consent and sexual abuse: subject another person to sex contact without consent. Quishpi also has arrests for witness tampering: prevent testimony – fear of injury, criminal contempt: violate order protection – communicating with person, aggravated harassment – communicating threat by phone/computer/mail, unlawful imprisonment and various traffic charges including driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of property damage accident. Officers with ICE New York City arrested Quishpi April 7.

    • Edimar Alejandra Colmenares Mendoza, 22, an illegally present Venezuelan national and member of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang whose criminal history includes charges for conspiracy, larceny and possession of stolen property. Officers with ICE New York City arrested Colmenares April 8, 2025.

    • Marcos Tul-Guallpa, 39, an illegally present Guatemalan national whose criminal history includes an arrest for sexual abuse: subject another person to sex without consent and a conviction for acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17 years old. Officers with ICE New York City arrested Tul April 9.

    • Modesto Arias-Soto, 35, an illegally present Dominican national whose criminal history includes a conviction for conspiracy to distribute narcotics and an arrest for tampering with public records. Officers with ICE New York City arrested Arias April 9.

    • Jhonny Morocho-Veletanga, 32, an illegally present Ecuadoran national whose criminal history includes convictions for assault: causing injury to a non-participant during the commission of a felony and disorderly conduct: fight/violent behavior. ICE New York City arrested Morocho April 10.

    • Will Alexander Ordonez, 48, an illegally present Honduran national whose criminal history includes convictions for arson, criminal possession of controlled substance, criminal possession of stolen property, unlawful use of controlled substance, driving while intoxicated and false impersonation. Ordonez has numerous additional charges for criminal possession of controlled substance. Officers with ICE New York City arrested Ordonez April 11.

    • Jaime Gustavo Quizpi-Romero, 51, an illegally present Ecuadoran national whose criminal history includes arrests for assault: intent to cause physical injury with weapon/instrument and strangulation: obstruct breath/blood circulation causing serious injury. ICE New York City arrested Quizpi April 11.

    • Adnan Paulino-Flores, 58, an illegally present Mexican national whose criminal history includes arrests for sexual abuse: person incapable of consent – physically helpless, Sexual Abuse-3rd Degree: Subject Another Person to Sex Contact Without Consent, and Forcible Touching – Touch Sexual/Intimate Parts of Another Person, pending. Officers with ICE New York City arrested Paulino April 11.

    • Jose Felix Ortiz-Martinez, 49, an illegally present Mexican national whose criminal history includes a conviction for assault and an additional arrest for assault. Officers with ICE New York City arrested Ortiz April 12.

    Partner law enforcement participating in the operation were FBI New York; DEA New York; ATF New York; USMC New York; DSS New York and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York.

    Members of the public can report crimes and suspicious activity by dialing 866-DHS-2-ICE (866-347-2423) or completing the online tip form.

    Learn more about ICE’s mission to increase public safety in our communities on X: @ICEgov.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Attorney General Bonta Continues in the United Fight Against Human Trafficking, Joins Bipartisan Letter to Trump Administration

    Source: US State of California

    Wednesday, April 16, 2025

    Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.gov

    OAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today joined a bipartisan, multistate letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert Kennedy, Jr., advocating that the National Human Trafficking Hotline grant be awarded to an organization that demonstrates a willingness to work with law enforcement when they receive human trafficking tips from third parties.
     
    “Attorneys General nationwide have put in significant effort to educate the public about recognizing the signs of trafficking and how to report suspected cases to the Nationwide Human Trafficking Hotline,” said Attorney General Bonta. “It is imperative that the Hotline collaborate with law enforcement to ensure those tips are promptly reported and acted upon. Law enforcement relies on third-party tips to determine if a vulnerable victim is at risk from a trafficker. Even the smallest tip from a concerned citizen can play a significant role in an investigation, leading to the dismantling of a trafficking ring, rescuing trafficking victims from a life of violence, and providing critical support for victims through shelters and service providers. This intelligence is instrumental in ensuring the safety of those affected by trafficking and allowing survivors to rebuild their lives with assistance from dedicated organizations.”
     
    The letter outlines the crucial role the National Human Trafficking Hotline has played in the fight against human trafficking. However, in recent years, operators managing the Hotline have limited the way tips were shared with law enforcement agencies. The letter advocates for an approach that respects the wishes of victims while recognizing that an effective strategy to reduce human trafficking requires communicating third-party tips to law enforcement.
     
    Attorney General Bonta joins the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming in sending the letter.
     
    A copy of the letter can be found here.
     

    # # #

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Protecting the World’s 5th Largest Economy: Attorney General Bonta, Governor Newsom Sue Trump Administration Over Unlawful Imposition of Tariffs

    Source: US State of California Department of Justice

    Tariffs threaten California’s economy, people, small businesses 

    STANISLAUS COUNTY — California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Governor Gavin Newsom today filed a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s unlawful use of power to impose tariffs and direct the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) to implement and enforce those tariffs without the consent of Congress. Since early February, the Trump Administration has issued over a dozen executive orders under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to impose tariffs that have sent shockwaves through financial markets, businesses, and consumers in every corner of the globe. In the lawsuit today, Attorney General Bonta and Governor Newsom challenge the President’s use of the IEEPA to levy those tariffs, arguing that the IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose these tariffs. The emergency tariffs challenged under the lawsuit are projected to, at a minimum, shrink the U.S. economy by $100 billion annually, increase inflation by 1.3%, and cost the average American family $2,100. The economic impact of the President’s unlawful tariffs could have resounding impacts on California’s economy, budget, and consumers. California is a significant and frequent purchaser of goods impacted by the tariffs and the projected increase in cost to the state is significant. 

    “The President’s chaotic and haphazard implementation of tariffs is not only deeply troubling, it’s illegal. As the fifth largest economy in the world, California understands global trade policy is not just a game,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta. “Californians are bracing for fallout from the impact of the President’s choices — from farmers in the Central Valley, to small businesses in Sacramento, and worried families at the kitchen table — this game the President is playing has very real consequences for Californians across our state. I am proud to go to bat alongside Governor Newsom to fight for California’s vibrant economy, businesses, and residents.” 

    “President Trump’s unlawful tariffs are wreaking chaos on California families, businesses, and our economy — driving up prices and threatening jobs,” said Governor Gavin Newsom.“We’re standing up for American families who can’t afford to let the chaos continue.”

    California is the nation’s largest importer and second-largest exporter. The President’s tariffs will impact California’s businesses, including its ports and small businesses that rely on trade. California’s agricultural sector, which exports goods around the world, will also face particularized challenges as other countries impose retaliatory tariffs and decrease trade in response to President Trump’s tariffs. Furthermore, the tariffs directly harm California’s ability to contract, purchase, and sell goods. These effects are already too real: vendors who contract with California have indicated that they will pass their increased costs from President Trump’s tariffs on to the state directly.  

    Claiming authority under the IEEPA, President Trump has issued multiple executive orders to impose, pause, re-start, and modify 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada and a universal 10% tariff on every other U.S. trading partner. Separately and in addition, the President’s actions have goaded China into a full-blown trade war, with tariffs reaching 145% on Chinese goods, and China imposing reciprocal 125% tariffs on U.S. goods. Additionally, President Trump has imposed individualized reciprocal tariffs of up to 50% on nearly 90 specific countries; they are currently paused for 90 days before going into effect. Once the 90-day “pause” expires, the harms will only compound further. And new tariffs are being contemplated or announced nearly every day. 

    To justify his tariffs, the President has declared national emergencies and extended prior declared emergencies beyond the bounds of reason. But with or without emergencies, the President does not have the power to levy tariffs under the IEEPA.   

    The impacts of President Trump’s dizzying array of tariff plans have already wreaked havoc on our financial systems: the U.S. stock market suffered the largest two-day loss in its history in the two days following the announcement of President Trump’s most sweeping tariffs. These actions and the near-daily threats to impose new tariffs have already inflicted and continue to inflict serious financial harms on California. 

    The complaint filed today alleges that the Constitution expressly gives the authority to impose tariffs to Congress, not the President, and the IEEPA does not provide the required congressional authorization for President Trump to impose tariffs — Congress enacted the IEEPA to limit Presidential authority and to prevent Presidential abuse of power — not to give the President these powers. The complaint asks the court to declare that tariff orders made under the purported authority of the IEEPA are unlawful and void and to halt DHS and CPB from implementing and enforcing these orders.  

    A copy of the complaint is available here. 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Security: 11 Defendants Sentenced for Their Role in a Conspiracy to Traffic Fentanyl from the Mexico Border to Idaho

    Source: Office of United States Attorneys

    Combined Federal and State Investigation Resulted in the Seizure of over 48,000 Fentanyl Pills and Four Pounds of Methamphetamine

    BOISE – A large-scale Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) investigation and prosecution resulted in the conviction of 11 Idaho defendants on federal drug trafficking charges, Acting U.S. Attorney Justin Whatcott announced today.  The investigation involved the cooperative efforts of 10 federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.

    According to court records, beginning in early 2023, Idaho State Police (ISP) detectives received a tip that Austin Lee was distributing large quantities of fentanyl in southern Idaho.  In coordination with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and other agencies, ISP detectives worked quickly to investigate Lee and identify the source of these drugs. Investigators conducted multiple controlled purchases of fentanyl and methamphetamine from Lee and other co-conspirators, to include Jamie Coltrin, Jenika Johnson, Brandon Dana, Tina Morris, and Daniel Coltrin.

    In July 2023, the investigation expanded to include Lee’s Mexico-based drug supplier and other co-conspirators. The investigation revealed that recent parolees were recruited into the conspiracy prior to their release from prison.  These conspirators helped traffic fentanyl from the United States/Mexico border to distribute in Idaho.  Additional conspirators accepted payment for the drugs.  From this, investigators identified additional co-conspirators Arafat Ramirez, Rosa Ramirez, Laila Ramirez-Martinez, Sammy Martinez, and Rachel Dixon.

    The investigation was extensive and resulted in the seizure of over 48,000 fentanyl pills and four pounds of methamphetamine.  This significantly hindered the flow of fentanyl into Idaho, and the Magic Valley area.

    As part of this OCDETF investigation, the following individuals have been sentenced for federal drug violations:

    • Austin Chad Lee, 29, of Twin Falls, was sentenced to 140 months in prison for distribution of methamphetamine and fentanyl;
    • Arafat Ramirez, 43, of Jerome, was sentenced to 140 months in prison for conspiracy to distribute fentanyl;
    • Brandon Aaron Dana, 37, of Leadore, was sentenced to 120 months in prison for distribution of fentanyl;
    • Tina Jane Morris, 46, of Pocatello, was sentenced to 97 months in prison for possession with intent to distribute fentanyl and methamphetamine;
    • Sammy Davey Martinez, 49, of Nampa, was sentenced to 78 months in prison for conspiracy to distribute fentanyl;
    • Jamie Lee Coltrin, 36, of Rupert, was sentenced to 48 months in prison for distribution of fentanyl;
    • Jenika Ann Johnson, 31, of Pocatello, was sentenced to 48 months in prison for distribution of fentanyl;
    • Daniel Ross Coltrin, 40, of Paul, was sentenced to 25 months in prison for attempted possession with intent to distribute fentanyl;
    • Rosa Ramirez, of Jerome, 64, was sentenced to 24 months in prison for conspiracy to distribute fentanyl;
    • Rachel Dixon, 36, of Boise, was sentenced to 3 years’ probation for distribution of fentanyl; and
    • Laila Vanessa Ramirez-Martinez, 35, of Jerome, was sentenced to two years’ probation for false statement.

    “The success of this investigation is the direct result of cooperation between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies” Acting U.S. Attorney Whatcott said.  “Protecting Idahoans from dangerous drugs flowing up from the Mexico border is one of our highest law enforcement priorities, and I commend each of the agencies involved for their outstanding work achieving justice in this case.”

    “We are proud the State of Idaho works so well with our federal partners to protect the public,” said Governor Brad Little.  “The goal of our Operation Esto Perpetua initiative is to equip law enforcement with the training and tools they need to keep Idaho safe.  Today’s announcement about the conviction of 11 drug traffickers demonstrates what Idaho is doing is working.”

    The cases were primarily investigated by the Idaho State Police and the Drug Enforcement Administration.  In addition to the work of these agencies, Acting U.S. Attorney Whatcott thanked the following agencies for assisting in the investigations and arrests of the above-named individuals:  Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Office, Minidoka County Sheriff’s Office, Cassia County Sheriff’s Office, Pocatello Police Department, Nampa Police Department, Ada County Sheriff’s Office, Garden City Police Department, and the Idaho Department of Correction.

    These indictments are part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) investigation.  OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level drug traffickers, money launderers, gangs, and transnational criminal organizations that threaten the United States by using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach that leverages the strengths of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies against criminal networks.

    Since the inauguration of President Trump, the Department of Justice is playing a critical role in Operation Take back America, a nationwide initiative to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), and protect our communities from perpetrators of violent crime. Operation Take Back America streamlines efforts and resources from the Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETFs) and Project Safe Neighborhood (PSN).

    ###

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Durbin Holds Roundtable On Tax Day To Discuss Using Tax Dollars Responsibly To Support Critical Programs

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Illinois Dick Durbin
    April 15, 2025
    SPRINGFIELD – U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) today held a roundtable in Springfield with labor leaders, senior advocates, retirees, and small business owners to discuss the need to use tax dollars wisely to fulfill the promise of critical programs like Social Security, instead of cutting taxes for billionaires and raising prices forAmerican families and small businesses via tariffs.
    More than two million Illinoisans depend on the Social Security Administration (SSA) to deliver essential benefits and services, yet customers experience long wait times over the phone and increased time to process disability benefits, while staffing levels at SSA offices continue to decrease. The Trump Administration’s threats to cut tax payer-funded SSA services would further prevent Illinoisans from receiving their benefits.
    “Illinoisans are questioning whether or not they’ll continue to have access to their hard-earned benefits and essential services, while also being crushed by President Trump’s other economic policies, such as his outlandish tariffs,” said Durbin. “Today’s discussion with seniors, small business owners, and labor leaders in Springfield made it clear—these policies do nothing to ‘Make America Great Again,’ they are only making it harder for Illinoisans to get by.”
    Durbin spoke on the Senate floor about the impact President Trump’s tariffs will have on small businesses, manufacturers, consumers, and workers in Illinois, which received $127 billion of imports from China, Canada, and Mexico in 2023. Durbin also joined fellow U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture member U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and 17 of their colleagues in a letter to ask U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer for information on how the Trump Administration’s tariffs will impact farmers across the nation.
    -30-

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Attorney General James Defends Social Security Benefits for Millions of Americans

    Source: US State of New York

    EW YORK – New York Attorney General Letitia James joined a coalition of 20 other attorneys general in fighting back against the unlawful layoffs and chaotic mismanagement at the Social Security Administration (SSA) that has threatened Americans’ ability to access their Social Security benefits. Attorney General James and the coalition filed an amicus brief in American Association of People with Disabilities v. Dudek seeking to block the staff layoffs implemented by Acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The attorneys general assert that the staffing cuts jeopardize continued Social Security payments for millions of Americans.  

    “Millions of New Yorkers rely on Social Security benefits to ensure they can put food on the table, keep a roof over their head, and access quality health care,” said Attorney General James. “Elon Musk, DOGE, and the administration are yet again launching an attack on our most vulnerable communities. My office is standing up to defend everyday Americans’ ability to access the Social Security benefits they depend on.”

    Many Americans rely on Social Security benefits to meet their most basic needs, including food, shelter, and health care. Social Security is also the pathway to eligibility for a number of other vital safety net programs, including Medicaid and Medicare, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Nearly nine out of 10 people aged 65 and older were receiving a Social Security benefit as of December 31, 2024. Approximately 3.7 million New Yorkers receive Social Security benefits annually, including retirement, survivor, and disability payments.

    In the brief, Attorney General James and the coalition explain that staff cuts are exacerbating SSA’s problems rather than improving its efficiency. Approximately 2,800 SSA employees have already retired or taken early buyouts promoted by DOGE. The resulting reduction in SSA’s workforce has led to longer lines at field offices, longer wait times on phones, and frequent website crashes for online users. The layoffs and reorganization measures have delayed benefits and limited SSA’s ability to meet the needs of beneficiaries with disabilities.

    Acting Commissioner Dudek’s erratic management has led to nationwide confusion as announcements of office closures have been made only to be rolled back days or even mere hours later. The Trump administration and DOGE continue to falsely claim that SSA has paid out billions in improper payments, and that millions of deceased people are receiving benefits. In reality, less than one percent of total benefits paid between 2015 and 2022 were improper, according to SSA’s Inspector General’s Office. The coalition argues that Acting Commissioner Dudek and DOGE’s actions have created unnecessary confusion and chaos nationwide.

    In February, Attorney General James sent a letter to Acting Commissioner Dudek after SSA announced plans to close the White Plains hearing office and reduce services at the Poughkeepsie field office. These offices provide for New Yorkers throughout the Hudson Valley and serve as a central hub for seven counties, including Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster, and Westchester. Eliminating the office would have harmed thousands of vulnerable New Yorkers.

    Joining Attorney General James in submitting the brief are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia. 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Commencement Student Speaker Spotlight: Kristina Delgado

    Source: US State of Connecticut

    Meet Kristina Delgado. She was born in Mexico City, Mexico, raised in Cuenca, Ecuador, and moved to the U.S. at 18. Growing up in a multicultural household, she developed resilience, a strong work ethic, and a deep appreciation for diversity. Seeking purpose, she enlisted in the U.S. Navy, serving aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, where she achieved the highest rank within her enlistment and was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. Her military service strengthened her leadership and teamwork skills while exposing her to critical gaps in healthcare, igniting her passion for biomedical research.

    Why did you choose UConn and your UConn Graduate School program?

    My path to UConn and the Biomedical Science Graduate School program was shaped by a fortunate opportunity to work as a technician in the Spirochete Research Laboratory at UConn School of Medicine. There, my passion for infectious disease research, particularly on Treponema pallidum, was sparked. The hands-on experience and guidance from exceptional mentors solidified my decision to pursue further education at UConn, where I knew I could grow both academically and professionally.

    Tell us more about your path to grad school.

    My career path began with my military service, which strengthened my leadership and teamwork skills while exposing me to critical gaps in healthcare, sparking my passion for biomedical research. Afterward, I earned my B.S. in Biological Sciences from Georgia State University, leading to an opportunity at the USDA Foreign Animal Disease Laboratory at Plum Island. There, I gained hands-on experience in virology, further fueling my interest in infectious diseases. This passion ultimately led me to work as a technician in the Spirochete Research Laboratory at UConn Health, where the mentorship of Drs. Radolf, Hawley, and Caimano solidified my decision to pursue a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences, focusing on infectious disease research and vaccine development.

    What activities were you involved with as a grad student?

    As a graduate student, I was fully immersed in my research, but I also made it a priority to support diversity in STEM. As an active member of the Graduate School DEI Committee, I worked alongside a dedicated team to foster an inclusive academic environment. It was incredibly rewarding to give back by mentoring and advising younger students, sharing the opportunities and experiences that shaped my own journey. Being part of something bigger—helping to support and inspire the next generation of scientists—was one of the most fulfilling aspects of my time at UConn.

    What’s one thing that surprised you about UConn?

    One thing that truly surprised me about UConn was how welcoming and supportive everyone is, as well as the incredible depth and diversity of research being conducted here. I wasn’t sure what to expect at first, but I quickly found myself in a collaborative and inspiring community. Being in an environment driven by innovation and curiosity has made my time at UConn both enriching and rewarding.

    What’s one thing every student should do during their time at UConn?

    Every student should take a moment to step beyond their research or career goals and get involved in the broader community. It’s easy to fall into tunnel vision when you’re deep in academic work, but engaging in other aspects of the UConn community helps you gain perspective, connect with others, and see the bigger picture. Whether it’s through mentorship, outreach, or organizations like the DEI Committee, these experiences help you grow in ways that go beyond the lab or classroom. Stepping back from the laboratory bench every now and then reminds us that we’re part of something bigger—and that we have so much to offer to the people and communities around us.

    Who has inspired you most?

    I was incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by an amazing group of mentors who showed me the true impact of our work. They taught me that what we do in the lab isn’t just about experiments—it’s about making a real difference in healthcare. Beyond my mentors, I was also blessed with the unwavering support of my family and friends, who constantly encouraged me and stood by my decision. Their belief in me kept me moving forward, reinforcing my passion and commitment to this field.

    What are your plans after graduation?

    Ah, the dreaded question! I’m happy to say that I still have a deep passion for research and want to continue expanding my scientific expertise. While I don’t know exactly where my career will take me—whether in academia, industry, or teaching—I do know that I want to bridge the gap between basic science and its real-world applications. My goal is to develop the skills needed to move into translational research, connecting fundamental discoveries with clinical trials and patient care. No matter the path I take, I want my work to have a tangible impact on healthcare and the scientific community.

    What’s one thing that will always make you think of UConn?

    One thing that will always make me think of UConn is the sense of community here. Whether it’s the camaraderie among fellow students, the support from mentors, or the collaborative spirit in research, UConn has a unique way of bringing people together. It’s this feeling of connection and shared purpose that I’ll carry with me long after graduation.

    What does being a part of UConn mean to you?

    Being a part of UConn means being part of a supportive and innovative community that fosters growth, collaboration, and inclusion. It’s where I’ve been able to challenge myself, advance my research, and contribute to a diverse environment. The connections I’ve made here, and the shared purpose have shaped me both personally and professionally, and that’s something I’ll carry with me throughout my career.

    What’s it going to be like to walk across the Commencement stage and get your degree?

    Walking across the Commencement stage will be a moment of immense pride and reflection. It will mark the culmination of years of hard work, challenges, and growth. But beyond the academic achievement, it will be a moment to celebrate the support of my family, friends, mentors, and the UConn community that helped me get here. It will be a symbol of not just earning a degree, but of the journey and the people who’ve shaped my path. It’ll be a bittersweet farewell to this chapter, but an exciting step into the next.

    Any final words of wisdom for incoming students?

    No matter how many roadblocks or challenges life throws your way, the key is to face them head-on, learn from them, and keep moving forward. Don’t give up, and remember to enjoy the journey along the way. It’s easy to get caught up in the stress, but make sure you take time to have fun, find balance, and celebrate the small wins. Growth comes from persistence, and the experience will be all the richer if you embrace both the challenges and the moments of joy.

    Delgado’s doctoral dissertation focused on “Cracking the Code of Treponema pallidum Immunity: Lessons from the Rabbit Model to Drive Syphilis Vaccine Innovation.”

    Watch the livestream of UConn Health’s 54th Commencement on May 12, 2025, at 1:00 p.m.

     

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Nayib Bukele: El Salvador’s strongman leader doing Donald Trump’s legwork abroad

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amalendu Misra, Professor of International Politics, Lancaster University

    The US president, Donald Trump, has unleashed a string of controversial policies since returning to the White House that have put his administration at odds with most of the world. He has, at the same time, forged an alliance with one country that is willing to do his bidding abroad.

    This country is El Salvador, a tiny central American nation nestled between Guatemala and Honduras. El Salvador has found itself at the forefront of overseeing Trump’s contentious drive to deport undocumented migrants.

    In recent months, hundreds of foreign-born men have been deported from the US to the Center for Terrorism Confinement (Cecot) mega-prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador. This is part of an agreement between Trump and the self-declared “world’s coolest dictator”, Nayib Bukele.

    Such is the warmth between Trump and El Salvador’s leader that the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, recently hailed their alliance as “an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere”.

    The comment came shortly before Bukele met with Trump at the White House and said he will not return Kilmar Abrego García, a man that the US government admits was mistakenly deported. Bukele referred to the suggestion as “preposterous”.

    This is despite a US Supreme Court ruling that the Trump administration “facilitate” García’s return. The US government says a court does not have the power to order the release of a person in a foreign prison.

    Bukele, the grandson of Palestinian Christian immigrants, is considered something of a maverick. His background is in advertising. Through his business, Obermet, Bukele advertised two election campaigns for the ruling Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in the 2000s.

    He joined the FMLN as a member in 2012, and was elected as mayor of El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador, three years later. Bukele’s relationship with the FMLN soon became strained. After several public spats, he was expelled from the party. This included calling Luis Martínez, the country’s then attorney-general, a “gangster, very corrupt, [and] the worst of the worst”.

    Bukele subsequently launched his own political front, Nuevas Ideas. And when the country’s electoral court refused to register the party for the 2019 presidential elections, he ran as the candidate for the right-wing Grand Alliance for National Unity. Bukele won with 53% of the vote and, since then, his political fortunes have been in constant ascent.

    While many outside El Salvador see Bukele as a serial human rights abuser, his countrymen consider him a political messiah. His popularity is such that he won an unprecedented second presidential term in 2024 with over 84% of the vote.

    The country’s constitution had previously restricted a sitting president from contesting two terms in a row. Bukele’s critics say he circumvented the rules by using his congressional majority to replace Supreme Court judges.

    The court later ruled that the president can serve two consecutive terms in office. In the past, Bukele has remarked that restrictions on re-election only exist in developing countries.

    Bukele’s popularity stems from having rid his country of gang violence. El Salvador was once known for having the highest per capita homicide rate in the world, with 105 murders per 100,000 people in 2015. But under Bukele’s leadership, it is now considered a haven of peace in an otherwise unstable region.

    In 2022, after a spate of gang killings, Bukele declared a state of emergency. The decree curtailed the right to be informed of the reason for arrest and access to a lawyer upon being detained. It also allowed for administrative detention of more than 72 hours.

    Tens of thousands of people were rounded up and thrown in jail without trial. El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with roughly 110,000 people in jail. The proportion of its population that is incarcerated is twice that of the next nearest country, Cuba.

    Many of the alleged criminals – as well as those deported from the US – are held in Cecot. The prison has been described by activists as “a black hole of human rights”. When Bukele first unveiled the facility, he said prisoners would receive “not one ray of sunlight”.

    Bukele’s tough anti-criminal stance has been lauded across Latin America. Many regional leaders have embraced Bukele-style policies to tackle criminal violence in their respective countries. His policies have also clearly been appreciated by Trump.



    Read more:
    Latin America: several countries look to combat gang violence by fighting fire with fire

    Alliance of convenience

    Bukele and Trump share the same ideological persuasion. Both are conservative right-wing populists. But while there is a deep convergence in their ideology, their alliance is also one of convenience.

    Trump wants to rid the US of undocumented migrants from south of the border. El Salvador has, so far, provided a convenient avenue to address his administration’s needs.

    And for Bukele, it is financially worthwhile to house deportees from the US. The Bukele and Trump administrations have reportedly signed an agreement that will pay El Salvador US$20,000 (£15,000) per prisoner. This is a significant sum for El Salvador’s economy.

    His alliance with Trump will also help him shore up his political position at home and consolidate his image as a “do gooder” in an otherwise violent continent.

    Bukele’s security strategy has certainly rid El Salvador of gang violence. However, opening up El Salvador as a destination to address other countries’ criminality sets a bad precedent.

    Encouraged by Bukele’s policies, more states could choose to violate human rights and ignore judicial process by simply dumping their own citizens and others in prisons abroad. This is a reality that more courts may soon struggle to prevent.

    Amalendu Misra is a recipient of British Academy and Nuffield Foundation fellowships.

    – ref. Nayib Bukele: El Salvador’s strongman leader doing Donald Trump’s legwork abroad – https://theconversation.com/nayib-bukele-el-salvadors-strongman-leader-doing-donald-trumps-legwork-abroad-254629

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: Culture can build a better world: four key issues on Africa’s G20 agenda

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Ribio Nzeza Bunketi Buse, Associate Professor, University of Kinshasa

    The cultural and creative industries are a growing source of income and job creation around the world, generating tens of millions of jobs. The cultural sector is also linked to soft power, to relations between countries.

    Because of this, culture is an active part of the agenda of the G20 global economic forum. Under the presidency of South Africa in 2025, the G20 has chosen four key culture focus areas: heritage restitution; socio-economic strategies for inclusivity; digital technologies; and climate action.

    Here, as a scholar of the sector, I outline why these four priorities are relevant to both the G20 and the African continent, and to South Africa itself as the host country, in the light of current global trends and issues.

    G20 and culture

    The relationship between culture and development is increasingly emphasised. The 2022 Unesco World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development – or Mondiacult – recommended that culture be a “stand-alone” sustainable development goal.

    This proposal is underlined by the UN’s Pact for the Future, adopted in 2024. The 17 sustainable development goals, adopted by the UN in 2015, are to ensure peace and prosperity for all people by 2030. They include goals like zero hunger and reduced inequalities.

    Read more: What is Mondiacult? 6 take-aways from the world’s biggest cultural policy gathering

    As the global order shifts, new actors from the global south are emerging as the Brics group. However, the G20 is the only forum that includes countries from both the global north and south.

    The G20, like the G7 and Brics, has a tradition of including culture among the items for discussion at ministerial level, supported by a working group.

    Under Brazil’s presidency in 2024, the G20 Culture Working Group highlighted the relationship between education and culture. This was in line with Unesco’s Framework for Culture and Arts Education. Taking over the G20 presidency, South Africa has expanded on the cultural agenda.

    Cultural heritage

    Priority 1: the safeguarding and restitution of cultural heritage to protect human rights.

    This relates to cultural property, mainly stolen during colonisation and displayed in global south museums. It’s one of the key issues in the heritage sector today.

    After years of demands by formerly colonised countries, there’s a growing list of high profile objects being sent back home. France returned 26 Dahomey Kingdom royal treasures to Benin and the saber of El Hadj Omar Tall to Senegal; 119 Benin bronzes came from the Netherlands to Nigeria. Akan cultural objects were restituted from Japan to Côte d’Ivoire.

    This global issue has particularly affected African countries. South Africa, too, knows its importance, with the repatriation of the human remains of Saartjie Baartman by France.

    Statues of the Kingdom of Dahomey returned to Benin by France. Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images

    The Mondiacult 2022 declaration calls the return of cultural heritage an “ethical imperative”. It’s part of the respect for cultural rights and human rights.

    For South Africa, one of the most influential countries on the continent, this is a good way to support the 2023 position of the African Union (AU) on the urgent return of this heritage. Improving the relationship between the global north and south requires this kind of debate.

    Inclusive development

    Priority 2: integrating cultural policies in socio-economic strategies to ensure inclusive, rights-based development.

    The importance of cultural goods and services in national and international trade has been highlighted many times. Statistics show they make up a healthy share of a country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

    A 2021 study found that the cultural and creative industries contributed 4.3% to South Africa’s GDP. At African level, they are estimated to generate US$45.35 billion in income and 15.87 million jobs. According to the 2024 UN Creative Economy Outlook, exports of creative services globally rose to $1.4 trillion in 2022, an increase of 29% since 2017. Exports of creative goods reached US$713 billion, an increase of 19%.

    Read more: South Africa has taken over the G20 presidency from Brazil – what lessons can it learn?

    With the development of an African Continental Free Trade Area, the AU revised its plan for action on cultural and creative industries.

    South Africa can play a leading role in this priority, having drafted a national policy paper on trade agreements involving the creative and cultural industries. The country’s Creative Industries Vision 2040 aims for an annual growth rate of 6.8% of GDP for these industries.

    However, the creative economy should be rights-based development and inclusive of local communities, young people and women. The G20 countries will need to work together to support policies that enhance sustainability and equity for creative workers. This is especially important in Africa where the creative economy is largely informal and unprotected.

    Digital technologies

    Priority 3: harnessing digital technologies for the protection and promotion of culture and sustainable economies.

    Digital technology is transforming the creative economy value chain. In my survey of the COVID era’s harsh impact on creative workers, I found that digital media, online games, music and audiovisual content were able to be resilient. Their value chains, from creator to user, don’t require high levels of face-to-face interaction, and online tools can be used effectively.

    Maliyo, a games development company in Lagos, Nigeria. Olympia de Maismont/AFP/Getty Images

    In 2024 the UN Conference on Trade and Development reported that, in 2022, the most exported creative services globally were software services (41.3%), research and development (30.7%), advertising, market research and architecture (15.5%), audiovisual services (7.9%), information services (4%) and cultural, recreational and heritage services (0.6%).

    While digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) can be seen as a threat to creativity and intellectual property, they can also be used to promote respect for communities and creators. The development of monitoring software for collecting music rights payments is an example.

    In 2021 the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization adopted a recommendation on the ethics of AI. It proposes that AI tools be used for the benefit of the promotion, preservation, enrichment and accessibility of intangible or tangible cultural heritage. This issue is crucial because Mondiacult 2022 declared that culture is a “global public good” and the G20 must fund research and development of the most appropriate and advanced AI tools.

    Climate change

    Priority 4: the intersection of culture and climate change – shaping global responses.

    The challenges of climate change require a range of responses. Intangible cultural heritage (like oral traditions, social practices, rituals) can help to teach how ancient societies organised their relationships with nature and how they dealt with changes.

    The Herds, touring the world from central Africa for climate awareness. Hardy Bope/AFP/Getty Images

    Art, theatre, film, gaming and many other cultural forms can educate and raise awareness about this urgent issue. The African continent has a rich cultural diversity and is a potential source of many unexpected and insightful solutions.

    Keeping it relevant

    These four priorities reflect what is important on the continent. Africa will benefit from the collective efforts of the G20 countries in implementing such priorities. The presence of the AU as a permanent member of the G20 will support South Africa’s leadership and advance the continent’s cause.

    The challenge to the culture working group is to come up with relevant recommendations that can be endorsed by the G20 Ministerial Meeting. The 2024 G7 Ministerial Meeting on Culture, along with the AU and the African Development Bank, has set the tone. Their Naples Statement on culture for the sustainable development of Africa and the world notes that the G7 countries “intend to work with African governments to harness culture as a key driver of sustainable development”.

    A G20 summit on African soil cannot do less. It has all the potential it needs to support the African cultural sector in a variety of ways.

    – Culture can build a better world: four key issues on Africa’s G20 agenda
    – https://theconversation.com/culture-can-build-a-better-world-four-key-issues-on-africas-g20-agenda-253864

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: Ernest Cole: the South African photographer at the centre of a powerful and heartbreaking film

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Kylie Thomas, Senior Researcher and Senior Lecturer (Radical Humanities Laboratory, University College Cork), NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies

    Ernest Cole is famous for photographing the everyday realities of South Africa’s racist apartheid system. His 1967 book House of Bondage ensured his damning critique of the white minority regime was seen by the world. But its publication sent him into exile and was banned at home.

    The startling discovery of a vast archive of his work in a Swedish bank vault in 2017 has returned him to public view.

    House of Bondage was republished in 2023 and then, in 2024, celebrated Haitian film-maker Raoul Peck made Ernest Cole: Lost and Found.

    It would win the documentary prize at the Cannes Film Festival and show around the world, restoring the legacy of a photographer who died penniless in New York in 1990 at the age of 49.

    As a researcher of South African photography under apartheid, I was intrigued by how the film would convey this complex life story.

    It draws extensively on Cole’s images, made in South Africa, Europe and the US. It’s a beautiful, poetic interpretation of how his images mirrored his own experiences of oppression, displacement and the loneliness of exile.

    House of Bondage

    Cole was just 10 when the state introduced the Group Areas Act and entrenched racial segregation. He was 22 when his childhood neighbourhood of Eersterust was razed to the ground. His family was among the thousands forcibly removed to a new township.

    In his second year of high school, he elected to drop out. The state had introduced Bantu Education, designed to ensure Black children learned only enough for a life of servitude.

    Cole began to study by correspondence, taking a course with the New York Institute for Photography. By 18, he’d landed a position as a darkroom assistant at Drum magazine, working alongside German photographer Jürgen Schadeberg.

    Cole captured the everyday realities of Black life in South Africa. Ernest Cole/Magnolia Pictures

    In 1959, Cole saw a copy of French street photography pioneer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The People of Moscow, and decided he would create a similar book to convey what it meant to live under apartheid.

    He spent six years taking the photographs that would become House of Bondage, a book that exposed the apartheid state.

    Determined to publish his images, he fled to the US in 1966, where his book appeared a year later. Acclaimed internationally, it was banned for 22 years in South Africa. Cole was prohibited from returning home and spent the next 20 years stateless.

    Read more: Ernest Cole: South Africa’s most famous photobook has been republished after 55 years

    He hoped to find freedom in America. Instead he felt pigeonholed as a Black photographer, dismayed at only ever being commissioned to document suffering.

    He made hundreds of photographs of people in Harlem, often drawn to scenes that were impossible in South Africa. Mixed-race couples holding hands in public, young people of different races hanging out, neon signs offering “Sex, sex, sex” rather than the “Whites only” signs of segregation he documented at home.

    Under apartheid, public space was segregated. Ernest Cole/Magnolia Pictures

    Commissioned to take photos in the Deep South, he found the same suffering and racism he’d thought particular to South Africa.

    In a letter to the Norwegian government requesting an emergency travel certificate to leave the US, he wrote:

    Exposing the truth at whatever cost is one thing. But having to live a lifetime of being a chronicler of misery and injustice and callousness is another.

    A life in fragments

    For me, the most poignant moment of the film is the footage of Cole speaking in his own voice in a 1969 documentary. A slight man with a sorrowful gaze, he’s seated at a table with prints of his photos:

    I’ve been banned in absentia, but that doesn’t matter because it (his book) will stand in the future. Because I’m sure South Africa will be free.

    His youthful conviction is undercut by the presence, in his voice, of the weight of all he’s experienced. Correspondence shows Cole’s book was sent to government officials in the US and Europe, and to the United Nations, but it would take decades of resistance before apartheid fell.

    Black life in America was as painful as back home. Ernest Cole/Magnolia Pictures

    Despite his fame, and the support of leading international photographers, writers and editors, Cole’s determination was ground down by the racism he encountered everywhere he went. Although he received grants to continue his work, he descended into poverty and depression.

    By the mid-1980s he stopped taking photos – his cameras were lost, stolen, or sold, and he learned that his belongings, including negatives and prints that he’d left in a hotel storage room in New York, had been discarded. Cole was destitute and ill.

    Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he watched Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 from his hospital bed. Cole died in New York that same year. All his negatives and the work he’d made during his life in exile were thought to be lost.

    Cole also captured street images of childhood joys wherever he went. Ernest Cole/Magnolia Pictures

    Finding Ernest Cole

    Peck’s meditative film draws on Cole’s notebooks and letters, along with research interviews, in a rather bold attempt to have him “tell his own story”. It’s a story driven by both curiosity and heartbreak, narrated by actor LaKeith Stanfield, whose rather jarring American accent gives voice to a South African experience.

    Although she’s not mentioned in the credits, Peck’s script draws heavily on interviews by Swedish curator and researcher Gunilla Knape. Her association with the Hasselblad Foundation might account for why she remains unacknowledged – the organisation is linked to the ongoing controversy over ownership of Cole’s work.

    Read more: Glimpses into the history of street photography in South Africa

    In 2017, Cole’s nephew, Leslie Matlaisane, received an email requesting that he travel to Sweden to discuss the return of items belonging to his uncle, discovered in a bank vault in Stockholm.

    The film includes footage of Matlaisane’s journey to Sweden and the bizarre scene that unfolds as Cole’s archive is returned without any explanation about how it came to be either lost or found, or who’d placed it there.

    The boxes included 60,000 negatives, and Cole’s notebooks and research materials for House of Bondage. An incredible trove of history has resurfaced, but as Peck’s film shows, Cole himself was irrecoverably lost in exile.

    Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is showing in Johannesburg. It can be streamed on various services.

    – Ernest Cole: the South African photographer at the centre of a powerful and heartbreaking film
    – https://theconversation.com/ernest-cole-the-south-african-photographer-at-the-centre-of-a-powerful-and-heartbreaking-film-254508

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Congressman Dan Goldman Demands AG Bondi Reinstate DOJ Lawyer Fired for Telling the Truth About Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s Unlawful Deportation

    Source: US Congressman Dan Goldman (NY-10)

    Firing Makes Clear Admin Expects DOJ Employees to Lie to Judges, a Violation of State Law Governing Courtroom Candor 

     

    Goldman Argues Lawyers Should Not be Forced to Choose Between Their Jobs and Following the Law 

    Members Urge Bondi to Facilitate the Return of Garcia Back to America 

    Read the Letter Here 

    Washington, D.C. – Congressman Dan Goldman (NY-10) today led a letter with 5 of his colleagues urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to reinstate Erez Reuveni, Acting Deputy Chief of the Office of Immigration Litigation, the Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer who first represented the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in Abrego Garcia v. Noem, the federal case concerning the Trump administration’s unlawful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.  

    While representing DHS in court, Mr. Reuveni acknowledged that DHS’s deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia was an “administrative error.” One day later, Deputy Attorney General Blanche placed Mr. Reuveni on indefinite leave and later fired him, citing his failure to “follow a directive from [his] superiors.” Attorney General Pam Bondi said that Mr. Reuveni was suspended for failing to vigorously advocate on behalf of his client. 

    “While an attorney must balance their obligation to persuasively present their client’s case within their duty of candor to the tribunal, under no circumstances may the attorney “allow the tribunal to be misled by false statements of law or fact or evidence that the attorney knows to be false.” Here, Mr. Reuveni had no choice but to abide by his duty of candor to the court,” the Members wrote.

    Under Maryland’s Rules of Professional Conduct, lawyers cannot lie in a court of law or present statements that they know to be untrue or misleading. None of the statements Mr. Reuveni made during the April 4th hearing on the Abrego Garcia v. Noem were false, yet he was fired anyway, making clear Attorney General Bondi has prioritized the administration’s talking points over every attorney’s duty to present the facts as they understand them. 

    “That Mr. Reuveni was fired because he had the human decency to recognize that there was no defense for the Administration’s position underscores the danger that your firing of Mr. Reuveni presents to attorneys throughout the Department, who are now put in a position where they may have to choose between their jobs and their bar license,” the Members wrote. 

    The members also argue that there is no legitimate justification for the administration’s failure to facilitate Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return from the El Salvador prison he was unlawfully and erroneously deported to, as the Supreme Court ruled in a 9-0 unanimous decision. 

    “In order to correct your improper employment action, and to set an appropriate message for other attorneys representing the Department, we request that you immediately reinstate Mr. Reuveni. As the legal advisor for the Executive Branch, we further encourage you to advise the President that he must follow the Supreme Court’s unanimous order to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s safe return from El Salvador, including, if necessary, by stopping payments to El Salvador for Mr. Abrego Garcia’s detention,” the Members concluded.  

     Read the Letter Here or below. 

    Dear Attorney General Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Blanche,  

    We write with grave concern about your removal and firing of Acting Deputy Chief Erez Reuveni of the Office of Immigration Litigation on unethical and improper grounds. Further, we are deeply troubled by the Hobbesian choice you have created for the attorneys in the Department of Justice (DOJ), who may be forced to choose between their jobs and their oath of candor to the courts. We therefore request that you reinstate Mr. Reuveni and clarify that Department attorneys must always be honest and forthright with the court, even if that undermines the Department’s position.

    This specific incident stems from Abrego Garcia v. Noem, a case before Judge Paula Xinis in the Maryland District Court, in which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), DOJ’s client, admitted to the court that it improperly and unlawfully deported Mr. Abrego Garcia, a resident of the State of Maryland and husband to an American citizen, to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador – a prison whose conditions would violate an inmate’s constitutional rights if it were in the United States.

    At a hearing on April 4, Mr. Reuveni admitted error on behalf of DHS, which failed to follow an order prohibiting Mr. Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador. Specifically, Mr. Reuveni made the following statements during the April 4 hearing:

    • “We have nothing to say on the merits. We concede he should not have been removed to El Salvador.” See Hr’g Tr., Apr. 4, 2025, 25: 13-14. 

    • “There’s no dispute that the order could not be used to send Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.” See Hr’g Tr., Apr. 4, 2025, 25:6–7. 

    • When asked by Judge Xinis why Abrego Garcia was held in CECOT, Mr. Reuveni replied “I don’t know. That information has not been given to me. I don’t know.” See Hr’g Tr., Apr. 4, 2025, 34:25-35:5 

    • “This person should – the plaintiff, Abrego Garcia, should not have been removed. That is not in dispute.” Hr’g Tr., Apr. 4, 2025, 19:11–13 

    • When asked by Judge Xinis why Mr. Abrego Garcia cannot be returned, Mr. Reuveni replied “Your Honor, I will say, for the Court’s awareness, that when this case landed on my desk, the first thing I did was ask my clients that very question. I’ve not received, to date, an answer that I find satisfactory.” Hr’g Tr., Apr. 4, 2025, at 35–36.

    • “I am also frustrated that I have no answer for you on a lot of these questions. The government made a choice here to produce no evidence.”

    None of these statements were incorrect. In fact, on March 31, Robert L. Cerna, Acting Field Office Director at DHS, submitted a declaration to the court which stated: “Through administrative error, Abrego-Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador. This was an oversight.”  Even until today, after the case has gone up to the United States Supreme Court and back to Judge Xinis, the Department has not provided the courts with any legitimate reason why Mr. Abrego Garcia cannot be returned to the United States in light of the government’s error and the fact that the United States is paying El Salvador to keep him in CECOT. 

    Yet the day following the court conference, on April 5, Deputy Attorney General Blanche placed Mr. Reuveni on indefinite leave, citing his failure to “follow a directive from [his] superiors.” The following day, Attorney General Bondi appeared on Fox News Sunday and claimed that Mr. Reuveni’s suspension was justified because he had not vigorously advocated on behalf of his client, stating that “[h]e did not argue. He shouldn’t have taken the case. He shouldn’t have argued it if that’s what he was going to do.”

    Yesterday, public reports revealed that you outright fired Mr. Reuveni, who has spent 15 years dedicating his life to government service and was recently elevated to a supervisory position and commended for his work. 

    Under Rule 19-303.3 (a)(1) of Maryland’s Rules of Professional Conduct regarding candor toward the court, an attorney shall not knowingly “make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal.” While an attorney must balance their obligation to persuasively present their client’s case within their duty of candor to the tribunal, under no circumstances may the attorney “allow the tribunal to be misled by false statements of law or fact or evidence that the attorney knows to be false.” Here, Mr. Reuveni had no choice but to abide by his duty of candor to the court, which conflicted with a “directive from his superiors.” 

    Further, Maryland’s Rule 19-303.3 (a)(4) prohibits an attorney from offering evidence known by that attorney to be false. The Rules also allow an attorney to refuse to offer evidence that the attorney “reasonably believes” is false under (3.3) (c). In response to the court’s questions, Mr. Reuveni either stated that he did not have answers or that the information provided to him by the Department was not “satisfactory.” In either case, the Rules require Mr. Reuveni to adhere to his obligation of candor to the court.  

    Attorney General Bondi further clarified that “every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States,” and “[a]ny attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences.”  While Ms. Bondi is correct that DOJ attorneys have a duty to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States, that directive must yield to every attorney’s independent obligation to be candid and honest with the court, as required by the rules authorizing that attorney to practice law. In other words, if the Department takes a position that is either unlawful or unsupported by the facts and circumstances of a case, the attorney is prohibited from zealously arguing for that position.

    In this case, however, Mr. Reuveni was improperly suspended, and eventually fired, for doing just that.

    Having admitted error in this case, there is simply no legitimate justification for refusing to request that El Salvador return Mr. Abrego Garcia to his family in Maryland where he can receive due process and proceed through the immigration system according to the law.  That Mr. Reuveni was fired because he had the human decency to recognize that there was no defense for the Administration’s position underscores the danger that your firing of Mr. Reuveni presents to attorneys throughout the Department, who are now put in a position where they may have to choose between their jobs and their bar license. This is unacceptable.

    In order to correct your improper employment action, and to set an appropriate message for other attorneys representing the Department, we request that you immediately reinstate Mr. Reuveni. As the legal advisor for the Executive Branch, we further encourage you to advise the President that he must follow the Supreme Court’s unanimous order to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s safe return from El Salvador, including, if necessary, by stopping payments to El Salvador for Mr. Abrego Garcia’s detention.  

    ###

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: King Charles visits the Vatican: my research shows countries that cut ties with the Catholic Church perform better

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jason Garcia-Portilla, Lecturer in Business Management, University of Winchester

    King Charles’s recent visit to the Vatican may appear to be simply a symbolic gesture of ecumenical goodwill. But moments like this provide an opportunity to look at the long-term consequences of church-state relations around the world.

    Britain, of course, has a complicated history with the Catholic church. Edward VII (Charles’s great-great-grandfather) was the first UK monarch to visit the Vatican since the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.

    The UK (and much of western Europe) is largely secular today, but this is a global exception: 85% of the world’s population identifies as religious. These beliefs are often passed down through generations, not necessarily chosen freely.

    Today’s religious identities have more to do with political decisions made centuries ago than with personal faith. Spain and Portugal are predominantly Catholic not because of the individual choices of their population, but because their monarchs aligned (and maintained the hegemony) of the Roman Catholic church-state. In England, on the other hand, King Henry VIII broke away from Rome in the 1530s, challenging (“protesting”) against the universal papal authority and leading to the establishment of the Church of England.

    This religious split also carried over to former colonies. Compare the US, (a Protestant country) to Mexico or Brazil (Catholic countries), and you’ll see the long shadow of these old decisions. My research shows the profound and lasting consequences of religion on these societies.

    Diverging nations

    In my book Ye Shall Know Them by Their Fruits, I analysed data from 65 countries across Europe and the Americas using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

    My findings suggest that countries with historical and legal alignments with the Catholic church — such as Spain, Portugal, Austria, Ireland and much of Latin America — tend to underperform on a number of metrics, including inequality and education, and have more political corruption compared to states that maintained institutional separation (such as through the Protestant Reformation). Historical Protestant countries include the UK, Switzerland, Scandinavian and North American countries.

    In particular, countries with strong traditional links to the Catholic church tend to exhibit higher levels of corruption and inequality. They also perform weaker in education, sustainability and competitiveness compared to Protestant countries.

    Prosperity and educational differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics are evident even within countries. In Switzerland, the Protestant cantons (such as Geneva and Zurich) are currently the most competitive, while the Roman Catholic cantons (such as Ticino and Valais) are the least competitive. In Germany, Protestants are more educated (0.8 years more) and more prosperous (5.4% higher income) than Catholics.

    Differences in economic prosperity and education are even higher comparing data across Protestant and Catholic countries.

    Before the Reformation, literacy in England was below 10%, and the Roman church largely monopolised education. The Protestant emphasis on individual reading – especially of the Bible – dramatically increased literacy rates and access to knowledge. This paved the way for broader democratic participation, industrialisation and innovation.

    Protestantism similarly proved influential in historical law revolutions, gradually separating society from feudal institutions and papalist medieval canon law.

    In Britain, the Reformation was not just a theological shift, but a political one, breaking institutional ties with Rome and affirming national sovereignty. The long-term effects of that decision have echoed through the UK’s democratic and economic development.

    Church-state relations

    The Vatican’s political influence is often underestimated. The Roman Catholic church is the only religious body that is, at the same time, a sovereign political state – with ambassadors, diplomatic immunity and seats at international forums. The pope holds absolute executive, legislative and judicial authority.

    Many of today’s Catholic-majority countries maintain formal relations with the Roman See through bilateral treaties called concordats. These agreements exert the power of the church in countries that have them, and are rarely democratically consulted with the population.

    In Colombia, for example, concordats throughout history have linked religion and politics, have given church-influenced groups power over the economy, and allowed Rome to control what is taught in public and private education at all levels.

    Since then, liberal efforts have reestablished much of the state’s power. But the effects are still evident in the strong cultural identity and presence of Catholicism in the country. Colombia has one of the highest proportions of adults raised as Roman Catholics in the world (92%), after Paraguay (94%).

    The Vatican remains a political actor whose influence is often underestimated.
    Collection Maykova/Shutterstock

    Historically, informal gestures of religious diplomacy have laid the groundwork for further cooperation and formal agreements with Rome.

    But King Charles’s recent Vatican visit is more diplomatic than anything. It reflects modern efforts to maintain and strengthen state-to-state relations and discuss shared global concerns like climate change and peacebuilding.

    It is for this reason that the king’s visit matters – not because a formal treaty is on the table, but because it shows the strength of the UK’s experience since the Reformation. An exemplary model of the success of church-state separation, British democracy and prosperity have thrived for centuries – without formal entanglements with the Catholic church.

    Dr Jason Garcia-Portilla earned his PhD in Organization Studies and Cultural Theory at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), financed with a Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship–ESKAS. Additionally, he holds an MSc in Climate Change and Policy from the University of Sussex in the UK (funded by the British Chevening Scholarship).

    – ref. King Charles visits the Vatican: my research shows countries that cut ties with the Catholic Church perform better – https://theconversation.com/king-charles-visits-the-vatican-my-research-shows-countries-that-cut-ties-with-the-catholic-church-perform-better-254357

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Video: Members of a Massive International Drug Trafficking and Money Laundering Ring Indicted in Atlanta

    Source: United States Department of Justice (video statements)

    On April 1, 2025, seven individuals in Georgia and Mexico were indicted by a federal grand jury seated in the Northern District of Georgia related to a drug trafficking and money laundering ring tied to a Mexico-based trafficker.

    Related: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/members-massive-international-drug-trafficking-and-money-laundering-ring-indicted

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5Q_VV3Boks

    MIL OSI Video –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Culture can build a better world: four key issues on Africa’s G20 agenda

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Ribio Nzeza Bunketi Buse, Associate Professor, University of Kinshasa

    The cultural and creative industries are a growing source of income and job creation around the world, generating tens of millions of jobs. The cultural sector is also linked to soft power, to relations between countries.

    Because of this, culture is an active part of the agenda of the G20 global economic forum. Under the presidency of South Africa in 2025, the G20 has chosen four key culture focus areas: heritage restitution; socio-economic strategies for inclusivity; digital technologies; and climate action.

    Here, as a scholar of the sector, I outline why these four priorities are relevant to both the G20 and the African continent, and to South Africa itself as the host country, in the light of current global trends and issues.

    G20 and culture

    The relationship between culture and development is increasingly emphasised. The 2022 Unesco World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development – or Mondiacult – recommended that culture be a “stand-alone” sustainable development goal.

    This proposal is underlined by the UN’s Pact for the Future, adopted in 2024. The 17 sustainable development goals, adopted by the UN in 2015, are to ensure peace and prosperity for all people by 2030. They include goals like zero hunger and reduced inequalities.



    Read more:
    What is Mondiacult? 6 take-aways from the world’s biggest cultural policy gathering

    As the global order shifts, new actors from the global south are emerging as the Brics group. However, the G20 is the only forum that includes countries from both the global north and south.

    The G20, like the G7 and Brics, has a tradition of including culture among the items for discussion at ministerial level, supported by a working group.

    Under Brazil’s presidency in 2024, the G20 Culture Working Group highlighted the relationship between education and culture. This was in line with Unesco’s Framework for Culture and Arts Education. Taking over the G20 presidency, South Africa has expanded on the cultural agenda.

    Cultural heritage

    Priority 1: the safeguarding and restitution of cultural heritage to protect human rights.

    This relates to cultural property, mainly stolen during colonisation and displayed in global south museums. It’s one of the key issues in the heritage sector today.

    After years of demands by formerly colonised countries, there’s a growing list of high profile objects being sent back home. France returned 26 Dahomey Kingdom royal treasures to Benin and the saber of El Hadj Omar Tall to Senegal; 119 Benin bronzes came from the Netherlands to Nigeria. Akan cultural objects were restituted from Japan to Côte d’Ivoire.

    This global issue has particularly affected African countries. South Africa, too, knows its importance, with the repatriation of the human remains of Saartjie Baartman by France.

    The Mondiacult 2022 declaration calls the return of cultural heritage an “ethical imperative”. It’s part of the respect for cultural rights and human rights.

    For South Africa, one of the most influential countries on the continent, this is a good way to support the 2023 position of the African Union (AU) on the urgent return of this heritage. Improving the relationship between the global north and south requires this kind of debate.

    Inclusive development

    Priority 2: integrating cultural policies in socio-economic strategies to ensure inclusive, rights-based development.

    The importance of cultural goods and services in national and international trade has been highlighted many times. Statistics show they make up a healthy share of a country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

    A 2021 study found that the cultural and creative industries contributed 4.3% to South Africa’s GDP. At African level, they are estimated to generate US$45.35 billion in income and 15.87 million jobs. According to the 2024 UN Creative Economy Outlook, exports of creative services globally rose to $1.4 trillion in 2022, an increase of 29% since 2017. Exports of creative goods reached US$713 billion, an increase of 19%.



    Read more:
    South Africa has taken over the G20 presidency from Brazil – what lessons can it learn?

    With the development of an African Continental Free Trade Area, the AU revised its plan for action on cultural and creative industries.

    South Africa can play a leading role in this priority, having drafted a national policy paper on trade agreements involving the creative and cultural industries. The country’s Creative Industries Vision 2040 aims for an annual growth rate of 6.8% of GDP for these industries.

    However, the creative economy should be rights-based development and inclusive of local communities, young people and women. The G20 countries will need to work together to support policies that enhance sustainability and equity for creative workers. This is especially important in Africa where the creative economy is largely informal and unprotected.

    Digital technologies

    Priority 3: harnessing digital technologies for the protection and promotion of culture and sustainable economies.

    Digital technology is transforming the creative economy value chain. In my survey of the COVID era’s harsh impact on creative workers, I found that digital media, online games, music and audiovisual content were able to be resilient. Their value chains, from creator to user, don’t require high levels of face-to-face interaction, and online tools can be used effectively.

    In 2024 the UN Conference on Trade and Development reported that, in 2022, the most exported creative services globally were software services (41.3%), research and development (30.7%), advertising, market research and architecture (15.5%), audiovisual services (7.9%), information services (4%) and cultural, recreational and heritage services (0.6%).

    While digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) can be seen as a threat to creativity and intellectual property, they can also be used to promote respect for communities and creators. The development of monitoring software for collecting music rights payments is an example.

    In 2021 the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization adopted a recommendation on the ethics of AI. It proposes that AI tools be used for the benefit of the promotion, preservation, enrichment and accessibility of intangible or tangible cultural heritage. This issue is crucial because Mondiacult 2022 declared that culture is a “global public good” and the G20 must fund research and development of the most appropriate and advanced AI tools.

    Climate change

    Priority 4: the intersection of culture and climate change – shaping global responses.

    The challenges of climate change require a range of responses. Intangible cultural heritage (like oral traditions, social practices, rituals) can help to teach how ancient societies organised their relationships with nature and how they dealt with changes.

    Art, theatre, film, gaming and many other cultural forms can educate and raise awareness about this urgent issue. The African continent has a rich cultural diversity and is a potential source of many unexpected and insightful solutions.

    Keeping it relevant

    These four priorities reflect what is important on the continent. Africa will benefit from the collective efforts of the G20 countries in implementing such priorities. The presence of the AU as a permanent member of the G20 will support South Africa’s leadership and advance the continent’s cause.

    The challenge to the culture working group is to come up with relevant recommendations that can be endorsed by the G20 Ministerial Meeting. The 2024 G7 Ministerial Meeting on Culture, along with the AU and the African Development Bank, has set the tone. Their Naples Statement on culture for the sustainable development of Africa and the world notes that the G7 countries “intend to work with African governments to harness culture as a key driver of sustainable development”.

    A G20 summit on African soil cannot do less. It has all the potential it needs to support the African cultural sector in a variety of ways.

    Ribio Nzeza Bunketi Buse 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. Culture can build a better world: four key issues on Africa’s G20 agenda – https://theconversation.com/culture-can-build-a-better-world-four-key-issues-on-africas-g20-agenda-253864

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ernest Cole: the South African photographer at the centre of a powerful and heartbreaking film

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Kylie Thomas, Senior Researcher and Senior Lecturer (Radical Humanities Laboratory, University College Cork), NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies

    Ernest Cole is famous for photographing the everyday realities of South Africa’s racist apartheid system. His 1967 book House of Bondage ensured his damning critique of the white minority regime was seen by the world. But its publication sent him into exile and was banned at home.

    The startling discovery of a vast archive of his work in a Swedish bank vault in 2017 has returned him to public view.

    House of Bondage was republished in 2023 and then, in 2024, celebrated Haitian film-maker Raoul Peck made Ernest Cole: Lost and Found.

    It would win the documentary prize at the Cannes Film Festival and show around the world, restoring the legacy of a photographer who died penniless in New York in 1990 at the age of 49.

    As a researcher of South African photography under apartheid, I was intrigued by how the film would convey this complex life story.

    It draws extensively on Cole’s images, made in South Africa, Europe and the US. It’s a beautiful, poetic interpretation of how his images mirrored his own experiences of oppression, displacement and the loneliness of exile.

    House of Bondage

    Cole was just 10 when the state introduced the Group Areas Act and entrenched racial segregation. He was 22 when his childhood neighbourhood of Eersterust was razed to the ground. His family was among the thousands forcibly removed to a new township.

    In his second year of high school, he elected to drop out. The state had introduced Bantu Education, designed to ensure Black children learned only enough for a life of servitude.

    Cole began to study by correspondence, taking a course with the New York Institute for Photography. By 18, he’d landed a position as a darkroom assistant at Drum magazine, working alongside German photographer Jürgen Schadeberg.

    In 1959, Cole saw a copy of French street photography pioneer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The People of Moscow, and decided he would create a similar book to convey what it meant to live under apartheid.

    He spent six years taking the photographs that would become House of Bondage, a book that exposed the apartheid state.

    Determined to publish his images, he fled to the US in 1966, where his book appeared a year later. Acclaimed internationally, it was banned for 22 years in South Africa. Cole was prohibited from returning home and spent the next 20 years stateless.



    Read more:
    Ernest Cole: South Africa’s most famous photobook has been republished after 55 years

    He hoped to find freedom in America. Instead he felt pigeonholed as a Black photographer, dismayed at only ever being commissioned to document suffering.

    He made hundreds of photographs of people in Harlem, often drawn to scenes that were impossible in South Africa. Mixed-race couples holding hands in public, young people of different races hanging out, neon signs offering “Sex, sex, sex” rather than the “Whites only” signs of segregation he documented at home.

    Commissioned to take photos in the Deep South, he found the same suffering and racism he’d thought particular to South Africa.

    In a letter to the Norwegian government requesting an emergency travel certificate to leave the US, he wrote:

    Exposing the truth at whatever cost is one thing. But having to live a lifetime of being a chronicler of misery and injustice and callousness is another.

    A life in fragments

    For me, the most poignant moment of the film is the footage of Cole speaking in his own voice in a 1969 documentary. A slight man with a sorrowful gaze, he’s seated at a table with prints of his photos:

    I’ve been banned in absentia, but that doesn’t matter because it (his book) will stand in the future. Because I’m sure South Africa will be free.

    His youthful conviction is undercut by the presence, in his voice, of the weight of all he’s experienced. Correspondence shows Cole’s book was sent to government officials in the US and Europe, and to the United Nations, but it would take decades of resistance before apartheid fell.

    Despite his fame, and the support of leading international photographers, writers and editors, Cole’s determination was ground down by the racism he encountered everywhere he went. Although he received grants to continue his work, he descended into poverty and depression.

    By the mid-1980s he stopped taking photos – his cameras were lost, stolen, or sold, and he learned that his belongings, including negatives and prints that he’d left in a hotel storage room in New York, had been discarded. Cole was destitute and ill.

    Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he watched Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 from his hospital bed. Cole died in New York that same year. All his negatives and the work he’d made during his life in exile were thought to be lost.

    Finding Ernest Cole

    Peck’s meditative film draws on Cole’s notebooks and letters, along with research interviews, in a rather bold attempt to have him “tell his own story”. It’s a story driven by both curiosity and heartbreak, narrated by actor LaKeith Stanfield, whose rather jarring American accent gives voice to a South African experience.

    Although she’s not mentioned in the credits, Peck’s script draws heavily on interviews by Swedish curator and researcher Gunilla Knape. Her association with the Hasselblad Foundation might account for why she remains unacknowledged – the organisation is linked to the ongoing controversy over ownership of Cole’s work.



    Read more:
    Glimpses into the history of street photography in South Africa

    In 2017, Cole’s nephew, Leslie Matlaisane, received an email requesting that he travel to Sweden to discuss the return of items belonging to his uncle, discovered in a bank vault in Stockholm.

    The film includes footage of Matlaisane’s journey to Sweden and the bizarre scene that unfolds as Cole’s archive is returned without any explanation about how it came to be either lost or found, or who’d placed it there.

    The boxes included 60,000 negatives, and Cole’s notebooks and research materials for House of Bondage. An incredible trove of history has resurfaced, but as Peck’s film shows, Cole himself was irrecoverably lost in exile.

    Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is showing in Johannesburg. It can be streamed on various services.

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

    – ref. Ernest Cole: the South African photographer at the centre of a powerful and heartbreaking film – https://theconversation.com/ernest-cole-the-south-african-photographer-at-the-centre-of-a-powerful-and-heartbreaking-film-254508

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI United Nations: 16 April 2025 Departmental update Country-level champions meet to strengthen interagency coordination of mental health and psychosocial support across humanitarian emergencies

    Source: World Health Organisation

    In February 2025, the co-chairs of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) Technical Working Groups (TWGs) from humanitarian emergencies around the world gathered in Ethiopia for a global meeting to strengthen interagency coordination and share country-level experiences.

    Hosted by WHO Ethiopia and convened by the IASC MHPSS Reference Group, the meeting brought together 40 MHPSS leaders from 29 emergency settings, including Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lebanon, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, and the occupied Palestinian territories.

    The four-day strategic forum provided an opportunity for participants to exchange practical approaches to coordination, identify common challenges, and explore solutions to strengthen MHPSS service delivery in crisis settings. It also reinforced the importance of country-led leadership, peer learning, and interagency collaboration in advancing the MHPSS agenda in emergencies. The IASC MHPSS Reference Group serves as a global platform and is the highest level of humanitarian coordination in MHPSS. It is co-chaired by WHO and IFRC and comprises 65 member organizations, including NGOs, UN agencies, international agencies, and academics.

    This was this was the second meeting of its kind organized by the Reference Group, following the first held in Ukraine in 2019. The wide geographic representation and diversity of agency and sectors contributed to productive discussions and exchanges. Participants rated the meeting highly, highlighting the value of the interactive sessions, peer learning opportunities, and combination of theoretical learning, real-world case study exercises to practice skills, and  one-on-one consultation clinics with global and country-level technical experts.

    Global MHPSS TWG Meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 3-6 Feb 2025 – packed with sessions on multisectoral deep dives, tool and method highlights, country experiences, consultations, technical insights, team building and learnings, and interactive exercises on technical topics such as IASC tools including the MHPSS Minimum Service Package, MHPSS coordination, mapping, monitoring and evaluation, assessments, etc.

    In the same week, an MHPSS global-national forum was organized to capitalize on the presence of international MHPSS country leaders and engage national professionals in Ethiopia dedicated to enhancing MHPSS in humanitarian crises. The event, organized by IASC MHPSS RG and WHO Ethiopia, featured a series of high-level and technical interventions focused on ways to strengthen MHPSS coordination and service delivery, particularly in Ethiopia, and globally. Speakers included the WHO Representative to Ethiopia, the IASC MHPSS RG Co-chairs from WHO and IFRC, TWG chairs, and representatives from Africa CDC, UNICEF, ECHO, the Embassy of the Netherlands, country offices of partner agencies. 

    Following the Global MHPSS TWG meeting, an Academic Writing training was held from February 8 to 9. This training, convened by the IASC MHPSS RG and hosted by ARQ International, and co-organized by WHO, the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team and Intervention journal, brought together MHPSS experts to support the development of country-led, evidence-based documentation and publications. Participants took part in theoretical presentations, interactive exercises, and dedicated writing time, covering essential topics such as formulating working titles, pitching ideas, drafting outlines, navigating the publication process, and leveraging AI tools. Ongoing technical support is being provided to assist participants in finalizing and submitting their publications. 

    MHPSS Academic Writing Training, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 8-9 Feb 2025

    Together, the global meeting, national forum, and academic writing training represented a coordinated effort to strengthen MHPSS leadership, collaboration, and evidence generation in humanitarian settings. These events underscored the value of sustained investment in interagency coordination and knowledge sharing to improve mental health and psychosocial support for people affected by crises.

    MIL OSI United Nations News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: 200 years ago, France extorted Haiti in one of history’s greatest heists – and Haitians want reparations

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Marlene L. Daut, Professor of French and African American Studies, Yale University

    A French propaganda engraving from 1825 depicts King Charles X bestowing freedom on a Black man kneeling before him in chains. ‘S.M. Charles X, le bien-aimé, reconnaissant l’indépendance de St. Domingue,’ 1825, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Cabinet des Estampes, CC BY-SA

    In 2002, Haiti’s former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide argued that France should pay his country $US22 billion.

    The reason? In 1825, France extracted a huge indemnity from the young nation, in exchange for recognition of its independence.

    April 17, 2025, marks the 200th anniversary of that indemnity agreement. On Jan. 1 of this year, the now-former president of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council, Leslie Voltaire, reminded France of this call when he requested that France “repay the debt of independence and reparations for slavery.” In March, tennis star Naomi Osaka, who is of Haitian descent, added her voice to the chorus in a tweet wondering when France would pay Haiti back.

    As a scholar of 19th-century Haitian history and culture, I’ve dedicated a significant portion of my research to exploring Haiti’s particularly strong legal case for restitution from France.

    The story begins with the Haitian Revolution.

    France instituted slavery in the colony of Saint-Domingue on the western third of the island of Hispaniola – today’s Haiti – in the 17th century. In the late 18th century, the enslaved population rebelled and eventually declared independence. In the 19th century, the French demanded compensation for the former enslavers of the Haitian people, rather than the other way around.

    Just as the legacy of slavery in the United States has created a gross economic disparity between Black and white Americans, the tax on its freedom that France forced Haiti to pay – referred to as an “indemnity” at the time – severely damaged the newly independent country’s ability to prosper.

    The cost of independence

    Haiti officially declared its independence from France on Jan. 1, 1804. In October 1806, following the assassination of Haiti’s first head of state, the country was split into two, with Alexandre Pétion ruling in the south and Henry Christophe ruling in the north.

    Despite the fact that both Haiti rulers were veterans of the Haitian Revolution, the French had never quite given up on reconquering their former colony.

    In 1814, King Louis XVIII, restored as king after the overthrow of Napoléon earlier that year, sent three commissioners to Haiti to assess the willingness of the country’s rulers to surrender. Christophe, crowned king in 1811, remained obstinate in the face of France’s exposed plan to bring back slavery. Threatening war, the most prominent member of Christophe’s cabinet, Baron de Vastey, insisted,“ Our independence will be guaranteed by the tips of our bayonets!”

    In contrast, Pétion, the ruler of the south, was willing to negotiate, hoping that the country might be able to pay France for recognition of its independence.

    In 1803, Napoléon had sold Louisiana to the United States for US$15 million. Using this number as his compass, Pétion proposed paying the same amount. Unwilling to compromise with those he viewed as “runaway slaves,” Louis XVIII rejected the offer.

    Pétion died suddenly in 1818, but Jean-Pierre Boyer, his successor, kept up the negotiations. Talks, however, continued to stall due to Christophe’s stubborn opposition.

    “Any indemnification of the ex-colonists,” Christophe’s government stated, was “inadmissible.”

    Once Christophe died in October 1820, Boyer was able to reunify the two sides of the country. However, even with the obstacle of Christophe gone, Boyer repeatedly failed to successfully negotiate France’s recognition of independence. Determined to gain at least suzerainty over the island – which would have made Haiti a protectorate of France – Louis XVIII rebuked the two commissioners Boyer sent to Paris in 1824 to try to negotiate an indemnity in exchange for recognition.

    On April 17, 1825, Charles X, brother to Louis XVIII and the new French king, performed a sudden about-face. Charles X issued a decree stating that France would recognize Haitian independence but only at the price of 150 million francs – or nearly twice the 80 million francs the U.S. had paid for the Louisiana territory.

    Baron de Mackau, whom Charles X sent to deliver the ordinance, arrived in Haiti in July, accompanied by a squadron of 14 brigs of war carrying more than 500 cannons.

    His instructions stated that his “mission” was “not a negotiation.” It was not diplomacy either. It was extortion.

    Amid the threat of violent war and a looming economic blockade, on July 11, 1825, Boyer signed the fatal document, which stated, “The present inhabitants of the French part of St. Domingue shall pay … in five equal installments … the sum of 150,000,000 francs, destined to indemnify the former colonists.”

    French prosperity built on Haitian poverty

    Newspaper articles from the period reveal that the French king knew the Haitian government was hardly capable of making these payments, as the amount was nearly six times Haiti’s total annual revenue. The rest of the world seemed to agree that the agreement was absurd. One British journalist noted that the “enormous price” constituted a “sum which few states in Europe could bear to sacrifice.”

    Forced to borrow 30 million francs from French banks to make the first two payments, it was hardly a surprise to anyone when Haiti defaulted soon thereafter. Still, a subsequent French king sent another expedition in 1838 with 12 warships to force the Haitian president’s hand. The 1838 revision, inaccurately labeled “Traité d’Amitié” – or “Treaty of Friendship” – reduced the outstanding amount owed to 60 million francs, but the Haitian government was once again ordered to take out crushing loans to pay the balance.

    It was the Haitian people who suffered the brunt of the consequences of France’s theft. Boyer levied draconian taxes in order to pay back the loans. And while Christophe had been busy developing a national school system during his reign, under Boyer, and all subsequent presidents, such projects had to be put on hold. Moreover, researchers have found that the independence debt and the resulting drain on the Haitian treasury were directly responsible not only for the underfunding of education in 20th-century Haiti, but also for the lack of health care and the country’s inability to develop public infrastructure.

    A 2022 analysis by The New York Times, furthermore, revealed that Haitians ended up paying more than 112 million francs over seven decades, or $560 million – estimated between $22 billion and $44 billion in today’s dollars. Recognizing the gravity of this scandal, French economist Thomas Piketty has argued that France should repay at least $28 billion to Haiti in restitution.

    A debt that’s both moral and material

    Former French presidents, from Jacques Chirac to Nicolas Sarkozy to François Hollande, have a history of punishing, skirting or downplaying Haitian demands for recompense.

    In May 2015, when Hollande became only France’s second head of state to visit Haiti, he admitted that his country needed to “settle the debt.” Later, realizing he had unwittingly provided fuel for the legal claims already prepared by attorney Ira Kurzban on behalf of the Haitian people, Hollande clarified that he meant France’s debt was merely “moral.”

    To deny that the consequences of slavery were also material is to deny French history itself. France belatedly abolished slavery in 1848 in its remaining colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion and French Guyana, which are still territories of France today. Afterward, the French government demonstrated once again its understanding of slavery’s relationship to economics when it financially compensated the former “owners” of enslaved people.

    The resulting racial wealth gap is no metaphor. In metropolitan France, 14.1% of the population lives below the poverty line. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, in contrast, where more than 80% of the population is of African descent, the poverty rates are 38% and 46%, respectively. The poverty rate in Haiti is even more dire at 59%. And whereas the gross domestic product per capita – the best measure of a country’s standard of living – is $44,690 in France, it’s a mere $1,693 in Haiti.

    These discrepancies can be viewed as the concrete consequences of stolen labor from generations of Africans and their descendants.

    In recent years, French academics have begun to increasingly contribute to the conversation about the longitudinal harms the indemnity brought to Haiti. Yet what effectively amounts to a statement of “no comment” has historically been the only response from France’s current government under President Emmanuel Macron.

    Yet if recent reports prove accurate, on the bicentennial of the indemnity “agreement,” Macron plans to issue a “landmark statement” about France’s “colonial legacy,” along with several “memory initiatives,” designed to “keep the memory of slavery alive throughout the national territory, as in Haiti.”

    But to me, the only initiative from France that would matter would be one detailing how it plans to provide economic recompense to Haitians.

    This is an updated version of an article originally published on June 30, 2020.

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

    – ref. 200 years ago, France extorted Haiti in one of history’s greatest heists – and Haitians want reparations – https://theconversation.com/200-years-ago-france-extorted-haiti-in-one-of-historys-greatest-heists-and-haitians-want-reparations-254550

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI USA: U.S. crude oil production rose by 2% in 2024

    Source: US Energy Information Administration

    In-brief analysis

    April 16, 2025

    U.S. crude oil production grew by 270,000 barrels per day (b/d) in 2024 to average 13.2 million b/d, according to our Petroleum Supply Monthly. Almost all the production growth came from the Permian region.

    Our Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) breaks out U.S. Lower 48 (L48) crude oil production data for the Appalachia, Bakken, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, and Permian regions, in addition to reporting Alaska and Gulf of America production data. For crude oil production, the Permian, Eagle Ford, and Bakken are the most prolific production regions, accounting for almost two-thirds of total U.S. production.

    In 2024, the Permian region in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico produced more crude oil than any other region, accounting for 48% of total U.S. crude oil production. Permian region production also accounted for almost all the growth in 2024, rising by 370,000 b/d compared with 2023 to average 6.3 million b/d. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices averaged $77 per barrel (b) in 2024, high enough to support oil-directed drilling in the Permian region. The average breakeven price was $62/b in the Permian Midland Basin and $64/b in the Permian Delaware Basin, the two largest basins in the Permian, according to data from a Dallas Fed Energy survey.

    The Permian region averaged 308 active drilling rigs in 2024, accounting for more than half of the rigs in operation last year but 26 fewer rigs than in 2023. Even with the lower rig count in 2024, Permian production grew because well productivity improved. Producers used technological advancements such as artificial intelligence, electronic hydraulic fracturing technology, and automated drilling processes to optimize operations.

    Although the Eagle Ford and Bakken regions each contributed 9% of the total U.S. crude oil production in 2024, production in these regions remained mostly flat. Both Eagle Ford and Bakken production showed similar growth, rising by 13,000 b/d to 1.2 million b/d. The rig count in the Eagle Ford fell by 9 rigs in 2024 to average 54 rigs, while the rig count in the Bakken fell by 2 rigs to average 34 rigs in 2024.

    Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short-Term Energy Outlook, April 2025
    Note: GOA=Gulf of America; AK=Alaska; L48=Lower 48 U.S. states

    Principal contributor: Naser Ameen

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: Global AI Diagnostics Market to Reach $8.54 Billion By 2033 as Industry Sees Increasing R&D and Strategic Collaborations

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    PALM BEACH, Fla., April 16, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — FN Media Group News Commentary – Artificial intelligence (AI) is being utilized for disease detection in the global markets. In today’s AI-driven world, the use of deep learning algorithms and AI tools in diagnostics can improve the accuracy, speed and efficiency for diagnosing patients with minimal errors. The introduction of AI tools in diagnostics has revolutionized the healthcare industry with supporting the doctors in advanced disease diagnosis and providing personalized treatments to patients with better judgements and quick results. According to Precedence Research, the global artificial intelligence in diagnostics market size was exhibited at USD 1.61 billion in 2024 and is projected to hit around USD 8.54 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 20.37% during the forecast period 2024 to 2033. The report said: “The advances in digital biomarkers technology which uses real-time monitoring systems for early disease diagnosis and prediction has also enhanced the AI in diagnostics market growth. The application of AI tools in diagnostics has led to analyzing medical images for assessing disease progression, predicting patient outcomes, processing and storing of patient data which includes electronic health records (EHRs), identifying patterns and anomalies in patient data and symptom checkers for providing potential diagnosis.”   Active healthcare/tech companies active in the markets include: Avant Technologies Inc. (OTCQB: AVAI), Illumina Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN), Tempus AI, Inc. (NASDAQ: TEM), Medtronic plc (NYSE: MDT), Spectral AI, Inc. (NASDAQ: MDAI).

    The report continued: “Moreover, the rising prevalence of chronic and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is fueling the market growth of AI in diagnostics as the demand for advanced and digital healthcare solutions is increasing worldwide. The rapid developments in cutting-edge AI tools in diagnostics and the surging investments in R&D of industries in enhancing diagnostic proficiency for improved patient outcomes is driving the market. North America dominated the AI in diagnostics market in 2024. With the presence of key market players and cutting-edge advancements in technologies integrated with AI-powered tools has expanded the market growth in this region. The rise in investments in R&D, support from government initiatives and increased fundings from private and public organizations for producing AI-enhanced diagnostic tools is strengthening the industries in the region.”

    Avant Technologies, Inc. (OTCQB: AVAI) and JV Partner, Ainnova, Accelerate Expansion Across Latin America Following Key Role at Healthcare Innovation Summit – Avant Technologies, Inc. (“Avant” or the “Company”) and its partner, Ainnova Tech, Inc., (Ainnova), a leading healthcare technology company focused on revolutionizing early disease detection using artificial intelligence (AI), today announced that following Ainnova’s sponsorship and its CEO’s key role at the 2025 Healthcare Innovation Summit in Mexico City, both Avant and Ainnova, through their joint venture, Ai-nova Acquisition Corp. (AAC), are building on Ainnova’s strong presence in Mexico by expanding its footprint across Latin America.

    Ainnova has initiated its first commercial pilots in both Chile and the Dominican Republic to work directly with prestigious hospitals that cover the full spectrum of care—from primary to highly specialized services. These pilot programs aim to demonstrate, (i) cost reduction in preventive diagnostics; (ii) increased efficiency in medical resource allocation and patient flow; (iii) enhanced institutional reputation driven by technological innovation; and (iv) improved profitability for participating healthcare centers through optimized patient referrals.

    The pilot programs leverage Ainnova’s proprietary Vision AI platform to identify health risks in real time, which enable seamless referrals for specialty care or further diagnostic tests when a positive risk is detected. The broader vision for the joint venture involves deploying an automated, low-cost retinal imaging device integrated with its AI-driven platform to deliver comprehensive preventive risk screening. From just two retinal images, blood pressure and some lab test information, the system will assess risks for: cardiovascular disease (CVD), type 2 diabetes, liver fibrosis, and chronic kidney disease (CKD).

    The message that Ainnova’s CEO, Vinicio Vargas, continues to convey to audiences around the world is that this accessible, fast, and scalable solution is designed to support early intervention and targeted treatment strategies, with the ambition of reaching millions of patients globally in the coming years.

    Avant has partnered with Ainnova to form AAC so the two companies can advance and commercialize Ainnova’s technology portfolio worldwide. AAC has the global licensing rights for the portfolio, including its Vision AI platform and its versatile retinal cameras.

    Avant and Ainnova have identified Brazil and the United States as key strategic markets. Ainnova is currently addressing regulatory pathways in Brazil with the support of its MDSAP certification to meet ANVISA requirements, paving the way for rapid market entry. CONTINUED… Read this and more news for Avant Technologies at:   https://www.financialnewsmedia.com/news-avai/

    In other developments and happenings in the markets recently include:

    Medtronic plc (NYSE: MDT), a global leader in healthcare technology, recently announced late-breaking data on five-year outcomes from the Evolut Low Risk Trial. Data shows, versus surgery, the Evolut™ transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) system delivers a numerically lower rate of all-cause mortality or disabling stroke at five years, strong valve performance and durable clinical outcomes. The findings were presented as late-breaking clinical science at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session & Expo and simultaneously published in the JACC, the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology.

    The Evolut Low Risk Trial was a randomized, multicenter, international study assessing the safety and efficacy of the Evolut TAVR system versus surgery in low-risk patients. These patients had a predicted 30-day mortality risk <3%, as assessed by a local heart team. 1,414 patients were randomized, with 730 receiving TAVR with either a Medtronic Evolut R, PRO, or CoreValve™ and 684 undergoing surgery.

    Spectral AI, Inc. (NASDAQ: MDAI), a leading developer of the AI-driven DeepView® System, which uses multi-spectral imaging and AI algorithms to predict burn healing potential, recently announced the successful completion of a debt financing agreement of up to $15.0 million in funding from Avenue Venture Opportunities Fund II, L.P., a fund of Avenue Capital Group, with an initial draw down of $8.5 million. In connection with this debt financing, the Company also raised $2.7 million of equity financing from institutional as well as existing investors. With total cash on hand now of over $14 million and potential access to additional debt of $6.5 million, Spectral AI is able to accelerate its product commercialization efforts, including the upcoming U.S. launch of its DeepView System.

    The term of the financing agreement is for three years, with an interest-only payment period of no less than 15 months, which can be extended to 24 months upon achieving the milestones laid out in the second financing tranche. The second financing tranche, which is contingent upon FDA clearance of the DeepView System, includes an additional $6.5 million in debt financing and a $7.0 million equity raise to be completed by the Company. The financing also includes warrant coverage equal to 8.5% of the total funding commitment from Avenue Capital Group, with an exercise price of $1.80 per share.   As part of the financing, the Company has agreed to a market standstill with no additional stock sales by the Company for a period of at least six months. SP Angel Corporate Finance LLP acted as the sole placement agent for the participation of existing UK investors. Dominari Securities LLC acted as the sole placement agent for U.S. investors.

    Illumina Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) and Tempus AI, Inc. (NASDAQ: TEM) recently announced a collaboration to accelerate clinical adoption of next-generation sequencing tests through novel evidence generation. The collaboration will combine leading Illumina AI technologies with Tempus’s comprehensive multimodal data platform to train genomic algorithms and ultimately accelerate clinical adoption of molecular testing for patients.

    “In the era of true precision medicine, every patient who is battling complex disease should be routed to the optimal therapy based on molecular insights,” said Everett Cunningham, chief commercial officer of Illumina. “We envision a world where the full range of molecular profiling is available as part of the standard of care—not just in cancer, but in cardiology, neurology, immunology, and every other category of disease.”

    Today, patients frequently miss the benefit of precision medicine because molecular profiling is not yet standard across disease areas and regions. This collaboration will leverage Tempus multimodal data to further improve Illumina’s AI-driven molecular analysis technologies and generate new insights supporting the clinical value of sequencing. These insights will be used to build evidence packages needed to standardize use of comprehensive genomic profiling and other molecular testing across all major diseases.

    “By expanding our collaboration with Illumina, we are combining our strengths in technology and data analytics with their strengths in developing new sequencing technologies to drive forward innovation and advance precision medicine,” said Terron Bruner, chief commercial officer of Tempus.

    The program builds on a long-standing collaboration between the companies, which has focused on developing tools and assays to address gaps in testing needs from preemptive screening through therapy selection, health economics, and bioinformatics pipelines to improve patient outcomes and research.

    About FN Media Group:

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    DISCLAIMER:  FN Media Group LLC (FNM), which owns and operates FinancialNewsMedia.com and MarketNewsUpdates.com, is a third party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels. FNM is NOT affiliated in any manner with any company mentioned herein. FNM and its affiliated companies are a news dissemination solutions provider and are NOT a registered broker/dealer/analyst/adviser, holds no investment licenses and may NOT sell, offer to sell or offer to buy any security. FNM’s market updates, news alerts and corporate profiles are NOT a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell or hold securities. The material in this release is intended to be strictly informational and is NEVER to be construed or interpreted as research material. All readers are strongly urged to perform research and due diligence on their own and consult a licensed financial professional before considering any level of investing in stocks. All material included herein is republished content and details which were previously disseminated by the companies mentioned in this release. FNM is not liable for any investment decisions by its readers or subscribers. Investors are cautioned that they may lose all or a portion of their investment when investing in stocks. For current services performed FNM was compensated forty nine hundred dollars for news coverage of the current press releases issued by Avant Technologies, Inc. by a non-affiliated third party. FNM HOLDS NO SHARES OF ANY COMPANY NAMED IN THIS RELEASE.

    This release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. “Forward-looking statements” describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as “may”, “future”, “plan” or “planned”, “will” or “should”, “expected”, “anticipates”, “draft”, “eventually” or “projected”. You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a company’s annual report on Form 10-K or 10-KSB and other filings made by such company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and FNM undertakes no obligation to update such statements.

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    SOURCE: FN Media Group

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Intermex to Release First Quarter 2025 Earnings

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    MIAMI, April 16, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — International Money Express, Inc. (NASDAQ: IMXI), also known as Intermex, will release its First Quarter 2025 earnings before the start of trading on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. The Intermex management team will be hosting a conference call on the same day at 9:00 am ET.

    Interested parties are invited to join the discussion and gain firsthand knowledge about Intermex’s financial performance and operational achievements through the following channels:

    • A live broadcast of the conference call may be accessed via the Investor Relations section of Intermex’s website at https://investors.intermexonline.com/.
    • To participate in the live conference call via telephone, please register HERE. Upon registering, a dial-in number and unique PIN will be provided to join the conference call.
    • Following the conference call, an archived webcast of the call will be available for one year on Intermex’s website at https://investors.intermexonline.com/.

    About International Money Express, Inc.
    Founded in 1994, Intermex applies proprietary technology, enabling consumers to send money from the United States, Canada, and Europe to more than 60 countries. The Company provides the digital movement of money through a network of agent retailers in the United States, Canada, and Europe; Company-operated stores; our mobile app; and the Company’s websites. Transactions are fulfilled and paid through thousands of retail and bank locations around the world. Intermex is headquartered in Miami, Florida, with international offices in Puebla, Mexico, Guatemala City, Guatemala, London, England, and Madrid, Spain. For more information about Intermex, please visit www.intermexonline.com.

    Investor Relations:
    Alex Sadowski
    Investor Relations Coordinator
    Tel: 305-671-8000
    IR@intermexusa.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Questor Announces December 31, 2024 Results

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    CALGARY, Alberta, April 16, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Questor Technology Inc. (“Questor” or the “Company”) (TSX-V: QST) announced today its financial and operating results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2024.  

    Questor’s audited Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements and Management’s Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2024 are available on the Company’s website at www.questortech.com/quarterly-reports and at www.sedarplus.ca.

    Unless otherwise noted, all financial figures are presented in Canadian dollars, prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards and are unaudited for the three months ended December 31, 2024.

    FOURTH QUARTER AND 2024 CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL RESULTS

      Three months ended December 31,   Twelve months ended December 31,  
    For the 2024   2023   2024   2023  
    (Stated in CDN $)        
    Revenue 1,775,892   1,445,128   4,520,580   7,190,871  
    Gross profit 595,405   738,031   1,233,410   2,730,907  
    Adjusted EBITA(1) 5,246   152,543   (1,450,452)   488,787  
    Loss for the period (1,041,393)   (891,982)   (3,233,997)   (4,806,412)  
    Loss per share – basic and diluted (0.04)   (0.03)   (0.12)   (0.17)  
             
    As at         December 31, 2024     December 31, 2023  
    (Stated in CDN $)        
    Working capital(2)     7,570,934   11,844,178  
    Total assets     24,090,332   27,125,820  
    Total equity     21,110,076   24,357,652  

    (1)Non-GAAP financial measure. Refer to “Non-GAAP Financial Measures” section at the end of this MD&A.
    (2)Working capital is defined as total current assets less total current liabilities.

    Revenue for the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2024 was $1.8 million and $4.5 million compared to $1.4 million and $7.2 million for the same periods in 2023. The reduction was mainly attributed to a strategic shift in Questor’s business focus towards the international market. Questor’s USA sales team was hired in the second half of 2024 with a focus on rebuilding rental and sales revenue lost primarily due to merger and acquisition activity combined with regulatory changes in the space over the past few years. The revenue focus is primarily in the Permian basin, Colorado, North Dakota, New Mexico and Wyoming. The company is exploring potential rental opportunities in Mexico, with rental activities set to begin in Q1 2025. While short-term results were impacted by the change in our client base combined with regulatory changes, our refreshed focus on global markets with opportunities to eliminate methane and VOC emissions will position the Company for stronger, more diversified and ultimately more sustainable growth in the long term. As at the date of this press release, the Company has secured $4.5 million of committed equipment sales revenue, expected to be fulfilled in the first half of 2025.

    Gross profit as a percentage of revenue for the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2024 was 34 percent and 27 percent compared to 51 percent and 38 percent for the same periods in 2023. The reduction for the twelve and three months ended December 31, 2024 compared to the prior periods is mainly due to a lower revenue, where the Company continues to incur fixed costs and due to the revenue and sales mix. Additionally, 2024 cost of sales expense benefited from the absence of a $0.2 million valuation allowance for slow-moving inventory, which was recognized in 2023.

    Adjusted EBITDA for the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2024 was nil and negative $1.5 million, compared to positive $0.2 million and $0.5 million for the same periods in 2023. The reduction in Adjusted EBITDA is mainly due to lower revenue, where the Company continues to incur operational and administrative fixed costs.

    The Company continues to have a strong financial position at December 31, 2024 including cash and cash equivalents of $5.3 million, $1.7 million of highly liquid short-term investments, and working capital of $7.6 million.

    2024 HIGHLIGHTS AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS

    In the fourth quarter of 2024, Questor received the final payment of $1,393,246 for the milestone one of the Waste Heat to Power project from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (“SDTC”).

    The construction of the 1500kW waste heat to power prototype neared completion in Q4, with final testing underway in Q1 2025. Commissioning is scheduled to begin in Q2 2025. Meanwhile, Questor has advanced negotiations and preparations for the prototype’s field demonstration, with the field deployment expected in the second half of 2025.

    On February 9, 2024, Questor commenced Normal Course Issuer Bid (“NCIB”) allowing Questor to purchase a maximum of 1,400,000 common shares over the 12-month period for cancellation. NCIB is effective until the earliest of (i) February 7, 2025, (ii) the Company purchasing the maximum of 1,400,000 Shares, and (iii) the Company terminating the NCIB. In connection with the current NCIB, Questor entered into an automatic share purchase plan (“ASPP”) with its designated broker to enable the purchase of shares during blackout periods during which the Company would not ordinarily be permitted to purchase shares. Purchases under the ASPP during those periods are determined by the designated broker in its sole discretion based on the purchasing parameters set by Questor in accordance with the rules of the TSX Venture Exchange, applicable securities laws and the terms of the ASPP. Outside of the periods noted above, purchases under the current NCIB are completed at Questor’s discretion. As of December 31, 2024 under the current NCIB and the instructions in place with the broker, Questor purchased for cancellation of 671,500 shares for the weighted average of $0.48. Subsequent to the year-end, the Company’s NCIB expired and was formally concluded on February 7, 2025. As a result of the NCIB, which was active from February 9, 2024 to February 7, 2025, the Company repurchased and cancelled a total of 731,500 shares at a weighted average price of $0.47 per share.

    In the first quarter of 2025, Questor announced a $0.9 million purchase order to supply clean combustion solutions for managing railcar vapours at Caltrax Inc.’s Calgary facility. During the same period, the company also secured a $2.4 million contract in Iraq, marking the second unit supplied in the MENA region for a leading global exploration and production company focused on reducing flaring and methane emissions.

    PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

    The global regulatory landscape for emissions is rapidly evolving, with increasing pressure from regulators, courts, investors, and the public to reduce flaring and venting in industrial operations. As a result, Questor is seeing significant global interest in our technology solutions to help address these critical challenges.

    Flaring and venting not only waste valuable resources but also contribute significantly to air pollution. This practice releases methane, hydrocarbons, fine particulates (PM2.5), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, formaldehyde, and acetaldehyde into the atmosphere. These harmful pollutants have been directly linked to higher cancer rates, respiratory diseases, and other chronic health conditions. Methane, in particular, is a climate “super pollutant” with 86 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over 20 years. It is responsible for 30% of observed global warming to date, making it a key target for climate change mitigation.

    At Questor, we offer proven solutions to combat these challenges. Our ISO 14034-certified thermal oxidizer achieves a 99.99% combustion efficiency, ensuring that our clients can demonstrate compliance with emissions standards and eliminate the release of harmful pollutants. This clean combustion technology significantly reduces health risks in surrounding communities, including respiratory illnesses and cancers. Additionally, our organic Rankine cycle (ORC) repurposes heat from methane combustion, creating a revenue stream that offsets the costs of achieving net-zero carbon dioxide equivalent emissions.

    Many major oil and gas producers have pledged to reduce flaring, venting, and methane emissions while working toward net-zero goals. Questor’s innovative combination of clean combustion and waste heat-to-power technology enables our clients to meet these all these commitments at a net-zero cost.

    Questor’s multi-year strategy to intentionally diversify revenue streams globally has focussed on those jurisdictions that have created favorable conditions that have considered the environmental and social impacts of energy production and want to grow their future production in a sustainable manner. As an example, the Iraq contract awarded early 2025 in partnership with OilSERV was for TotalEnergies EP Ratawi Hub, as a part of the multi-energy Gas Growth Integrated Project (GGIP) operated by TotalEnergies. The GGIP is designed to enhance the development of Iraq’s natural resources to improve the country’s electricity supply. This 4-in-1 project comprises the recovery of gas that is currently flared at three oil fields in southern Iraq to supply electric power plants, the redevelopment of the Ratawi oil field, the construction of a 1 GWac (1.25GWp) solar farm and of a seawater treatment plant. The Questor Q5000 Unit will initially treat 2.1 MMSCFD of associated gas during the pilot phase. Subsequently, the unit will treat an additional 1.2 to 2 MMSCFD of low-pressure gas, maximizing the Q5000’s potential and reducing site GHG emissions in the frame of AGUP Phase 1 development. This is the second unit that TotalEnergies has purchased in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region. TotalEnergies exemplifies the ideal partner for Questor’s solutions, utilizing our thermal oxidizer to reduce methane and VOC emissions, and the future potential of utilizing waste-heat in the GGIP and converting it to power with our 1.5MW Organic Rankin Cycle (ORC) generator.

    To accelerate global adoption, we have partnered with key industry leaders. In Iraq, we collaborate with OilSERV, a top-tier integrated oilfield services provider in the Middle East. In Nigeria, we are represented by Ar-Rahman Technical Services Nig. Limited. In Latin America, our partnership with Hoerbiger, an established multinational company with over 120 locations in 50 countries, further expands our reach. In Mexico, we work with JHJ and GSM Carso, leading service providers supplying units to Pemex. Over the past three years, we have built strong relationships with these partners, educating them on our technology and supporting them in client engagements. With a 25-year track record of eliminating flaring and venting, we are confident that Questor can set the standard for best practices in these regions.

    As global incentives for methane and VOC reduction continue to grow, Questor is uniquely positioned to help clients improve environmental performance while strengthening their community relations. We anticipate that both new and existing clients will view Questor as the ideal partner to accelerate the attainment of their environmental pledges—reducing emissions while simultaneously cutting costs and generating revenue.

    Finally, we acknowledge the evolving political and economic landscape and its potential impact on our operations. We have assessed the risks associated with tariffs and remain confident in our ability to adapt. With strategically positioned inventory in Canada and the United States and established supply chains across North America, Questor is well-prepared to navigate uncertainties. Our global partnerships further diversify our revenue streams, ensuring continued resilience and growth.  

    As we move forward, Questor remains committed to driving innovation, sustainability, and global leadership in emissions reduction.

    FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

    Certain information in this news release constitutes forward-looking statements. When used in this news release, the words “may”, “would”, “could”, “will”, “intend”, “plan”, “anticipate”, “believe”, “seek”, “propose”, “estimate”, “expect”, and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. This news release contains forward-looking statements with respect to, among other things, business objectives, expected growth, results of operations, performance, business projects and opportunities and financial results. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the Company’s current views with respect to future events based on certain material factors and assumptions and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, changes in market, competition, governmental or regulatory developments, general economic conditions and other factors set out in the Company’s public disclosure documents. Many factors could cause the Company’s actual results, performance or achievements to vary from those described in this news release, including without limitation those listed above. These factors should not be construed as exhaustive. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in this news release and such forward-looking statements included in, or incorporated by reference in this news release, should not be unduly relied upon. Such statements speak only as of the date of this news release. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

    ABOUT QUESTOR TECHNOLOGY INC.

    Questor Technology Inc., incorporated in Canada under the Business Companies Act (Alberta) is an environmental emissions reduction technology company founded in 1994, with global operations. The Company is focused on clean air technologies that safely and cost effectively improve air quality, support energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emission reductions. The Company designs, manufactures and services high efficiency clean combustion systems that destroy harmful pollutants, including Methane, Hydrogen Sulfide gas, Volatile Organic Hydrocarbons, Hazardous Air Pollutants and BTEX (Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene and Xylene) gases within waste gas streams at >99.99 percent efficiency per its ISO 14034 Certification. This enables its clients to meet emission regulations, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, address community concerns and improve safety at industrial sites.

    The Company also has proprietary heat to power generation technology and is currently targeting new markets including landfill biogas, syngas, waste engine exhaust, geothermal and solar, cement plant waste heat in addition to a wide variety of oil and gas projects. The combination of Questor’s clean combustion and power generation technologies can help clients achieve net zero emission targets for minimal cost. The Company is also doing research and development on data solutions to deliver an integrated system that amalgamates all the emission detection data available to demonstrate a clear picture of the site’s emission profile.

    The Company’s common shares are traded on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol “QST”. The address of the Company’s corporate and registered office is 1920, 707 – 8th Avenue S.W. Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2P 1H5.

    QUESTOR TRADES ON THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE UNDER THE SYMBOL ‘QST’

    Investor Relations Contact

    Aly Sumar – Chief Financial Officer

    investor@questortech.com

    Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

    This document is not intended for dissemination or distribution in the United States.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Europe: AMERICA/HAITI – “The State is collapsing, opening the door to criminal gangs”

    Source: Agenzia Fides – MIL OSI

    Port-au-Prince (Agenzia Fides) – “The Haitian people are a martyred people (…) and the Church that is in communion with this people lives this suffering in its flesh”, said Father Marc-Henry Siméon, spokesman for the Haitian Episcopal Conference, in a television debate broadcast by Radio Télé Métropole, on Sunday 13 April. Referring to the assassination of Sister Evanette Onezaire and Sister Jeanne Voltaire, of the Little Sisters of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, killed on March 31 in Mirebalais about fifty kilometers north-east of the capital Port-au-Prince (see Fides, 3/4/2025), Father Siméon said that the security conditions in Mirebalais are so precarious that they have not yet made it possible to recover the bodies of the two nuns in order to offer them dignified funeral services.About a year after the installation of the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC), the priest draws a gloomy balance of the achievements of this body, which was supposed to bring the country out of the insecurity caused by the criminal gangs that have been raging in the country for years. “The state is progressively collapsing, leaving is gradually collapsing, leaving the door open to the gangs that are extending their grip, especially on the capital,” he said.Faced with what he calls a collective failure, Father Siméon calls for a moral revolution instead of a brutal revolt. He urges political leaders to conduct a sincere self-assessment and open an inclusive dialogue to find a credible solution to the crisis. “Those who have failed will never walk away from power alone.”According to the UN, there are more than a million displaced people in Haiti, a number that has tripled in the space of a year. Gang violence in the capital Port-au-Prince has forced thousands of families to flee several times. According to the United Nations, in the first three months of the year at least 1,518 people died and 572 were injured due to gang violence, law enforcement operations and self-defense militias. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides, 16/4/2025)
    Share:

    MIL OSI Europe News –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Joint Statement from the United Kingdom and France on Haiti

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments 3

    Press release

    Joint Statement from the United Kingdom and France on Haiti

    Joint statement from the United Kingdom and France on Haiti.

    The UK and France are concerned by reports of criminal gangs coordinating to further destabilise Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council (TPC). We reiterate our collective support for CARICOM and the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support mission in assisting the TPC and the Haitian National Police to tackle the gangs who continue to cause daily suffering to the Haitian people and in their efforts to bring about the stability required to restore democratic institutions and the rule of law in Haiti. We are committed to maintaining pressure on those who seek to destabilise Haiti via the implementation of sanctions, and we call on authorities to fully implement the sanctions regime in Haiti.

    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.

    Updates to this page

    Published 16 April 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI: Bitget Wallet Brings Tokenized Gold Trading Onchain Amid Market Uncertainty

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador, April 16, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Bitget Wallet, a leading Web3 non-custodial wallet, has added support for both spot and futures trading of Pax Gold (PAXG), a tokenized version of physical gold. This move comes amid renewed global interest in gold as a hedge against market volatility.

    PAXG is issued by Paxos and backed 1:1 by physical gold, with each token representing one ounce stored in a secure vault. As gold prices surge beyond $3,200 in response to rising geopolitical tensions, digital gold has emerged as a practical safe-haven for on-chain users. By integrating PAXG, Bitget Wallet provides a seamless way for Web3 participants to preserve value without leaving the blockchain — combining the stability of gold with the accessibility of crypto.

    To further drive engagement, Bitget Wallet has launched a limited-time trading campaign featuring a $9,000 prize pool, with additional rewards available for new users. From April 12 to April 20, users can earn the rewards by trading PAXG via Bitget Wallet’s Swap feature or its futures trading interface powered by tatadex, the wallet’s built-in decentralized engine for onchain derivatives.

    As a multi-chain wallet supporting over 130 blockchains and a million tokens, Bitget Wallet delivers a secure, simple, and seamless trading experience. Its infrastructure includes one-click cross-chain swaps, gas optimization, MEV protection, and smart contract risk detection — features designed to streamline trading while maintaining high standards of user safety and accessibility.

    “As traditional finance and Web3 converge, we believe digital access to real-world assets like gold should be effortless,” said Alvin Kan, COO of Bitget Wallet. “With this campaign, we’re giving users an easy way to tap into the gold narrative while enjoying the full benefits of onchain trading.“

    About Bitget Wallet
    Bitget Wallet is the home of Web3, uniting endless possibilities in one non-custodial wallet. With over 60 million users, it offers comprehensive onchain services, including asset management, instant swaps, rewards, staking, trading tools, live market data, a DApp browser and crypto payment solutions. Supporting over 130 blockchains, 20,000+ DApps, and millions of tokens, Bitget Wallet enables seamless multi-chain trading across hundreds of DEXs and cross-chain bridges, along with a $300+ million protection fund to ensure safety of users’ assets.

    For more information, visit: X | Telegram | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn | TikTok | Discord | Facebook

    For media inquiries, please contact media.web3@bitget.com

    A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/aa7639b6-4519-479e-91a1-a519ffa50463

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: ACT Group Enhances Support for Latin America with New Miami Office

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    MIAMI, April 16, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — ACT Group, the leading developer and provider of comprehensive and innovative environmental solutions for businesses globally, is enhancing its longstanding presence in Latin America with the opening of its Miami, Florida office. This strategic move will enable ACT to provide even greater support and localized expertise for businesses headquartered in the region, as well as global companies with operations there.

    With existing offices in Amsterdam, London, New York, Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo, ACT’s operations in Latin America reflect its commitment to addressing evolving client needs locally and globally. As the pressure to decarbonize and navigate complex regulatory frameworks intensifies, ACT’s Miami office will serve as a regional hub, empowering organizations to bridge the gap between ambition and action with tailored, market-based solutions. These solutions include tools to measure carbon footprints, set climate targets, and reduce, mitigate, and disclose emissions efficiently.

    “ACT has always been about more than just helping businesses achieve environmental goals—it’s about empowering them to decarbonize with clarity and confidence. Across Latin America, we’re seeing a growing commitment to net zero, and our role is to make that journey as accessible and impactful as possible,” said Ronald Rozgonyi, CEO of ACT Americas.

    David Maarek to Lead Latin America Office

    Pioneering this initiative is David Maarek, a 15-year veteran of ACT who played a pivotal role in the company’s early growth in Amsterdam and spearheaded the successful energy efficiency business in Paris, France. As Head of Latin America, David will oversee efforts to deepen ACT’s impact in the region, bringing with him a wealth of knowledge and a proven track record of leadership.

    “Latin American businesses are eager to contribute to a low-carbon economy but often face challenges in knowing where to begin,” said Maarek. “Our goal is to meet them where they are and provide the holistic tools and on-the-ground assistance needed to chart a path forward.”

    His leadership reflects ACT’s strong corporate culture, which prioritizes client-centric dedication, a high standard of excellence, and open collaboration within teams and with partners.

    Actionable Insights in Mexico’s Carbon and Energy Markets

    To complement this expansion, ACT has launched a comprehensive whitepaper titled Navigating Mexico’s Carbon and Energy Markets: Practical Insights for Compliance and Voluntary Success. Created by ACT’s dedicated R&D team—who continuously track global regulatory and market developments—this resource offers businesses a roadmap to accelerate low-carbon goals while efficiently meeting regulatory obligations.

    Inside, you’ll find:

    • A detailed overview of Mexico’s regulatory landscape, including Clean Energy Certificates (CELs) and carbon tax frameworks.
    • Practical insights into utilizing CELs and International Renewable Energy Certificates (IRECs) for voluntary sustainability goals.
    • Updates on the operational phase of Mexico’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) and its implications for businesses.

    About ACT

    ACT develops and provides comprehensive and innovative environmental solutions that empower businesses globally to act on and achieve their environmental goals efficiently and transparently. No matter how ambitious. Founded in 2009, thousands of customers worldwide rely on ACT’s extensive global environmental regulation, market, standard, and product expertise to deliver real results.

    Providing solution discovery, optimized procurement strategies, environmental project development, and cutting-edge digital decarbonization services as well as physical environmental products, ACT simplifies and streamlines its customers’ journeys to net zero and empowers them through market expertise and digital simplicity.

    A PDF accompanying this announcement is available at 

    http://ml-eu.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/beaeb218-63c1-4ab3-a5b5-51a6c0d2975d

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Gaza has become a “mass grave” for Palestinians and those helping them – MSF

    Source: Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

    JERUSALEM, 16 APRIL – As Israeli forces resume and expand their military offensive by air, ground and sea on the Gaza Strip, Palestine, forcibly displacing people and deliberately blocking essential aid, Palestinian lives are once again being systematically destroyed, warns Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF). A series of deadly attacks by Israeli forces have shown a blatant disregard for the safety of humanitarian and medical workers in Gaza. We call on Israeli authorities to immediately lift the inhumane and deadly siege on Gaza, protect the lives of Palestinians, humanitarian and medical personnel, and for all parties to restore and sustain the ceasefire.

    “Gaza has been turned into a mass grave of Palestinians and those coming to their assistance. We are witnessing in real time the destruction and forced displacement of the entire population in Gaza.” says Amande Bazerolle, MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza. “With nowhere safe for Palestinians or those trying to help them, the humanitarian response is severely struggling under the weight of insecurity and critical supply shortages, leaving people with few, if any, options for accessing care.”

    Over 50,000 people have been killed since October 2023, nearly a third of whom are children, according to the Ministry of Health. Since the resumption of hostilities on 18 March, more than 1,500 people have been killed, according to local authorities.

    According to the United Nations, at least 409 aid workers, most of whom were UNWRA staff, the main provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza, have been killed since October 2023. Eleven MSF colleagues, some while on duty, have been killed since the start of the war, including two in just the past two weeks.

    In the latest instance of a ruthless attack by Israeli forces on aid workers, the bodies of 15 emergency responders and the ambulances they were traveling in were found in a mass grave on 30 March in Rafah, southern Gaza. The group was killed by Israeli forces while trying to assist civilians caught in shelling on 23 March. Recent publicly shared evidence has shown that the workers and their vehicles were clearly marked and identifiable, challenging the initial claims given by Israeli authorities.

    “This horrific killing of aid workers is yet another example of the complete disregard shown by Israeli forces for the protection of humanitarian and medical workers. The silence and unconditional support of Israel’s closest allies further emboldens these actions,” says Claire Magone, General Director of MSF France. MSF considers that only international and independent investigations can bring to light the circumstances of, and the responsibilities for, these attacks on aid workers.

    Although the situation has already been catastrophic for over 18 months, over the past three weeks, MSF has witnessed several incidents involving the killing of humanitarian and medical workers. The coordination of humanitarian movements with Israeli authorities, known as the Humanitarian Notification System (HNS), an already imperfect mechanism, has become more unreliable and is now barely affording any protection guarantees. Notified locations, in which humanitarians have informed Israel of their presence, such as health facilities where we work, compounds of humanitarian stakeholders, and MSF offices and guesthouses have been hit by shells or bullets. Areas near healthcare facilities have been subjected to strikes, fighting and evacuation orders.

    Medical facilities are not exempt from attacks and evacuation orders by Israeli forces. MSF teams have had to leave many facilities, while others continue operating with staff and patients trapped inside, unable to leave safely for hours at a time. On 7 April, MSF teams and patients found themselves trapped in the MSF field hospital in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza. Rockets were launched by Hamas in close proximity to our field hospitals in Deir Al-Balah endangering both patients and staff and leading to an evacuation order of the area by Israeli forces, who also carried out strikes near the compounds of Al Aqsa and Nasser hospitals. We strongly denounce these actions by the warring parties and call on them to respect and protect healthcare facilities, patients and medical staff.

    Since March 18, MSF has not been able to return to Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza where our teams were set to begin pediatric care but had to flee the field hospital, which was set up right next to the compound. MSF mobile clinics in North Gaza were suspended, and in the south, teams have been unable to return to Al-Shaboura clinic in Rafah.

    The full siege on Gaza has depleted food, fuel and medical stocks. MSF is especially facing shortages in medications for pain management and chronic illnesses, antibiotics and critical surgical materials. The lack of fuel replenishment across the Strip will lead to the inevitable suspension of activities as hospitals rely on generators for electricity to keep critical patients alive and conduct lifesaving operations.

    “Israeli authorities have deliberately blocked all aid from entering Gaza for over a month. Humanitarians have been forced to watch people suffer and die while carrying the impossible burden of providing relief with depleted supplies, all while facing the same life-threatening conditions themselves,” explains Bazerolle. “There is no way they can carry out their mission under such circumstances. This is not a humanitarian failure — it is a political choice, and a deliberate assault on a people’s ability to survive, carried out with impunity.”

    Israeli authorities must end their collective punishment of Palestinians.

    We urge Israel’s allies to end their complicity and stop enabling the destruction of Palestinian lives.

    MSF is an international, medical, humanitarian organisation that delivers medical care to people in need, regardless of their origin, religion, or political affiliation. MSF has been working in Haiti for over 30 years, offering general healthcare, trauma care, burn wound care, maternity care, and care for survivors of sexual violence. MSF Australia was established in 1995 and is one of 24 international MSF sections committed to delivering medical humanitarian assistance to people in crisis. In 2022, more than 120 project staff from Australia and New Zealand worked with MSF on assignment overseas. MSF delivers medical care based on need alone and operates independently of government, religion or economic influence and irrespective of race, religion or gender. For more information visit msf.org.au 

    MIL OSI – Submitted News –