Category: Machine Learning

MIL-OSI: CAI Named Among Newsweek’s America’s Greatest Workplaces for Parents & Families 2024

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

ALLENTOWN, Pa., Oct. 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — CAI, a global services firm, announced today that it has been recognized as one of America’s Greatest Workplaces for Parents & Families for 2024 by Newsweek and Plant-A Insights Group. This is the third Newsweek recognition this year including Greatest Workplace for Diversity and their signature list, Greatest Workplaces.

The comprehensive study is an assessment of over 693,000 company reviews from more than 113,000 parents highlighting CAI’s commitment to fostering a supportive and inclusive environment that accommodates working parents and their families. The award exemplifies organizations’ dedication to providing competitive compensation packages, benefits and opportunities for career progression, which are drivers for employee satisfaction and retention.

“Our employees are professionals dedicated to their craft, but they are also devoted parents and caregivers with responsibilities that extend beyond the workplace,” said Tammy Harper, chief human resources officer at CAI. “Aspiring for work-life balance is good, but at CAI we make it a reality with flexible scheduling and our work-from-anywhere environment along with various resources that support our teams. This recognition from Newsweek and Plant-A Insights Group affirms our commitment to the well-being of our associates and their families.”

“As more parents juggle raising a family with their work obligations, they want employers who offer flexibility and are supportive of work-life balance,” said Nancy Cooper, Global Editor in Chief at Newsweek. “Newsweek and market-data research firm Plant-A Insights are proud to introduce ‘America’s Greatest Workplaces for Parents & Families 2024’, highlighting companies that are lauded by their employees as great places to work.”

CAI continues to include programs and policies in the workplace that support working parents and caregivers.

CAI has also been recognized this year with a score of 100 on the Disability Equality Index, a bronze Stevie^® Award for Best Use of Technology in Customer Service, North America Top 100 Inspiring Workplaces, among others.

To learn more about careers at CAI, visit https://www.cai.io/about-us/cai-careers-open-positions

About CAI

CAI is a global services firm with over 8,700 associates worldwide and a yearly revenue of $1 billion+. We have over 40 years of excellence in uniting talent and technology to power the possible for our clients, colleagues, and communities. As a privately held company, we have the freedom and focus to do what is right—whatever it takes. Our tailor-made solutions create lasting results across the public and commercial sectors, and we are trailblazers in bringing neurodiversity to the enterprise.

Learn how CAI powers the possible at http://www.cai.io

Contact
Derek Herman
Executive Director of Communications
CAI
derek.herman@cai.io

The MIL Network –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: FACT SHEET: U.S. Achievements in the Global Fight Against Corruption

US Senate News:

Source: The White House
Corruption poses a grave and enduring threat to U.S. national interests and those of our partners. When officials abuse their entrusted power for personal or political gain, the interests of authoritarians and corrupt actors win – at the expense of citizens, honest businesses, and healthy societies. As the Biden-Harris Administration took office, this longstanding challenge had metastasized. In some countries, oligarchs were teaming up with foreign kleptocrats to warp policy and procurement decisions in exchange for kickbacks – with no accountability. Corrupt officials were laundering stolen assets through the U.S. and global financial systems, while local investigators were ill-equipped to follow the money. Reformers in countries saddled with corruption had scarce public resources to actually address development needs. The Biden-Harris Administration tacked these challenges starting Day One, to ensure democracy delivers and corrupt actors are held to account.
The first National Security Study Memorandum of the Biden-Harris Administration established countering corruption as a “core U.S. national security interest,” leading to the issuance in December 2021 of the first United States Strategy on Countering Corruption. Since then, the United States has taken action at home and around the world to curb illicit finance, hold corrupt actors accountable, forge multilateral partnerships, and equip frontline leaders to take on transnational corruption. The result has been historic progress in protecting the U.S. financial system from money-laundering, including in the residential real estate sector, while enhancing corporate transparency. This Administration has mobilized record levels of foreign assistance dedicated to anti-corruption, including $339 million in Fiscal Year 2023 alone – almost double the yearly average during the previous four years. This new assistance has unlocked support for anti-corruption institutions, leveled the playing field for law-abiding businesses, enabled journalists to team up across borders, and more. Expanded law enforcement cooperation and capacity-building have generated convictions of corrupt actors as well as the seizure, forfeiture, and return of criminal proceeds, while new anti-corruption offices at the Department of State (State) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) energized diplomatic and stakeholder engagement. The United States imposed sanctions on more than 500 individuals and entities for corruption and related activities, and established – for the first time in any jurisdiction globally – a new visa restriction for those who enable corrupt activity.
U.S. progress on anti-corruption has produced concrete benefits for the American people and stakeholders around the world – enhancing prosperity, economic security, safety, and democracy, as outlined below. To bolster and sustain this work, the U.S. government has also modernized its approach to addressing corruption as a cross-cutting priority. Today, Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics Daleep Singh will highlight the benefits of this work to American businesses and workers at a White House anti-corruption roundtable with leaders from 15 major U.S. companies.
Advancing economic opportunity abroad
Improving the business enabling environment: U.S. assistance advanced governments’ capacity to prevent, detect, investigate, and prosecute corruption, while encouraging anti-bribery compliance. State expanded its Fiscal Transparency Innovation Fund – to help willing partners improve budget transparency – while holding countries to account for progress in its Fiscal Transparency Report. In the past two years alone, a newly expanded State-Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) program facilitated U.S. collaboration with foreign counterparts on more than 50 transnational corruption and money laundering cases with a U.S. nexus. In coordination with State, experienced legal advisors from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) assisted foreign justice partners around the world in investigating and prosecuting corruption and money laundering cases, and recovering assets. And DOJ’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, in partnership with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, has recovered more than $1.7 billion and returned or assisted in returning more than $1.6 billion for the benefit of the people harmed by the corruption.
Enforcing our bans on foreign bribery and money-laundering – and pressing other countries to do the same: To enable honest companies to compete overseas, the United States upheld its commitments under the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention by enforcing its foreign bribery and related laws and working with partners to monitor other countries’ progress in implementing the Convention, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2024. Since the start of the Administration, DOJ has imposed more than $3.5 billion in total monetary sanctions under the Foreign Corruption Practices Act (FCPA) in 16 corporate resolutions, and announced charges against more than 70 individuals. For instance, this April the former Comptroller General of Ecuador was convicted of money laundering relating to his receipt of over $10 million in bribes from, among others, the Brazil-based construction conglomerate Odebrecht S.A. The Securities and Exchange Commission continued civil enforcement of the FCPA, with approximately $1 billion in total monetary sanctions in 22 corporate resolutions, spanning conduct in 24 countries, since the start of the Administration. DOJ is also enforcing the recently enacted Foreign Extortion Prevention Act, which criminalizes demands for bribes by foreign officials from U.S. companies and others. In addition, this August DOJ announced a new Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program to uncover and prosecute corporate crime – with a particular focus on foreign and domestic corruption, as well as violations by financial institutions of their obligations to take steps to detect and deter money laundering.
Seizing windows of opportunity: U.S. assistance has become more agile via the establishment of USAID’s Anti-Corruption Response Fund (providing flexible support to countries experiencing new opportunities or backsliding), the State-DOJ Global Anti-Corruption Rapid Response Fund (providing assistance and case mentoring to foreign partners on short notice), and USAID’s Democracy Delivers initiative (which has marshalled $500 million in funding from the United States and others to help reformers deliver, including on their anti-corruption commitments). These innovations, informed by USAID’s Dekleptification Guide, are enabling the U.S. government to more nimbly pivot toward environments where local momentum can be bolstered by outside assistance.
Bolstering integrity in high-risk sectors: In April 2024, the United States and its partners launched the Blue Dot Network – a mechanism to certify infrastructure projects that have met global standards for quality and sustainability, including transparency in procurement and provisions to limit opportunities for corruption. The United States also supported the launch of PROTECT, a collective action project to address corruption risk in the supply chain for critical minerals.
Strengthening corruption safeguards in the Indo-Pacific: In June, the United States and thirteen other partners held a signing ceremony, after concluding eight rounds of negotiations in record time, for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) Fair Economy Agreement. The Agreement aims to create a more transparent, predictable trade and investment environment across IPEF partners’ markets, including through binding obligations to prevent and combat corruption. The Department of Commerce (Commerce) and State are accelerating implementation by offering new anti-corruption technical assistance to IPEF partners, including workshops on procurement corruption.
Dialoguing with the private sector: In 2021, State launched the Galvanizing the Private Sector as Partners in Combatting Corruption initiative, which connects companies and governments to strengthen business integrity and encourage governance reform. Commerce’s International Trade Administration organized the 2024 forum of the Business Ethics for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Small and Medium Enterprises Initiative – the world’s largest public-private partnership on ethical business conduct – at which stakeholders formalized policy recommendations on business integrity in public procurement.
Protecting the U.S. financial system from abuse
Expanding corporate transparency: To deter kleptocrats and criminals from laundering money through anonymous shell companies, the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) operationalized a new filing system for certain companies operating in the United States to report their beneficial owners – the real people who own or control them – pursuant to the bipartisan Corporate Transparency Act. Treasury held hundreds of outreach events across all states and territories, reaching thousands of stakeholders, to enable companies to quickly and easily comply with this reporting requirement.
Closing loopholes for money-laundering: Treasury finalized rules to close two major loopholes in the U.S. financial system: (1) to increase transparency in the U.S. residential real estate sector, to ensure that law-abiding homebuyers are not disadvantaged by individuals laundering their ill-gotten gains, and (2) to safeguard the investment adviser industry from illicit finance. Treasury also proposed a rule to modernize financial institutions’ anti-money-laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) programs, to make them more effective and risk-based. Together, these rulemakings represent historic advances for the U.S. AML/CFT regime, in line with international standards, that will help the United States urge other countries to undertake similar reforms to curb illicit finance. The Biden-Harris Administration has also called on Congress to close even more loopholes that facilitate money-laundering by passing the ENABLERS Act.
Blocking assets and denying entry to corrupt actors: Since the start of the Administration, Treasury has designated more than 500 individuals and entities for corruption and related activities, across six continents. That includes blocking the assets of 20 individuals and 48 companies in Fiscal Year 2024 for corruption in Afghanistan, Guatemala, Guyana, Paraguay, Western Balkans, and Zimbabwe. In tandem, State publicly issued corruption-related visa restrictions for 76 foreign officials and family members in Fiscal Year 2024, and 292 over the course of the Administration. These actions have protected the U.S. financial system from corrupt actors and promoted accountability in domestic jurisdictions. For example, just one week after the U.S. issuance of a public visa restriction on former Director of Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) Intelligence Services Osman Mehmedagic for significant corruption, he was arrested by BiH authorities for abuse of office.
Taking aim at enablers of corruption: In December 2023, President Biden issued an historic Presidential Proclamation establishing a visa restriction for those who facilitate and enable significant corruption and their immediate family members. This new visa restriction complements existing commitments to use sanction and law enforcement capabilities to target private enablers of public corruption. Earlier this year, the FBI and DOJ secured a guilty plea and a criminal penalty of $661 million from Gunvor – one of the largest commodities trading firms in the world – for facilitating bribery of Ecuadorian officials and laundering those bribes through U.S. banks. In addition, USAID launched new activities to incentivize integrity within professions that serve as gatekeepers to the international financial system.
Upholding international standards: The United States has helped lead efforts to expand anti-corruption work at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), including improving assessment tools, mitigating risks associated with “golden passport” programs, and highlighting how non-financial sectors can be abused by corrupt actors.
Keeping America and our partners safe
Addressing corruption risk in the security sector: Security sector corruption can divert essential supplies, empower malign actors, threaten the safety of U.S. service members, and undermine U.S. military missions writ large. In the past year, the Department of Defense (DOD) incorporated corruption risk into its security cooperation planning – subjecting certain proposals to further scrutiny and identifying risk mitigation measures as needed. State also created new resources to weigh corruption risk as part of security sector assistance decision-making. In addition, State’s Global Defense Reform Program and DOD’s institutional capacity building programs advanced more transparent, accountable, and professional defense institutions. DOD continued running a training course on combatting corruption for partner military commanders and civilian leaders.
Tackling organized crime and corruption: Transnational criminal organizations often rely on corruption to enable their criminal activities and evade accountability – which fuels narcotrafficking into the United States, human smuggling, cybercrimes, and more. The U.S. government is deploying anti-corruption tools to target criminal networks and their financial enablers, in line with the 2023 White House Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime.
Standing up to Russia’s aggression: The United States has adapted to address the wartime needs of Ukraine’s anti-corruption stakeholders, as they close off a key vector for Russian dominance and advance Ukraine’s democratic future. In 2023, Ukrainian anti-corruption investigators and prosecutors achieved an 80 percent increase in prosecutions and a 50 percent increase in convictions, plus opened cases against high-ranking officials including the former head of the Ukrainian Supreme Court. With U.S. support, Ukraine has advanced significant reforms on asset disclosure, launched a whistleblower portal, strengthened the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, and enhanced transparency and integrity in reconstruction.
Securing a greener future: The United States has integrated an anti-corruption lens across sectors, with particular emphasis on addressing corruption vulnerabilities that threaten a secure, just energy transition for all. This includes USAID support to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), increased mining transparency in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, and innovations that address transnational corruption in green energy mineral supply chains across 15 countries.
Protecting global health: Corruption curtails the ability of states to respond to pandemics and undercuts access to basic healthcare. USAID is tackling this challenge by releasing cutting-edge guidance on anti-corruption in the health sector and launching integrated programming. For example, in Liberia the United States is working with the government to curb theft of pharmaceuticals through civil society monitoring, law enforcement trainings, and public awareness campaigns.
Addressing the root causes of migration: Combating corruption is a core component of improving conditions in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras – so people do not feel compelled to leave their homes, in line with the U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America. Recent U.S. actions have included training up to 27,000 justice sector stakeholders in those countries to more effectively address corruption.
Defending democracy by rooting out corruption
Tackling electoral corruption: When candidates can be bankrolled by foreign adversaries and institutions captured by kleptocrats, citizens lose faith in their governments—or even in democracy itself. In response, USAID has launched new programs to bolster electoral integrity, strengthen independent media, and increase the transparency of political finance in high-risk locations.
Lifting up civil society and independent media: The U.S. government has substantially expanded support to frontline activists and journalists, including through the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium. In addition, a new State Department initiative is training hundreds of journalists in transnational corruption investigations, while USAID’s new investigative journalist networks in Asia and Southern Africa are building capacity to track corruption across sectors and across borders. The Secretary of State established a new award for Anti-Corruption Champions, which has honored dozens of courageous civil society leaders and embattled reformers. In 2022, the United States also hosted the largest regular gathering of civil society activists fighting corruption – the International Anti-Corruption Conference – in Washington, DC, with keynote remarks from APNSA Jake Sullivan.
Protecting sovereignty: Authoritarian actors like Russia and the PRC use bribery to interfere in the policy, procurement, debt, and electoral processes of other countries – undermining both sovereignty and democracy. The United States is standing up to this tactic by building the resilience of frontline actors to detect and deflect foreign-backed strategic corruption, educating partners about the kleptocrats’ playbook, harnessing sanction tools to deter threats, and increasing collaboration between practitioners working on anti-corruption and those addressing foreign malign influence – both within the USG and with likeminded partners. For example, in June the United States joined with Canada and the UK to expose Russia’s use of corruption and covert financing, among other tactics, to undermine democratic processes in Moldova.
Restoring trust in American democracy: The Biden-Harris Administration has established the strongest ethics standards of any U.S. presidency. On his first day in office, the President signed an Executive Order requiring administration officials to take a stringent ethics pledge, which extends lobbying bans, limits shadow lobbying, and makes ethics waivers more transparent. The Administration also restored longstanding democratic norms by protecting DOJ cases from political interference, releasing the President’s and Vice-President’s taxes, and voluntarily disclosing White House visitor logs. And in the last year, the Office of Government Ethics finalized rules updating the standards for ethical conduct and legal expense funds for executive branch employees.
Protecting American democracy from malign finance: Just as we defend democracy around the world, the U.S. government is working to keep American democracy safe from foreign adversaries. Actions to curb money laundering in the United States can help reduce the ability of foreign and domestic actors to make illegal campaign contributions and evade U.S. election laws. President Biden has called on Congress to go even further by passing the DISCLOSE Act, which would curb the ability of foreign entities and special interests to use dark money loopholes to influence our elections.
Revitalizing participation in the Open Government Partnership (OGP): The United States rejoined the Steering Committee of OGP – a platform for civil society and governments to forge joint commitments and learn from each other– and provided assistance for OGP’s work on anti-corruption. Domestically, the United States has turbocharged OGP implementation by creating the U.S. Open Government Secretariat at the General Services Administration, an Open Government Federal Advisory Committee, an Interagency Community of Practice – spanning federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, and engaged with hundreds of stakeholders to exchange lessons and expand transparency, accountability, and public participation. The United States also launched the first-ever Request for Information to feed into the 6th U.S. OGP National Action Plan and announced development of a toolkit to help federal agencies more meaningfully engage with the public.
Modernizing and coordinating U.S. government efforts to fight corruption
Institutionalizing anti-corruption as an enduring priority: Over the past four years, Departments and Agencies have made substantial organizational improvements to elevate corruption concerns. For example:
The State Department’s new Office of the Coordinator on Global Anti-Corruption leads the integration of anti-corruption priorities into bilateral and other policy processes, conducts targeted diplomatic engagements, and drives strategic planning, including through the Department’s senior-level Anti-Corruption Policy Board. In the past year, the Office jumpstarted implementation of the Combating Global Corruption Act and completed an analysis of anti-corruption assistance to inform future State Department decision-making.
USAID’s new Anti-Corruption Center, within the newly established Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance, serves as a hub of technical expertise and thought leadership – driving the integration of corruption considerations across USAID’s portfolio, supporting USAID Missions in developing localized approaches, managing a suite of programming focused on transnational corruption, and using its convening power and policy insights to forge strategic partnerships. Since 2022, USAID has released its first-ever Anti-Corruption Policy, which outlines a cross-sectoral approach to constraining opportunities for corruption, raising the costs of corruption, and incentivizing integrity – plus a host of tools to drive uptake across USAID.
FBI’s International Corruption Unit expanded an agreement with the State Department to deploy six regional anti-corruption advisors to strategic locations around the world, where they organize regional working groups with local law enforcement officials, provide case-base mentorship, and facilitate coordination with the International Anti-Corruption Coordination Centre.

Expanded interagency capacity has been complemented by the National Security Council’s establishment of a dedicated Director for Anti-Corruption position, for the first time, to ensure whole-of-government coordination and advance anti-corruption within key policy processes.
Leading in multilateral fora: The United States has regained its leadership role in the international bodies that shape anti-corruption norms globally and can sustain momentum across time. In particular, the United States stepped into the presidency of the UN Convention against Corruption Conference of States Parties (UNCAC COSP), proudly hosting in December 2023 thousands of stakeholders in Atlanta, Georgia, led by the U.S. Representative to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield. As part of its commitment to championing the role of non-governmental actors in the fight against corruption, the United States facilitated record civil society participation in UNCAC working group meetings, hosted the first UNCAC Private Sector Forum, and supported inclusive implementation of UNCAC commitments in Latin America, East Africa, and Southeast Asia. The United States also participated in several peer reviews of our own anti-corruption practices over the last three years, and proudly made these results public. Alongside these multilateral fora, we convened the Global Forum on Asset Recovery action series to accelerate practitioner cooperation across the United States, Algeria, Honduras, Iraq, Moldova, Nigeria, Seychelles, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and Zambia.
Understanding corruption dynamics: The Intelligence Community developed and disseminated new resources to bolster intelligence prioritization, collection and analysis on corrupt actors and their networks. USAID commissioned research on topics like countering corruption through social and behavioral change and State initiated an interagency anti-corruption learning agenda and a small grants program to support it.
Deepening external partnerships: The United States convened a series of coordination meetings with other bilateral donors and philanthropies in order to harmonize our anti-corruption approaches and galvanized anti-corruption resources across the donor community through the Integrity for Development campaign. USAID’s Countering Transnational Corruption Grand Challenge for Development brought together technologists, businesses, activists, and others to collaboratively address concrete corruption challenges.

MIL OSI USA News –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI: MELD makes Strategic Investment in AI Wallet for the Future of Finance

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

SINGAPORE, Oct. 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — MELD, a crypto native Neobank has announced a strategic investment in Armor Wallet, an AI powered web3 wallet promising to revolutionize crypto investing for both new users and professional traders. In this strategic investment MELD is committing to a future vision of finance where AI drives the market.

Today, professional institutions and traders have access to specialized AI tools giving them an edge against your average trader. Armor Wallet is building an AI powered wallet with autonomous agent technology to level the playing field and give the average user powerful AI tools to better compete.

“This strategic partnership with Armor helps MELD build a future of finance where the average person can invest like a professional without specific knowledge or large budgets. “MELD brings investment products and Neobank technology and Armor brings mind blowing AI tools.”, says Ken Olling, founder of MELD.

MELD has been building for three years towards a future where normal people can get access to financial tools normally only available to wealthy individuals or large corporations. Bringing these tools to the common investor means they get the most out of their money and see it grow. It’s not about saving the world, it’s about giving the bartender in Brazil the same opportunities that a stock broker in New York city has.

Armor is a natural fix in the eyes of MELD because they are building a web3 wallet that is powered by a chatGPT style interface where a user can simply type what they want to do and the AI in concert with autonomous agents will execute those trades, no matter how complex or what time of day. A 24/7 trading desk that is always available and always working for you.

The partnership involves both an investment of capital and also sharing of technology to build a more complete and cohesive set of financial tools. MELD will work to help integrate Armor more tightly into their service offering and Armor will use MELD and its services in the training of their AI as well as product integration.

AI has a bright future in finance, but it’s not about telling the future price of Bitcoin, it’s about onboarding the next billion users into crypto in a way that’s easy, friendly and intuitive.

About MELD
MELD is a crypto native global neobank powered by the blockchain. Bringing fiat currencies like (30+ including USD and EUR) and crypto currencies (2000+ including BTC and ETH) together in one seamless wallet supporting more than 150+ countries. MELD makes it easy to navigate between these two worlds and get the best out of both. From generating a yield on your crypto to debit cards and business accounts, MELD brings fundamental banking services to everyone.

The MELD blockchain powers more than just the MELD Neobank, with a non-custodial lending and borrowing protocol and more than 30 businesses building on MELD. Users interact with all of this through the MELD web and Mobile apps helping people and businesses take full advantage of both their crypto assets and fiat assets.

You can follow the project and stay up to date with its development at these links: Website | X (Twitter) | Telegram |

Contact:
press@meld.com

Disclaimer: This content is provided by MELD. The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the content provider. The information provided in this press release is not a solicitation for investment, nor is it intended as investment advice, financial advice, or trading advice. It is strongly recommended you practice due diligence, including consultation with a professional financial advisor, before investing in or trading cryptocurrency and securities. Please conduct your own research and invest at your own risk.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5c1f5937-2055-4aa3-b863-f75e8c79c3c9

The MIL Network –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Security: Defense News: Carderock Hosts Small Business Industry Day and Navy Small Business Symposium with Capital Tech Bridge

Source: United States Navy

WEST BETHESDA, Md. – Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division hosted its annual Industry Day virtually on Oct. 9, 2024. This was followed by the in-person Navy Small Business Symposium, facilitated by the NavalX Capital Tech Bridge and the Pike District Partnership, at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center on Oct. 10.

Industry Day provided a virtual platform for Carderock’s technical experts to connect with industry members and showcase Carderock’s mission, focus areas, and technical capabilities. The goal was to expand the pool of small business partners to foster innovation between the Navy and the private sector.

Carlos Duran, Carderock’s Deputy of Small Business Programs, facilitated the virtual program in collaboration with the Capital Tech Bridge. Duran was also the 2024 recipient of Naval Sea Systems Command’s Excellence Award in Small Business.

“The intent of Carderock’s Annual Industry Day is to share technical information with industry, so they have a better understanding of our mission and needs. This approach augments the ecosystem of technically available small business concerns that can compete for our contracts,” said Duran.

The Navy Small Business Symposium, coordinated by Capital Tech Bridge, offered an in-person forum for small businesses to connect with the Navy, specifically Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), and Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR). The Department of the Navy Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP) provided information for participants explaining how to do business with the Navy. Presenters included Maryland APEX Accelerators and Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC).

The Department of the Navy Office of Small Business Programs is “bringing more players to the field,” by inclusion of new businesses from atypical sources through its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs.

“Annually the Navy includes 21% of businesses [that] are owned by socially or economically disadvantaged persons and 41% of the businesses that participate in SBIR and STTR programs are new to the program and to the Navy. The Navy is responsible for 50% of all transitions to the commercialization phase out of the entire DoD,” said Susie Drummond, Naval Sea Systems Command SBIR/STTR Outreach.

Capital Tech Bridge facilitated the event and continues to seek new venues to provide these connecting opportunities. This effort has expanded since the July announcement of a Partnership Intermediary Agreement between Carderock and the Pike District Partnership.

Increased local economic development is a shared goal of Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division, Capital Tech Bridge and the Pike District Partnership. By creating a welcoming business environment and new avenues for collaboration, the hope is for Montgomery County to remain a strong economic base that will support the Navy and Marine Corps mission for years to come.

Eugene Cornelius, Director of Pike District Partnership, shared the objective of the partnership.

“We are the advocate for economic development here in the North Bethesda area. One of the things that we have learned when it comes to small businesses and government contracting is that a lot of those in this city and [at this symposium] will need technical assistance…We’re learning as we go and we are providing information that we think is valuable to [them] as we go,” said Cornelius.

The symposium also provided opportunities to network, share ideas and challenges, and connect directly with technical experts during the “Ask Me Anything” panel. The panel included Lauren Hanyok, Carderock’s Capital Tech Bridge director, Eugene Cornelius, Director of Pike District Partnership, and Susie Drummond, Naval Sea Systems Command SBIR/STTR Outreach, who provided keen insight into new applications, emerging technologies and ways to leverage existing capabilities.

Hanyok provides the logistical glue and serves as a facilitator for connecting efforts like the Navy’s Small Business Symposium. In her role at Capital Tech Bridge, she also understands the value of creating Partnering Intermediary Agreements with organizations like the Pike District Partnership and Navy labs under Carderock.

“All Navy labs have the ability to enter into Partner Intermediary Agreements with non-profits like the Pike District Partnership. They have access to county resources to help Capital Tech Bridge host its events outside of the Carderock fence line so that we can reach a bigger audience with less barriers to entry,” said Hanyok.

“Not a lot of people in Montgomery County know what Carderock is, so partnering with a hyper-local PIA helps us better engage with the community and learn that a Navy organization is right in their backyard with not only small business opportunities, but a fantastic STEM program and there are job opportunities in all fields.”

By fostering innovation and technological advancement, the Capital Tech Bridge aims to strengthen this partnership to driving progress that benefits both the Navy and the region. The Capital Tech Bridge encompasses a vibrant innovation ecosystem for the Navy and Marine Corps, partnering with naval warfare centers and national labs to solve complex problems for Sailors and Marines.

For more information on the Capital Tech Bridge or upcoming events by the Capital Tech Bridge, please contact Lauren “Tink” Hanyok at lauren.w.hanyok.civ@us.navy.mil

MIL Security OSI –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Banking: XSET and Samsung Galaxy Unite to Empower Women in Gaming

Source: Samsung

XSET, the revolutionary lifestyle gaming organization, and Samsung Galaxy , the internationally recognized industry leader in technology, today announced a dynamic partnership aimed at elevating the gaming experience and empowering women in the industry. The collaboration will debut at New York Comic Con (NYCC) with an immersive activation featuring special appearances by the XSET QUEENS.
This strategic alliance aims to enhance the gaming experience with a particular focus on empowering women in the industry. By combining Samsung’s advanced mobile technology with XSET’s cultural influence, the partnership creates new opportunities for female gamers to showcase their skills and creativity. The collaboration, spotlighting talents like the XSET QUEENS, will encourage broader representation and inspire the next wave of diverse gaming enthusiasts. XSET and Samsung Galaxy are taking concrete steps towards a more inclusive and innovative gaming community.
The partnership will make its IRL debut at New York Comic Con (NYCC), October 17-20 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center. Samsung Galaxy is creating an immersive onsite experience that offers gaming enthusiasts hands-on interactions with cutting-edge devices. Visitors to the activation can look forward to:
XSET QUEENS Meet and Greet: Special appearance by XSET’s Aliyah Will on Saturday, October 19
PUBG MOBILE Battle Royale: An adrenaline-pumping elimination competition showcasing Galaxy Z Fold6
Lone Survivor Photo-Op: A unique opportunity for fans to capture their NYCC memories using state-of-the-art Samsung technology
Exclusive Giveaways: Chances to win premium Galaxy products, including the revolutionary Galaxy Z Fold6 and the immersive Galaxy Buds3 Pro
XSET QUEENS Meet and Greet: Special appearance by XSET’s Aliyah Will on Saturday, October 19
Olga Suvorova, Vice President, Mobile eXperience Marketing at Samsung Electronics America, commented, “Samsung Galaxy devices are designed to make a difference by breaking down barriers and empowering users to pursue their passions. Partnering with XSET affords us the opportunity to bring our innovations to the next generation of female content creators, including gamers, athletes, musicians, and many others. With its unparalleled gaming experience, and the countless ways the device seamlessly fits into users’ lives, we know Galaxy Z Fold6’s incredible hardware, software, and Galaxy AI innovations will empower these creators to reach new heights.”
“This partnership with Samsung Galaxy represents a pivotal moment for XSET and the gaming industry as a whole,” said Brynanna Goecke, Chief Revenue Officer of XSET. “Together, we’re not just advancing technological innovation; we’re redefining what it means to be a gamer in today’s world. The XSET QUEENS embody the spirit of innovation and diversity that both our brands champion.”

The NYCC activation marks just the beginning of the XSET and Samsung Galaxy partnership. Fans can look forward to a series of unboxing videos featuring XSET QUEENS, showcasing how Galaxy Z Fold 6‘s powerful performance, long-lasting battery, and immersive display will help them take their gaming to the next level. Additional collaborations, content, and events will be announced in the coming months.
For more information about the XSET and Samsung Galaxy partnership, follow @XSET and @SamsungMobileUS on social media platforms.

MIL OSI Global Banks –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI United Nations: Secretary-General’s remarks to the Fifth Committee of the General Assembly on the Proposed Programme Budget for 2025

Source: United Nations secretary general

Excellencies, Distinguished delegates,

I welcome this opportunity to introduce the proposed programme budget for 2025.

I do so in a context of a multiplicity of challenges and with a strong sense of urgency.

In a context of major global shocks, the United Nations is more needed than ever — with our unmatched convening power.

The Pact for the Future, the Global Digital Compact and the Declaration on Future Generations represent a commitment towards updating and reforming international cooperation to make it more networked, effective, fair and inclusive.

The 2025 programme budget proposal reflects in many ways, the priorities set out in these landmark agreements.

The proposal renews our commitment to deliver on our mandates to advance peace, sustainable development, and human rights.

At the same time, we will continue to work to cement our reforms, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

In the new digital age, the United Nations has an essential part to play.

We reached a milestone with the Global Digital Compact which includes the first truly universal agreement on the international governance of Artificial Intelligence with the UN at its centre.

Madam Chair, distinguished delegates,

In December 2022, the General Assembly lifted the trial period and formalized the change to an annual budget period.

The format of the programme budget has stabilized. The programme plans reflect our increased results-orientation.
Our 350 results frameworks continue to move further towards demonstrating the impact and positive change of our work on the ground.

The planned targets have become more ambitious.

More than 65 percent of quantitative planned targets are now aiming to achieve a 10 percent or more increase in performance. This is an increase from less than 30 percent in the 2018-19 biennium, 45 percent for 2023, and 60 percent for 2024.

We have reduced duplication in the strategies and deliverables, while maintaining the same level of programmatic information.

Every programme manager is expected to scrutinize every dollar spent and planned to be spent.

And they must constantly review and adjust programmatic activities to achieve planned results.

This will allow us to optimize resources for mandate delivery and focus even more effectively on results.

Let me now turn to the overall resource requirements.

To fully implement our mandates, we will require a total of $3.6 billion in 2025.

Excluding Special Political Missions, this includes a total of 10,494 posts, representing a net increase of 115 posts required to implement new or strengthen existing mandates.

The proposed budget also includes $711 million for the continuation of 36 Special Political Missions for 2025.

This reflects a decrease of $31 million from last year primarily because of the discontinuation of the field mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), and our investigative team to promote accountability for the crimes committed in Iraq by Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD).

In line with the usual practice, you will consider later in the session additional proposals for construction, revised estimates and programme budget implications resulting from new or revised mandates. These include revised estimates in support of the implementation of the Pact of the Future, and for UNRWA.

We continue to make every effort to find efficiencies while also recognizing that any further cuts to support departments risk jeopardizing policy, operational, or communication support to our programmatic work.

Allow me to highlight five specific elements of our 2025 programme budget proposals:

First, we propose to continue our investment in sustainable development.

We propose an increase of approximately $4.5 million, the sixth consecutive annual increase for the development pillar.

The Regular Programme of Technical Cooperation – or RPTC — will be a key recipient.

The increases will further strengthen the direct support provided to governments to help advance their development efforts.

With the proposed increase of $2 million, resources for the RPTC will have grown by more than 45% since 2019.

The proposed increase in the RPTC will be split evenly between all entities.

However, we propose an additional $0.5 million for the Economic Commission for Africa for technical assistance and advice to Member States on the 2030 Agenda and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

Our proposal also includes an increase of $1 million for the Development Account to enhance and expand targeted, country-level capacity development support and to broaden the dissemination of the projects’ results to more countries.

We also seek increases of $0.6 million for the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa and $0.75 million for the Office of the High Representative for Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States.

Further, we want to strengthen the UN development system through structural changes to help ensure sufficient and predictable funding — and enhanced accountability.

The Resident Coordinator system has faced a chronic funding shortfall since day one.

A sustainable and predictable funding mechanism, through partial financing from the regular budget, is essential.

My proposal for assessed funding is under review by this Committee.

It is important to reach a decision on this topic.

Member States’ expectations of the RC system are growing.

The effects of the funding gap are felt every day. For example, the recruitment for 78 posts across 52 countries has been suspended.

We also seek to put the small System-Wide Evaluation Office on a firmer footing with regular budget funding.

This will further enhance transparency and ensure effective, independent evaluation of the UN development system at the country level – the raison d’etre of the UNSDG System-Wide Evaluation Office.

Second, human rights.

The proposal includes an additional $8.3 million to support the work of the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic and ensure its functioning at full capacity in 2025.

We are also seeking an increase of $8 million for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for more effective implementation of mandates, especially at the regional level.

Additionally, based on the recommendation of the ACABQ and the guidance from the General Assembly, we have included resource requirements that will arise from anticipated mandate renewals by the Human Rights Council later in the year.

By presenting these resource requirements now rather than separately later in the session, Member States have a more complete picture of the resources being sought for the Office. This will also reduce fragmentation and increase transparency.

Let me emphasize that this consolidation, which amounts to $28.8 million, does not represent an increase in resources – only a change in presentation.

Third, boosting support for the unprecedented humanitarian challenges in Gaza, with approximately $3.5 million in additional resources.

This includes an increase of nearly $2.5 million for UNRWA which complements the additional $30 million approved for 2024.

UNRWA is a lifeline for Palestine refugees, and a crucial factor for regional stability.

Fourth, advancing peace and security.

This includes an increase of $2.5 million for disarmament, including the establishment of 9 posts to implement activities requested by the General Assembly.

We are also seeking an increase of $1 million for the Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process to intensify its vital work.

Following the landmark decision of the General Assembly, we will address persistent funding challenges of the Peacebuilding Fund due to its exclusive reliance on voluntary contributions — by approving a $50 million dollar grant for the Peacebuilding and Recovery Facility of the Peacebuilding Fund starting in 2025.

And fifth, strengthening our capacities in investigation and ethics.
We are seeking an approximately $2 million increase, for the creation of three temporary positions for the Ethics Office and ten for the Office of Internal Oversight Services.

Madam Chair, distinguished delegates,

With the structural aspects of the reforms now well consolidated, it is imperative to keep working together to achieve the cultural change for results.

Our 2025 budget continues to strive towards our shared vision for UN 2.0, through a forward-thinking workforce culture, empowered by cutting-edge skills.

Gender equality and geographical representation remain priorities.

We are working nonstop to ensure that our workforce reflects the membership of the United Nations.

The General Assembly decision to increase the number of geographical posts has enabled us to reduce the total countries that were un- or under-represented and over-represented. 120 countries are now within range compared to 103 in December 2023.

We are revising our strategy for equitable geographical distribution to focus on attracting more staff from countries that are un-or under-represented.

Through our RC system and UN Information Centres, we have launched targeted outreach strategies in those countries, namely in many of the developing countries that are under-represented.

In the same vein, we strive to expand opportunities for recruitment from as wide a geographical basis as possible for all posts.

All these efforts are yielding results. For example, at the start of the UN development system reform, 41% of Resident Coordinators were from the global South. Today, this number has increased to 57%.

We have successfully maintained gender parity at senior levels and, based on current projections, we will be able to reach parity at an Organizational level before 2028.

But we must do more to achieve parity at every entity and every level.

We are also working on the next phase of our system-wide disability inclusion strategy and making progress in our efforts to combat racism and racial discrimination at work.

Madam Chair, distinguished delegates,

The proposal before you reflects our ambition to respond to new threats and opportunities.

For us to deliver on our promises, Member States must also honour their commitments to this Organization.

Ultimately, the effectiveness of programme delivery and use of financial resources in 2025 will depend on the availability of cash.

I hope that we can end the current trend of declining liquidity.

The Organization started this year with only about $67 million in cash, compared to $700 million last year, making it extremely vulnerable to adverse changes in payment patterns of assessed contributions.

On top of that, the Organization had to return $114 million as credits to Member States as part of the 2024 assessments, which meant that we would collect less than the budget approved for 2024, even if all Member States pay in full in 2024.

The depletion of the regular budget liquidity reserves at the end of 2023 therefore necessitated imposing stringent cash-conservation measures from the very beginning of 2024.

Unless the liquidity reserves are replenished fully at the end of this year, cash conservation measures are again likely to constrain budget implementation in 2025.

This is why I have proposed that the General Assembly temporarily suspend the return of credits for 2023 against the 2025 assessment.

The credits will be held in a reserve and released to Member States as soon as conditions improve.

This is critical to both minimize the risk of negative impact on programme delivery and the ability to fulfill even non-discretionary commitments to personnel and third-party partners in 2025.

I once again urge Member States to meet their financial obligations in full and on time.

I thank Member States that have paid in advance or earlier than before, and have made adjustments to their internal processes to continue to pay earlier.

We will keep monitoring the situation and reach out to Member States to pay in full and inform us of their plans so we can adapt our spending based as needed.

However, when programme delivery is repeatedly constrained by liquidity, past spending patterns become less reliable indicators of the real needs of the Organization.

Madam Chair, distinguished delegates,

The outcome of the Summit of the Future has opened pathways to new possibilities and opportunities towards securing a peaceful and livable future for everyone on our planet.

Against this backdrop, I look forward to your support for my 2025 programme budget proposal.

I welcome this opportunity to engage with you today and assure you that my senior managers will continue to support your deliberations on these proposals.

Thank you.

MIL OSI United Nations News –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Economics: Global Financial Stability Report, October 2024: analytical chapters available now, main chapter on October 22

Source: International Monetary Fund

Chapter 3: Advances in Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Capital Market Activities

Chapter 3 assesses recent developments in AI and Generative AI and their implications for capital markets, using new analytical work and results from a global outreach to market participants and regulators. Evidence from labor markets and patent filings suggests that adoption of AI in capital markets is likely to increase significantly in the near future, and AI could cause large changes in market structure through the greater and more powerful use of algorithmic trading and novel trading and investment strategies. AI may reduce some financial stability risks by enabling superior risk management, deepening market liquidity, and improving market monitoring by both participants and regulators. At the same time, new risks may arise, including increased market speed and volatility under stress, more opacity and monitoring challenges of non-bank financial institutions, increased operational risks as a result of reliance on a few key third-party AI-service providers, and increased cyber and market manipulation risks. Many of these risks are addressed by existing regulatory frameworks, but important new and unforeseen developments may arise. To ensure relevant authorities are prepared for these potentially transformative changes, they should consider additional policy responses.

MIL OSI Economics –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Economics: Three cybersecurity tips for IT professionals in education
Source: Microsoft

Headline: Three cybersecurity tips for IT professionals in education
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MIL OSI Economics –
January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI: Canyon Network Secures $6 Million at $60M Valuation for Its Onchain AI Oracle
Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

NEW YORK, NY, Oct. 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Canyon Network, the Onchain AI Oracle that delivers verifiable AI power for decentralized applications (dApps), is proud to announce the completion of a $6 million private funding round at a $60M valuation.

This round was backed by an esteemed group of investors with expertise in both blockchain and AI, including including DeData Technologies, DAO Venture, Vinci Labs, and Fission Digital Capital.

By leveraging cryptographic technologies, including Trusted Execution Environments (TEE), operational Machine Learning (opML), and Zero-Knowledge Machine Learning (zkML), Canyon Network aims to eliminate trust assumptions and enhance development and security in blockchain ecosystems.

“In an era increasingly defined by AI-driven automation and the expansion of intelligent systems, the need for verifiable and transparent AI solutions has never been more pressing. Without systems that can verify outputs and validate the truth of information, we risk descending into chaos” says Dr. Tim Willis, the co-founder of Canyon Network.

With this belief, Canyon Network is building the must-needed Onchain AI Oracle to address critical trust and security challenges within blockchain ecosystems. By offering verifiable AI power that eliminates traditional trust assumptions, Canyon Network ensures that dApps can operate securely and with integrity. The new funding will enable Canyon Network to achieve several key milestones:
- Develop and launch its next-generation Onchain AI Oracle, solidifying its leadership in the AI/blockchain intersection
- Expand the network’s cryptographic capabilities to enhance security, scalability, and trustworthiness
- Foster the growth of a vibrant developer and user community, facilitating widespread adoption of its solutions
- Accelerate partnerships with decentralized applications in high-impact sectors such as decentralized finance (DeFi), governance, Webb social, and gaming
- Secure brand visibility to drive future integrations across the Web3 landscape
At the heart of Canyon Network’s vision is the belief that truth, transparency, and verifiability must remain paramount in an age of rapid technological advancement. As AI and automation reshape industries, societies, and economies, the integrity of the systems we rely upon becomes critically important.

While still in its early stage of development, Canyon Network has already laid out an ambitious roadmap, with the release of its Minimum Viable Product (MVP) scheduled for Q4 this year. This milestone will mark a significant step forward in the company’s mission to redefine how AI is integrated into blockchain and dApp development, ensuring that trust and security are embedded at every stage.

The funding raised will catalyze Canyon Network to continue innovating and ensuring that decentralized applications can thrive in a landscape driven by verifiable AI. In a world increasingly characterized by automation, Canyon Network’s commitment to transparency and security stands as a call for truth—a fundamental principle in the responsible deployment of AI across blockchain ecosystems.

Social Links

X: https://x.com/canyon_labs

Telegram: https://t.me/officialcanyonchat

Medium: https://officialcanyonnetwork.medium.com/

Media Contact

Brand: Canyon Network

Contact: Media team

Email: info@canyon.io

Website: https://canyon.io/

The MIL Network –
January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI: PERMA FAIR Health & Pharmacy Launches to Combat Rising Employer Costs

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

CAMDEN, N.J., Oct. 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Conner Strong & Buckelew, one of the country’s largest and most respected insurance brokerage, risk management and employee benefits consulting firms, announces the launch of PERMA FAIR Health and Pharmacy [PERMA FAIR], an independent affiliate committed to delivering cost-effective healthcare and pharmacy solutions to employers nationwide.

PERMA FAIR helps businesses lower costs, broaden coverage and improve care through a strategic indexed reimbursement model that helps eliminate unnecessary fees and streamline claims processing and payments. By negotiating directly with providers, PERMA FAIR ensures access to care at fair prices, without the need for referrals or out-of-network restrictions or penalties. The company’s proprietary claims review process focuses on improving efficiencies, eliminating overpayments and providing accurate and timely payments to providers.

Self-funded businesses partnering with PERMA FAIR could save up to 25% on healthcare costs versus traditional models. Employers can explore their savings potential via the company’s online cost calculator.

“Historically, businesses facing mounting healthcare costs are left with two choices: spend more or cut coverage. Neither is good for the business or the health and morale of employees,” said Joe DiBella, Chairman of PERMA FAIR. “We are proud to be able to provide a solution that empowers businesses to tailor custom provider networks and prioritize quality of care, outcomes and equitable healthcare provider reimbursement”.

Rooted in the legacy of PERMA, a trailblazer in municipal joint insurance funds for nearly 40 years, PERMA FAIR draws upon decades of experience in risk management services and claims program oversight. Notably, PERMA has saved taxpayers over $4 billion to date, a testament to its proven track record.

“As a veteran of this industry, I’m thrilled about the launch of PERMA FAIR and the opportunity to usher in a new era of healthcare innovation that will help businesses enhance their employee benefits programs and control costs,” said PERMA FAIR President William Green. “The growth opportunities are unparalleled, and as we continue to navigate volatile economic conditions, the need for a fair solution will remain of utmost importance.”

In addition to cost-saving healthcare and pharmacy benefits solutions, PERMA FAIR clients can expect a full spectrum of services, including stop loss coverage sourcing and a member advocacy team to answer questions, provide care navigation support and assist with dispute resolution.

About PERMA FAIR

Headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, PERMA FAIR is a privately held company committed to helping businesses find healthcare cost containment solutions. PERMA FAIR’s expertise encompasses health and pharmacy insurance, self-funded health plans, plan design, stop loss insurance, reference-based pricing, member advocacy, medical benefits and human resource and claims support. With a commitment to fairness, transparency and innovation, PERMA FAIR is partnering with businesses and providers nationwide to redefine the healthcare landscape and enhance the healthcare experience for employers and employees. The company’s solutions are primarily distributed through employer and plan sponsor benefits consultants and brokers. PERMA FAIR is an affiliate of Conner Strong & Buckelew, one of America’s largest and most respected insurance brokerages, risk management and employee benefits consulting firms. For more information about PERMA FAIR, visit http://www.permafair.com.

Contact:
Alex Dalgliesh
adalgliesh@gobraithwaite.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7e995563-bcf8-42e5-8878-96cc2d06ed25

The MIL Network –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI: PERMA FAIR Health & Pharmacy Launches to Combat Rising Employer Costs

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

CAMDEN, N.J., Oct. 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Conner Strong & Buckelew, one of the country’s largest and most respected insurance brokerage, risk management and employee benefits consulting firms, announces the launch of PERMA FAIR Health and Pharmacy [PERMA FAIR], an independent affiliate committed to delivering cost-effective healthcare and pharmacy solutions to employers nationwide.

PERMA FAIR helps businesses lower costs, broaden coverage and improve care through a strategic indexed reimbursement model that helps eliminate unnecessary fees and streamline claims processing and payments. By negotiating directly with providers, PERMA FAIR ensures access to care at fair prices, without the need for referrals or out-of-network restrictions or penalties. The company’s proprietary claims review process focuses on improving efficiencies, eliminating overpayments and providing accurate and timely payments to providers.

Self-funded businesses partnering with PERMA FAIR could save up to 25% on healthcare costs versus traditional models. Employers can explore their savings potential via the company’s online cost calculator.

“Historically, businesses facing mounting healthcare costs are left with two choices: spend more or cut coverage. Neither is good for the business or the health and morale of employees,” said Joe DiBella, Chairman of PERMA FAIR. “We are proud to be able to provide a solution that empowers businesses to tailor custom provider networks and prioritize quality of care, outcomes and equitable healthcare provider reimbursement”.

Rooted in the legacy of PERMA, a trailblazer in municipal joint insurance funds for nearly 40 years, PERMA FAIR draws upon decades of experience in risk management services and claims program oversight. Notably, PERMA has saved taxpayers over $4 billion to date, a testament to its proven track record.

“As a veteran of this industry, I’m thrilled about the launch of PERMA FAIR and the opportunity to usher in a new era of healthcare innovation that will help businesses enhance their employee benefits programs and control costs,” said PERMA FAIR President William Green. “The growth opportunities are unparalleled, and as we continue to navigate volatile economic conditions, the need for a fair solution will remain of utmost importance.”

In addition to cost-saving healthcare and pharmacy benefits solutions, PERMA FAIR clients can expect a full spectrum of services, including stop loss coverage sourcing and a member advocacy team to answer questions, provide care navigation support and assist with dispute resolution.

About PERMA FAIR

Headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, PERMA FAIR is a privately held company committed to helping businesses find healthcare cost containment solutions. PERMA FAIR’s expertise encompasses health and pharmacy insurance, self-funded health plans, plan design, stop loss insurance, reference-based pricing, member advocacy, medical benefits and human resource and claims support. With a commitment to fairness, transparency and innovation, PERMA FAIR is partnering with businesses and providers nationwide to redefine the healthcare landscape and enhance the healthcare experience for employers and employees. The company’s solutions are primarily distributed through employer and plan sponsor benefits consultants and brokers. PERMA FAIR is an affiliate of Conner Strong & Buckelew, one of America’s largest and most respected insurance brokerages, risk management and employee benefits consulting firms. For more information about PERMA FAIR, visit http://www.permafair.com.

Contact:
Alex Dalgliesh
adalgliesh@gobraithwaite.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7e995563-bcf8-42e5-8878-96cc2d06ed25

The MIL Network –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Africa: Secretary-General’s remarks to the Fifth Committee of the General Assembly on the Proposed Programme Budget for 2025

Source: United Nations – English

xcellencies, Distinguished delegates,

I welcome this opportunity to introduce the proposed programme budget for 2025.

I do so in a context of a multiplicity of challenges and with a strong sense of urgency.

In a context of major global shocks, the United Nations is more needed than ever — with our unmatched convening power.

The Pact for the Future, the Global Digital Compact and the Declaration on Future Generations represent a commitment towards updating and reforming international cooperation to make it more networked, effective, fair and inclusive.

The 2025 programme budget proposal reflects in many ways, the priorities set out in these landmark agreements.

The proposal renews our commitment to deliver on our mandates to advance peace, sustainable development, and human rights.

At the same time, we will continue to work to cement our reforms, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

In the new digital age, the United Nations has an essential part to play.

We reached a milestone with the Global Digital Compact which includes the first truly universal agreement on the international governance of Artificial Intelligence with the UN at its centre.

Madam Chair, distinguished delegates,

In December 2022, the General Assembly lifted the trial period and formalized the change to an annual budget period.

The format of the programme budget has stabilized. The programme plans reflect our increased results-orientation.
Our 350 results frameworks continue to move further towards demonstrating the impact and positive change of our work on the ground.

The planned targets have become more ambitious.

More than 65 percent of quantitative planned targets are now aiming to achieve a 10 percent or more increase in performance. This is an increase from less than 30 percent in the 2018-19 biennium, 45 percent for 2023, and 60 percent for 2024.

We have reduced duplication in the strategies and deliverables, while maintaining the same level of programmatic information.

Every programme manager is expected to scrutinize every dollar spent and planned to be spent.

And they must constantly review and adjust programmatic activities to achieve planned results.

This will allow us to optimize resources for mandate delivery and focus even more effectively on results.

Let me now turn to the overall resource requirements.

To fully implement our mandates, we will require a total of $3.6 billion in 2025.

Excluding Special Political Missions, this includes a total of 10,494 posts, representing a net increase of 115 posts required to implement new or strengthen existing mandates.

The proposed budget also includes $711 million for the continuation of 36 Special Political Missions for 2025.

This reflects a decrease of $31 million from last year primarily because of the discontinuation of the field mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), and our investigative team to promote accountability for the crimes committed in Iraq by Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD).

In line with the usual practice, you will consider later in the session additional proposals for construction, revised estimates and programme budget implications resulting from new or revised mandates. These include revised estimates in support of the implementation of the Pact of the Future, and for UNRWA.

We continue to make every effort to find efficiencies while also recognizing that any further cuts to support departments risk jeopardizing policy, operational, or communication support to our programmatic work.

Allow me to highlight five specific elements of our 2025 programme budget proposals:

First, we propose to continue our investment in sustainable development.

We propose an increase of approximately $4.5 million, the sixth consecutive annual increase for the development pillar.

The Regular Programme of Technical Cooperation – or RPTC — will be a key recipient.

The increases will further strengthen the direct support provided to governments to help advance their development efforts.

With the proposed increase of $2 million, resources for the RPTC will have grown by more than 45% since 2019.

The proposed increase in the RPTC will be split evenly between all entities.

However, we propose an additional $0.5 million for the Economic Commission for Africa for technical assistance and advice to Member States on the 2030 Agenda and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

Our proposal also includes an increase of $1 million for the Development Account to enhance and expand targeted, country-level capacity development support and to broaden the dissemination of the projects’ results to more countries.

We also seek increases of $0.6 million for the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa and $0.75 million for the Office of the High Representative for Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States.

Further, we want to strengthen the UN development system through structural changes to help ensure sufficient and predictable funding — and enhanced accountability.

The Resident Coordinator system has faced a chronic funding shortfall since day one.

A sustainable and predictable funding mechanism, through partial financing from the regular budget, is essential.

My proposal for assessed funding is under review by this Committee.

It is important to reach a decision on this topic.

Member States’ expectations of the RC system are growing.

The effects of the funding gap are felt every day. For example, the recruitment for 78 posts across 52 countries has been suspended.

We also seek to put the small System-Wide Evaluation Office on a firmer footing with regular budget funding.

This will further enhance transparency and ensure effective, independent evaluation of the UN development system at the country level – the raison d’etre of the UNSDG System-Wide Evaluation Office.

Second, human rights.

The proposal includes an additional $8.3 million to support the work of the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic and ensure its functioning at full capacity in 2025.

We are also seeking an increase of $8 million for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for more effective implementation of mandates, especially at the regional level.

Additionally, based on the recommendation of the ACABQ and the guidance from the General Assembly, we have included resource requirements that will arise from anticipated mandate renewals by the Human Rights Council later in the year.

By presenting these resource requirements now rather than separately later in the session, Member States have a more complete picture of the resources being sought for the Office. This will also reduce fragmentation and increase transparency.

Let me emphasize that this consolidation, which amounts to $28.8 million, does not represent an increase in resources – only a change in presentation.

Third, boosting support for the unprecedented humanitarian challenges in Gaza, with approximately $3.5 million in additional resources.

This includes an increase of nearly $2.5 million for UNRWA which complements the additional $30 million approved for 2024.

UNRWA is a lifeline for Palestine refugees, and a crucial factor for regional stability.

Fourth, advancing peace and security.

This includes an increase of $2.5 million for disarmament, including the establishment of 9 posts to implement activities requested by the General Assembly.

We are also seeking an increase of $1 million for the Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process to intensify its vital work.

Following the landmark decision of the General Assembly, we will address persistent funding challenges of the Peacebuilding Fund due to its exclusive reliance on voluntary contributions — by approving a $50 million dollar grant for the Peacebuilding and Recovery Facility of the Peacebuilding Fund starting in 2025.

And fifth, strengthening our capacities in investigation and ethics.
We are seeking an approximately $2 million increase, for the creation of three temporary positions for the Ethics Office and ten for the Office of Internal Oversight Services.

Madam Chair, distinguished delegates,

With the structural aspects of the reforms now well consolidated, it is imperative to keep working together to achieve the cultural change for results.

Our 2025 budget continues to strive towards our shared vision for UN 2.0, through a forward-thinking workforce culture, empowered by cutting-edge skills.

Gender equality and geographical representation remain priorities.

We are working nonstop to ensure that our workforce reflects the membership of the United Nations.

The General Assembly decision to increase the number of geographical posts has enabled us to reduce the total countries that were un- or under-represented and over-represented. 120 countries are now within range compared to 103 in December 2023.

We are revising our strategy for equitable geographical distribution to focus on attracting more staff from countries that are un-or under-represented.

Through our RC system and UN Information Centres, we have launched targeted outreach strategies in those countries, namely in many of the developing countries that are under-represented.

In the same vein, we strive to expand opportunities for recruitment from as wide a geographical basis as possible for all posts.

All these efforts are yielding results. For example, at the start of the UN development system reform, 41% of Resident Coordinators were from the global South. Today, this number has increased to 57%.

We have successfully maintained gender parity at senior levels and, based on current projections, we will be able to reach parity at an Organizational level before 2028.

But we must do more to achieve parity at every entity and every level.

We are also working on the next phase of our system-wide disability inclusion strategy and making progress in our efforts to combat racism and racial discrimination at work.

Madam Chair, distinguished delegates,

The proposal before you reflects our ambition to respond to new threats and opportunities.

For us to deliver on our promises, Member States must also honour their commitments to this Organization.

Ultimately, the effectiveness of programme delivery and use of financial resources in 2025 will depend on the availability of cash.

I hope that we can end the current trend of declining liquidity.

The Organization started this year with only about $67 million in cash, compared to $700 million last year, making it extremely vulnerable to adverse changes in payment patterns of assessed contributions.

On top of that, the Organization had to return $114 million as credits to Member States as part of the 2024 assessments, which meant that we would collect less than the budget approved for 2024, even if all Member States pay in full in 2024.

The depletion of the regular budget liquidity reserves at the end of 2023 therefore necessitated imposing stringent cash-conservation measures from the very beginning of 2024.

Unless the liquidity reserves are replenished fully at the end of this year, cash conservation measures are again likely to constrain budget implementation in 2025.

This is why I have proposed that the General Assembly temporarily suspend the return of credits for 2023 against the 2025 assessment.

The credits will be held in a reserve and released to Member States as soon as conditions improve.

This is critical to both minimize the risk of negative impact on programme delivery and the ability to fulfill even non-discretionary commitments to personnel and third-party partners in 2025.

I once again urge Member States to meet their financial obligations in full and on time.

I thank Member States that have paid in advance or earlier than before, and have made adjustments to their internal processes to continue to pay earlier.

We will keep monitoring the situation and reach out to Member States to pay in full and inform us of their plans so we can adapt our spending based as needed.

However, when programme delivery is repeatedly constrained by liquidity, past spending patterns become less reliable indicators of the real needs of the Organization.

Madam Chair, distinguished delegates,

The outcome of the Summit of the Future has opened pathways to new possibilities and opportunities towards securing a peaceful and livable future for everyone on our planet.

Against this backdrop, I look forward to your support for my 2025 programme budget proposal.

I welcome this opportunity to engage with you today and assure you that my senior managers will continue to support your deliberations on these proposals.

Thank you.

MIL OSI Africa –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: The forum “Advanced digital and production technologies” has started at the Polytechnic University

MILES AXLE Translation. Region: Russian Federation –

Source: Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University – Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University –

On October 15, SPbPU opened the VI International Forum “Advanced Digital and Manufacturing Technologies”. The key topic of the forum is the development and application of advanced digital and manufacturing technologies as the basis for Russia’s technological leadership. The business program includes events dedicated to the most pressing topics of the national technological agenda.

Over the course of two days, leading experts will discuss the specifics of the development of the unmanned aircraft systems industry in Russia, trends and potential of domestic engineering software, the use of digital twin technology and new materials in industry, the advantages of seamless engineering education: “school — college — university — industry”, the possibilities of university technological entrepreneurship, as well as the specifics of ensuring legal protection and use of intellectual property and many other issues.

The organizers of the annual expert event are the structural divisions of the country’s leading technical university, which are the basis of the university’s technological development ecosystem. The forum is held with the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation within the framework of the national project “Science and Universities”, the federal project “Advanced Engineering Schools”.

The central event of the first day was the plenary session. It was attended by representatives of government agencies, development institutes, universities and leading enterprises in the high-tech industry.

First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation on Economic Policy Denis Kravchenko, Rector of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI Vladimir Shevchenko, Deputy Chairman of the Council for the Development of the Digital Economy under the Federation Council of the Russian Federation Artem Sheikin, Director for Innovative Development of PJSC UEC-Saturn Dmitry Ivanov, Director of Science of PJSC Gazprom Neft Mars Khasanov became speakers of the session. The moderator of the event was Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Knyaginin.

A video address by the Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov opened the welcoming part. Valery Nikolaevich emphasized the importance of the forum as a platform for discussing the current agenda for the development of advanced digital and production technologies: The forum has acquired special significance in the context of solving the problems of achieving technological leadership in Russia. In order for these problems to be solved as quickly and efficiently as possible, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education is launching new projects for more effective interaction between universities and businesses. One of these projects is the Advanced Engineering School. It has proven its effectiveness precisely due to the close interaction of universities with companies. We are pleased to inform you that you will be presented with the positive experience and developments of one of the best advanced engineering schools – the school of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University “Digital Engineering”. Specialists will tell you about new effective solutions and experience in the development and implementation of breakthrough technologies, as well as how to prepare a new generation of engineers.

On behalf of the Polytechnic University, the Rector of SPbPU, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Andrey Rudskoy welcomed the forum participants: Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University has always implemented a practice-oriented educational model aimed at fast and effective results for industry. We interact very closely with the industry. St. Petersburg Polytechnic University is a flagship university of PJSC Gazprom Neft, and among the university’s strategic partners are the state corporations Rosatom and Rostec, PJSC Severstal and other major enterprises that are systemically important for their industries. Representatives of many of them will participate in our forum as experts and speakers. The forum “Advanced Digital and Manufacturing Technologies” is a unique opportunity for direct communication, discussion of the most pressing issues on the educational, industrial, and technological agenda.

After this, the Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Knyaginin moved on to the main issues on the agenda of the plenary session.

Over the five years of its existence, the International Forum “Advanced Digital and Manufacturing Technologies” has become an authoritative platform for discussing current challenges and tasks. It is important that the organizer of this large-scale event is the Polytechnic University, which is one of the leaders in technical education and engineering sciences, not only in Russia, but also in the world. On the basis of the university, with the support of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia and the Government of St. Petersburg, significant initiatives are being implemented aimed at the innovative development of our state and achieving its technological leadership, – Vladimir Nikolaevich emphasized.

Elena Druzhinina, Managing Director for Science and Business Cooperation at the Rostec State Corporation, presented the view of a participant in the real sector of the economy on the scientific, technological and educational agenda of the forum.

The St. Petersburg Polytechnic University and Rostec enterprises have been building various forms of interaction for a long time. We are ready to go further and create new forms of cooperation between science and business with the university. For example, the creation of a research and production association is a topic that is currently being actively discussed in this context. Also, the head of the Rostec State Corporation Sergey Chemezov supported the idea of creating an industrial postgraduate program, – concluded Elena Druzhinina.

First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy Denis Kravchenko supported the thesis on the need to expand cooperation between educational institutions and high-tech enterprises: I would like to emphasize the importance of close work on the part of the management of educational institutions and future employers in terms of equipping educational institutions and training students in working with domestic application software on real production equipment.

Vice-Rector for Digital Transformation of SPbPU Alexey Borovkov highlighted the approaches applied to the transformation of engineering education in his report and noted the dynamic growth of interest in advanced digital and production technologies, in particular, in the technology of digital twins. As well as in modern cross-industry platform solutions from industrial enterprises and government agencies: Digital twin technology is at the forefront, meeting the goal of achieving technological leadership, which consists in the superiority of technologies and products in key parameters over foreign analogues. The focus on technological leadership has pushed industries and the state to standardize and regulate those areas that were previously very cautiously discussed by the expert community. In recent years, we have seen how almost the same notes of our lectures with the terminology of advanced digital and production technologies are approved in regulatory documents, consolidating the scientific and technological groundwork formed by the ecosystem of technological development of SPbPU over many years.

Thus, the speaker noted the adoption of the national standard GOST R 57700.37-2021 “Computer models and modeling. DIGITAL DOUBLES OF PRODUCTS. General provisions” in Russia and in the international arena.

In 2023, the global digital twin market was valued at $10 billion, and by 2028, experts estimate it will reach $110 billion with an unprecedented annual CAGR growth of 61%. World leaders recognize digital twins as one of the technologies of the future, the speaker explained.

Alexey Ivanovich presented the ecosystem of technological development of SPbPU, which forms the “gold standard” of interaction between various federal structures, organized based on the results of victories in prestigious competitions of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia with the aim of developing, replicating and expanding the scope of application of advanced digital and production technologies in industry and education.

Alexey Borovkov spoke about the key results of R&D of the SPbPU technological development ecosystem, carried out on the Digital Platform for the Development and Application of Digital Twins CML-Bench® in 2024.

In conclusion, Aleksey Borovkov noted the flagship role of the SPbPU Advanced Engineering School “Digital Engineering” in the ecosystem of technological development of the Polytechnic University and emphasized the growing interest in it from applicants and partner companies: Following the results of the admissions campaign in 2023, students were recruited to the SPbPU Advanced Engineering School “Digital Engineering” for 72 budget places. This year, the number of budget places and open educational programs has almost doubled, but we managed to maintain a high competition for admission, which is 4 people per place. The geography of admission covers almost all regions of our country, – Aleksey Ivanovich summed up.

Based on the methodology of the federal project “Advanced Engineering Schools”, the rector of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI Vladimir Shevchenko identified common patterns in organizing cooperation between partner companies and advanced engineering schools in the context of transforming approaches to engineering education and developing a system for training highly qualified personnel.

The education of a modern engineer should, from the very beginning, assume an understanding that modern engineering and production activities occur in parallel in two worlds: physical and digital. I would like to emphasize the benefits of conducting early career guidance activities with applicants, which over the past year has made it possible to equalize the number of graduates taking the Unified State Exam in physics and computer science. For a modern engineer, these two disciplines should be in tandem, concluded Vladimir Igorevich.

Deputy Chairman of the Council for the Development of the Digital Economy under the Federation Council of the Russian Federation Artem Sheikin spoke in detail about the main barriers to the introduction of artificial intelligence in real sectors of the economy in order to automate business processes, reduce costs and increase the efficiency of enterprises, and also spoke about the cybersecurity of processes for handling large volumes of industrial data.

Director of Innovative Development of PJSC UEC-Saturn, Honorary Doctor of SPbPU Dmitry Ivanov shared his practical experience in developing digital twin of marine gas turbine engine gearbox as part of the unit within the framework of research work of national importance, carried out jointly with SPbPU, and highlighted a number of aspects.

Everyone perceives digital twin technology differently. Very often, the technology is presented to enterprises as another calculation tool, work with which should be transferred down the hierarchy of engineering teams. This is a mistake. The digital twin changes the ideology of product design and production, including changes in the system of division of labor, business processes at the enterprise level, – Dmitry Stanislavovich emphasized to the audience.

Director of Science at Gazprom Neft PJSC, Honorary Doctor of SPbPU Mars Khasanov presented an expert opinion on the implementation of system digital engineering technology, including digital twin technology, and considered the possibilities of combining it with neurosymbolic artificial intelligence to solve the company’s problems. Mars Magnavievich emphasized the need for practice-oriented training of personnel and highlighted various formats of project interaction at Gazprom Neft PJSC to form the required set of competencies of a future specialist.

At the plenary session, representatives of research centers, leading universities and industrial enterprises exchanged experience in the application of new technologies, assessed the dynamics of their development and the speed of implementation in real production practice, held a discussion on the main trends in the development of domestic engineering software and discussed current issues in engineering education. More details about the plenary session read here.

The business forum program traditionally consists of discussions, scientific and educational debates, pitch sessions, presentations. The full program of the forum can be found atevent website.

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

Please note; This information is raw content directly from the information source. It is accurate to what the source is stating and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

https://vvv.spbstu.ru/media/nevs/science_and_innovations/forum-advanced-digital-and-production-technologies has started at the Polytechnic University/

MIL OSI Russia News –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Banking: Explore what’s new for Copilot and Dynamics 365 at Oct. 29 virtual launch event
Source: Microsoft

Headline: Explore what’s new for Copilot and Dynamics 365 at Oct. 29 virtual launch event

As Microsoft Copilot features continue to roll out across Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, it can be easy to get overwhelmed and lose track of critical new capabilities. Thankfully, the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event is just around the corner.

Register today for the virtual launch event on Tuesday, October 29, 2024—a showcase of new and enhanced capabilities releasing between October 2024 and March 2025. Packed with demos and a live Q&A chat with Microsoft experts, you’ll get a sneak peek at innovation that can empower your workforce, optimize business processes, and enhance customer engagement.

Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

Explore the future of your business.

Explore the future of business with Copilot

Microsoft product leaders and engineers will be live at the event to give you an in-depth look at the latest Copilot capabilities for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, including new ways to automate business process across your organization and scale your team. Our team will also showcase organizations across industries using new Copilot and Dynamics 365 features to drive transformation.

Top 4 reasons to attend the launch event

Twice a year, the Business Applications Launch Event gives you a sneak peek at product news, demos and insights into upcoming features and capabilities across Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Copilot. Here are four top reasons to attend the October 2024 event:
1. Get a sneak peek at highlights from the 2024 release wave 2. Discover what’s new and improved in Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. Hear from Charles Lamanna, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Business and Industry Copilot, and other leaders as they guide you through dozens of new Copilot and core platform capabilities releasing over the next six months.
2. Personalize sales and service experiences. Learn how to elevate customer experiences with demonstrations of new capabilities across Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales. You’ll also discover how Sweden-based automotive company, Lynk & Co, is using Dynamics 365 to drive highly personalized experiences.
3. Transform business operations with AI-enabled enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes. Get a sneak peek at the enhancements that improve both core functionality and autonomous capabilities across ERP applications like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central through the lens of our customer Lifetime Products, as well as the latest features for Business Central.
4. Exploring the future of Microsoft Power Platform. Learn how Copilot is transforming how you build, what you build, how you automate, and get a first-hand look at how Applied Information Sciences is innovating business solutions using the newest capabilities for Microsoft Power Apps, Microsoft Power Automate, and Microsoft Copilot Studio.
That’s not all. You’ll also hear from other Microsoft leaders about their roadmap for the future of AI, customer service, and operations and how to use these new technologies to take on your organization’s most time-consuming tasks.

The Business Applications Launch Event streams live on Tuesday, October 29, 2024 starting at 9:00 AM Pacific Time and then available on-demand. Be sure to register for updates and reminders as the event day approaches. We’ll see you there!  

Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

Tuesday, October 29, 2024
9:00 AM-10:00 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7)
MIL OSI Global Banks –
January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Banking: Holidays start with Microsoft Store
Source: Microsoft

Headline: Holidays start with Microsoft Store

With the holidays just around the corner, it’s time to enjoy seasonal treats, hang up festive decorations and relive childhood classics. Yet, alongside the joy, there’s the ever-growing to-do list: finding recipes for meals, managing budgets, planning holiday gatherings and so much more. The season is about togetherness and connection, and whether it’s helping to bring traditions to life or tackling tasks, so you have time to enjoy festivities, Microsoft Store is here to support you. From Surface laptops and Xbox consoles and accessories to movies, TV shows and gift cards – we make shopping simple and stress-free. For early savings on the season’s hottest tech, shop today and check out the latest deals on Microsoft Store.

Check off your to-do list with Microsoft Copilot, your AI-powered assistant this holiday season

Designed to help you get more done with ease, Microsoft Copilot can support holiday tasks like creating a budget, editing holiday photos, or even organizing and planning travel.
- Celebrate the season: Not sure what events are happening in your area? Use Copilot to discover local holiday events, like light festivals and pop-ups. Simply ask Copilot to find events nearby, and you’ll get an up-to-date list of activities perfect for enjoying with your family and friends.
- Get an assist with planning: Simplify planning and spend more time enjoying the festivities with Copilot. Leverage AI to help write invites, design place settings, search for food and drink recipes, and even assist with outfit inspiration, so you can spend as much time as possible with those that make the holidays special.
Celebrate the season with AI-powered experiences, available on the all-new Copilot+ PCs from Microsoft Surface

Copilot+ PCs are the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs on the market equipped with unique AI experiences, like Cocreator in Paint and Windows Studio Effects, to help you do more of what you love this holiday season.
- Create with confidence: Make your holiday invitations pop or even design your own wrapping paper with Cocreator in Paint. The new-and-improved Microsoft Paint app allows anyone to create unique artwork with the help of AI. Simply enter a text prompt and start drawing on the Paint canvas, and Cocreator will generate artwork based on what’s drawn. Turn a stick figure into a snowman or first draft snowflakes into intricate designs, choosing how polished the final artwork will be.
- Upgrade to picture perfect images: Have a photo that would be perfect for the holiday card but there’s too much background clutter? Use AI-powered features in the Photos app on Copilot+ PCs to effortlessly enhance the images. Remove unwanted objects, like photobombers or clutter, to keep the focus on your loved ones or add festive filters to infuse your photos with holiday cheer with Restyle Image.
- Stay connected for those important moments: Whether it’s across town or on the other side of the globe, the all-new Surface Pro is the perfect device to stay connected with family and friends. With a 120-degree, ultra-wide camera and full-HD front-facing camera, the Surface Pro is great for video calls allowing for more space to move around. And with the addition of OLED, the display delivers brighter brights and darker darks for better daytime and night-time viewing. With AI-powered features in Windows Studio Effects, available on Copilot+ PCs, you can look and sound your best with features like portrait light, creative filters, voice focus and more.
With incredible performance and all-day battery life, Surface Laptop and Surface Pro are available in four stunning colors: Sapphire, Dune, Platinum and Black. Designed with productivity and creativity in mind, learn more about Copilot+ PCs from Microsoft Surface and AI-powered experiences by visiting Microsoft.com.

Level up your holidays with Xbox: Gaming for all, anytime and anywhere

Whether you’re cozying up by the fire with your favorite game or sparking some friendly competition during your holiday vacation, Xbox is making it easier than ever for everyone to play anywhere this season.

Shopping made simple with Microsoft Store

Microsoft Store makes it easy to find and purchase the perfect gift with 24/7 online support, free shipping and extended return windows, flexible payment options that start at 0% APR, and cash back for eligible used devices.

When shopping at Microsoft.com, customers can take advantage of fast, free 2-3-day shipping, and extended free returns and price protection through Jan. 31, 2025, for extra peace of mind. If we drop the price of a physical product or you find it lower at an eligible retailer, we’ll honor a one-time price adjustment. Exclusions apply*.

Microsoft Store and partners offer you simple, safe ways to pay at checkout with flexible payment options, including PayPal Pay Later, which allows you to buy now and pay later, and Citizens Pay®, which offers financing, a traditional line of credit. Microsoft Store also has an online trade-in program to make your dollars go further this holiday season.

Not sure what to gift? To help find the best laptop, this short quiz will determine which Surface device is right for your loved one.

Looking for more holiday magic? Stay tuned for savings on the season’s hottest tech with Microsoft Store’s upcoming Black Friday sale, beginning Nov. 15 on microsoft.com.

*Holiday extended return policy available with eligible physical products purchased between Oct. 15, 2024 – Dec. 2, 2024 from Microsoft Store online and Microsoft Experience Centers in select markets. Purchases can be returned through Jan. 31, 2025. Limit five product returns per eligible customer purchase. Excludes Surface Hub, HoloLens and Windows DevKit. Applicable return policy applies. For purchases made at Microsoft Store, see applicable Microsoft Terms of Sale for more information. For purchases made at Microsoft Experience Center, see receipt for more information. Microsoft reserves the right to modify or discontinue offers at any time.
MIL OSI Global Banks –
January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Anniversary Statement: Socata TB-20 Tobago, (N33NW), 10 October 2023
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

Collision with trees during takeoff, Langham Airfield, Norfolk, 10 October 2023
This statement provides an update on the ongoing AAIB investigation into an accident involving a Socata TB-20 which struck trees during takeoff at Langham Airfield, Norfolk.

The investigation into this accident has been completed and the investigation report will be published in the near future.

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Published 16 October 2024
MIL OSI United Kingdom –
January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Mpox vaccine is safe and generates a robust antibody response in adolescents

Source: US Department of Health and Human Services – 2

News Release

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

NIH clinical trial addresses knowledge gap on vaccine use in adolescent populations

WHAT:

A National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded clinical trial of an mpox vaccine in adolescents found it was safe and generated an antibody response equivalent to that seen in adults, according to a planned interim analysis of study data. Adolescents are among the population groups affected by mpox in the current Clade I mpox outbreak. The interim results of this trial were presented at the IDWeek2024 conference in Los Angeles.

The first human case of mpox was recorded in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Two types of the virus that causes mpox have been identified. Clade I is endemic in Central Africa and can cause severe illness. Clade II, endemic in West Africa, caused the global mpox outbreak that began in 2022 and tends to result in milder illness. People with compromised immune systems, children, and those who are pregnant are especially vulnerable to severe mpox regardless of the virus clade. A large proportion of people affected in the current Clade I outbreak in the DRC and other African countries are adolescents and children. The modified vaccinia Ankara-Bavarian Nordic (MVA-BN) vaccine is approved in several countries for the prevention of mpox and smallpox in adults, but insufficient data are available to support licensure for people younger than 18 years.

NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is sponsoring a mid-stage study in the United States to evaluate the safety and immune response generated by two doses of MVA-BN in adolescents aged 12-17 years, comparing outcomes to those in adults aged 18-50 years. In a planned interim analysis, study investigators measured antibody levels two weeks after the second dose (study day 43) and monitored safety through 180 days after the second dose (study day 210). The analysis showed that the MVA-BN vaccine generated antibody levels in adolescents equivalent to those observed in adults at day 43 and found that the vaccine was well tolerated through study day 210. The overall frequency of adverse events was comparable between the study groups. Reports of dizziness were more common in adolescents than adults, but similar to the frequency of dizziness reported when other vaccines are administered in adolescents.

According to the study team, the interim data support the safety and quality of the immune response generated by the MVA-BN vaccine in adolescents, findings relevant to the United States and other areas where mpox cases have occurred. The authors underscored the need to evaluate the MVA-BN vaccine in younger children to extend the evidence base to all people affected by mpox.

NIH is grateful to the research sites and volunteers who participate in studies to improve the mpox response.

For more information about this study, please visit ClinicalTrials.gov and use the identifier NCT05512949.

NIAID conducts and supports research—at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide—to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID website.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health^®

Reference

CM Healy et al. Safety and Immunogenicity of Mpox Vaccination in Adolescents. IDWeek2024. Saturday, October 19, 2024.

###

MIL OSI USA News –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI: Surgent Knowledge Summit Offers Premium CPE Courses for Accounting and Tax Professionals
Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

RADNOR, Pa., Oct. 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Surgent Accounting & Financial Education, a division of KnowFully Learning Group, is excited to announce the inaugural Surgent Knowledge Summit, a series of exclusive, live events celebrating International Accounting Week. The Knowledge Summit will provide accounting and tax professionals with valuable, premium content designed to enhance their expertise and support their ongoing professional development.

This event will feature a variety of insightful sessions aimed at helping attendees earn essential continuing professional education (CPE) credits while staying up to date with the latest industry trends and practices.

“At Surgent, we believe that continuous learning is the key to staying competitive in today’s fast-paced accounting and tax landscape,” said Liz Kolar, executive vice president of Surgent. “The Surgent Knowledge Summit is our commitment to helping professionals not only meet their CPE requirements but also stay informed on the latest industry trends and technologies.”

The Surgent Knowledge Summit features sessions led by industry experts and covers critical topics like the future of financial reporting, the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on accounting, post-election tax policy changes and much more. Below is the calendar of events, showcasing the diverse range of sessions that will be held during the summit.

“The Surgent Knowledge Summit offers unparalleled access to exclusive content delivered by top industry experts,” Kolar said. “From the latest AI developments to crucial tax updates following the 2024 elections, our courses are designed to equip professionals with the knowledge and tools they need to thrive in this dynamic industry.”

Surgent Knowledge Summit Events

Thursday, Nov. 7

AICPA and Surgent Panel on the CPA Exam and State of the Industry
We kick off the summit with a free webinar at noon ET featuring a panel discussion on the CPA exam and the state of the accounting industry. Liz Kolar will join Mike Decker and Joe Maslott from the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA) to discuss the recent CPA exam overhaul, industry trends and what lies ahead for 2025 and beyond.

Free Premium CPE: Weekly Expert Hour Webinar
Later that afternoon, join Washington insider Ken Kies and Surgent instructor Mike Tucker for Surgent CPE’s exclusive free Weekly Expert Hour on how the 2024 election results may shape tax policies. They will explore potential changes to tax legislation and expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This premium CPE course will be held 2-3 p.m. ET and attendees will earn one CPE credit.

Tuesday, Nov. 12

Mark Your Calendars: Surgent’s Most Exciting Annual Event Is Coming!
In celebration of International Accounting Day Surgent will be offering its biggest sale of the year.

Tax Preparation for Accountants
Join Surgent Income Tax School at 3 p.m. ET for a free webinar: How Accounting Firms Can Increase Revenue with Tax Prep. Surgent’s team of industry experts will share strategies on using tax preparation services to boost revenue and client retention.

Wednesday, Nov. 13

The Surgent Knowledge Summit will kick into high gear with a day dedicated to the future of accounting and auditing with cutting-edge webinars, including:
- What A&A Pros Need to Know About Blockchain, Bitcoin, and Digital Assets (BBD2) with Jack Castonguay will explore the impact of blockchain, Bitcoin and digital assets on accounting practices. Attendees will learn about the regulatory challenges, reporting standards and key accounting complexities related to these emerging technologies. This course will be held 9-11 a.m. ET and attendees will earn two CPE credits.
- Innovating Accounting: The Impact of AI, Automation and Blockchain on Financial Reporting and Auditing (AAB1) with Eric Cohen, owner of Cohen Computer Consulting and co-founder of XBRL. This webinar will cover how AI, automation and blockchain are transforming financial reporting and audit. This course will be 11 a.m.-noon ET and attendees will earn one CPE credit.
- CFOs as Leaders of Organizational Change (CFO1) will feature a panel facilitated by Cory Ng, Surgent’s accounting and auditing content developer, and will include Avia Yudalevich and Landon Cortenbach, two leading CFOs from diverse industries. This program will discuss how CFOs are driving innovation and navigating economic challenges. This course will be held 1-2 p.m. ET and attendees will earn one CPE credit.
- The Threat and Opportunity to Accounting Posed by Generative AI and Other Emerging Technologies (GEN1) with Dr. Sean Stein Smith, associate professor at Lehman College; Jack Castonguay, Surgent vice president of learning and development; and James Madison University associate professor, Dr. Nicole Wright, will explore how AI and emerging technologies are reshaping audit functions by automating tasks like data analysis and fraud detection. It will also address challenges related to ethics, data security and the evolving role of auditors in the AI-driven landscape. This course will be held 2-3 p.m. ET and attendees will earn one CPE credit.
- Quarterly Update: The FASB, AICPA, SEC, and PCAOB (QFA2) with Jack Castonguay and Cory Ng will cover new FASB, SEC, and PCAOB standards. This session provides an overview of key updates from the FASB, SEC and PCAOB. Attendees will learn about recent changes to accounting standards and auditing regulations, including new standards and guidance, and their impact on financial reporting. This course will be held 3-5 p.m. ET and attendees will earn two CPE credits.
Thursday, Nov. 14

The Knowledge Summit continues with a day dedicated to the tax industry and how the 2024 presidential and congressional elections will impact the profession. Here is a rundown of the CPE webinars that Surgent has planned for the day:
- 2024 Tax Changes and Year-end Planning Opportunities (YT24) featuring Surgent instructor Mike Tucker; Shannon Retzke Smith, a partner in the international law firm Withers Bergman; and Lance Weiss, a CPA and member of SFW Partners, LLC in St. Louis; will cover the key 2024 tax law changes and their implications for year-end planning. Attendees will gain valuable insights into new tax strategies and opportunities to optimize their tax positions before the end of the year. This course will be held 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. ET and attendees will earn four CPE credits.
- How Our Economy and Markets Perform in Election Years (ELY2) will feature David Peters, founder and owner of Peters Tax Preparation & Consulting in Richmond, Va., and financial advisor for Peters Financial, LLC. This course will look at the economic cycle and the effect of election years. It will examine how certain key investments have performed, examine why this year is unique and look at how major tax policy changes affect our economy. This course will be held 1-3 p.m. ET and attendees will earn two CPE credits.
- Post-election Coverage of Potential Tax Changes and Planning Strategies (PEL2) with Mike Tucker, Ken Kies, Lance Weiss and Ed Renn, of counsel at the international tax law firm Withers Bergman, will examine potential tax law changes following the recent election. This course will explore how shifts in tax policy may impact individuals and businesses, offering strategies to adapt and plan for potential legislative changes. Participants will learn to navigate the evolving tax landscape. This course will be held 3-5 p.m. ET and attendees will earn two CPE credits.
Friday, Nov. 15

Mock CPA Exam
The Surgent Knowledge Summit concludes with a free virtual mock CPA exam facilitated by Michael Matthews, director of state society partnerships at Surgent. This online event will allow CPA candidates to practice CPA exam questions, pinpoint their strengths and identify areas that need extra attention before their exam day. By simulating the actual exam, candidates will gain the confidence and insights needed to improve their performance. Plus, they will receive detailed feedback to guide them through their final stages of preparation. The mock exam will be at 3 p.m. ET and is open to the public.

About Surgent
Surgent Accounting & Financial Education, a division of KnowFully Learning Group, is a provider of the high-impact education experiences that accounting, tax and financial professionals need throughout their careers. For most of the company’s 35-year history, Surgent has been a trusted provider of the continuing professional education (CPE), continuing education (CE) and skill-based training that professionals need to maintain their credentials and stay current on industry changes. More recently, Surgent became one of the fastest-growing certification exam review providers, offering adaptive learning-based courses that help learners pass accounting and finance credentialing exams faster. Learn more at Surgent.com.

About KnowFully
KnowFully Learning Group provides continuing professional education, exam preparation courses and education resources to the accounting, finance and healthcare sectors. KnowFully’s suite of learning solutions helps learners become credentialed, satisfy required credit hours to maintain credentials, and stay informed on the latest trends and critical changes in their industries over the course of their careers. The company provides exam preparation and continuing education for accounting, finance and tax professionals under the Surgent Accounting & Financial Education brand. KnowFully’s healthcare education brands include CME Outfitters, CE Concepts, PharmCon, The Rx Consultant, ChiroCredit, IA Med, EMT & Fire Training Inc., Psychotherapy.net and American Fitness Professionals & Associates. For more information, please visit KnowFully.com.

SOURCE: Surgent Accounting & Financial Education

Contact:
marketing@surgent.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/697a0e4f-d78c-414e-8545-08e12377070c

The MIL Network –
January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI: AutoScheduler.AI and Softeon Host LinkedIn Live Event: The Future of Warehouse Productivity: Strategies for Supply Chain Success
Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — AutoScheduler.AI, an innovative Warehouse Orchestration Platform and WMS accelerator announces that Keith Moore, CEO of AutoScheduler.AI, and Mark Fralick, CTO from Softeon, will discuss on a LinkedIn Live session the future of warehouse productivity and the strategies that will define success in today’s supply chain. The free event occurs on October 31, 2024, at 1:00 PM EDT.

As the warehouse management landscape evolves, businesses face increasing pressure to optimize operations, integrate advanced technologies, and respond to labor and demand volatility. In this session, Keith and Mark will explore the power of warehouse orchestration—a game-changing approach that combines automation, real-time data, and predictive analytics to maximize efficiency.

Sign up for the Live Event at: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7252297224133451776/comments/

“Whether your business is dealing with ongoing labor challenges or looking to future-proof your warehouse operations, this LinkedIn Live session will provide actionable insights to help you stay ahead in the rapidly changing world of supply chain management,” says Keith Moore, CEO of AutoScheduler.AI. “Don’t miss this opportunity to hear about the innovations shaping the future of warehouse productivity.”

Attendees will learn:
- How warehouse orchestration can optimize workflows, minimize downtime, and enhance labor productivity.
- How to leverage technology to gain real-time operational visibility and improve decision-making.
- What are the practical strategies for addressing the growing complexity of supply chain operations.
As CEO of AutoScheduler.AI, Keith Moore is a warehousing visionary, working with top Consumer Goods, Food, Beverage, Retail, and Distribution companies to drive efficiencies and improve on-time, in-full fulfillment. He is focused on bringing advanced technologies like AI and ML to the supply chain in network optimization and warehouse orchestration. Keith holds multiple patents in neural architecture search and supply chain planning. He has been published in trade journals and industry groups like SupplyChainBrain, Inbound Logistics, ISSA, and OTC for his work in logistics, cyber security, and predictive maintenance applications.

Mark Fralick serves as Softeon’s Chief Technology Officer, driving its architectural platform, deployment infrastructure, and operating platform. For his work as a WMS architect, he has been called the “Godfather of the Modern WMS.” Mark has been a leader in the Warehouse Management System sector for three decades and a pioneer in the development of WMS technologies. His expertise and strategic vision contribute to Softeon’s commitment to delivering cutting-edge technology solutions, emphasizing optimizing value for its clientele.

About AutoScheduler.AI
AutoScheduler.AI orchestrates warehouse activities directly on top of your WMS, optimizing operations for peak performance. Developed alongside industry leaders like P&G and successfully deployed at prominent companies such as Pepsi, General Mills, and Unilever, our AI and Machine Learning platform seamlessly integrates with your existing systems. Focused on labor planning, inventory workflow, human-robotics interaction, and space utilization, we streamline operations, reducing travel and inventory handling while maximizing OTIF rates and labor efficiency. With prescriptive analytics driving insights, our clients harness the power to enhance efficiencies and generate value across their supply chains. Reach out to us at info@autoscheduler.ai for more information.

About Softeon
Softeon is a WMS provider focused exclusively on optimizing warehouse and fulfillment operations. For over two decades now, we have been helping our customers succeed. Investing in R&D enables us to develop software to solve the most complex warehouse challenges. Softeon is laser-focused on customer results, with a 100% track record of deployment success. We believe warehouse leaders shouldn’t have to settle for a one-size-fits-all all approach to technology. For more information, please visit http://www.Softeon.com.

Contact:
Becky Boyd
MediaFirst PR
Becky@MediaFirst.Net
Cell: (404) 421-8497

The MIL Network –
January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: VR developments, game design, online communities: the gaming industry festival took place at the HSE

MILES AXLE Translation. Region: Russian Federation –

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

The festival “I want to go to gamedev!” has ended at the business school. It was organized by a team of teachers and graduates of the “Game Project Management” program. More than 220 representatives of the gaming industry gathered at the HSE campus on Shabolovka: from beginners to developers, scriptwriters and other gamedev professionals. The initiators of the project offered a vibrant program so that participants could immediately immerse themselves in showcase projects, master classes and discussions, lectures from industry gurus – neither theoretical nor practical aspects of game development were forgotten. The festival partner is the company “Virtual Glasses”.

The showcase zone became a special highlight of the event – students of the Game Project Management program launched their projects here. One of them was the game Twilight Wars, created by graduates and teacher Sergey Golubkin, which was recently released in early access on the VK Play platform. Participants were lucky to see the premiere from the Terrabyte Games team and blogger Daria Ostrovskaya – the game Run Away from Me: Alexandra – and many other promising projects. The children’s development project KnigaKit, developed by a graduate of the program and winner of the All-Russian competition Start the Game, the stand of the Vengeance Games studio with their projects Azrael: Herald of the Death and Shadows of Vengeance, the cooperative shooter Ironwaste from the team of a 21games graduate.

A separate area of the festival was dedicated to virtual and augmented reality technologies. The latest VR developments were tested here, such as the role-playing VR shooter “Dixotomia” and the new VR game “Smasher VR” from the BHS team.

A special guest of the festival was Anastasia Shalunkova with the team of one of the largest communities of independent developers – “Gamedev Schrödinger”. They held a master class on creating mascots and organizing online communities and discussed with the participants the future of “Gamedev Schrödinger” and cooperation with regional developers. Together with them, partners from the All-Russian competition “Start the game” took part in the event, which became a social lift for many developers. They held many activities and presented branded gifts.

The lecture part of the festival started with a greeting from Vyacheslav Utochkin, head of the Game Project Management program. The first speaker, Konstantin Sakhnov, producer and founder of Vengeance Games, talked about how to become a game designer, what skills are needed for this and how to prepare for work in the industry. Oleg Dobroshtan picked up the topic of project management and talked about the importance of assembling the right team and keeping it motivated. Sergey Chekmaev, writer, screenwriter, literary producer, member of the Board of the Union of Writers of the Russian Federation, and Nikolay Kalinichenko, Chairman of the Union of Writers of the Russian Federation, announced the release of books on game franchises. Vyacheslav Utochkin and Sergey Zykov, teachers of the Game Project Management program, together with representatives and members of the Union of Writers, presented a book in the RealRPG genre about a game designer who finds himself in the world of a game. The series of announcements was completed by the news about the opening of the Dzen Games Studio, created by future students of the “Game Project Management” program with the support of teachers.

Ilya Boytsov, another speaker at the festival, founder of the Midhard studio, also a graduate and teacher of the HSB program, shared his experience of working in the gaming industry, spoke about the risks and successes of his path. The speech by Andrey Malakhov, game director of Mensa Studio, was devoted to pitching projects and evaluating ideas at the early stages of development.

The final chord of the event was a round table, where invited experts and guests discussed current trends in game design. The discussion was attended by famous figures in the gaming industry: Konstantin Sakhnov, game producer and founder of the Vengeance Games studio, Vladimir Agarev, creative director of the Jay-Joy studio, Olga Maksimenkova, associate professor of the Faculty of Computer Science at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, and Denis Pozdnyakov, co-owner of the Vintorog and Contrast Games studios. The speakers discussed artificial intelligence in game development, the growth of indie projects, and new opportunities for developers through government funds and grants.

The “I Want to Be in Gamedev!” festival at the Higher School of Business of the National Research University Higher School of Economics has become a landmark event for everyone interested in the gaming industry.

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

Please note; This information is raw content directly from the information source. It is accurate to what the source is stating and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

http://gsb.hse.ru/nevs/975637470.html

MIL OSI Russia News –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Economics: Narrowing the Digital Divide: Households with broadband, laptops and desktops rising
Source: Microsoft

Headline: Narrowing the Digital Divide: Households with broadband, laptops and desktops rising

Today, we’re launching a refresh of the Microsoft Digital Equity Data Dashboard with current data from the FCC, the United States Census Bureau, Code.org, Broadband Now, and Microsoft to help federal, state, and local policymakers gain a better understanding of the factors contributing to the digital divide in communities across the United States. Originally launched in 2022 as part of our Airband Initiative, the dashboard provides critical data to help understand broadband gaps at the local level, allowing these decision makers to anchor their policies and programs in data and maximize investments in areas of highest need.

Today’s update allows tracking of historical broadband data to analyze trends and progress being made as a result of government and private sector investments. This includes the new data from the dashboard, which shows that all states, including Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, saw an increase in the number of households with broadband connections as well as an increase in the number of households with laptops or desktops. The greatest changes were in households earning less than $20,000. These households saw an average increase of over 10.8 percentage points in internet connectivity compared to previous metrics, meaning there are nearly 325,000 more households connected in this group.

We’ve long held the belief in the value of data, and this dashboard refresh is the latest step in our ongoing journey to help close the digital divide around the world.

Bridging the Rural Broadband Gap in the United States

In 2017, we launched the Microsoft Airband Initiative with a clear mission: to bridge the significant rural broadband gap in the United States. That year, government data showed that at least 23.4 million people across the United States did not have access to reliable high-speed internet, and this lack of access created significant barriers to education, healthcare, and economic opportunities. At the same time, it’s been shown that increasing access and usage of broadband in rural areas leads to higher property values, increased job and population growth, increased entrepreneurship, and lower unemployment rates. This stark reality illustrated by this data highlighted the urgent need for action to bridge the digital divide. 

We set out to help solve the problem by bringing private sector investment and innovative technologies together with advocacy for regulatory support and financial frameworks to increase connectivity. Over the years, we have tried different approaches to bridging the digital divide, and we’ve learned a lot. We initially focused on TV White Spaces, believing this unique technology would extend reliable and affordable broadband to rural areas. As time went on, we determined that to make a tangible impact in rural communities, we couldn’t rely on specific technology, so we shifted to a technology neutral approach. Today, our partners are leveraging fiber, fixed wireless, satellite, and other disruptive technologies to drive broad networks deeper into rural areas. As a result, our partners have extended coverage to over 7.4 million people in rural communities across 41 states and territories in the United States.

But technology alone was not a solution. High costs, the absence of new and alternative technologies, and market and regulatory conditions all hampered efforts. The economic impact was substantial, not only hindering individual progress but also stifling the overall development of rural areas. So, we also used our corporate voice and joined forces with others to directly advocate for Congress to deploy targeted funding to combat the digital divide.

Targeted Funding to Combat the Digital Divide

In the U.S., none of the progress we’ve seen would be possible, without the vision of the U.S. Congress to proactively and significantly invest in broadband infrastructure programs. Our experiences since 2017 have made it clear that these government investments are necessary to drive deep impact. Bipartisan investments in digital infrastructure and inclusion through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) were a huge step forward in our journey to close the digital divide in the United States.

As a result of these government investments and public private partnerships, our internet service provider partners in the U.S. have received more than $725 million in government infrastructure funding awards to accelerate network expansion and drive broadband adoption across the country, with approximately 80% going to rural communities.

An example includes Microsoft partner, Nextlink Internet, which is leveraging government investment and partnership to bring meaningful connectivity to rural communities in the Midwest, Southwest, and Southeast regions of the United States. Federal infrastructure funding enabled Nextlink to extend their seven-state footprint to 11 states in total: Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.  

Looking Forward Globally with a Clear Vision

Outside of the United States, our global partnerships have brought coverage to nearly 100 million previously unserved and underserved people. Internationally, we’re also seeing success from similar models of participating in government infrastructure programs, with the U.S. government leading the way. This includes significant investments and leadership from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) via the Digital Invest program and the Women in the Digital Economy Fund (Wi-DEF), as well as the United States Trade and Development Agency’s (USTDA) Digital Transformation with Africa initiative.

These partnerships have also enabled digital infrastructure and off-grid energy in unserved and underserved communities around the world. In Nigeria, for instance, providers like Tizeti are leveraging government investments to bring connectivity to schools, health clinics, and community anchor institutions. And communities are experiencing improved outcomes in education and healthcare as a result. If connectivity alone has enabled these outcomes, imagine what additional innovation AI could unlock.

But there are still 2.6 billion people who remain offline. Limited internet can exacerbate economic inequalities and inhibit access to social services, civic activities, and online learning resources. In places where we’re using AI to map global populations in real-time, we can provide early warnings that allow communities to better plan disaster recovery during times of crisis. Communities that remain offline do not get these early warnings and cannot act on them. As AI becomes more prevalent, communities that remain offline will not be able to fully access the benefits of this new technology.

To continue momentum, we are looking to the lessons we learned in the U.S. We must scale innovative technologies, expand connectivity and energy access, and leverage strategic partnerships. Governments, financial institutions, philanthropic institutions, and the private sector must come together to address critical financing barriers, invest in development finance, and expand digital infrastructure.

We’ve committed to reaching 250 million people with meaningful connectivity by the end of next year. Today, we’re calling for continued support and collaboration from all sectors to ensure no one is left behind. We call on all stakeholders to join us in this mission.
- Governments must create enabling regulatory environments that prioritize funding for digital infrastructure and support quick and efficient allocation of funding by federal, state, and local entities.
- The private sector must invest in innovative technologies and business models.
- Philanthropic organizations must continue to advocate for digital inclusion and develop initiatives anchored in the local community.
The journey to close the digital divide is a long one. Building out infrastructure takes time. It’ll take time for us to see some of the direct results of this work, but there is room for optimism. We are extremely grateful for the leadership and vision of the United States government, which is laying a blueprint for other countries to follow, as well as state and local leaders working to ensure these programs are successful. We encourage all policymakers to proceed efficiently so the benefits of these investments reach local communities sooner rather than later.

With continued collaboration and commitment, we can use the power of data, technology, and partnership to achieve our ambitious goals. We’re dedicated to making a lasting impact, and we are excited about the future. Let’s come together to bring the power of digital connectivity and transformation to people around the world.

Tags: Airband initiative, broadband, broadband access, connectivity, digital access, digital divide, digital inequity, Digital Inequity Dashboard, Internet access, rural broadband
MIL OSI Economics –
January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Sobyanin: The main idea of the development strategy is to make Moscow the best city in the world

MILES AXLE Translation. Region: Russian Federation –

Source: Moscow Government – Government of Moscow –

Sergei Sobyanin met with students of the Science and Technology University, College and Educational Centre “Sirius”. The meeting was held in the “Atom” hall in Sochi. The Moscow Mayor spoke about new solutions in the sphere of improving the quality of life in cities using the example of the strategy for the development of the capital until 2040 and answered questions.

According to the Mayor of Moscow, the main idea of the development strategy is to make the capital the best city in the world.

“For our city to be the best, it must have the most powerful economy in our country, it must have the best opportunities for every person, the best urban environment, and it must be a global center of attraction that the whole world would know and strive to come to Moscow,” said Sergei Sobyanin.

The capital has a large-scale public transport infrastructure – underground, surface and water. Over the past 14 years, the city has built a large number of new metro stations, equal in number to those built throughout the history of Moscow. An above-ground metro has appeared – four Moscow Central Diameters, which allow you to get to the Moscow region and nearby areas. In addition, a decision has been made to build a high-speed railway (VSM-1) to St. Petersburg.

“This is the President’s project, a high-speed railway (HSR) connecting St. Petersburg and Moscow, then Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Voronezh. I think that most of you live in one or another region where this project should come. This means that the entire country will be closer, travel options will be more comfortable, accessible, and the country will develop differently,” the Moscow Mayor emphasized.

The new rail framework will become a powerful impetus for regional development. The HSR-1 (Moscow-St. Petersburg), the construction of which began in 2024, will cover more than 80 percent of the Russian population. The speed of trains will reach 400 kilometers per hour.

More than a million trips have been made by passengers on electric ships since the beginning of the year 110 carriages of the Ivolga 4.0 train will be launched on the MCD by the end of the year

New centers of economic activity are being created in the capital. In addition to the historical center, there will be six more comparable in size. They will be located in abandoned depressed areas where a large number of transport highways intersect. Thus, all districts of Moscow will receive their own modern center for life, work and leisure.

One such center of economic activity is “Yuzhny Port – Tekstilshchiki”It is being created as part of the world’s largest industrial zone reorganization project.

The city is implementing a complex renovation program that has no analogues in the world. It includes 5,175 buildings. City residents are moving from outdated apartments to new, modern and comfortable ones. In 2024, housing was provided for the resettlement of more than 170 thousand Muscovites. In addition, as part of the renovation program, over 400 social facilities will be built and more than 200 thousand jobs will be created.

Renovation program: about 75 percent of new residents took advantage of the city’s assistance when moving Sergei Sobyanin: About 1.7 thousand capital courtyards were improved this year

The capital is renewing its urban environment and creating comfortable public spaces. Moscow is developing not just residential areas, but complex districts with parks, squares and embankments where you can work and relax. They are becoming mini-cities with high-quality infrastructure, where there is everything necessary for life.

The world’s largest monument restoration program is in effect in the capital. More than 2,100 of them were restored in 2011–2024. More than 150 more monuments are planned to be restored annually.

“In total, more than two thousand monuments have been restored, are in very good condition and continue to serve Muscovites not only as monuments, but also as life, business, public and city organizations,” said Sergei Sobyanin.

Instead of old cultural centers, multifunctional recreation and entertainment centers are appearing in the city. The largest cinema park “Moskino” was built in TiNAO.

The capital can be proud of its unique, accessible and best healthcare system in the world. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) helps to recognize diseases from CT, MRI and ultrasound images. With the help of AI, it will be possible to predict health problems for each resident and conduct preventive work. The average life expectancy in the capital is expected to approach 80 years.

Digital technologies are also being implemented in the education system. The world’s largest project, the Moscow Electronic School, allows for the creation of a digital twin of each student and the personalization of their development trajectory. Secondary vocational education is being revived. The capital is dramatically improving its quality and doubling the number of colleges. 75 percent of vacancies on the labor market are for workers with this type of training.

Moscow Mayor: Funds for school reconstruction included in draft budget Sobyanin: Budget expenditures on healthcare development will be increased by 8%

The digital ecosystem is developing. Its 90 key projects cover all areas of city life, from public utilities to city services, transport, and education.

The digital system of Moscow services is the best in the world according to the United Nations. The mos.ru portal offers 420 electronic services. They allow you to draw up documents and social benefits, pay bills, and transmit meter readings.

A digital twin of a city is a project that helps to see its future for decades to come, plan development, design buildings, structures, engineering and social infrastructure, ensuring a comfortable life for Muscovites.

The capital is becoming safer thanks to new technologies, artificial intelligence systems, video surveillance, and facial recognition. The crime rate in Moscow is one of the lowest among world cities.

Sobyanin: The draft budget for 2025 includes the development of digital technologies

The capital’s economic structure corresponds to the world level: it has a powerful industry, government services, transport, logistics, creative industry, etc. Labor productivity in Moscow is twice as high as the national average.

“Well, Moscow ultimately occupies a worthy place among all the cities of the world in terms of economy, despite the fact that the largest financial centers of the world are ahead of us. Despite the sanctions, despite the sanctions war declared against us, despite the difficulties, the SVO and so on, Moscow today is one of the world leaders. It is very important that it maintains its leadership. It is the locomotive of the country’s development, and I hope that you will carry this flag further and develop our beautiful capital and wonderful Russia,” the Mayor of Moscow concluded.

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

Please note; This information is raw content directly from the information source. It is accurate to what the source is stating and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

https://vvv.mos.ru/major/themes/11903050/

MIL OSI Russia News –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Dmitry Grigorenko: The main challenge in digitalization is to fulfill the planned

MILES AXLE Translation. Region: Russian Federation –

Source: Government of the Russian Federation – An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.

Dmitry Grigorenko took part in the forum of innovative financial technologies Finopolis 2024 in Sochi

Deputy Prime Minister – Chief of the Government Staff Dmitry Grigorenko took part in the session “Digital technologies serving society: a new look at fintech and government services” as part of the Finopolis 2024 forum of innovative financial technologies in Sochi.

He noted that Russia is currently integrated into the global IT space. This is proven by the fact that our country faces the same digitalization challenges as all other countries. The key tasks remain the development of data transmission and processing infrastructure, the introduction of artificial intelligence, information protection, overcoming regulatory barriers and adaptation to changes in consumer expectations.

The Deputy Prime Minister stressed that these challenges concern both public and private institutions, including the banking sector.

“We have designed a national project, “Data Economy”. This is the basis for work. But it is important to remember that plans alone will not lead to results. Therefore, the main challenge in digitalization is to implement everything planned,” said Dmitry Grigorenko.

Today, the financial sector is helping to implement measures aimed at creating a safe digital space for citizens and businesses. In particular, together with the Bank of Russia, the Government is developing the architecture of a single anti-fraud platform. It is expected that it will ensure online interaction between government agencies, banks, telecom operators and digital platforms to combat telephone fraud. In addition, the platform will allow for the prompt identification and blocking of phishing sites, fraudsters’ phone numbers, as well as their accounts and cards, stolen accounts and suspicious transactions.

Currently, the development of a legislative initiative to combat cyber fraud is also being discussed together with the banking sector. It is aimed at eliminating the current problem of fraud, when criminals issue microloans to third-party accounts or anonymous electronic wallets.

It is assumed that the initiative will establish a ban on issuing microloans to third parties and will establish a requirement for the loan amount to be transferred exclusively to the borrower’s bank account. To open an account, the borrower will have to undergo an identification procedure – this can be done using biometrics or in person at the bank.

Earlier, as part of the work to combat cyber fraud, the Government approved a procedure for self-prohibition on the issuance of consumer loans and microloans. The corresponding resolution has been signed.

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

Please note; This information is raw content directly from the information source. It is accurate to what the source is stating and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

http://government.ru/nevs/53011/

MIL OSI Russia News –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI: Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis announces $800,000 in pre-development grants now available for Tribal Nations Housing Development Assistance Program

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

INDIANAPOLIS, Oct. 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis (“FHLBank Indianapolis” or the “Bank”) announced today that pre-development affordable housing grants are now available to the 12 federally recognized tribal nations located in Michigan through the Tribal Nations Housing Development Assistance Program (TNHDAP).

Announced earlier this year, the TNHDAP is a unique and innovative capacity-building housing development grant program in partnership with the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA). The TNHDAP provides dedicated training and technical assistance coupled with grant funding opportunities to support tribal nations in creating innovative housing solutions tailored to the unique needs of each nation. The Bank’s program grant of up to $3 million marks the largest investment to a single organization in FHLBank Indianapolis history.

FHLBank Indianapolis is making $800,000 available for project-specific pre-development grants with up to $75,000 available per project. Pre-development dollar grants may support either rental or homeownership projects, dependent upon individual tribal priorities.

“Pre-development grants are often the hardest type of funding to find, and one of the most impactful tools to help kickstart projects,” said Anna Shires, VP, Community Investment Outreach Partner at the Bank. “We’re excited to complement all of the technical assistance underway, and help tribes get one major step closer to providing safe and affordable housing for their communities.”

Through the program, the Bank also will be providing project-specific gap funding subsidies as well as supporting additional capacity building needs identified by tribal nations in Michigan. Through next year, each tribe also will receive dedicated technical assistance to identify their unique housing needs, support for overall housing initiatives and project-specific guidance.

In keeping with the knowledge and capacity-building focus of the program, the National American Indian Housing Council and its partners facilitated a series of training sessions earlier this year focusing on the wide range of available affordable housing solutions. Sessions focused on multi-unit development, Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LITHC) and other funding sources, housing development for special needs populations, and homeownership development opportunities. Sessions included presentations and discussions between the tribes and FHLBank Indianapolis, MSHDA, HUD leadership, the Michigan Balance of State Continuum of Care, and local and national housing and finance industry leaders.

“The completion of this training series represents a significant commitment of time and effort, and we commend everyone involved for their dedication to this critical work,” said Karen Gagnon, Tribal Liaison for MSHDA. “It’s truly exciting to see the program entering its next phase. This support will play a pivotal role in advancing essential housing projects for these communities, and we look forward to the far-reaching impact of these new investments and partnerships.”

For more information about the pre-development grants, visit the Tribal Nations Housing Development Assistance Program page on MSHDA’s website.

More information on the Tribal Nations Housing Development Assistance Program is available at fhlbi.com. For information on FHLBank Indianapolis’ other programs to support affordable housing and community development, see the Community Programs page on fhlbi.com.

Media contact information:
For more information, contact Katherine Marshall, Corporate Communications Specialist, at kmarshall@fhlbi.com.

Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis: Building Partnerships. Serving Communities
FHLBank Indianapolis is a regional bank in the Federal Home Loan Bank System. FHLBanks are government-sponsored enterprises created by Congress to provide access to low-cost funding for their member financial institutions, with particular attention paid to providing solutions that support the housing and small business needs of members’ customers. FHLBanks are privately capitalized and funded, and they receive no Congressional appropriations. One of 11 independent regional cooperative banks across the U.S., FHLBank Indianapolis is owned by its Indiana and Michigan financial institution members, including commercial banks, credit unions, insurance companies, savings institutions and community development financial institutions. For more information about FHLBank Indianapolis, visit http://www.fhlbi.com and follow the Bank on LinkedIn, and Instagram and X at @FHLBankIndy.

The MIL Network –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Banking: Azure Cobalt 100-based Virtual Machines are now generally available
Source: Microsoft

Headline: Azure Cobalt 100-based Virtual Machines are now generally available

We are excited to announce the general availability of the new Azure Cobalt 100 Virtual Machines (VMs). These VMs run on Microsoft’s first fully custom Arm-based Cobalt 100 CPU and represent a significant milestone in our end-to-end approach to building cloud infrastructure.

Today we are announcing the general availability of the new Azure Cobalt 100-based Virtual Machines (VMs). These VMs run on Microsoft’s first 64-bit Arm-based Azure Cobalt 100 CPU, which has been fully designed in-house. They represent a significant milestone in our journey in designing and building out our cloud infrastructure, with optimization and customization across every layer of the infrastructure stack—from silicon, to servers, to services. Through vertical integration across hardware and software, Azure Cobalt 100-based VMs are one of Microsoft’s latest examples of innovating to enhance and optimize our cloud infrastructure with an end-to-end systems approach, to deliver the right mix of performance, power efficiency, and scale for our customers.

The Cobalt 100-based VMs consist of our new general purpose Dpsv6-series and Dplsv6-series and our memory-optimized Epsv6-series VM series. They offer up to 50% better price performance than our previous generation Arm-based VMs, making them an attractive option for a wide range of scale-out and cloud-native Linux-based workloads, including data analytics, web and application servers, open source databases, caches, and more.

The new Azure Cobalt 100-based VMs deliver leading performance across various workloads compared to previous generations of Azure Arm-based VMs: up to 1.4x CPU performance, up to 1.5x performance on Java-based workloads, and up to 2x performance on web servers, .NET applications, and in-memory cache applications compared to the previous generation Azure Arm-based VMs. These VMs also support 4x local storage IOPS (with NVMe) and up to 1.5x network bandwidth compared to the previous generation Azure Arm-based VMs.

The new VMs are broadly available in Canada Central, Central US, East US 2, East US, Germany West Central, Japan East, Mexico Central, North Europe, Southeast Asia, Sweden Central, Switzerland North, UAE North, West Europe, and West US 2. The number of regions will continue to expand in 2024 and beyond with Australia East, Brazil South, France Central, India Central, South Central US, UK South, West US 3, and West US coming soon.

Customer adoption and scenarios

We have been working with several internal and external customers during the preview period. For example, IC3, the platform that powers billions of customer conversations in Microsoft Teams, is serving its growing customer base more efficiently, achieving up to 45% better performance on Cobalt 100-based VMs.

We’re also delivering Cobalt 100-based VMs to many of our independent software vendor (ISV) partners offering platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) solutions on Microsoft Azure.

“The Cobalt 100, Microsoft Azure’s new Arm-based processor, represents a huge step forward for optimizing performance and productivity. Cadence and Microsoft’s collaboration helps our mutual customers tackle the demands of giga-scale compute that advanced-node silicon design demands. The Cobalt 100 helps our thousands of electronic design automation (EDA) and systems customers meet their ever-increasing demands for throughput to speed time-to-market.” —Mahesh Turaga, Vice President (VP) of Cloud Business Development, Cadence

“We are really excited about the new Cobalt 100 VMs. We are making them the primary platform for our Databricks SQL Serverless offering on Azure, as they offer outstanding efficiency and allow us to deliver significant price-performance improvements to our customers. Customers using our Azure Databricks classic Jobs offering will also greatly benefit from Cobalt VMs by selecting them for their Jobs cluster nodes, achieving noticeable performance improvements while keeping operating costs down.” —Michael Kiermaier, VP of Business Strategy and Operations, Databricks

“At Elastic, we are driving innovation and cost-efficiency by enabling customers to leverage our Search AI-powered observability, security, and search solutions on Arm-based architecture. Azure Virtual Machines with Cobalt 100 Arm CPUs enables Elastic to deliver better throughput and up to 37% improved performance compared to Azure’ previous generation Arm based VMs.” —Uri Cohen, Vice President, Product Management, Elastic

“At Rescale, our mission is to elevate innovation by providing the best tools in high performance computing, data, and AI to organizations of every size to deliver engineering and scientific breakthroughs that enrich humanity. We have tested the Azure Cobalt 100 VMs to power our high-performance computing platform and found it to deliver about a 40% improvement in performance compared to Azure’s previous generation Arm-based VMs. We look forward to upgrading our Azure infrastructure to these new VMs and offer comparable performance improvements to our customers so they can tackle complex challenges with greater speed and efficiency.” —Adam McKenzie, Chief Technology Officer, Rescale

“Siemens EDA continues to expand its partnership with Microsoft to develop innovative solutions for our mutual silicon and electronic systems customers. Our collaboration around Microsoft Azure Cobalt 100 Arm-based VMs running analog, standard-cell, memory, and digital verification workloads has demonstrated compelling performance and economic benefits. The general availability of these new VMs marks an important milestone for the industry, highlighting its fast-growing reliance on continuously advancing hardware and software platforms optimized for high throughput and efficiency.” —Craig Johnson, Vice President, Siemens EDA Strategy

“We have extensively tested Azure’s new Cobalt 100 VMs and compared them to the previous generation Arm VMs on Azure using Snowflake workloads. We’re thrilled with the significant improvements in performance. And now, we’re excited to adopt these latest Cobalt 100 VMs and share that performance improvement with our customers!” —Gabe Bryant, Senior Manager, Snowflake

“In the face of unprecedented compute and memory demands driven by increasingly sophisticated systems, designers are leveraging the cloud to scale their computing resources. Our close collaboration with Microsoft Azure facilitates the adoption of Arm architecture-based compute resources by providing customers with industry-leading, AI-driven EDA tools enabled on the Azure cloud to help them address the escalating workload demands.” —Sanjay Bali, senior vice president of EDA strategy and product management at Synopsys

“Templafy relies on the stability and scalability of Microsoft Azure to run our document generation platform for enterprises worldwide, and we’re excited about the new Azure Cobalt 100 VMs. After evaluation we’ve observed significant performance improvements, including approximately 25% higher throughput and 35% lower CPU usage compared to Azure’s previous generation Arm-based VMs. We look forward to harnessing these advancements to enhance our platform’s performance and deliver even better experiences for our customers when it comes to their critical business documents.” —Marco van Kimmenade, Director of Engineering, Templafy

Synergy with our technology partners

We value the collaboration with our technology partners.

“The Cobalt 100 processor is a fantastic example of how Arm-based silicon, supported by a robust software ecosystem, is addressing the growing compute complexity of modern infrastructure,” said Mohamed Awad, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Infrastructure Business, Arm. “Following years of collaboration with Microsoft to bring Arm-based VMs to market, the general availability of Cobalt 100 marks an important milestone in our partnership, and demonstrates the power, efficiency and flexibility of Arm Compute Subsystems in driving the workloads of the future.”

The journey to Arm: Embracing innovation and customer benefits

Microsoft has a longstanding history of contributing to Arm architecture and integrating Arm technology. This experience has enabled us to develop important industry standards that prepared the Arm architecture for datacenter-scale computing. We have also been working closely with Arm on industry initiatives such as ServerReady and SystemReady and received industry recognition for both initiatives. Our journey into Arm-based VMs is based on a vision to deliver superior price-performance and power efficiency. The Cobalt 100-based VMs embody this vision by offering these benefits. By embracing Arm-based VMs, we have been able to offer our customers a unique combination of performance and cost effectiveness.

Developer ecosystem

The developer ecosystem for Arm continues to thrive and has seen tremendous progress in the last couple of years. Major developer platforms and languages such as C++, .NET, and Java provide Arm-native versions. We have invested in Arm-specific optimizations for each of these platforms and languages so we’re fully leveraging the capabilities of the Arm architecture.

The larger ecosystem has embraced Arm with many popular infrastructure and deployment solutions now available with native Arm support. GitHub Actions, GitHub’s continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflow engine, is an integral part of many developers’ workflows and used to continuously build, test, and deploy apps. This is now available for Arm in two flavors—self-hosted runners that can be hosted on an Arm VM or on local Arm hardware, and GitHub-hosted runners.

Containers are a popular deployment target for many reasons: a streamlined development workflow, isolation and security, efficient resource utilization, portability, and reproducibility. Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now supports the creation of Arm agent nodes as well as mixing x86 and Arm architecture nodes within a cluster.

Specifications

You can select from a range of Azure Virtual Machines of three memory ratios for a given vCPU size, giving you the flexibility to choose the configuration that works best for your workloads in terms of CPU performance and memory needs. All these VM series are available with and without local disks so that you can deploy the option that best fits your workload.
- The new Dpsv6-series and Dpdsv6-series general-purpose VMs offer up to 96 vCPUs and 384 GiB of RAM (4:1 memory-to-vCPU ratio). They are ideal for scale-out workloads, cloud-native solutions like AKS, small to medium open-source databases, application servers, and web servers. Arm developers can use these VMs in CI/CD pipelines, development, and test scenarios.
- The new Dplsv6-series and Dpldsv6-series VMs provide up to 96 vCPUs and 192 GiB of RAM (2:1 memory-to-vCPU ratio). They are perfect for media encoding, small databases, gaming servers, microservices, and workloads that don’t need high RAM per vCPU.
- The new Epsv6-series and Epdsv6-series memory-optimized VMs offer up to 96 vCPUs and 672 GiB of RAM (up to 8:1 memory-to-vCPU ratio). These VMs are designed for memory-intensive workloads such as large databases, in-memory caching applications, and data analytics.
The new virtual machines support all remote disk types such as Standard SSD, Standard HDD, Premium SSD and Ultra Disk storage. To learn more about various disk types and their regional availability, please refer to Azure managed disk type. Disk storage is billed separately from virtual machines. You can deploy these new VMs using existing methods including the Azure portal, SDKs, APIs, PowerShell, and the command-line interface (CLI).

You can learn more about the new Azure Cobalt 100-based VMs by visiting the specification pages: Dpsv6-series, Dpdsv6-series, Dplsv6-series, Dpldsv6-series, Epsv6-series, Epdsv6-series.

Pricing

To learn more about the pricing of Azure Cobalt 100-based VMs, please visit the Azure Virtual Machines pricing and Pricing calculator pages.

You can also take advantage of Reserved Instances, Azure savings plan for compute, and Spot Virtual Machines to lower your costs. Reserved VM Instances can reduce costs and improve your budget forecasting through upfront one-year or three-year commitments. For a limited time, you can save up to 15% more when you purchase one-year Azure Reserved Virtual Machine (VM) Instances for select Linux VMs. This offer is available between from October 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025. See here for more details. The Azure savings plan for compute gives you the flexibility to save across multiple Azure services, including Azure VMs. Spot Virtual Machines can significantly reduce the cost of running in Azure and further optimize your cloud spend for workloads that can tolerate interruptions and have flexible execution time.

A new era of price performance and power efficiency

The general availability of Azure Cobalt 100-based VMs marks the beginning of a new era in Azure’s infrastructure. With our custom silicon program, we are delivering exceptional price performance and power efficiency to our customers. We are excited to see the impact of these innovations on our customers’ businesses and we look forward to bringing even better solutions to our customers in the future.

Thank you for joining us on this exciting journey.

For questions, please go to Azure Support and our experts will be there to help you.

Additional resources
MIL OSI Global Banks –
January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI: EXL Schedules Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

NEW YORK, Oct. 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — ExlService Service Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: EXLS), a leading data analytics and digital operations and solutions company, will release financial results for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, 2024, on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024, after the market closes. An earnings news release, investor fact sheet and presentation will be published on the company’s investor relations website offering an overview of the financial results.

The company will host a conference call at 10:00 a.m. EDT the following day, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, with Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rohit Kapoor and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Maurizio Nicolelli, who will provide insights into the company’s operational and financial results.

To listen to an audio-only live webcast or to participate in the call, please register here. A replay of the webcast will be available for approximately one year.

EXL (NASDAQ: EXLS) is a leading data analytics and digital operations and solutions company. We partner with clients using a data and AI-led approach to reinvent business models, drive better business outcomes and unlock growth with speed. EXL harnesses the power of data, analytics, AI, and deep industry knowledge to transform operations for the world’s leading corporations in industries including insurance, healthcare, banking and financial services, media and retail, among others. EXL was founded in 1999 with the core values of innovation, collaboration, excellence, integrity and respect. We are headquartered in New York and have more than 55,000 employees spanning six continents. For more information, visit http://www.exlservice.com.

Contact:
John Kristoff
Vice President, Head of Investor Relations
+1 212 209 4613
ir@exlservice.com

The MIL Network –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Canada: Creation of New Permanent Chair Dedicated to Values and Ethics in the Public Service

Source: Government of Canada News (2)

Today, Taki Sarantakis, President of the Canada School of Public Service (CSPS), announced the creation of a new permanent Chair dedicated to values and ethics and the promotion of ethical leadership across federal government departments and agencies.

October 16, 2024
Ottawa, Ontario

Today, Taki Sarantakis, President of the Canada School of Public Service (CSPS), announced the creation of a new permanent Chair dedicated to values and ethics and the promotion of ethical leadership across federal government departments and agencies.

This new role, to be known as the “Ian D. Shugart Visiting Scholar”, is named for the late Clerk of the Privy Council, whose storied 30-year career in the federal public service culminated in being appointed Clerk in 2019, before being appointed to the Senate in 2022. Senator Shugart passed away on October 25, 2023.

The announcement was made on the final day of the two-day “What Unites Us, Defines Us: Values and Ethics in Today’s Federal Public Service” symposium, hosted by the Privy Council Office and the Canada School of Public Service. The event brought federal public servants together to engage in an interactive discussion on the role of values and ethics in the public service, a conversation that the current Clerk, John Hannaford, launched in September 2023.

The symposium featured more than 20 speakers and panelists with a combined on-site and virtual audience of more than 15,500 federal civil servants from across the country and abroad. Hannaford, who delivered a keynote at the symposium, welcomed the initiative.

The new Chair will focus specifically on helping develop and enrich existing learning and training that encourages decision-making rooted in values and ethics principles—particularly at the leadership levels—and promote the importance of ethical leadership across government.

The role will also establish linkages between the public sector and academia to help infuse the public service with the latest insights and research, explore best practices in ethics and governance, within Canada and internationally, as well as provide guidance on ethical frameworks in response to emerging challenges like digital governance, social media, and artificial intelligence.

Appointees will serve on a rotational basis, starting in 2025. Successful candidates will bring to bear their experience in public sector values and ethics and associated disciplines, such as governance, federalism, technology, and history.

MIL OSI Canada News –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Secretary Del Toro Travels to Argentina for the XVI Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas

Source: United States Department of Defense

MENDOZA, Argentina – From October 13-16, 2024, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro led the United States delegation to the XVI Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas (CDMA) in Mendoza, Argentina. The delegation included senior officials from the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy. U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Northern Command were also represented.

CDMA is the premier defense forum in the Western Hemisphere, convening the senior most national security and defense officials biennially to address hemisphere-wide challenges while forging strong partnerships throughout the region. This year’s event featured discussions on the responsible use of artificial intelligence, and climate and environmental challenges from a defense perspective.

Secretary Del Toro held bilateral meetings with Ministry of Defense leaders from the following countries:

Argentina

Secretary Del Toro and Minister of Defense Petri reaffirmed their mutual commitment to the U.S.- Argentina defense relationship and discussed efforts to strengthen bilateral cooperation, including in Women, Peace, and Security, and peacekeeping operations. Secretary Del Toro thanked Minister Petri for hosting the XVI CDMA and for Argentina’s contributions to global security.

Brazil

Secretary Del Toro and Minister Múcio discussed cooperating on emerging defense areas, including cyber, space, and special operations; military-to-military activities in the South Atlantic; and expanding defense industrial base cooperation. The two sides recognized the progress made towards finalization of the U.S.-Brazil Reciprocal Defense Procurement Agreement.

Colombia

Secretary Del Toro and Vice Minister Suárez discussed the strong bilateral U.S.-Colombia defense relationship, and tackling emerging challenges such as counter-unmanned aircraft system, climate change, and support to special operations. The delegations discussed countering transnational criminal organizations, and regional security.

Peru

Secretary Del Toro and Minister Astudillo discussed the strength of the U.S.-Peru bilateral defense relationship, especially in areas of security cooperation and countering transnational criminal organizations (TCOs). The U.S. commended Peru’s recent progress toward the lifting of aerial interdiction restrictions.

The Ministers endorsed the United States’ proposal to host the XVIII CDMA in 2028.

MIL OSI USA News –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI Australia: Ensuring First Nations children in New South Wales are school ready

Source: Australian Executive Government Ministers

The Australian Government is expanding the Connected Beginnings program, helping more First Nations children thrive in the crucial early years.

Minister for Early Childhood Education Dr Anne Aly today announced $1.8 million for Dalaigur Pre-School and Children’s Services Aboriginal Corporation to deliver Connected Beginnings program in Kempsey.

The program connects First Nations children aged zero to five with a range of early childhood education, health and family support services – helping children meet the learning and development milestones necessary to achieve a positive transition to school.

The new site will support around 700 local First Nations children. The Kempsey site joins 47 other locations across the country supporting more than 23,700 First Nations children.

The community-led program is a key contributor to the early childhood Closing the Gap targets, driving an increase in preschool enrolments and improvements to developmental outcomes.

The Government partners with SNAICC – National Voice for our Children and the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation to deliver the program.

The new Kempsey site is part of an investment of $81.8 million from the Australian Government to expand the program to 50 sites nationally. Once all 50 sites are established, the program has the potential to support up to 20 per cent of all First Nations children aged zero to five.

Other Connected Beginnings sites in New South Wales include Bourke, Broken Hill, Doonside, Dubbo, Gosford, Mount Druitt, Taree, Wagga Wagga and Wyong.

Once all New South Wales sites are up and running, the program will support around 6,900 First Nations children across the state.

Learn more about the Connected Beginnings program at: https://www.education.gov.au/early-childhood/community-child-care-fund/connected-beginnings.

Quotes attributable to Minister for Early Childhood Education Dr Anne Aly:

“All children, no matter their background or where they live, should be able to access the transformational benefits of quality early childhood education and care.

“Connected Beginnings is delivering significant positive results for First Nations children right across the country, helping to Close the Gap by improving developmental outcomes.

“The Connected Beginnings program is empowering communities to design and deliver the program in a way which supports their individual needs and aspirations.”

Quotes attributable to Assistant Minister for Indigenous Health Ged Kearney:

“Labor is committed to closing the health gap that leads to a significantly lower life expectancy for First Nations people.

“Connected Beginnings is all about centring the voices of First Nations Australian and a community-led approach.

“From child care, to pre-school, to primary school, Connected Beginnings is setting First Nations kids up for best start in life.”

Quotes attributable to SNAICC Chief Executive Catherine Liddle:

“SNAICC is very proud to be the Community Partner in the Connected Beginnings program, that is expanding access to culturally-centred early education and care to many more children and families around the country.

“This is helping to drive positive outcomes in early childhood for Aboriginal and Torres Strait children by increasing participation in early education activities and increasing school readiness.

“The benefits of Connected Beginnings extend to the entire community, as we know closing the gap starts with our children.”

Quotes attributable to Dalaigur Pre-School and Children’s Services Aboriginal Corporation Chairperson Fred Kelly:

“It is essential that all our Aboriginal children have a sense of their culture and in particular a strong cultural identity. Dalaigur Pre-School and Children’s Services Aboriginal Corporation provide this through language and culture educators working with both preschools.

“Connected Beginnings is an exciting new program that will provide the resources and services for this solid foundation to be further expanded upon by providing the opportunity to draw upon the experience of existing and new connections and accessing the extensive knowledge from our local community to increase the support for the varied needs of our children.”

MIL OSI News –

January 23, 2025
MIL-OSI China: Chinese modernization fuels shared prosperity of developing nations

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

BEIJING, Oct. 16 — China is forging its own path to modernization, offering not only inspiration to other developing countries but also tangible opportunities for growth amid a sluggish global economy.

Amid rising trade protectionism, China, the world’s largest developing nation, remains committed to advancing high-level opening up and serving as a reliable partner for developing countries on the path to modernization.

On the domestic front, China is prioritizing institutional openness, unlocking vast market potential and creating abundant opportunities for foreign businesses. Measures like lifting foreign investment restrictions in manufacturing and enhancing intellectual property protection are making China an increasingly attractive destination for global enterprises.

On the global stage, the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which now encompasses over three quarters of the world’s countries, exemplifies China’s commitment to collaborative progress. Projects once deemed unattainable have become realities, significantly improving the lives of millions.

As Belt and Road cooperation has entered its second decade, new opportunities are emerging, with plans to break new ground through enhanced collaboration with partner countries. In July, a resolution was adopted during the third plenum of the 20th Communist Party of China Central Committee. It calls for efforts to improve the integrated framework for land, sea, air and cyberspace connectivity and build a multidimensional network to connect countries along the Belt and Road.

Cooperation within the BRI framework will be strengthened in key areas such as green development, the digital economy, artificial intelligence, finance, and disaster mitigation. As China rapidly advances in digital communications, it is well-positioned to assist partner countries in developing their digital economies and bridging the digital divide.

In the realm of technological innovation, China has consistently embraced a spirit of collaboration. Its belief that science should benefit all humanity is not mere rhetoric; it is reflected in concrete actions.

China has established scientific and technological cooperation ties with over 160 countries and regions, and signed 118 intergovernmental agreements on such cooperation. China also issued the International Science and Technology Cooperation Initiative, featuring open, fair, equitable and non-discriminatory international science and technology cooperation.

A prime example of such cooperation is the establishment of 10 overseas science and education centers by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, South America and beyond. More than 100 scientific and technological projects have been launched, training nearly 5,000 high-level professionals from these regions.

China has provided the international community with abundant public goods, including the annual China International Import Expo and regional initiatives like the China-ASEAN Expo. These influential platforms are set to evolve into concrete cooperation projects that deliver tangible benefits to the people of participating countries. Committed to offering even more global public goods to support peace and prosperity, China aims to achieve more win-win outcomes through its reform and opening up while collaborating with other nations on modernization.

The effectiveness of these efforts is evident. Following its pledge in July to further open its doors to the world’s least developed countries, China announced in early September that it would grant zero-tariff treatment on 100 percent of tariff lines to all the least developed countries that have established diplomatic relations with China. This makes China the first major developing nation and the first significant economy to take such a step.

Cooperation between China and other developing nations is expected to accelerate in the future, especially in green transition efforts aimed at tackling climate change. China’s strengths in clean energy equipment and electric vehicles have already been translated into successful cooperation programs in relevant sectors across developing countries.

Modernization is a shared aspiration for humanity. Chinese modernization dispels the misconception that modernization equates to Westernization. Rather than pursuing isolated success or creating a model that hinders others, China is dedicated to partnering with other nations to jointly advance modernization.

As the world’s second-largest economy, China has contributed more than 30 percent of global economic growth over the past years. The widening door of opportunity being opened by Chinese modernization welcomes all, particularly Global South countries.

MIL OSI China News –

January 23, 2025