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Category: Politics

  • MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: Shri Jyotiraditya M. Scindia to Attend the Northeast Trade and Investment Roadshow in Bengaluru

    Source: Government of India (2)

    Posted On: 25 SEP 2024 7:17PM by PIB Delhi

    The Ministry of Development of the Northeastern Region (MDoNER) is organising the Northeast Trade and Investment Roadshow in Bengaluru on September 26, 2024, starting at 5 PM at the Four Seasons Hotel. The event will be graced by SHRI JYOTIRADITYA M. SCINDIA, Hon’ble Union Minister of Communications and Development of the Northeastern Region, Government of India.

    Senior officials from MDoNER, including Shri Chanchal Kumar, Secretary, and Sushri Monalisa Dash, Joint Secretary, will also be present, along with representatives from various Northeastern states.

    The event is being organised in collaboration with State governments of Northeastern, FICCI (Industry Partner), and Invest India (Investment Facilitation Partner).

    This marks the fourth major Roadshow in Bengaluru, featuring presentations from representatives of the eight Northeastern states: Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya, Sikkim, and Nagaland. They will highlight various investment opportunities in their respective states.

    Key investable sectors include IT & ITES, Healthcare, Education & Skill Development, Sports & Entertainment, Tourism & Hospitality, and Energy—all crucial for the region’s economic growth.

    The Northeast Investors Summit, organised by MDoNER, aims to attract investments and stimulate economic development. Previous roadshows in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Kolkata received strong participation, while the State Seminar at Vibrant Gujarat drew significant interest from potential investors.

    To build on these efforts, MDoNER held a signing and exchange of MOUs event for the North East Investors Summit on March 6, 2024, at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, facilitating Business-to-Government (B2G) meetings with senior officials from state governments.

    The Roadshow in Bengaluru is expected to attract many potential investors eager to be part of the growth journey in North East India.

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    MG/SB/DP

    (Release ID: 2058755) Visitor Counter : 38

    MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Risch Introduces Bill to Ban Handgun Rosters

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Idaho James E Risch

    WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho) today introduced the Modern Firearms Safety Act, which would prohibit states from enforcing handgun rosters. These lists of pre-approved handguns require manufacturers to include costly features like microstamping, loaded chamber indicators, and magazine disconnect mechanisms on firearms, preventing law-abiding citizens from purchasing the firearm of their choice.

    “Unconstitutional handgun rosters create unnecessary, burdensome requirements for firearm manufacturers while undermining the Second Amendment,” said Risch. “The Modern Firearms Safety Act stops Democrats arbitrary handgun catalogs and protects law-abiding gun owners’ right to bear arms.”

    Several states, including California, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, and D.C., have recently enacted unconstitutional handgun rosters. A 2024 federal district court ruling found California’s handgun roster requirements unconstitutional.

    Risch is joined by U.S. Senators Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) in introducing the legislation.

    “Those on the Left continue to use every creative avenue possible to stifle Second Amendment rights and restrict gun ownership for law-abiding citizens,” said Crapo. “These practices must stop.”

    “Blue states look for every avenue to ban guns for law-abiding citizens,” said Cassidy. “Requiring unnecessary and imaginary modifications that don’t improve safety is just another tactic out of this playbook. The Second Amendment is a Constitutional right that shouldn’t be infringed upon just because of the state in which you reside.” 

    “Trying to impose unnecessary and overly stringent requirements on what features handguns must have is a blatant attempt to strip away core constitutional rights,” said Cornyn. “This legislation ensures law-abiding gun owners in Texas can continue to exercise their Second Amendment right in a safe and responsible way without being subject to impractical restrictions.”

    “Our Founding Fathers were clear—the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” said Daines. “Forcing Americans to outfit their firearms with onerous and costly features is a clear attempt to undermine the Second Amendment and law-abiding citizens’ constitutional rights, and it must stop.”

    “I am proud to join Senator Risch in our fight against the Democrats’ never-ending attack on our Second Amendment rights and our constitutional freedoms,” Marshall said. “The Modern Firearm Safety Act will end the unconstitutional gun grab currently underway in far-Left states like California, New York, Maryland, and Massachusetts. Our legislation rightfully blocks Democrats from enforcing illegal handgun roster requirements designed to target law-abiding Americans.”

    “This commonsense legislation safeguards the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens by eliminating unnecessary barriers to purchase firearms,” said Tillis. “I am proud to support responsible gun owners by introducing this legislation, which aims to prevent government overreach and uphold our constitutional freedoms.”

    The Modern Firearms Safety Act has received support from the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), and National Rifle Association (NRA).

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: News 09/25/2024 Blackburn, Kelly, Cornyn, Baldwin Introduce Bill to Stop School Bus Manufacturers Tied to Chinese Communist Party from Receiving Federal Funding

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn)

    WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) introduced the Secure School Buses Act to ensure school bus manufacturers tied to foreign entities and countries of concern, including the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), do not receive federal funding:

    “Under current law, federal funding for public transit is banned from going to companies tied to U.S. adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party, but the requirements do not apply to federal funding for school buses,” said Senator Blackburn. “Our Secure School Buses Act would close this dangerous loophole and safeguard national security and our nation’s students.”

    “The Clean School Bus Program has provided school districts in Arizona and throughout the country opportunities to modernize their school bus fleets, while supporting bus manufacturers based here in the United States,” said Senator Kelly. “This bill ensures companies that receive state support from the Chinese government can’t take advantage of this program to unfairly compete against American manufacturers. We’ve taken these same steps to protect public transit systems, and now it’s time we apply the same standard to the buses carrying our kids to school every day.” 

    “It is unacceptable for adversarial nations to receive any benefit at the expense of American taxpayers,” said Senator Cornyn. “This bill would prohibit federal dollars from going to subsidiaries and spin-offs of predatory entities in China and other countries of concern that don’t have our interests at heart, and I’m glad to support it.”

    “When we use taxpayer dollars, we should be investing those dollars back into American businesses, workers, and communities – not sending money overseas to adversaries like China,” said Senator Baldwin. “I’m proud to work with my Democratic and Republican colleagues to ensure taxpayer investments in our children’s school buses won’t line the pockets of bad actors like China and give them a competitive edge over our workers and businesses.”

    BACKGROUND:
    • Several years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established the Clean School Bus Program to replace existing school buses with electric models. According to the EPA, they have awarded almost $3 billion in taxpayer funds through this program. Troublingly, certain companies in the electric bus industry have ties to the CCP and other foreign entities of concern.
    • Localities can currently use their federal funding to purchase buses from companies with ties to these foreign entities of concern, with some of these companies marketing buses specifically for the Clean School Bus Program. In the past, Congress has made clear that no federal taxpayer dollars should go to companies with ties to our adversaries.
    • While federal funds are prohibited from going to companies with ties to the CCP and other foreign entities of concern for public transit, there are no such prohibitions for the procurement of school buses. If these products are not safe enough for public transit, they certainly are not safe enough for our nation’s children.
    • Senator Blackburn has worked extensively on the national security risks posed by Chinese-made connected cars and electric vehicles proliferating in the United States, due to many Chinese companies’ subservience to the CCP. The same holds true for these electric bus companies with ties to the CCP and other foreign entities of concern.

    SECURE SCHOOL BUSES ACT:
    • The Secure School Buses Act would prohibit the award of federal grant funding to school bus manufacturers with certain ties to a foreign entity of concern.
    • This legislation is endorsed by the Alliance for American Manufacturing and Heritage Action.

    Click here for bill text.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: Jammu and Kashmir votes amidst a tranquil and festive atmosphere in Phase 2

    Source: Government of India

    Jammu and Kashmir votes amidst a tranquil and festive atmosphere in Phase 2

    Voters across 6 districts queued up in large numbers and exercised their franchise

    Voting took place peacefully in 106 Border Polling Stations near LOC in Poonch & Rajouri district; 13 polling stations set up across the fence

    History in the making as voters of Jammu-Kashmir embrace democratic process over violence and boycott – CEC Rajiv Kumar

    Phase-2 voter turnout 54.11% as of 7 PM

    Posted On: 25 SEP 2024 8:21PM by PIB Delhi

    In the penultimate phase of the elections to the Jammu-Kashmir Legislative Assembly, voters queued up in long lines at the Polling Stations dotting the picturesque landscape and carried forward the momentum witnessed during Phase-1. Voting across 26 ACs which commenced at 7 AM today was held peacefully without any incidents of violence. As of 7 PM, a voter turnout of 54.11% was recorded at the polling stations. The overall voter turnout recorded in these six districts that went for polls in Phase 2 have also surpassed the turnout recorded in Lok Sabha Elections 2024. Phase-1 of the Jammu-Kashmir Assembly elections had also witnessed an encouraging response by voters with a voter turnout of 61.38% at Polling Station across 24 ACs.

    Voters queuing up at polling stations in second phase of J&K elections

    CEC Shri Rajiv Kumar along with ECs Shri Gyanesh Kumar and Dr. Sukhbir Singh Sandhu had maintained a constant supervision of the polling process to ensure that the polling took place in an incident free manner. Earlier in the day, interacting with media at Nirvachan Sadan, CEC Rajiv Kumar said that these elections are “history in the making”, the echoes of which will be carried through posterity. He added that the valleys and the mountains which had once witnessed fear and boycott, are now taking part in the democratic festivities or “Jashn-e-Jamhuriyat”. Strong security measures were in place creating a conducive environment for voters to cast their vote without fear or intimidation. Webcasting was in place in all polling stations to ensure transparency of the voting process. While demonstrating the visuals emerging live from the Polling Stations in Jammu & Kashmir, CEC Kumar lauded the voters seen patiently waiting for their turn to vote at the Polling Stations and said that it is a resounding statement of their belief in democracy.

    Voters in Poonch District, Jammu-Kashmir

    In Phase-2, 26 Assembly Constituencies, spread across 6 districts saw polling across 3502 Polling Stations set up for voters in this phase. 239 Candidates were in the fray including 233 men and 6 women candidates in this phase of the elections. The six districts that went to polls in phase 2 are – Budgam, Ganderbal, Poonch, Rajouri, Reasi and Srinagar.

    Young voters reflected the aspirations of peace, democracy and progress as first time voters proudly showcased their inked fingers after voting. A total of over 1.2 lakh electors are in the age of 18-19 for phase 2.

    Voters across age groups displaying their inked fingers

    Accessibility is one of the key pillars of the voting experience that ECI is committed to. Shri Rakesh Kumar, Bronze medalist at the recently concluded Paris Paralympics and ECI’s National PwD icon also showed up to fulfil his civic responsibility and cast his vote at Sri Mata Vaishno Assembly Constituency earlier today. One polling station in each AC was manned by Persons with Disabilities. 26 Polling Stations were managed by women.

    ECI National PwD icon Shri Rakesh Kumar and PwD voters voting in Phase-2 of J&K elections

    Pwd manned PS no 80 Dhanori, AC-58 Shri Mata Vaishno Devi & women managed PS

    The Dal lake provided a scenic backdrop for the polling festivities. Voters reached their polling stations aboard the iconic Shikara to cast their vote. Voting took place in a tranquil atmosphere free of fear and intimidation. Voters inhabiting the areas near the border were also empowered to exercise their franchise at 55 Border Polling Stations set up near the LoC in 89 Poonch Haveli and 90- Mendhar AC in Poonch district and 51 such polling stations in Rajouri district. These Border Polling Stations saw voting today in line with the Commission’s resolve to bring even the remotest corners of the country into the democratic fold.

    Border PS 1 Noorkot, 89 Poonch Haveli AC and voters going by Shikara at Dal Lake

     

    Border Polling stations in 84 Nowshera AC in Rajouri district

    Border Polling Station 84-Nowshera, situated less than 1 Km away from the Border

    Kashmiri Migrant voters were also empowered to exercise their franchise through 24 Special Polling Stations setup in Jammu (19), Udhampur (1) and Delhi (4). Earlier, the Commission had eased the process for Kashmiri migrant voters by abolishing the cumbersome Form-M and enabling self-certification.

    Home-voting facility, introduced for the first time in Assembly elections in J&K saw democracy being taken to the doorsteps of those who are bound by physical limitations. Many voters aged above 85 years and PwDs with 40% benchmark disability opted to vote from the comfort of their homes. The entire process was videographed to ensure transparency while preserving the secrecy of the ballot. 

    As part of ECI’s commitment to make the voting experience pleasant and memorable, Assured Minimum Facilities (AMF’s) like drinking water, electricity, toilet, ramp, furniture, adequate shelter, helpdesk, wheel chair & volunteers amongst others were provided at all Polling Stations. One polling station each, exclusively managed by women and PwDs, was set up in every AC for giving a comfortable voting experience.

    The provisional voter turnout figures of 54.11% as of 7 PM will continue to be updated AC wise on the Voter Turnout App by the ROs, as and when the polling parties formally close the poll and return from the polling stations based on the geographical/logistical conditions and after scrutiny of statutory papers and consideration of repolls, if any. The Commission for convenience of stakeholders, will also issue another press note with provisional voter turnout figures at ~2345 hours today.

     

    District-Wise Approximate Voter Turnout in Phase – 2 (7PM)

    Sl. No.

    Districts

    No. ACs

    Approximate Voter Turnout %

    1

    Budgam

    5

    58.97

    2

    Ganderbal

    2

    58.81

    3

    Poonch

    3

    71.59

    4

    Rajouri

    5

    68.22

    5

    Reasi

    3

    71.81

    6

    Srinagar

    8

    27.37

    Above 6 Districts

    26

    54.11

    Polling for the third phase will be held on October 1, 2024. Counting of votes is scheduled on October 8, 2024.

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    PK/RP 

    (Release ID: 2058809) Visitor Counter : 63

    MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

  • MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: Union Health Ministry releases National Health Accounts Estimates for India 2020-21 and 2021-22

    Source: Government of India (2)

    Union Health Ministry releases National Health Accounts Estimates for India 2020-21 and 2021-22

    The methodology taken for these NHA estimates has improved over the last 9 years and has resulted in a more robust and accurate account of the government’s expenditure on Health: Member, NITI Aayog

    “The decline in Out-of-Pocket expenditure out of Total Health Expenditure from 64.2% in 2013-14 to 39.4% in 2021-22 reflects a very positive indicator”

    Government Health Expenditure’s share in the country’s total GDP increases from 1.13% (2014-15) to 1.84% (2021-22)

    Share of Government Health Expenditure in Total Health Expenditure increases from 29.0% (2014-15) to 48.0% (2021-22)

    Per capita Government spending on healthcare triples

    Posted On: 25 SEP 2024 8:07PM by PIB Delhi

    The Union Health Ministry released the National Health Account (NHA) estimates for India 2020-21 and 2021-22. These estimates are the eighth and ninth in the series of reports released annually by the Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare.

    Addressing the session, Dr V K Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog said that “the methodology taken for these NHA estimates has improved over the last 9 years and has resulted in a more robust and accurate account of the government’s expenditure on Health”. He said, “the decline in Out-of-Pocket expenditure out of Total Health Expenditure from 64.2% in 2013-14 to 39.4% in 2021-22 reflects a very positive indicator.”

    Dr Paul highlighted that “more than Rs 1 lakh crore savings have accrued from the Ayushman Bharat PMJAY and this has had a positive impact on the recent NHA estimates. He also stated that other schemes like the Free Dialysis scheme, launched in 2015-16 has benefited 25 lakh people.”

    Speaking on the occasion, Union Health Secretary Shri Apurva Chandra said that “a substantial increase has been noticed in the health expenditure of the government while the out-of-pocket expenditure has come down which is a good sign.” He highlighted that the total health expenditure has also made a significant increase which reflects the emphasis of the government towards health.

    The NHA estimates are based on the globally accepted framework of ‘A System of Health Accounts (SHA), 2011’ which facilitates inter-country comparisons. This report provides a systematic description of the financial flows in India’s health system by different sources, how the money is spent, how healthcare is provided, and the nature of healthcare services that are used.

    The NHA estimates for 2021-22 show that Government expenditure for healthcare continues to increase in the country, highlighting the efforts of the Government to increase public investments in the health sector. The share of Government Health Expenditure (GHE) in the overall GDP of the country has increased from 1.13% in 2014-15 to 1.84% in 2021-22. In terms of share in the General Government Expenditure (GGE), it has increased from 3.94% in 2014-15 to 6.12% in 2021-22.

     

    Figure 1: Government Health Expenditure (GHE) as % of GDP

     

    Figure 2: Government Health Expenditure (GHE) as % of General Government Expenditure (GGE)

    In per capita terms, GHE has tripled, from Rs. 1,108 to Rs. 3,169   between 2014-15 to 2021-22. The Government spending on health between 2019-20 and 2020-21 increased by 16.6%, while between 2020-21 and 2021-22, it grew by an unprecedented rate of 37%, highlighting the proactive role played by the Government in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The increase in Government spending on health has an important implication for the reduction of financial hardship endured by households. In the Total Health Expenditure (THE) of the country between 2014-15 and 2021-22, the share of GHE has increased from 29% to 48%. During the same period, the share of Out-of-Pocket Expenditure (OOPE) in THE declined from 62.6% to 39.4%.

    The continuous decline in the OOPE in the overall health spending vindicates the substantial efforts made by the Government in the progress towards ensuring financial protection and Universal Health Coverage for its citizens. 

     

    Figure 3: Government Health Expenditure (GHE) and Out-Of-Pocket Expenditure (OOPE) as % of Total Health Expenditure (THE)

     

    Another positive trend in the country’s health financing space is the increase in Social Security Expenditure (SSE) on healthcare. This increase in social security has a direct impact on reducing out-of-pocket payments. A robust social security mechanism ensures that individuals will not face financial hardship and the risk of poverty as a consequence of accessing essential healthcare services. The share of SSE on health, which includes Government-funded health insurance, medical reimbursement to Government employees, and social health insurance programs, in THE, has increased from 5.7% in 2014-15 to 8.7% in 2021-22.

    The NHA Estimates for 2020-21 and 2021-22 released today can be accessed here: https://nhsrcindia.org/national-health-accounts-records.

    Smt. Punya Sasila Srivastava, Officer on Special Duty, Health Ministry; Shri Jaideep Kumar Mishra, Addl. Secy and Financial Adviser, Health Ministry; Smt. L S Changsan, Addl. Secy, Health Ministry; Smt. Aradhana Patnaik, Addl. Secy, Health Ministry; Smt. Indrani Kaushal, Senior Economic Advisor, Health Ministry; Shri Saurabh Jain, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry and other senior officers

     

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    MV

    HFW/ Release of NHA Estimates/25th September 2024/4

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    MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Congressman Alford Introduces Rural Innovation and Small Business Support Act to Enhance Outreach Efforts in Rural Communities and Small Businesses

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Mark Alford (Missouri 4th District)

    Congressman Alford Introduces Rural Innovation and Small Business Support Act to Enhance Outreach Efforts in Rural Communities and Small Businesses

    Washington, September 25, 2024

    WASHINGTON – Today, Congressman Mark Alford (MO-04) introduced the Rural Innovation and Small Business Support Act. This legislation will require the Small Business Administration (SBA) to enhance outreach efforts in rural communities through the Small Business Innovation (SBIR) and Small Business Technology (STTR) programs. 

    “Small businesses and entrepreneurship are the fabric of America. Too often, the opportunities to contract with the federal government are limited to coastal cities. The Rural Innovation and Small Business Support Act will force the government to include rural Americans in key SBIR and STTR programs,” said Congressman Alford. 

    View legislation here.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: CETY CEO KAM MAHDI ADDRESSES GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS LEADERS AT FORUM FOR LATVIA PRESIDENT EDGARS RINKĒVIČS’ ECONOMIC DELEGATION TO CALIFORNIA

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    Irvine, CA, Sept. 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Clean Energy Technologies, Inc. (“CETY”) (Nasdaq: CETY), a clean energy manufacturing and services company offering eco-friendly green energy solutions, clean energy fuels, and alternative electric power for small and mid-size projects in North America, Europe, and Asia, today announced its participation in Latvia’s economic delegation visit to the US from September 17 to 23. Led by President Edgars Rinkēvičs, the delegation visited San Francisco and Silicon Valley, engaging with California government leaders, technology giants, and investors.

    CETY CEO Kam Mahdi was a key presenter at a program on the topic of California Technology Research and Investment. He discussed CETY’s growth as a comprehensive clean energy solutions company with growing global focus that includes expanding operations in North America, Europe, and Asia. The program was part of President Rinkēvičs focus on exploring opportunities for economic cooperation and growth for Latvia enterprises seeking a presence in the United States and specifically targeting California for its business and technology development ecosystem and leadership.

    The visit of President Rinkēvičs and other Latvian government officials and business leaders is an historic one. It was the first such high-level economic delegation to the US from Latvia. Accompanying President Rinkēvičs were Minister of Economics Viktors Valainis, Director General at Investment and Development Agency of Latvia Raivis Bremsmits, and over 50 Latvia entrepreneurs interested in California and North America for strategic growth. Meetings during the three-day visit included Microsoft, Google, NASA Ames, and Meta. AI was a big topic for this visit, especially given its potential use in all sectors and the concerns raised in the EU over privacy and security.

    Mr. Mahdi talked about the evolution of CETY from its inception, when it was first focused on waste heat recovery, using technology developed by General Electric, through its current expansion into becoming a comprehensive energy solutions provider. “We have developed expertise of the entire energy process from system design to generation and storage, distribution and management,” said Mahdi. “Clients come to us to discuss their needs, and we can develop solutions to effectively address them.”

    Mahdi also spoke at a meeting which included California State Treasurer Fiona Ma, Latvia Economics Minister Viktors Valainis, Latvia Investment and Development Agency Director Raivis Bremsmits, Toms Zvidriņš, Head of the US Office of Investment and Development Agency of Latvia, Martins Andersons, President of the American Latvian Association, and Latvia business leaders.

    CETY has been involved in a waste heat to energy project in Latvia since 2018, with EkoNams, a company that builds Scandanvian-style log homes, the design of which is influenced by historic craftsmanship and the execution of which relies on new technologies. Building on that project, CETY has been in discussion with other Latvia companies interested in collaboration or partnerships.

    President Rinkēvičs’ delegation followed up on a July 2024 California delegation to Latvia led by California State Treasurer Fiona Ma and State Senator Josh Newman. The delegation included California businesses, and involved meetings with top government and business leaders, including former Latvia Prime Minister and current European Commissioner for Trade Valdis Dombrovskis, Prime Minister Evika Siliņa, and Transportation Minister Kaspars Briškens, to discuss investment, economic and technological collaboration, and development opportunities in key Baltic growth sectors. As part of that delegation, Mr. Mahdi was an invited speaker on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Forum on Sustainable Energy Technologies and Innovations, along with former California Senator and energy entrepreneur Robert Hertzberg.

    About Clean Energy Technologies, Inc. (CETY)

    Headquartered in Irvine, California, Clean Energy Technologies, Inc. (CETY) is a rising leader in the zero-emission revolution by offering eco-friendly green energy solutions, clean energy fuels and alternative electric power for small and mid-sized projects in North America, Europe, and Asia. We deliver power from heat and biomass with zero emission and low cost. The Company’s principal products are Waste Heat Recovery Solutions using our patented Clean CycleTM generator to create electricity. Waste to Energy Solutions convert waste products created in manufacturing, agriculture, wastewater treatment plants and other industries to electricity and BioChar. Engineering, Consulting and Project Management Solutions provide expertise and experience in developing clean energy projects for municipal and industrial customers and Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) companies.

    CETY’s common stock is currently traded on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol CETY. For more information, visit http://www.cetyinc.com.

    For video examples please visit CETY’s YouTube channel:
    https://www.youtube.com/@CleanEnergyTechnologiesInc.

    Follow CETY on our social media channels: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

    This summary should be read in conjunction with the Company’s quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended March 31, 2024 and other periodic filings made pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, which contain, among other matters, risk factors and financial footnotes as well as a discussions of our business, operations and financial matters located on the website of the Securities and Exchange Commission at http://www.sec.gov.

    Safe Harbor Statement

    This news release may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the United States Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, with respect to achieving corporate objectives, developing additional project interests, the Company’s analysis of opportunities in the acquisition and development of various project interests and certain other matters. These statements are made under the “Safe Harbor” provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and involve risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements contained herein. Forward-looking statements are neither historical facts nor assurances of future performance. Instead, they are based only on the Company’s current beliefs, expectations and assumptions regarding the future of CETY’s business, future plans and strategies, projections, anticipated events and trends, the economy and other future conditions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of the Company’s control. Therefore, you should not rely on any of these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as: “anticipate,” “plan,” “expect,” “estimate,” “strategy,” “future,” “likely,” “may,” “should,” “will” and similar references to future periods. Any forward-looking statement made by the Company in this press release is based only on information currently available to us and speaks only as of the date on which it is made. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.

    Clean Energy Technologies, Inc.
    Investor and Investment Media inquiries:
    949-273-4990
    ir@cetyinc.com
    Source: Clean Energy Technologies, Inc.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Ruppersberger, Bipartisan Group Secures SNAP Theft Reimbursement in Stop-Gap Funding Bill

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (2nd District of Maryland)

    (Washington, DC) – Victims of food stamp theft will continue to be reimbursed thanks to a provision in a stop-gap funding bill secured by a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Congressman C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger. H.R. 9747, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act of 2025, passed in the U.S. House of Representatives today in a 341-82 vote, keeping the government funded – and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits flowing – through December 20, 2024. It is expected to be taken up in the U.S. Senate quickly.

    Last month, Ruppersberger, along with Representatives Mike Lawler (R-New York),  Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Oregon), James P. McGovern (D-Massachusetts), Dan Goldman (D-New York), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pennsylvania), Anthony D’Esposito (R-New York), Marc Molinaro (R-New York), Kweisi Mfume (D-Maryland), Brittany Pettersen (D-Colorado) and Grace Meng (D-New York) sent a letter to Congressional leadership urging them to allow victims of SNAP theft to continue to be reimbursed from federal and state coffers.

    Reports of SNAP theft – in which perpetrators use skimming devices to steal SNAP benefits distributed on electronic debit cards (EBT) – are skyrocketing across the nation. States are currently required to replace stolen benefits under a measure included in the 2023 omnibus funding bill passed by Congress at the end of 2022. But that provision was set to expire on September 30.

    “I want to thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who recognize the dire straits that SNAP theft leaves its victims, which often include veterans, families, low-income workers, children, the elderly and the disabled,” said Congressman Ruppersberger (MD-02). “While Congress continues to work toward its long-term and strategic spending bills, I am relieved to know these innocent constituents will not lose their primary source of healthy food.”

    “Ensuring that SNAP recipients who have their benefits stolen are made whole is my top priority and is deeply important to New York families,” said Congressman Mike Lawler (NY-17). “That’s why I joined colleagues in both parties and chambers to introduce the Enhanced Cybersecurity for SNAP Act to protect these programs from fraud, and it’s why I have been adamant about the need to include SNAP protections in FY25’s appropriations. I was pleased to see these provisions in the CR being voted on this week. We must complete our appropriations work while protecting the most vulnerable in our society.”

    “I was proud to join this bipartisan group of my colleagues in urging congressional leaders to prevent critical SNAP theft reimbursements from ending,” said Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer (OR-05). “I’m glad our message was heard and an extension was included in this stopgap funding bill. I’ll keep working to ensure victims of SNAP theft are protected.”

    “I am proud to have helped secure an extension that will allow states to use existing federal funding to reimburse vulnerable victims of SNAP theft so that families in need can put food on the table,” Congressman Dan Goldman (NY-10) said. “SNAP theft can be devastating for working families and these reimbursements are a critical lifeline that allows working families to make ends meet. I will continue fighting alongside my colleagues to ensure that states retain this authority when Congress passes its final budget at the end of the year.”

    “Families that rely on SNAP to put food on the table each day should never go hungry, especially as a result of their benefits being stolen,” said Congresswoman Grace Meng (NY-06), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee. “That’s why I fought to help over 36,000 New Yorkers recover more than $17.5 million in stolen SNAP benefits. I’m glad to see that this provision was included and extended in this critical government funding bill. I’ve also been fighting to make EBT benefit cards more secure to deter scams, and I’m excited that this bill includes language that will hopefully lead to more secure EBT cards. Many beneficiaries in Queens and across the country continue to be targeted by these scams, and we must continue fighting for the families in our communities experiencing the greatest needs.”

    “It is appalling that Americans are being targeted at record rates in major SNAP benefit theft. These sickening crimes are carried out against veterans, families, low-income workers, children, the elderly, and the disabled – all of whom are just trying to put food on their table,” said Congressman Kweisi Mfume (MD-07). “Our letter represented a unified effort, across the political aisle, to bring justice to victims in all our respective Congressional Districts. Today’s triumph was a culmination of fierce collaboration between both Democrats and Republicans and boldly fighting for justice on behalf of all households that rely on SNAP,” he concluded. 

    “Because of our bipartisan push, victims of SNAP theft will continue to be protected through the SNAP Reimbursement Extension,” said Congressman Marc Molinaro (NY-19). “I’m proud to have helped lead the effort to ensure Upstate New York families who rely on SNAP benefits always have access to the meals they deserve.”

    “Thousands of Bucks and Montgomery County residents depend on SNAP to put food on their tables, which is why I was proud to join my colleagues in the critical fight to prevent SNAP theft reimbursements from ending. This common-sense reimbursement provision is essential to safeguarding the integrity of the SNAP program and ensuring families in my community and nationwide who have fallen victim to SNAP theft can quickly recover their benefits. Today’s victory is a powerful reminder that when we unite across party lines, we can achieve meaningful change and stand firm in our commitment to uplift our communities and safeguard the well-being of those who need it most,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-1).

    “SNAP recipients who had their food benefits stolen—through no fault of their own, I would add—should not be kicked while they’re down by an indifferent government that tells them ‘too bad’ and leaves them to fend for themselves,” said Congressman Jim McGovern (MA-02). “Especially when the average SNAP benefit is barely over $2 per person, per meal. We’re talking about people who rely on these benefits to feed themselves and their families. When they are stolen, people go hungry. I’m glad that because of our continued advocacy, Congress is making sure that food insecure families are protected through the end of the year.”

    ####

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: DelBene on Bipartisan Funding Agreement to Avert Government Shutdown

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (1st District of Washington)

    DelBene on Bipartisan Funding Agreement to Avert Government Shutdown

    WASHINGTON, DC , September 25, 2024

    Today, Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (WA-01) issued the following statement after the House of Representatives passed a bipartisan funding agreement to avert a government shutdown: 

    “Americans want governance that works, and I joined House Democrats today to prevent a shutdown, once again demonstrating that bipartisan solutions are necessary to address the issues before Congress. It is unacceptable that House Republicans played games for weeks and risked a government shutdown that could have jeopardized the well-being of middle-class families, veterans, and our national security to advance their harmful Project 2025 agenda. 

    “While we successfully prevented a shutdown today, we must work together to reach an agreement to fund the government for the entirety of Fiscal Year 2025. House Republicans must accept the reality that in a divided government, bipartisan solutions are the only way to pass legislation through both the House and Senate and get it to President Biden’s desk.” 

    This temporary funding agreement now heads to the Senate for approval ahead of the September 30 funding deadline. 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Europe: Christine Lagarde: Technology as a new frontier for macroprudential policy

    Source: European Central Bank

    Welcome address by Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB and Chair of the European Systemic Risk Board, at the eighth annual conference of the ESRB

    Frankfurt am Main, 26 September 2024

    I would like to welcome all of you to the eighth annual conference of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB).

    The theme this year – “New Frontiers in Macroprudential Policy” – challenges us to rethink the ways in which we ensure financial stability in an evolving world.

    Traditionally, macroprudential policy has focused on safeguarding the stability of banks, particularly by addressing boom-bust cycles in real estate. Banks continue to hold significant exposures to the real estate sector, and this remains a core area of our oversight.

    But today our world is undergoing swift and profound changes.

    While we must remain alert as ever to cyclical risks, major structural transformations – from shifting geopolitics to a changing climate and extraordinary advances in technology – are creating new frontiers in macroprudential policy. These have important implications for financial stability that are not yet fully reflected in our current frameworks.

    Today I would like to focus on what one of those frontiers – technology – means for the financial system and, by extension, the response of macroprudential policy.

    As the Nobel laureate Christian Lange once observed, technology can be a “useful servant”, but it can also be a “dangerous master” if left unchecked.[1] That observation holds true for the financial system, where technological advances pose both sizeable opportunities and risks.

    In this setting, macroprudential policy needs to pull off a unique balancing act. To effectively mitigate the risks posed by new technologies, macroprudential policy must paradoxically embrace and harness the very innovations they create.

    Technology as the enabler of modern financial systems

    The basic needs that financial systems meet have not changed for centuries: saving for future needs, borrowing against future income, directing capital to productive uses and reallocating risk.

    But the way financial systems deliver their services has changed radically – driven largely by advances in information and communications technologies.

    In recent decades, powerful computing has revolutionised risk management and boosted market efficiency, enabling the pricing of complex financial instruments and the rise of algorithmic trading. One study, for example, finds that by facilitating faster price discovery, algorithmic trading improves liquidity for large-cap stocks.[2]

    Another key enabler of modern finance is encryption technology. Without it, there would be no online banking and no electronic payments. But encryption has not only aided the digitalisation of traditional finance. It has also facilitated the rise of a new asset class and a parallel financial system: crypto-assets and decentralised finance.

    The problems with crypto-assets are many, well-documented and not well-addressed – from weak fundamentals to questionable governance and inefficient validation methods.[3] But the encryption technology on which crypto-assets are based has so far proven robust. And distributed ledger technology can offer real benefits to our financial systems through the streamlining of processes.

    But it is perhaps artificial intelligence (AI) that may prove to be the most transformative for the financial system.

    For years now, analytical AI models designed to perform specific tasks have helped financial institutions in areas such as fraud detection, credit assessment and predicting portfolio returns.

    But the recent breakthroughs in generative AI – thanks to growth in computing power combined with extensive data access – are inducing a rapid uptake of AI across the board. According to one international study, almost two-thirds of companies – across all regions, sectors and sizes – are already using generative AI.[4]

    While new technologies have brought tremendous benefits for the financial system over time, they have always tended to carry potential risks with them.

    And we see this tension between opportunity and risk playing out today. The latest AI models, and budding technologies like quantum computing, have the potential to exert a profound impact on our economies and financial systems.

    Technological change and vulnerabilities

    As a tool, technology is neither good nor bad. It all depends on who uses it, and for what purpose.

    The financial sector will come up with numerous ways to use AI to improve existing operations. But the reliance on ever more sophisticated technologies – which typically demand highly specialised skills and enormous levels of investment to implement and maintain – creates new vulnerabilities in our financial system.

    We see this especially in areas where our financial institutions are increasingly reliant on a small number of external service providers.

    In July, a faulty software update from a leading cybersecurity firm caused worldwide computer outages and severe disruptions across many sectors, including finance. For instance, over eight million devices operating Microsoft Windows were hit simultaneously around the world.[5]

    While the disruption did not last long, the episode demonstrated the potential dangers of a broad-based reliance on a small number of third-party providers. These technology firms may have systemic importance and are a key element of the Digital Operational Resilience Act, an EU microprudential legislation.[6]

    This concentration risk is further heightened in an environment marked by geopolitical tensions and the rapid uptake of AI.

    Hostile states could wreak havoc if they uncover just one critical weakness in our financial system. At the ESRB, we expected intensified cyberattacks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.[7] Fortunately, the financial system has proven resilient so far, but the risk remains.

    The widespread adoption of AI may also have systemic implications for the financial system. For example, if AI suppliers were to remain concentrated, operational risk, market concentration and too-big-to-fail externalities may arise. Moreover, an extensive uptake of AI could increase the potential for herding behaviour.[8]

    Looking further ahead, advances in quantum computing may pose a serious threat to our encryption-based financial system. The technology may even go on to eventually break current encryption methods, although it is difficult to know when this might happen.

    That is why it is critical to start preparing early – and there are already efforts to do so.

    In August, for example, the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States finalised the first post-quantum encryption standards and called for their rapid deployment.[9] Efforts by individual financial institutions will not be enough, however: the shift to post-quantum encryption standards will need to be implemented across the economy to ensure sufficient resilience.

    The implications of technology for macroprudential policy

    As macroprudential policymakers, our primary role is to ensure that the financial system remains stable and resilient in the face of emerging threats.

    Historically, macroprudential policy has focused heavily on cyclical risks. But as we look into the future, we need to pay more attention to major structural changes. Technologies such as AI and quantum computing will reshape the financial landscape in ways we are only beginning to grasp.

    Macroprudential policy must evolve to meet these new frontiers. The risks stemming from disruptive technologies will not be confined to individual institutions – they will be systemic. But the tools we have relied on in the past may no longer be sufficient. Larger buffers are not always the right answer, nor are they the only answer.

    Our task now is to focus on how technological risks affect the interconnections and vulnerabilities across the entire financial system and ask ourselves how we may need to expand our toolkit.

    The answer is for macroprudential authorities to harness the power of new technologies, using the new opportunities they create as a force for good to mitigate the risks that technology may pose to the financial system.

    There is substantial potential on this front. AI can give us the capability to analyse vast amounts of supervisory and market data. And it can help us conduct more rigorous risk assessments to identify vulnerabilities faster and ensure timely prudential responses to new threats.

    We will need to consider a broader range of potentially disruptive scenarios and improve our capacity to model the financial stress that such scenarios can generate. The available data allow us to go a long way. But we need to go even further and remove obstacles to safe data sharing.

    In my capacity as Chair of the ESRB, I have recently called on European lawmakers to facilitate the removal of barriers to safe data sharing between the ESRB and European Supervisory Authorities, a crucial step towards enabling us to use data to their full potential.[10] At the same time, we need to enhance our collaboration across institutions, sharing insights and expertise so that we can collectively tackle the challenges ahead.

    By embracing technology, the role of macroprudential policy will be to help microprudential supervision to stay ahead of the curve, ensuring financial institutions are not only compliant with today’s rules but are also resilient to tomorrow’s threats.

    Conclusion

    Let me conclude.

    As with tackling cyclical risks, macroprudential policy at the new frontier centres on being proactive rather than reactive.

    Policymakers cannot afford to simply respond to crises as they emerge. We must continually attempt to anticipate them, harnessing the power of technology and data to build a financial system that is truly resilient. As Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.[11] And Franklin knew this first-hand. He is widely credited for developing and popularising the use of the lightning rod, which would go on to prevent many disasters.

    Looking at this conference’s agenda, I am confident that the discussions will spark fresh perspectives and innovative ideas as we explore the new frontiers of macroprudential policy.

    Thank you.

    MIL OSI Europe News –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: FMQs: Scottish Greens urge First Minister to reverse rail fare hike

    Source: Scottish Greens

    26 Sep 2024 Transport End Peak Rail Fares

    Peak fares are an unfair tax on workers and students.

    More in Transport

    Scottish Green co-leader Lorna Slater has urged the First Minister to mark Climate Week by halting the return of peak rail fares.

    Speaking at First Minister’s Questions, Ms Slater underlined the unfair nature of peak fares, which punish workers and students who have no choice about when they travel.

    The return of peak fares will see rail prices soaring. From the end of this week, someone travelling from the First Minister’s Perthshire constituency will pay £34.30 for a return ticket during peak hours, an increase of 58% on the current cost of £21.60.

    In her first question to the First Minister, Ms Slater said: “This week is Climate Week. The Climate Change Committee tells us that we urgently need to decarbonise transport. Getting people out of cars and planes and onto buses, trains and their own feet or wheels. 

    “The Scottish Government’s pilot to abolish peak rail fares, which was championed by the Scottish Greens in government, ends this week, hiking up the prices of train fares for many workers and students who do not have any choice about when they travel. 

    “Is this the right message for the Scottish Government to be sending in Climate Week?”

    Following a response from the First Minister, in which he did not reverse his decision, Ms Slater called for the SNP to support the introduction of a private jet tax to fund the permanent removal of peak fares.

    Ms Slater said: “The First Minister is in luck as I have a suggestion. Oxfam has reported that £21.5 million a year could be raised through a tax on Private Jets, assuming it was embedded in the Air Departure Tax, legislation that this parliament passed 7 years ago and hasn’t acted on. That’s enough to abolish peak fares for good. 

    “We all understand the need to ensure an exemption to Air Departure Tax for our island communities. Will the First Minister work with the UK Government to urgently introduce this tax so commuters can once again have fairer prices on our trains?”

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Translation: Joint Statement by Canada, the United States of America, Australia, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and Qatar

    MIL OSI Translation. Canadian French to English –

    Source: Prime Minister of Canada – in French

    The situation between Lebanon and Israel since October 8, 2023 is intolerable and poses an unacceptable risk of broader regional escalation. This situation is in no one’s interest, neither the Israeli people nor the Lebanese people.

    It is time to reach a diplomatic agreement that allows civilians on both sides of the border to return home safely.

    Diplomacy, however, cannot succeed in a context of escalating conflict.

    We therefore call for an immediate 21-day ceasefire on the Israeli-Lebanese border to allow room for diplomacy and the conclusion of a diplomatic settlement in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, and the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2735 on a ceasefire in Gaza.

    We call on all parties, including the Israeli and Lebanese governments, to immediately endorse the temporary ceasefire in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701 during this period, and to give a genuine chance to a diplomatic settlement.

    We will thus be ready to fully support all diplomatic initiatives aimed at reaching an agreement between Lebanon and Israel during this period, based on the efforts made in recent months, in order to put an end to this crisis.

    EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is a translation. Apologies should the grammar and/or sentence structure not be perfect.

    MIL Translation OSI

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: AUKUS statement: 26 September 2024

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments 3

    The defence ministers of the AUKUS partnership met in London to review progress in and reaffirm their commitment to the AUKUS partnership.

    Today the Right Honourable John Healey MP, Secretary of State for Defence, United Kingdom hosted the Honourable Richard Marles MP, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Australia and the Honorable Lloyd J. Austin III, Secretary of Defense, United States (U.S.) at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London, the United Kingdom (UK) to review progress in and reaffirm their commitment to the AUKUS partnership.

    The AUKUS partnership reflects the continued commitment by Australia, the United Kingdom, and United States to support a free and open Indo-Pacific that is peaceful, secure and stable.  The discussions between the Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister today reaffirmed the importance of this innovative, enduring, and trusted partnership in the face of a rapidly evolving and increasingly unstable international security environment. The three nations will continue to work to uphold the global rules-based order where international law is followed, and states can make sovereign choices free from coercion.  In this context, they reiterated their shared commitments to the AUKUS partnership for the decades to come and welcomed the progress made since AUKUS Defence Ministers last met in California, the United States, in December 2023.

    Pillar I – Conventionally Armed, Nuclear-Powered Submarines (SSNs)

    In March of 2023, our Heads of Government met to announce a comprehensive plan to support Australia’s acquisition of a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability as quickly as possible.  Since that announcement, our three governments have worked shoulder-to-shoulder to refine the milestones and principles that will form the building blocks for this decades-long partnership.

    The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister reiterated their shared and enduring commitment to setting the highest nuclear non-proliferation standard, and the importance of this work to the success of the programme. They undertook to continue AUKUS partners’ open, and transparent engagement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and noted the ongoing bilateral negotiations between the IAEA and Australia to develop a robust safeguards and verification approach for Australia’s naval nuclear propulsion programme under Article 14 of Australia’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA.

    Over the last year, our Royal Australian Navy (RAN), Royal Navy (RN), and U.S. Navy personnel have worked tirelessly across governments, defence industry, and academic institutions to optimise the training of personnel to maintain, sustain, operate, and crew nuclear-powered submarines.  The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister reiterated that the delivery of the “Optimal Pathway” depends upon the skilled workforces of all three countries and reaffirmed their shared commitment to develop a robust base of skills across their military, civilian and industrial sectors.

    • More than 60 RAN personnel are currently in various stages of the U.S. nuclear-powered submarine SSN training pipeline to equip a cadre of Australian officers and sailors with experience aboard the U.S. Virginia class SSNs that the RAN will own and operate from the early 2030s.  These numbers will increase further in 2025, with more than 100 personnel commencing training. Six officers have completed all training and have been assigned to U.S. Virginia class submarines.  RAN enlisted sailors will join U.S. submarine crews before the end of this year.
    • In the United Kingdom, three RAN officers completed the UK Nuclear Reactor course in July 2024 and are now assigned to UK Astute class submarines. The next group of RAN officers will commence training in the UK in November 2024.
    • The RN, with the support of the Australian Submarine Agency, has also delivered professional and general naval nuclear propulsion training for more than 250 Australian personnel in Canberra.
    • Australians have embedded into programme delivery teams in the UK Ministry of Defence and with Rolls-Royce Submarines. Australians are also currently embedded in U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program teams.
    • In July and September 2024, Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard welcomed the first 40 ASC Pty Ltd personnel into its training pipeline with the expectation of more than 100 additional ASC Pty Ltd employees by mid-2025.
    • The Australian Government has committed to nearly AUD 250 million to start delivering the skills and workforce needed for its SSN program, including providing 4,001 Commonwealth Supported Places at Australian universities, in addition to 3,000 undergraduate scholarships over six years, to build the necessary Australian Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics workforce.
    • Additional programs have seen more than 70 Australians supported to undertake postgraduate nuclear studies at universities in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia.
    • Australia has also recently announced the “Jobs for Subs” initiative, a government-funded program to evolve ASC Pty Ltd to recruit, train and retain approximately 200 additional graduates, apprentices and trainees to support Submarine Rotational Force-West (SRF-West) in Western Australia.

    Recognising that our partners in defence industry are and will remain vital to this endeavour, the Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister discussed opportunities to maximize our efforts to foster collaboration and build resilience across our industrial bases and supply chains. They welcome the collaboration between BAE Systems (BAES) and ASC Pty Ltd to bring together their combined decades of submarine building to deliver the SSN-AUKUS programme.

    • The U.S. Government decided to invest USD 17.5 billion into its submarine industrial base to support initiatives related to supplier development, shipbuilder and supplier infrastructure, workforce development, technology advancements, and strategic sourcing.
    • Australia has also committed to invest over AUD 30 billion in the Australian defence industrial base to develop Australia’s supply chains and facilitate industry participation in U.S. and UK supply chains.
    • His Majesty’s Government announced an initial allocation of £4 billion from the United Kingdom to continue the detailed design work of SSN-AUKUS and order long-lead items, as well as the United Kingdom’s investment of £3 billion across its Defence Nuclear Enterprise, including the construction of submarine industrial infrastructure that will help to deliver the SSN-AUKUS programme.
    • The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister welcomed the AUKUS partners’ commitment to accelerate opportunities for Australian industry in the Virginia class submarine supply chain, including through the Defence Industry Vendor Qualification Program and other industry collaboration initiatives.  They welcomed ongoing efforts to encourage further industrial base partnerships to build resiliency across the trilateral Submarine Industrial Base.
    • This August, as a direct result of our close collaboration over this year, our three nations commenced the execution of the first-ever planned maintenance activity of a U.S. SSN in Australia.  More than 30 RAN personnel worked alongside U.S. Navy and contractor personnel and UK observers to conduct routine maintenance and observe safety and stewardship evolutions.  This was an important step in building Australia’s capacity to support a rotational presence of UK and U.S. SSNs at SRF-West beginning as early as 2027, as well as Australia’s future sovereign SSN capability.

    The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister emphasised the importance of ensuring that our trilateral systems have the tools they need to transfer information and data in a timely fashion to facilitate cooperation.  They were pleased to welcome the August 2024 signing of an enabling agreement for trilateral cooperation related to naval nuclear propulsion. Once in force, this historic agreement will enable AUKUS partners to go beyond sharing naval nuclear propulsion information, allowing the United States and the United Kingdom to transfer nuclear-propulsion material and equipment to Australia required for the safe and secure construction, operation, and sustainment of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines.  

    This agreement reaffirms, and remains consistent with, the AUKUS partners’ respective, existing international non-proliferation obligations. As a non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Australia has re-affirmed unequivocally that it does not have, and will not seek to acquire, nuclear weapons. 

    Pillar II – Advanced Capabilities

    The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister hailed progress being made under Pillar II to deliver capability to our defence forces while bolstering industry and innovation sector collaboration. AUKUS nations continue to pool the talents of our defence sectors to catalyse, at an unprecedented pace, the delivery of advanced capabilities.

    Through AUKUS Pillar II, our trilateral science and technology, acquisition and sustainment, and operational communities are working across the full spectrum of capability development—generating requirements, co-developing new systems, deepening industrial base collaboration, and bolstering our innovation ecosystems.  The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister welcomed progress made in building a more capable, combined joint force of the future because of this work.

    • This year, under the Maritime Big Play initiative, we are undertaking a series of integrated trilateral experiments and exercises to enhance interoperability and accelerate the combined fielding of autonomous uncrewed systems in the maritime domain.  Later this year, the three nations will bring together approximately 30 systems across four domains for the first large-scale AUKUS integrated demonstration.  The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister welcomed the inclusion of technologies from companies in each of the three nations and plans to expand to include additional industry partners in the future.
    • In 2024, AUKUS partners furthered their undersea warfare capabilities by beginning to scale up the ability to launch and recover uncrewed underwater systems from torpedo tubes on current classes of British and U.S. submarines, which will increase the range and capability of our undersea forces.  AUKUS partners are exploring opportunities to collaborate on sensors and payloads to maximize this capability and deliver effects such as strike, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
    • In parallel, the United Kingdom and the United States are strengthening superiority in the maritime domain by integrating the Sting Ray lightweight torpedo into the P-8A Maritime Patrol Aircraft alongside the Mk 54 torpedo, with trials planned for 2025. This will increase the opportunity for interchangeability and potential work on future torpedo programmes.  These efforts will ultimately enhance the survivability of our surface combatant and submarine fleets.
    • In the area of long-range precision strike, we are increasing our collective ability to develop and deliver offensive and defensive hypersonic technologies through a robust series of trilateral tests and experiments that will accelerate the development of hypersonic concepts and critical enabling technologies.  These capabilities will hold time critical and heavily defended targets at risk from increased ranges, enhancing the survivability of our forces and defending our homelands and forces against potential threats.
    • Advancing our maritime domain autonomy and decision advantage efforts, AUKUS partners demonstrated and deployed common advanced artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms on P8-A Maritime Patrol aircraft to process data from each nations’ sonobuoys. These advances allow for faster data processing and improved target identification in congested acoustic environments, enhancing our combined anti-submarine warfare capabilities. The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister welcomed plans to scale these technologies in 2025.
    • Our joint forces demonstrated several innovative uses of AI technologies to enhance decision making and bolster combined military effects.  In March, AUKUS partners demonstrated the ability to rapidly co-develop and deploy trilateral AI algorithms to find and fix targets for strike.  The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister welcomed trilateral plans to explore the introduction of these capabilities into operational units in the coming years.

    The International Joint Requirements Oversight Council (I-JROC) remains a critical collaborative forum to identify and validate joint and combined requirements to ensure capability development considers interoperability and interchangeability from the very start. The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister welcomed the establishment of trilaterally determined key operational problems, leveraging existing activities to achieve capability development priorities endorsed by I-JROC. AUKUS partners seek:

    • An enhanced multi-domain long-range strike capability that incorporates asymmetric capabilities and integrated targeting;
    • Strengthened multi-domain integrated air and missile defence capability;
    • Resilient command and control systems that maintain a diverse range of information; and
    • Enhanced logistical networks that are able to deliver persistent support and sustainment for operations in contested environments.

    To this end, the Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister welcomed work underway across our trilateral Armies, Navies, and Air Forces to explore additional opportunities for collaboration in the land, maritime, air, and other domains under AUKUS Pillar II. 

    A cornerstone of our AUKUS Pillar II program remains the opportunity to leverage the best of our defence industrial bases and innovation ecosystems.  Over the past year we have further integrated our innovation ecosystems and fostered increased collaboration with these stakeholder communities to explore opportunities in all aspects of Pillar II.

    • AUKUS partners executed the first trilaterally sponsored innovation prize challenge, which focused on electronic warfare.  The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister are pleased to announce Advanced Design Technology Pty Ltd, Inovor Technologies Pty Ltd and Penten Pty Ltd (AUS), Amiosec Ltd, University of Liverpool, Roke Manor Research Ltd, Autonomous Devices Ltd (UK), and Distributed Spectrum (U.S.) as the winners for this challenge.  The selection of these companies demonstrates the important contributions that our trilateral commercial sectors and innovation bases can make in addressing critical operational requirements.
    • Building on the success of this first challenge, the Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister were pleased to endorse plans for a robust two-year agenda that will increase collaboration between and among our innovation centres of excellence.  Through this collaboration, AUKUS partners will leverage innovative tools to reach our entrepreneurs and actively solicit new and powerful capabilities from our trilateral innovation ecosystem and industrial base.
    • In coordination with industry associations representing the trilateral defence industrial base, the Advanced Capabilities Industry Forum, continues to provide an opportunity for representatives across government and industry to exchange ideas and deepen industrial collaboration in Pillar II.  By the end of this year, AUKUS partners will have convened meetings in each country and facilitated discussions with technology and policy subject matter experts to increase understanding and information sharing.
    • In response to industry feedback and as current projects mature beyond traditional research and development projects, the National Armaments Directors from each nation are identifying opportunities to harmonise acquisition processes and reducing barriers to facilitate the accelerated delivery of Pillar II advanced capabilities.

    In April 2024, the Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister announced principles for engaging additional partners on opportunities to collaborate on AUKUS Pillar II projects.  The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister welcomed progress on consultations with Japan on improving interoperability with Japan’s maritime autonomous systems as an initial area of cooperation. The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister noted ongoing consultations with Canada, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea to identify possibilities for collaboration on advanced capabilities under AUKUS Pillar II on a project by project basis.   

    Defence trade and industrial base collaboration

    To promote innovation and realise the goals of AUKUS, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States implemented momentous amendments to our respective export control regimes.  These historic efforts will maximise secure, licence-free defence trade and stimulate innovation across the full breadth of our defence collaboration, mutually strengthening our three defence industrial bases, while maintaining rigour and security in all three systems. The Secretaries and Deputy Prime Minister reaffirmed support to reduce bureaucratic barriers to collaboration to enable deeper defence industrial base cooperation.

    Updates to this page

    Published 26 September 2024

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Bees have irrational biases when choosing which flowers to feed on − just like human shoppers do

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Claire Therese Hemingway, Assistant Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee

    The other flowers a bee has visited recently will influence how it judges this one. Scott-Cartwright-Photography/Moment via Getty Images

    Just like people confronted with a sea of options at the grocery store, bees foraging in meadows encounter many different flowers at once. They must decide which ones to visit for food, but it isn’t always a straightforward choice.

    Flowers offer two types of food: nectar and pollen, which can vary in important ways. Nectar, for instance, can fluctuate in concentration, volume, refill rate and accessibility. It also contains secondary metabolites, such as caffeine and nicotine, which can be either disagreeable or appealing, depending on how much is present. Similarly, pollen contains proteins and lipids, which affect nutritional quality.

    When confronted with these choices, you’d think bees would always pick the flowers with the most accessible, highest-quality nectar and pollen. But they don’t. Instead, just like human grocery shoppers, their decisions about which flowers to visit depend on their recent experience with similar flowers and what other flowers are available.

    I find these behaviors fascinating. My research looks at how animals make daily choices – especially when looking for food. It turns out that bees and other pollinators make the same kinds of irrational “shopping” decisions humans make.

    Predictably irrational

    Humans are sometimes illogical. For instance, someone who wins $5 on a scratch ticket immediately after winning $1 on one will be thrilled – whereas that same person winning $5 on a ticket might be disappointed if they’re coming off a $10 win. Even though the outcome is the same, perception changes depending on what came before.

    Perceptions are also at play when people assess product labels. For instance, a person may expect an expensive bottle of wine with a fancy French label to be better than a cheap, generic-looking one. But if there’s a mismatch between how good something is and how good someone expects it to be, they may feel disproportionately disappointed or delighted.

    Humans are also very sensitive to the context of their choice. For example, people are more likely to pay a higher price for a television when a smaller, more expensive one is also available.

    These irrational behaviors are so predictable, companies have devised clever ways to exploit these tendencies when pricing and packaging goods, creating commercials, stocking shelves, and designing websites and apps. Even outside of a consumer setting, these behaviors are so common that they influence how politicians design public policy and attempt to influence voting behavior.

    Like minds

    Research shows bumblebees and humans share many of these behaviors. A 2005 study found bees evaluate the quality of nectar relative to their most recent feeding experience: Bees trained to visit a feeder with medium-quality nectar accepted it readily, whereas bees trained to visit a feeder with high-quality nectar often rejected medium-quality nectar.

    My team and I wanted to explore whether floral traits such as scents, colors and patterns might serve as product labels for bees. In the lab, we trained groups of bees to associate certain artificial flower colors with high-quality “nectar” – actually a sugar solution we could manipulate.

    The bumblebee colony, right, is attached by tunnel to the foraging arena, left, where colored discs serve as artifical flowers.
    Claire Hemingway, CC BY-SA

    For example, we trained one group to associate blue flowers with high-quality nectar. We then offered that group medium-quality nectar in either blue or yellow flowers.

    We found the bees were more willing to accept the medium-quality nectar from yellow flowers than they were from blue. Their expectations mattered.

    In another recent experiment, we gave bumblebees a choice between two equally attractive flowers – one high in sugar concentration but slower to refill and one quick to refill but containing less sugar. We measured their preference between the two, which was similar.

    At the center of each artifical flower is a tube the bee enters to access the sugar solution.
    Claire Hemingway, CC BY-SA

    We then expanded the choice by including a third flower that was even lower in sugar concentration or even slower to refill. We found that the presence of the new low-reward flower made the intermediate one appear relatively better.

    These results are intriguing and suggest, for both bees and other animals, available choices may guide foraging decisions.

    Potential uses

    Understanding these behaviors in bumblebees and other pollinators may have important consequences for people. Honeybees and bumblebees are used commercially to support billions of dollars of crop production annually.

    If bees visit certain flowers more in the presence of other flowers, farmers could use this tendency strategically. Just as stores stock shelves to present unattractive options alongside attractive ones, farmers could plant certain flower species in or near crop plants to increase visitation to the target crops.

    Claire Therese Hemingway is affiliated with The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institue.

    – ref. Bees have irrational biases when choosing which flowers to feed on − just like human shoppers do – https://theconversation.com/bees-have-irrational-biases-when-choosing-which-flowers-to-feed-on-just-like-human-shoppers-do-236933

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Post-election violence is possible in US, political scientist says − and it could be worse than Jan. 6

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Alexander Cohen, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Clarkson University

    Should Americans be bracing for bloodshed if Donald Trump loses the 2024 presidential election?

    As a political scientist who studies American politics, I can easily imagine a repeat of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection – or worse – following this November’s presidential election.

    Flashback to 2020

    Four years ago, in an attempt to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election, then-President Donald Trump and his surrogates furiously challenged its results. Lodging 63 lawsuits, Trump and his surrogates tried to discredit or override vote counting, election processes and certification standards in nine states.

    None of these attempts was successful. Many were dismissed as baseless – often by Trump-appointed judges – before they even saw trial. Simply put, there is no evidence of widespread fraud. Even a voter data expert hired by Trump concluded that the 2020 election was not stolen.

    The U.S. legal system agreed, demonstrating that courts remain an important bulwark protecting American democracy. Yet the legal system cannot prevent political violence wrought by election denialism, as the country soon learned.

    On Jan. 6, 2021, over 2,000 people stormed the United States Capitol to forcibly prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election. Four people died and 138 police officers were injured during the riot, which inflicted nearly US$3 million of damage. Four officers who responded to the riot would later kill themselves.

    The mob was spurred, at least in part, by Trump’s rousing speech at a rally in Washington, D.C., earlier that day. There, he reiterated his claims that the 2020 election had been “stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats” and warned the crowd of approximately 53,000 that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

    Many legal scholars considered this to be incitement.

    “He clearly knew there were people in that crowd who were ready to and intended to be violent,” legal scholar Garrett Epps told the BBC. “He not only did nothing to discourage it, he strongly hinted it should happen.”

    Trump: A sore loser … and winner

    Trump has a long history of denying the results of any contest whose outcome he does not like.

    Before entering the political arena, Trump called the 2012 Emmys “dishonest” because his show, “The Apprentice,” did not win. In 2012, he dismissed then-President Barack Obama’s reelection as a “total sham” and questioned the accuracy of vote tallies and voting machines. Unleashing a barrage of tweets, Trump urged citizens to “fight like hell” against a “disgusting injustice.”

    As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump called the Republican primaries fraudulent after his competitor Sen. Ted Cruz won in Iowa, tweeting that the Texan “stole it.”

    Ultimately, Trump won the Republican primaries and the national presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Nonetheless, he falsely claimed that he only lost the popular vote – Trump fell 2 million short of Clinton’s 65.8 million votes – due to massive voting among illegal immigrants.

    Attacking the 2024 election

    Trump has doubled down on his election denial this election cycle. By May 2024, The New York Times had documented 550 such statements, up from roughly 100 in the entire 2020 campaign.

    Continuing to insist that the 2020 election was “rigged,” Trump predicts a repeat in 2024.

    This narrative of pervasive victimization has been bolstered by a flurry of lawsuits and criminal investigations brought against the former president. Since 2020, state and federal prosecutors have charged Trump with 94 crimes, including business fraud, mishandling classified documents and interfering with the federal election.

    In New York, he was convicted of 34 counts of corporate fraud and found liable for sexual abuse in a civil case filed by author E. Jean Carroll.

    Trump has cast these legal challenges as a deliberate attempt by President Joe Biden to interfere with the 2024 election over 350 times.

    “My legal issues, every one of them, civil and the criminal ones, are all set up by Joe Biden,” Trump told a New York City crowd in January 2024. “They’re doing it for election interference.”

    His surrogates amplify this message. For instance, Mike Howell, director of the right-leaning Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, proclaimed on June 6, 2024, at a public Washington event that there is a “0% chance of a free and fair election.”

    From denialism to violence: Warning signs

    Lying about election results is no mere tantrum. It is a cornerstone of Trump’s strategy to paint himself as the victim of an elitist deep state – an image that appeals to his base, particularly among white working-class voters, some of whom feel that they are victims themselves of globalization and shadowy elites.

    This strategy is working.

    A September 2023 survey by the independent pollster PRRI showed that 32% of Americans believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Even though the question has been comprehensively litigated and dismissed in the courts, many American citizens simply do not believe, under any circumstances, that Trump can lose in a fair election.

    That fact, combined with other statistics from the same poll, explains why I believe another Jan. 6 is possible.

    About 23% of Americans and 33% of Republicans believe that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country” – a 5% increase among Republicans and 8% among the general public since 2021.

    Meanwhile, 75% of Americans believe that American democracy is at risk in the 2024 election. That, too, may be something worth fighting for – especially when 39% of Trump supporters and 42% of Biden supporters report having no friends who support the opposing candidate. When people do not trust or socialize with people unlike them, violence between groups is more likely.

    I fear little can be done to prevent such violence.

    In 2022, Congress, acting in rare bipartisan fashion, approved the Electoral Count Reform and Transition Improvement Act of 2022, which closed many doors that President Trump attempted to use to thwart the 2020 election. Yet, as history shows, rule of law is not a certain brace against violence.

    Given the perceived stakes of the election for most Americans, along with Trump’s ever-sharpening incendiary rhetoric, it is hard to imagine that Jan. 6, 2021, was an isolated chapter in American history.

    Indeed, it may have been just a prelude.

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

    – ref. Post-election violence is possible in US, political scientist says − and it could be worse than Jan. 6 – https://theconversation.com/post-election-violence-is-possible-in-us-political-scientist-says-and-it-could-be-worse-than-jan-6-238663

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Who is Tim Walz? Understanding the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party can help make sense of the VP candidate

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Gabriel Paxton, PhD Candidate, Boston University

    Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz thanks supporters after serving ice cream at the Minnesota State Fair on Sept. 1, 2024. Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

    Since Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris selected Tim Walz as her running mate in August 2024, political commentators have offered various takes on Walz – is he pragmatic or progressive, centrist or radical, a grassroots lefty or a mainstream Democrat?

    Walz will have a chance to speak directly to voters and possibly explain who he is and what he stands for when he debates Republican contender JD Vance on Oct. 1, 2024.

    I am a scholar of populist politics in North America, and I understand why it is difficult to define how Walz fits within the Democratic Party.

    On the one hand, Walz is a shock to the Democratic Party, which often endorses elite-educated, moderate politicians from the country’s two coasts. Walz is a former public school teacher who graduated from a state college in Nebraska – and he is not afraid to embrace the moniker of a “progressive,” which some Democrats reject in order to avoid false comparisons to socialists.

    As Walz said in an August 2024 donor call for Harris: “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values. One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”

    Yet, Walz is unlike many other progressives in the Democratic Party. He is a gun owner and a hunter – and was one of the “best shots in Congress” when he represented Minnesota in Washington, as he will remind people. He uses sports metaphors to convey his messages, rallying Democrats behind a “fourth quarter” comeback in the election, for example.

    Yet these apparent contradictions make sense when considering that Walz follows a rich lineage of Midwestern progressive politics that starts with the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, a state affiliate of the Democratic Party that maintains the traditions and values of populist farmer politics in the American Midwest.

    Tim Walz speaks while campaigning for Minnesota governor in St. Paul in September 2018.
    Anthony Souffle/Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images

    Farmer-Labor’s Midwestern roots

    The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is one of the first major recognized political parties in the state. It began more than 100 years ago as a form of populist protest to the harm industrialization and urbanization brought to rural farmers at the turn of the 20th century.

    In the late 1800s, political movements like the Grangers and the Farmers’ Alliances organized to bring attention to falling crop prices, increases in railroad fees for transporting crops and the monopolization of agribusiness.

    In Minnesota, these farmer protest groups joined forces with American labor unions to build a third-party alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. This new group, known as the Farmer-Labor Party, formed in 1918 as a way to represent rural people’s interests. The Farmer-Labor Party challenged state officials to legalize union protections and offer farmer subsidies, and unsuccessfully tried to place private utilities and natural resource industries under state control.

    The Farmer-Labor Party was ideologically diverse – sometimes to a fault – and brought together a range of activists, even socialists, under the common goal of protecting working people. In 1936, the Farmer-Labor Party’s momentum captured President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attention, and it became a key member of his New Deal coalition.

    For most of the 1920s and 1930s, Farmer-Labor challenged the Democratic Party with its more progressive ideas. However, under the guidance of former vice president Hubert Humphrey, the party merged in 1944 with the more moderate Minnesota Democratic Party to form the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

    Over the next several decades, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party pushed for pragmatic and progressive politics within the state’s Democratic Party. The movement’s grassroots message has centered around protecting the country’s rural backbone.

    Influential Minnesotan politicians – including U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, who championed environmentalism and walked the picket lines with Midwestern laborers before he died in 2002 – have been members of the party.

    The ideas behind Farmer-Laborism

    Today, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party shares many of its platforms and policy positions with the national Democratic Party.

    But Farmer-Labor politics are distinct in how the party has embraced a Midwestern working-class identity and rallied against monopolies, business elites and corrupt government.

    Among other Midwestern state political parties, like the Libertarian Party of Minnesota, Farmer-Labor is one of the most progressive and successful. The party has helped pass recent progressive legislation, like a public option health plan and a universal free school lunch policy.

    Walz’s predecessors in the Farmer-Labor movement have also successfully spoken out against economic and political injustices from a position within working-class and agrarian communities. Like Walz, this movement took a populist stance against political and economic elites.

    This Farmer-Labor tradition, in many ways, is a foil to the conservative-populism that is popular today. Unlike Trump’s appeal to middle America, this Minnesota brand of populism was not an attempt to save white Christian manhood. Instead, it was a genuine recognition that working people – especially those in middle America – needed to actively push back against economic inequality and forces that threatened the middle class.

    T-shirts were for sale at the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party booth at the Minnesota State Fair in Falcon Heights in August 2023.
    Michael Silk UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    Farmer-Labor’s forgotten importance

    For some people, Walz and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party are still hard to situate within the national Democratic Party.

    This is in part because the Democratic Party has sidelined rural and working-class voters over the past few decades. In 2016, the Democratic Party made the strategic mistake of not focusing enough on the Midwest – and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton lost the Electoral College in important Midwestern states, including Wisconsin and Michigan.

    President Joe Biden gained back some Midwestern voters’ support and won Michigan and Wisconsin in 2020.

    In the 2024 election, the Democratic Party is presenting voters with Walz, who can speak to the American dream from a familiar perspective. Walz embraces unions beyond lip service, chastises corporate greed and does not shy away from rural voters even if they have cultural differences.

    American voters said in September that they view Walz slightly more favorably than Republican contender JD Vance, though they say that they don’t know either candidate well. The debate should offer voters a chance to learn more about the popular Minnesota governor.

    Conservatives, meanwhile, have tried to paint Walz as someone whose progessive politics challenge the culture of rural American life. I’d argue that the truth is far from that. Instead, like the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and some of the rural activists it produced, Walz is trying to uncouple small-town politics from the politics of fear and cultural isolation.

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

    – ref. Who is Tim Walz? Understanding the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party can help make sense of the VP candidate – https://theconversation.com/who-is-tim-walz-understanding-the-minnesota-democratic-farmer-labor-party-can-help-make-sense-of-the-vp-candidate-239027

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The audacity of Kamala Harris’ laughter – and the racist roots of Trump’s derision

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Betsy Huang, Professor of English, Clark University

    A split image of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during the presidential debate on Sept. 10, 2024. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu/Getty Images

    Just when the summer uproar over Donald Trump calling his potential rival “Laffin’ Kamala” and “Cackling Copilot Kamala Harris” was beginning to subside, an apparent new round of attacks by Trump and other Republicans has emerged after their initial U.S. presidential debate.

    The target – again – was Kamala Harris’ laugh.

    Three days after the debate, for instance, Bruce Zuchowski, an Ohio sheriff, posted on his Facebook account that Harris was a “laughing hyena.” Zuchowski was subsequently barred from providing election security during in-person voting.

    Conservative media commentators also have voiced their displeasure, calling Harris’ laugh “contemptuous, ”exaggerated“ and ”inappropriate.“

    This is not surprising, given that Harris’ laughter was on full display during much of the nationally televised debate – and, worse, Trump was clearly the object of her unrelenting derision.

    Much has been written already about the sexism and racism behind Trump’s contempt for Harris’ laugh.

    But in a little-known, 1985 essay called ”An Extravagance of Laughter,“ celebrated American writer Ralph Ellison provided a sharp analysis of the subversive power of Black laughter in 1930s America.

    Ellison’s essay, published in a 1986 collection “Going to the Territory,” still offers useful historical racial context for explaining Trump’s animus toward Harris. Among the stories Ellison tells: Black people once had to put their heads in a barrel to laugh because their laughter unnerved white Southerners.

    The dangers of Black laughter

    Best known for his 1952 novel “Invisible Man,” Ellison was one of America’s foremost social critics who confronted racism and white supremacy by telling the stories of alienation among everyday Black people searching for identity in a nation that deemed them inferior.

    In “An Extravagance of Laughter,” Ellison began with an anecdote about attending a theater adaptation of Erskine Caldwell’s novel “Tobacco Road” in New York City in 1936. The popular play detailed the lives of destitute white sharecroppers during the Great Depression. The sharecroppers feared, among other things, losing their social status by dropping below the lower rung reserved for Black people in America.

    While laughing uncontrollably at a comical scene in the play involving the antics of poor white Georgia farmers, Ellison became aware of the stir he was causing among the predominantly white audience.

    American novelist Ralph Ellison in 1963.
    Ben Martin/Getty Images

    For many white Americans, Black laughter was “a peculiar form of insanity suffered exclusively by Negroes, who in light of their social status and past condition of servitude were regarded as having absolutely nothing in their daily experience which could possibly inspire rational laughter,” Ellison explained.

    As Ellison saw it, his laugh during the play was being construed as an affirmation of the Black buffoon stereotype.

    As he described it, the white spectators were “catching fire and beginning to howl and cheer the disgraceful loss of control being exhibited” by a Black man.

    Later in the essay, Ellison lampoons the use of “laughing barrels” in Southern towns, which he described as “huge whitewashed barrels labeled FOR COLORED, and into which any Negro who felt a laugh coming on was forced … to thrust his boisterous head.”

    The intent of suppressing Black laughter, Ellison explained, was pro bono publico, or for the public good.

    Stories of the use of barrels to block offensive Black laughter from public view have been well studied by scholars and are believed to be the origin of the expression “barrel of laughs.”

    While the idea of the barrels may seem utterly ridiculous, Ellison understood them as an absurd strategy of containment for a not-so-absurd fear in post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow white America, when racial segregation was legal.

    Black folks who laugh “turned the world upside down and inside out,” he explained.

    And in so doing, Ellison wrote, Black laughter “in-verted (and thus sub-verted) tradition and thus the preordained and cherished scheme of Southern racial relationships was blasted asunder.”

    In a 1983 letter celebrating Caldwell’s birthday, Ellison thanked the writer – “by giving artistic sanction to a source of comedy which in the interest of self-protection I had been forced to deny myself you had released me from three turbulent years of self-restraint.”

    Flipping the script on who gets to laugh

    The first time Trump found himself the object of Black laughter was during the 2011 White House correspondents’ dinner, where he was publicly and mercilessly roasted by a gleeful Barack Obama. The experience appeared to humiliate and infuriate Trump and is widely seen by political pundits as the catalyst for Trump’s entrance into the 2016 presidential race.

    It is not surprising, then, to see his campaign resurrect the rhetoric that many deem to be racist to erode public confidence in Harris’ fitness for the office.

    During the debate, Trump repeatedly accused Harris of “destroying the fabric of our country” with “insane” policies. Trump had previously called Harris “dumb as a rock” and “a radical left lunatic.”

    In this Harper’s Weekly cartoon published in 1874, two Black legislators are arguing in front of their white colleagues.
    Fotosearch/Getty Images

    These hearken to the long and shameful history of racist characterizations of Black Americans as menaces to society. They include depictions of unruly, newly emancipated Black men holding public office in D.W. Griffith’s 1915 “The Birth of a Nation” to Trump’s public call for the death penalty for the Black and Hispanic teens known as the Central Park Five in a full-page New York Times ad in 1989.

    In that case, the teen boys were falsely accused of the brutal assault of a white New York jogger. They served years in prison before being exonerated by DNA and the confession of a convicted rapist and murderer.

    America’s new racial and gender norms

    Trump’s mockery of Harris’ laughter has not been successful in neutralizing her popularity.

    Harris is widely regarded by political commentators as the winner of the debate, and the lasting impression is that of a glowering Trump repeatedly failing to put a stop to Harris’ mirthful expressions of incredulity.

    Almost a century has passed since Ellison’s disruptive laugh occurred in a New York theater in 1936. In that time, both Obama and Harris have reordered traditional gender and racial norms by using Black laughter in the very public theater of U.S. presidential politics.

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

    – ref. The audacity of Kamala Harris’ laughter – and the racist roots of Trump’s derision – https://theconversation.com/the-audacity-of-kamala-harris-laughter-and-the-racist-roots-of-trumps-derision-238189

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Airdropping vaccines to eliminate canine rabies in Texas – two scientists explain the decades of research behind its success

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Rodney E. Rohde, Regents’ Professor & Chair, Medical Laboratory Science, Texas State University

    Rabies is a fatal disease for both animals and people. CDC/Barbara Andrews

    Rabies is a deadly disease. Without vaccination, a rabies infection is nearly 100% fatal once someone develops symptoms. Texas has experienced two rabies epidemics in animals since 1988: one involving coyotes and dogs in south Texas, and the other involving gray foxes in west central Texas. Affecting 74 counties, these outbreaks led to thousands of people who could have been exposed, two human deaths and countless animal lives lost.

    In 1994, Gov. Ann Richards declared rabies a state health emergency. The Texas Department of State Health Services responded by launching the Oral Rabies Vaccination Program to control the spread of these wildlife rabies outbreaks.

    Since 1995, the program has distributed over 53 million doses of rabies vaccine over 758,100 square miles (nearly 2 million square kilometers) in Texas by hand or aircraft. Rabies cases in dogs and coyotes went from 141 to 0 by 2005, and rabies cases in foxes went from 101 to 0 by 2014. By 2004, one canine rabies variant was effectively eliminated from Texas, and another variant was substantially controlled.

    We are researchers who began studying wildlife rabies and oral vaccination in the 1980s. From providing a proof of concept in using oral vaccines in raccoons to being among the first to use new rabies vaccines in the 1990s, we were on the ground floor of efforts to contain this deadly virus.

    Decades of vaccine research led to one of the most successful public health projects in Texas. And we’re hopeful it could provide a road map for the use of mass wildlife vaccination to prevent future outbreaks.

    Developing the oral rabies vaccine

    The Texas Oral Rabies Vaccination Program benefited greatly from the work of multiple researchers over prior decades.

    The mid-20th century saw several major developments in rabies control. With the failure of efforts to poison or trap infected animals, virologist and veterinarian George Baer at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognized the need for a different strategy to prevent and control wildlife rabies. His and his colleagues’ work in the 1960s led to the concept of oral rabies vaccination. While orally vaccinating wildlife would help combat infection at its source, it was previously thought to be logistically unfeasible given the large range of target animals.

    By the late 1970s, European researchers began the first field trials to orally vaccinate foxes against rabies. Small plastic containers were filled with vaccines and placed into baits, such as chicken heads. Over 50,000 of these vaccine-laden baits were distributed over four years in fox habitats in forests and fields.

    Early vaccine baits were coated with fishmeal crumbles and cod liver oil.
    Maki et al/Veterinary Research, CC BY-ND

    Researchers in Canada also began similar field trials in Ontario. During the 1980s, an average of 235 rabid foxes per year were reported in the area. Baits containing oral rabies vaccine were dropped annually from 1989 to 1995 and successfully eliminated the fox variant of rabies from the whole area.

    Recombinant oral rabies vaccine

    The first generation of these vaccines used live viruses modified in an attempt to not cause severe disease. Although effective and generally safe, the original rabies vaccines had to be kept in cool temperatures and had the rare risk of causing rabies in animals.

    In the early 1980s, scientists developed recombinant rabies vaccines, which use a separate virus to express the genes of the rabies virus. A collaboration between a nonprofit institute, the U.S. government, and the pharmaceutical industry led to the development of a recombinant viral vaccine that produced a rapid immune response against rabies without the possibility of causing rabies.

    In 1984, preliminary work in laboratory animals showed the promise of using an oral form of the recombinant vaccine to vaccinate animals. However, the concept of using genetically modified organisms was in its infancy among both scientists and the general public. While the vaccine was safe and effective in captive raccoons and foxes, major questions loomed over how it might affect other species once released into the environment.

    After years of work improving the vaccine’s design and testing its safety in several nonhuman species, the first European trial was held on a military base in Belgium. With data supporting it could safely and effectively control wildlife in Luxembourg and France, the vaccine was licensed to control fox rabies in 1995.

    In the U.S., similar studies of the oral recombinant rabies vaccine were conducted. The first trial began in 1990 at Parramore Island off the Virginia coast, and a year of intensive monitoring found no significant adverse effects on the environment or any wildlife species. A second yearlong study on the mainland near Williamsport, Pennsylvania, had similarly positive results.

    After the vaccine was successfully used to control raccoon rabies in tests in several other East Coast states, it was approved for use on raccoons in 1997.

    In 1998, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service received funding to expand existing oral wildlife vaccination projects to states of strategic importance, to prevent the spread of specific rabies viruses, and to coordinate interstate projects.

    Results in Texas

    In Texas, the oral recombinant vaccine is now primarily distributed by hand and by approximately 75 separate helicopter flights annually.

    The Texas Department of State Health Services rabies laboratory worked alongside the CDC to create the Regional Rabies Virus Reference Typing Laboratory. One of us was recruited to both distribute the vaccine in the field and to develop molecular typing tools to discriminate between different types of rabies virus variants in the lab. These techniques allowed us to identify where different rabies virus variants were emerging at any given moment.

    The Texas Oral Rabies Vaccination Program continues to monitor and control rabies cases in the state.

    Our lab was also the first in the nation outside of the CDC to assist other U.S. states and countries in testing their specimens for rabies virus variants. These techniques helped researchers monitor where the rabies epizootic was ongoing or retreating due to wildlife vaccination and new forms of spread.

    With the constant threat of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases like COVID-19 and influenza, the prospect of mass vaccination of wild animals may be one way to address future pandemics. Though there is much work ahead of us, we have hope that we may one day have the option of using mass wildlife vaccination to reduce or eliminate infectious diseases like rabies.

    Rodney E. Rohde has received funding from the American Society of Clinical Pathologists, American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science, U.S. Department of Labor (OSHA), and other public and private entities/foundations. Rohde is affiliated with ASCP, ASCLS, ASM, and serves on several scientific advisory boards.

    Charles E. Rupprecht consults for global academic, governmental, industrial and NGO organizations. He receives funding from academic, governmental, industrial, and NGO sources.

    – ref. Airdropping vaccines to eliminate canine rabies in Texas – two scientists explain the decades of research behind its success – https://theconversation.com/airdropping-vaccines-to-eliminate-canine-rabies-in-texas-two-scientists-explain-the-decades-of-research-behind-its-success-238508

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Drug prices improved under Biden-Harris and Trump − but not for everyone, and not enough

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By C. Michael White, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacy Practice, University of Connecticut

    Negotiations to reduce drug prices can sometimes shift costs onto consumers. rudisill/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    When it comes to drug pricing, the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations both have some very modest wins to tout.

    As director of the Health Outcomes, Policy, and Evidence Synthesis group at the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy, I teach and study about the ethics of prescription drug prices and the complexities of drug pricing nationally.

    Delving into the presidential candidates’ successes on a number of drug-pricing policies, you’ll see a continuation of progress across the administrations. Neither the Trump administration nor the Biden-Harris administration, however, has done anything to truly lower drug prices for the majority of Americans.

    $35 insulin

    Insulin is a necessity for patients with diabetes. But from January 2014 to April 2019, the average price per unit went from US$0.22 to $0.34 before dropping back slightly by July 2023 to $0.29 per unit. Since dosing is weight-based, insulin costs for someone weighing 154 pounds would have risen from $231 to $357 a month from 2014 to 2019 and dropped to $305 a month by 2023. Price increases have led some patients to space out their medications by taking less than the dose they need for good blood sugar control. One study estimated that over 25% of patients in an urban diabetes center were underusing their insulin.

    In July 2020, the Trump administration enacted a $35 cap on insulin copayments via executive order. In effect, it made participating Medicare Part D programs limit the price of just one of each type of insulin product to $35. For instance, if there were six short-acting insulin products on an insurance plan’s approved drug list, the insurer had to offer one vial form and one pen form at $35.

    These price changes did not go into effect during Trump’s presidency. By 2022, only about 800,000 people – or around 11% of the more than 7.4 million people in the U.S. who use insulin to regulate their blood sugar – saw their prices reduced.

    Millions of Americans need insulin to manage their diabetes.
    Spencer Platt/Getty Images

    In August 2022, the Biden-Harris administration signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. This maintained the $35 insulin cap with the same stipulations but made the program mandatory for all Medicare Part D and Medicare Part B members. This expanded the number of people who could benefit from cheaper insulin to 3.3 million.

    This still doesn’t help a majority of diabetics. If you don’t have Medicare, the $35 reduction does not apply to you. Furthermore, pharmaceutical companies are not responsible for lowering insulin costs under these policies, but health plans are on the hook for lowering copayments. Costs could be passed along to beneficiaries in future Medicare premiums.

    Importing Canadian drugs

    Americans pay nearly 2.6 times more for prescription drugs than people in other high-income countries. One way regulators have tried to reduce prices is to simply import drugs at the prices pharmaceutical companies charge those countries rather than those charged to U.S. consumers.

    In July 2019, the Trump administration proposed importing drugs from Canada as a way to share Canadians’ lower drug costs with American consumers. He signed an executive order allowing the Food and Drug Administration to create the rules under which states could import the drugs. When President Joe Biden came into office, he left the executive order in place and the rulemaking process continued.

    Some Americans have traveled across borders for cheaper medications.
    Jeff Haynes/AFP via Getty Images

    No state under the Trump or Biden-Harris administrations has yet been able to successfully import a Canadian drug product. In January 2024, however, the Food and Drug Administration approved Florida’s plan to import Canadian drugs, the first state to receive the green light. Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Texas have applications pending as of September 2024.

    Unfortunately, it is unlkely that Canada would allow their prescription drugs to be shipped in large quantities to American consumers, not without imposing high tariffs as a disincentive. That is because drug manufacturers could limit supplies to Canada and cause shortages if drugs are moved to the U.S. Manufacturers could also be less willing to negotiate lower prices for Canadians if that will hurt U.S. profits.

    Negotiating with the pharmaceutical industry

    Be it prescription drugs or cars, both buyer and seller must agree on a price for a successful sale to occur. If the potential buyer is unwilling to walk away from negotiations, you will not get the seller’s best price. One reason U.S. drug prices are higher than other countries’ is because the government is not a shrewd negotiator.

    Negotiations that result in major reductions in drug prices frequently result from the drug manufacturer losing access to patients on a certain health plan or ending up in a higher drug tier that substantially raises a patient’s copay. However, if the buyer refuses the seller’s final offer, their members or citizens lose access to those drugs. While major private health plans and pharmacy benefit managers are able to directly negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical manufacturers, often with substantial savings, Medicare was prevented from doing so by federal law until recently.

    In May 2018, the Trump administration released a so-called blueprint for reducing prescription drug prices that included negotiating Medicare prescription drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry. This plan wasn’t enacted during his term.

    In August 2022, under the Biden-Harris administration, the Inflation Reduction Act enabled price negotiation and specified the number of drugs that negotiations could include in a year.

    The Inflation Reduction Act allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices for the first time.

    The first negotiation between Medicare and the pharmaceutical industry took place over the summer of 2024, lowering costs for 10 Medicare Part D drugs, which include the blood thinner Xarelto and the drugs Farxiga and Jardiance, which treat Type 2 diabetes, heart failure and kidney disease. The resulting $1.5 billion in savings will be extended in 2026 to the approximately 8.8 million Medicare Part D patients who are taking these drugs. The prices for these drugs are still twice what they are in four other developed countries.

    Prices will be negotiated for another 15 Medicare Part D drugs in 2027. Thereafter, drug negotiations could include Medicare Part D drugs, which you pick up from your pharmacy, and Medicare Part B drugs, which are administered or received from your doctor’s office.

    Another aspect of the Inflation Reduction Act is capping out-of-pocket expenses at $2,000. This won’t go into effect until 2025, however, and simply shifts costs above the cap onto taxpayers.

    Continuation of progress

    It is often challenging to attribute policy successes to one administration versus another when assessing complex issues such as drug pricing. There were ideas initiated during the Trump administration that did not come to fruition until the Biden-Harris administration implemented and expanded on them.

    For example, Medicare price negotiation, proposed in a Trump administration “blueprint,” was codified in law by President Biden, but the fruits of this policy will not be seen until the next administration. And regardless of who you attribute this success to, only a portion of people on Medicare will see any relief from high drug prices as a result.

    Truly lowering the costs of prescription drugs would require identifying the maximum price the nation is willing to pay for benefits, such as cost per quality adjusted life year at the federal, state and private payer levels, and being willing to walk away from negotiations if the price exceeds that level. This would not be a panacea, though, especially for patients with rare and ultrarare diseases, and would need to be eased in over time to avoid bankrupting the industry.

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

    – ref. Drug prices improved under Biden-Harris and Trump − but not for everyone, and not enough – https://theconversation.com/drug-prices-improved-under-biden-harris-and-trump-but-not-for-everyone-and-not-enough-238407

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How the US government can stop ‘churches’ from getting treated like real churches by the IRS

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame

    Uniformed members of Trail Life USA present the colors at the Family Research Council’s 2018 Values Voter Summit. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

    The Family Research Council is a conservative advocacy group with a “biblical worldview.” While it has a church ministries department that works with churches from several evangelical Christian denominations that share its perspectives, it does not represent a single denomination. Although its activities are primarily focused on policy, advocacy, government lobbying and public communication, the Internal Revenue Service granted the council’s application to be treated as “an association of churches” in 2020.

    Concerned that the IRS had erred in allowing the council and similar groups to be designated churches or associations of churches, Democratic members of the House of Representatives sent the Treasury secretary and the IRS commissioner letters in 2022 and 2024 expressing alarm. The House Democrats pointed to what appeared to be “abuse” of the tax code and asked the IRS to “determine whether existing guidance is sufficient to prevent abuse and what resources or Congressional actions are needed.”

    As a professor of nonprofit law, I believe some groups that aren’t churches or associations of churches want to be designated that way to avoid the scrutiny being a charitable organization otherwise requires. At the same time, some other groups that should qualify as churches may have difficulty doing so because of the IRS’ outdated test for that status.

    Together with my colleague Ellen P. Aprill, I recently published a paper outlining two main arguments in favor of revising the federal government’s definitions of churches as they pertain to tax law.

    No 990s means less scrutiny

    All charitable nonprofits, including churches, get the same basic benefits under federal tax law. This means they don’t have to pay taxes on their revenue and that donors can deduct the value of their gifts from their taxable income – as long as they itemize deductions on their tax return.

    Unlike other tax-exempt charities, churches don’t have to file 990 forms. That means the public does not have access to churches’ staff pay, board membership and funding details, which are in this publicly available tax form that all other charities must complete every year. The availability of 990 forms enhances the transparency and accountability of the nonprofit sector.

    And churches and associations of churches are unlikely to get audited by the IRS. Federal law requires that a senior IRS official “reasonably believes” the church or association has violated federal tax rules before beginning an investigation. This means that an official must have reason to believe the organization has violated federal tax law before obtaining any information from the organization.

    This standard is higher than what’s needed before an audit can begin for all other tax-exempt organizations and indeed all taxpayers. For everyone else, the IRS is free to begin an examination based only on a suspicion of a violation or even based on random selection.

    Also, unlike other tax-exempt charities, churches and church associations are automatically eligible for their tax-exempt status. They don’t have to apply for it.

    Why churches get special treatment

    Congress has passed laws granting churches and what it calls “integrated auxiliaries” and “conventions or associations of churches” special protections because the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects religious freedom.

    Churches include houses of worship ranging in size from a handful of parishioners to megachurches with 10,000 or more people attending weekly services. Houses of worship of all faiths, including synagogues, mosques and temples, count as churches, according to the IRS.

    Integrated auxiliaries are church schools and other organizations affiliated with churches or conventions and primarily supported by internal church sources, as opposed to by the public or government.

    Conventions or associations of churches are organizations that have houses of worship from either a single denomination or from multiple denominations as their members. Most denominational bodies, such as the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are likely conventions or associations of churches, although the IRS does not publish a list of such entities.

    Not every religious nonprofit belongs in one of these categories.

    For example, the University of Notre Dame, where I teach law students and conduct legal research, and World Vision, a global humanitarian group, are both religious organizations that do not fall into any of these categories. This makes sense, because Notre Dame and World Vision are primarily engaged in activities other than fostering a religious congregation or coordinating the activities of churches within a single denomination.

    The IRS has long relied on a 14-factor test to distinguish churches from the other religious nonprofits. Examples of those factors include having ordained ministers, a formal doctrine, a distinct membership and a regular congregation attending religious services.

    It’s not necessary for all the factors to apply to pass this test.

    Yet for almost as long, courts have been uncomfortable with this test because it draws heavily on the traditional characteristics of Protestant Christian churches, as the U.S. Court of Federal Claims explained in a 2009 ruling. This system therefore may be a poor fit for houses of worship of other faiths, especially given the increasing diversity of faith communities.

    These courts have instead adopted an “associational test.” It focuses on whether the organization’s congregants hold religious services on a regular basis and gather in person on other occasions.

    With the growth of virtual and televised religious services, an update of this test is overdue.

    A couple get married in May 2020 in a mostly empty church, with a screen set up so guests can watch over Zoom.
    Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

    Proposed solutions

    Aprill and I recommend that the IRS change its definition for churches to the associational one adopted by some courts in rulings as early as 1980. As the U.S. Court of Federal Claims explained in that 2009 ruling, this test focuses on whether a body of believers assembles regularly to worship. Given technological advances, the IRS should also make it clear that this test can be satisfied through remote participation in religious services using interactive, teleconferencing apps such as Zoom.

    This definition would be also better suited for congregations of all faiths because some faiths do not prioritize many of the factors included in the IRS test, such as having a formal code of doctrine or requiring members to not be associated with other houses of worship or faiths. And it would better reflect how some Americans participate in religious services today.

    We recommend that the IRS revisit its test for being a church and that Congress pass a law that would change the definition of church associations. The new law could limit associations of churches to organizations that represent a single denomination, as Congress likely initially intended.

    This latter change would make it harder for religious organizations that are primarily involved in bringing churches from multiple faiths together to engage in advocacy or other activities to obtain this status and the lack of transparency and accountability that come with it. We believe Congress, not the IRS, should make this change because of the potential political tensions that narrowing the definition could create.

    We don’t think the changes would impinge upon the special role that churches have in our society. Indeed, the revised test for qualifying as a church would better fit with both the increasing variety of faiths in our country and technological advancements.

    Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer is affiliated with the University of Notre Dame, a tax-exempt religious nonprofit corporation. Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer is also affiliated with South Bend City Church, a tax-exempt religious nonprofit corporation that is classified as a church for federal tax purposes.

    – ref. How the US government can stop ‘churches’ from getting treated like real churches by the IRS – https://theconversation.com/how-the-us-government-can-stop-churches-from-getting-treated-like-real-churches-by-the-irs-237922

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Big lithium plans for Imperial Valley, one of California’s poorest regions, raise a bigger question: Who should benefit?

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Manuel Pastor, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

    The edge of the Salton Sea, a heavily polluted lake with large geothermal and lithium resources beneath it. Manuel Pastor

    Imperial County consistently ranks among the most economically distressed places in California. Its Salton Sea, the state’s biggest and most toxic lake, is an environmental disaster. And the region’s politics have been dominated by a conservative white elite, despite its supermajority Latino population.

    The county also happens to be sitting on enough lithium to produce nearly 400 million batteries, sufficient to completely revamp the American auto fleet to electric propulsion. Even better, that lithium could be extracted in a way consistent with broader goals to reduce pollution.

    The traditional ways to extract lithium involve either hard rock mining, which generates lots of waste, or large evaporation ponds, which waste a lot of water. In Imperial Valley, companies are pioneering a third method. They are extracting the mineral from the underground briny water brought up during geothermal energy production and then injecting that briny water back into the ground in a closed loop. It promises to yield the cleanest, greenest lithium on the planet.

    The hope of a clean energy future has excited investors and public officials so much that the area is being rechristened as “Lithium Valley.”

    In a region desperate for jobs and income, the prospect of a “white gold rush” is appealing. Public officials have been working to roll out the red carpet for big investors, including trying to create a clear plan for infrastructure and a quicker permitting process. To get community groups’ support, they are playing up the potential for jobs, including company commitments to hire local workers.

    But Imperial Valley residents who have been on the butt end of get-rich schemes around water and real estate in the past are worried that their political leaders may be giving away the store. As we explore in our new book, “Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles and a Just Future,” the U.S. has an opportunity to ensure that these residents directly benefit from the lithium extraction boom, which is an important part of the global shift to clean energy.

    Possibilities and perils in ‘Lithium Valley’

    Imperial Valley is emblematic of the potential and the risks that have long faced impoverished communities in resource-rich regions.

    To understand the possibilities and perils in Imperial Valley, it’s useful to remember that the world is not just moving away from fossil fuel extraction but toward more mineral extraction. Today’s battery technology – necessary for electric vehicles and energy storage – relies on minerals including cobalt, magnesium, nickel and graphite. And mineral extraction is often accompanied by obscured environmental risks.

    A prototype for CTR’s lithium-producing geothermal facility, in the Hell’s Kitchen area of Imperial Valley.
    Manuel Pastor

    In Imperial Valley, environmental and community organizations are worried about lithium extraction’s water use, waste and air pollution as production steps up and truck traffic increases. When your region’s childhood asthma rate is already more than twice the national average, and dust from the drying lake is toxic, kicking up a “little extra dust” is a big deal.

    Comite Civico del Valle, a long-established environmental justice organization in Imperial Valley, has sued to slow down a streamlined permitting process for Controlled Thermal Resources, a company planning lithium extraction there. The group’s concern is that inadequate environmental reviews could result in harm to residents’ health. Both the company and public officials are warning that the lawsuit could stop the lithium boom before it begins.

    Local communities are also concerned about how much benefit they will see while the industry profits. They note that the electric vehicle boom driving lithium demand occurred precisely because of public policy. Tesla, for example, has benefited from multiple rounds of state and federal zero-emissions vehicle incentives, including the sale of emissions credits that accounted for 85% of Tesla’s gross margin in 2009 and rose to US$1.8 billion a year by 2023.

    Behind these policies and financial incentives have been public will and taxpayer money.

    Young advocates with the Imperial Valley Equity & Justice Coalition have been spreading their concerns through the community.
    Chris Benner

    We believe that local residents, not just companies, deserve a return. Rather than promising to just pay for community “benefits,” such as environmental mitigation, contributions to municipal coffers or jobs, the companies could pay “dividends” directly to local residents and communities.

    There are models of this dividend approach. For example, the Alaska Permanent Fund gives an annual amount to all residents of that state from revenues obtained from the oil beneath the ground.

    In Imperial Valley, the actual ownership of the lithium is complex, involving a mix of privately owned subsurface rights, public lease rights obtained by companies and public rights held by the regional water district to whom companies will pay royalties.

    Given the ownership complexities and the desire to benefit as development takes place, local authorities and community organizations persuaded the state in 2022 to pass a per-metric-ton lithium tax to address local needs.

    Controlled Thermal Resources CEO Rod Colwell, right, walks near the Salton Sea with a colleague.
    AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

    That “flat tax” was bitterly resisted by some in the emerging industry on the grounds that it could make Imperial Valley’s less-polluting extraction method too costly to compete with environmentally damaging imports; after the vote, CTR’s CEO called the legislators “clowns.” Meanwhile, CTR has also agreed to hire union workers in the construction phase. Everyone – companies, communities and government officials – is struggling to balance economic viability with accountability.

    Lessons for a just transition

    The hesitance of low-income Imperial Valley residents to immediately buy into the lithium vision is deeply rooted in history.

    Decades of racial exclusion, patronizing practices and broken promises have led to deep distrust of outsiders who assert that things will be better this time.

    Irrigation at the turn of the last century was supposed to bring an agriculture boom, but the early result was a broken canal that released enough water over nearly two years of disrepair to create what is now the Salton Sea. The Salton Sea was then supposed to fuel recreational tourism, but the failure to replenish it with anything but agricultural runoff helped to kill fish, birds and recreation. A more recent scheme to attract solar farms in recent decades delivered little employment and more worries about agricultural displacement.

    You can still find old billboards promising a resort life on the Salton Sea, which today is one of the state’s most polluted lakes. Wind kicks up toxic dust when the water is low.
    Manuel Pastor

    Building the supply chain here, too

    In recent years, some people have pinned their hopes on lithium. The main site so far in Imperial Valley has been CTR’s Hell’s Kitchen. It’s a fitting moniker on summer days when temperatures regularly exceed 110 degrees.

    Ensuring that the surrounding communities benefit from this new lithium boom will require thinking about how to attract not just companies extracting the lithium but also those that will use it. So far, Imperial County has had limited success in attracting related industries. In 2023, a company named Statevolt said it would build a “gigafactory” there to assemble batteries. However, the company’s previous efforts – Britishvolt in the United Kingdom and Italvot in Italy – have stalled without any volts being produced. Imperial County will need serious suitors to make a go of it.

    A potentially promising future for modern transportation and energy storage may be brewing in Imperial Valley. But getting to a brighter future for everyone will require remembering a lesson from the past: that community investments tend to be hard-won. We believe that ensuring everyone benefits long term is essential for achieving a more inclusive and sustainable future.

    Research for the book from which this article draws was supported by the James Irvine Foundation, New Energy Nexus, the California Wellness Foundation, and Open Society Foundations. Manuel Pastor was also supported by a Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center.

    Research for the book from which this article draws was supported by the James Irvine Foundation, New Energy Nexus, the California Wellness Foundation, and Open Society Foundations. Chris Benner was also supported by a Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center.

    – ref. Big lithium plans for Imperial Valley, one of California’s poorest regions, raise a bigger question: Who should benefit? – https://theconversation.com/big-lithium-plans-for-imperial-valley-one-of-californias-poorest-regions-raise-a-bigger-question-who-should-benefit-238397

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Grocery stores that donate expiring food − instead of price discounting or discarding − make higher profits

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By John Lowrey, Assistant Professor of Supply Chain and Health Sciences, Northeastern University

    This new food pantry opened on Long Island in September 2024. Alejandra Villa Loarca/Newsday RM via Getty Images

    All major supermarkets and retailers that sell groceries, such as Kroger, Walmart and Costco, give large amounts of food to food banks and pantries. In 2022, retailers donated close to 2 billion pounds of food across the United States, which amounted to US$3.5 billion that year. The estimated value of donated food was a little less than $2 per pound in 2022.

    Retailers donate products that are typically packaged, palatable and safe for consumption, yet unsuitable for sale due to quality concerns, such as minor blemishes. Since these items can go a long way to feeding hungry people, donations represent one of the best uses of leftover or surplus food.

    Donations are also technically acts of charity, and the companies responsible for them get tax breaks. This means that donations boost profits by lowering costs. There’s a second effect of donations on a store’s bottom line: They improve the quality of food on the store’s shelves and increase revenue from food sales.

    As a supply chain scholar who studies food banks, I worked with a team of economists to estimate the effects of retail food donations. We used sales data for five perishable food categories sold by two competing retail chains, with stores located in a large, Midwestern metropolitan area. We found that stores that remove items on the brink of expiration, donate them to food banks and fill up the emptied shelf space with fresher inventory get more revenue from sales and earn higher profits.

    Retailers donate 30% of what food banks give their clients

    U.S. food banks, which have been operating for more than 50 years, give away over 6 billion pounds of food annually.

    They get about 30% of that food for free from supermarkets and big-box retailers that sell groceries. Prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, retailers supplied more than twice as much food to food banks than the federal government did. The volume of food supplied by federal programs administered by the United States Department of Agriculture, such as the Emergency Food Assistance Program, have steadily increased since 2020, to now almost match the volume of food donated by retailers.

    In 2022, for example, the network of more than 200 Feeding America member food banks procured about 2 billion pounds from retailers and almost 1.5 billion pounds from government programs.

    The remaining 2.88 billion pounds of food were either purchased directly, provided by farmers, donated by food processing companies or donated by people and organizations in local communities.

    Despite several federal programs that help low-income people get food and the nation’s robust network of food banks and food pantries, nearly 50 million Americans are experiencing food insecurity. That means they can’t get enough nutritious food to eat at least some of the time.

    Retail donation routines are established but inconsistent

    When food on a store’s shelves is on the verge of expiration, store managers have three options. They can donate or discard it, or sell it at a discount.

    Stores that regularly donate food have established routines for when they set aside about-to-expire food to give away. However, these routines are often inconsistent.

    Many stores donate only on a seasonal basis or just give away certain kinds of food. For example, they might donate only meat, baked goods or fruits and vegetables. In many cases, donations take a backseat to more immediate priorities, such as customer service.

    Those realities can increase the likelihood that food will land at the dump instead of on somebody’s table.

    Although millions of Americans struggle to find their next meal, close to 40% of food gets thrown out along the supply chain, as food moves between agricultural producers, factories, retailers and consumers. This is largely due to logistical challenges: It’s hard to transport and distribute highly perishable food.

    Discounted meat is displayed at a San Rafael, Calif., grocery store in September 2024.
    Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

    Discounts on food can undercut sales

    Stores often prefer to sell food on the brink of expiration at a discount rather than donate it or throw it out due to the money they recoup that way. This option, however, also keeps the discounted food on the shelf, where it takes up valuable space that could otherwise hold fresher inventory.

    Shelf space dedicated to the sale and promotion of full-priced products competes with that for price-discounted food. Stocking perishable foods that are starting to look iffy – such as bananas with brown spots sold alongside unblemished yellow bananas – could harm a retailer’s image if shoppers start to question the store’s quality.

    In other words, if consumers make judgments based on all the produce that’s on display, then it may be better for stores if they don’t sell sad-looking bananas and instead just give them away.

    My research team calls this practice “preemptive removal.” Increasing the average quality level of food on display does more than improve a store’s appearance. We used panel data with over 20,000 observations, and we included 21 retail stores that compete in a similar market geography. The five fresh food categories were bakery, dairy, deli, meat and produce.

    Stores that donated food, instead of discounting it, may have made better use of the limited room to display fresher inventory. My research team found that food donations can increase average food prices by up to 1%, which corresponds to a 33% increase in profit margins. Profit margins for supermarkets and other food retailers are quite low and typically hover below 3%.

    That means even a small increment in food prices, even a 1% bump up, can translate into significantly higher profits for retailers. At the same time, increasing the volume of retail food donations would get more food to people who need it, limit hunger and reduce food insecurity.

    Prof Lowrey has consulted with several Feeding America member Food Banks on procurement and food-distribution-related supply chain projects. He has also served on an advisory board to the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics, focused on supply chain responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the emergency feeding network. His research has been funded by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (National Institute for Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture).

    – ref. Grocery stores that donate expiring food − instead of price discounting or discarding − make higher profits – https://theconversation.com/grocery-stores-that-donate-expiring-food-instead-of-price-discounting-or-discarding-make-higher-profits-234998

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI: Surgent CPE to Premiere 14 New Courses in Q4 2024

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    RADNOR, Pa., Sept. 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Surgent Accounting & Financial Education, a division of KnowFully Learning Group, today announced the premiere of 14 new continuing professional education (CPE) courses debuting in Q4 2024.

    “Surgent’s dedication to providing timely, practical learning is central to our mission of helping accounting and finance professionals thrive,” said Elizabeth Kolar, executive vice president of Surgent. “Our latest course offerings reflect Surgent’s commitment to offering premium content that goes beyond compliance, giving professionals the tools they need to make real-world applications of complex tax laws, business practices and industry regulations.”

    The new course offerings cover a diverse range of subjects, including taxation, client advisory services, financial planning and compliance issues. Many of these courses focus on current tax implications, gig economy trends, executive compensation, and the impact of the upcoming 2024 presidential and congressional elections.

    “The 2024 election and ongoing economic shifts are at the forefront of many of our customers’ concerns,” said Nick Spoltore, Surgent’s vice president of tax and advisory content. “These courses provide timely insights to help practitioners offer more informed advice to their clients, whether they’re dealing with tax planning, client advisory services, or executive compensation.”

    Below is a preview of the new offerings, along with their premiere dates. All courses are worth two CPE credits, except where noted.

    The 14 new CPE courses are scheduled as follows:

    Registration for each course is open now at SurgentCPE.com. All new courses will debut as a live webinar, while some will later be available on-demand.

    About Surgent Accounting & Financial Education
    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 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 predictive learning-based courses that help learners pass accounting and finance credentialing exams faster. Learn more at Surgent.com.

    About KnowFully Learning Group
     The 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 headlined by the Surgent Accounting & Financial Education brand. KnowFully’s healthcare education brands include American Fitness Professionals & Associates, ChiroCredit, Impact EMS Training, Online CE, PharmCon freeCE, PharmCon Rx Consultant and Psychotherapy.net. For more information, please visit KnowFully.com.

    A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7b56442d-7af7-42c6-b096-7412c5b4a366

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: SpyCloud Launches Custom Automation Solution to Scale Identity Protection Workflows for Enterprises

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — SpyCloud announced today the release of its new hosted automation solution, SpyCloud Connect, which delivers custom-built automation workflows to Information Security (InfoSec) and Security Operations (SecOps) teams. The solution enables rapid automation of SpyCloud’s suite of identity threat protection products with a vast array of security tools and systems they currently use to protect their business and users from cyber threats – saving them valuable time and alleviating overburdened resources.

    With this new solution, SpyCloud will build, maintain, and support customer-specified workflows across their desired integration destinations – connecting SpyCloud’s rich recaptured darknet data with the tools they already use to deliver automated remediation of compromised identities across their workforce.

    “When in-house development and engineering resources are strapped, we want to help customers take full advantage of the high-fidelity darknet data provided by SpyCloud’s products,” explained Damon Fleury, SpyCloud’s chief product officer. “With SpyCloud Connect, teams now have an endless number of integrations available to take instant action on the exposed identity data elements discovered and recaptured by SpyCloud.”

    SpyCloud Connect maximizes existing investments in diverse security tools and systems, including SIEMs, SOARs, ticketing systems, Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs), Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) tools, XDR Platforms, Identity providers, and more.

    Examples of customer-favorite workflows include:

    • SpyCloud + JIRA + Okta: Receive password exposure alerts from SpyCloud and re-secure vulnerable accounts
    • SpyCloud + JIRA + Google: Disable exposed Google Accounts based on SpyCloud’s recaptured data
    • SpyCloud + Snow Software + Slack: Automatically create a ticket for a malware-infected user and send an alert to the SecOps team via Slack

    SpyCloud Connect helps enterprises not only scale their operations but more quickly achieve a desired state of security posture. Deployments are customized to each enterprise’s specific use cases and needs – with most delivery cycles completed in 2-4 weeks.

    To learn more about SpyCloud Connect and the wide-range of integration options, visit spycloud.com.

    About SpyCloud

    SpyCloud transforms recaptured darknet data to disrupt cybercrime. Its automated identity threat protection solutions leverage advanced analytics to proactively prevent ransomware and account takeover, safeguard employee and consumer accounts, and accelerate cybercrime investigations. SpyCloud’s data from breaches, malware-infected devices, and successful phishes also powers many popular dark web monitoring and identity theft protection offerings. Customers include more than half of the Fortune 10, along with hundreds of global enterprises, mid-sized companies, and government agencies worldwide. Headquartered in Austin, TX, SpyCloud is home to more than 200 cybersecurity experts whose mission is to protect businesses and consumers from the stolen identity data criminals are using to target them now.

    To learn more and see insights on your company’s exposed data, visit spycloud.com.

    A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/35c6c747-54b5-46a5-ba59-0123764f4277

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Strong Global Entertainment Announces Closing of Sale of Strong/MDI for Approximately $30 Million

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    Mooresville, NC, Sept. 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Strong Global Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE: SGE) (“Strong Global”) and Fundamental Global Inc. (Nasdaq: FGF, FGFPP) (“Fundamental Global”) are pleased to announce the closing of the previously announced sale of Strong/MDI Screen Systems, Inc. (“MDI”) from Strong Global to Saltire Holdings Ltd (“Saltire”).

    Mark Roberson, Chief Executive Officer of Strong Global, commented, “We are pleased to announce the closing of the sale of MDI. This is one element of our previously announced strategy to streamline operations, increase liquidity and drive shareholder value. We expect the transaction to result in a net pre-tax financial statement gain in excess of $25 million. At closing, Strong Global holds approximately 37% of the outstanding common shares of Saltire, and we look forward to participating in the Saltires’ long term growth strategy.”

    At closing, and after a working capital adjustment, Strong Global received total consideration of $29.5 million, consisting of $0.8 million of cash, $9.0 million of preferred shares of Saltire, and $19.7 million of common shares of Saltire.

    Prior to the Closing, Strong Global did not own or control any securities of Saltire. Strong Global received 1,972,723 common shares and 900,000 series A preferred shares of Saltire as consideration under the transaction.

    Strong Global may acquire additional securities including on the open market or through private acquisitions or sell the securities including on the open market or through private dispositions in the future depending on market conditions, general economic and industry conditions, Saltire’s business and financial condition, and/or other relevant factors, and Strong Global may develop such plans or intentions in the future.

    A copy of the Early Warning Report to be filed by Strong Global in connection with the transaction described above will be available on its SEDAR+ profile at http://www.sedarplus.ca.

    About Strong Global Entertainment, Inc.

    Strong Global Entertainment, Inc., a majority owned subsidiary of Fundamental Global Inc., is a leader in the entertainment industry, providing mission critical products and services to cinema exhibitors and entertainment venues for over 90 years.

    About Fundamental Global Inc.

    Fundamental Global Inc. (Nasdaq: FGF, FGFPP) and its subsidiaries engage in diverse business activities including reinsurance, asset management, merchant banking, manufacturing and managed services.

    The FG® logo and Fundamental Global® are registered trademarks of Fundamental Global LLC.

    Forward-Looking Statements

    This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”). These statements are therefore entitled to the protection of the safe harbor provisions of these laws. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “budget,” “can,” “contemplate,” “continue,” “could,” “envision,” “estimate,” “expect,” “evaluate,” “forecast,” “goal,” “guidance,” “indicate,” “intend,” “likely,” “may,” “might,” “outlook,” “plan,” “possibly,” “potential,” “predict,” “probable,” “probably,” “pro-forma,” “project,” “seek,” “should,” “target,” “view,” “will,” “would,” “will be,” “will continue,” “will likely result” or the negative thereof or other variations thereon or comparable terminology. In particular, discussions and statements regarding the Company’s future business plans and initiatives are forward-looking in nature. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, assumptions, estimates, and projections. While we believe these to be reasonable, such forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These and other important factors may cause our actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements, and may impact our ability to implement and execute on our future business plans and initiatives. Management cautions that the forward-looking statements in this release are not guarantees of future performance, and we cannot assume that such statements will be realized or the forward-looking events and circumstances will occur. Factors that might cause such a difference include, without limitation: risks associated with our inability to identify and realize business opportunities, and the undertaking of any new such opportunities; our lack of operating history or established reputation in the reinsurance industry; our inability to obtain or maintain the necessary approvals to operate reinsurance subsidiaries; risks associated with operating in the reinsurance industry, including inadequately priced insured risks, credit risk associated with brokers we may do business with, and inadequate retrocessional coverage; our inability to execute on our investment and investment management strategy, including our strategy to invest in the risk capital of special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs); our ability to maintain and expand our revenue streams to compensate for the lower demand for our digital cinema products and installation services; potential interruptions of supplier relationships or higher prices charged by suppliers in connection with our Strong Global business; our ability to successfully compete and introduce enhancements and new features that achieve market acceptance and that keep pace with technological developments; our ability to maintain Strong Global’s brand and reputation and retain or replace its significant customers; challenges associated with Strong Global’s long sales cycles; the impact of a challenging global economic environment or a downturn in the markets; the effects of economic, public health, and political conditions that impact business and consumer confidence and spending, including rising interest rates, periods of heightened inflation and market instability; potential loss of value of investments; risk of becoming an investment company; fluctuations in our short-term results as we implement our new business strategy; risks of being unable to attract and retain qualified management and personnel to implement and execute on our business and growth strategy; failure of our information technology systems, data breaches and cyber-attacks; our ability to establish and maintain an effective system of internal controls; our limited operating history as a public company; the requirements of being a public company and losing our status as a smaller reporting company or becoming an accelerated filer; any potential conflicts of interest between us and our controlling stockholders and different interests of controlling stockholders; potential conflicts of interest between us and our directors and executive officers; risks associated with our related party transactions and investments; and risks associated with our investments in SPACs, including the failure of any such SPAC to complete its initial business combination. Our expectations and future plans and initiatives may not be realized. If one of these risks or uncertainties materializes, or if our underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those expected, estimated or projected. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are made only as of the date hereof and do not necessarily reflect our outlook at any other point in time. We do not undertake and specifically decline any obligation to update any such statements or to publicly announce the results of any revisions to any such statements to reflect new information, future events or developments.

    Investor Relations Contacts:
    IR@strong-entertainment.com

    investors@fundamentalglobal.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: LIS Technologies Inc. Contracts Leading Construction Specialist to Oversee $1 Million Redevelopment of its Secured Facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Sept. 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — LIS Technologies Inc. (“LIST” or “the Company”), a proprietary developer of advanced laser technology and the only USA-origin and patented laser uranium enrichment company, today announced that it has engaged a leading construction specialist to oversee the design and redevelopment of its facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, creating a modern and secure space for the Company’s next phase of physical test work.

    Following completion of the nearly $1 Million redevelopment, the facility will house LIST’s specialized testing equipment aimed at refining and demonstrating the capabilities of its technology. It will include dedicated space for the Phase 1 Test Loop demonstration of the Company’s proprietary, patented laser uranium enrichment technology, serving as the central hub for its development. Additionally, the facility will support the production of stable isotopes for medical and scientific research. The initial design and build-out will ensure the facility is properly equipped to host operations and lay the groundwork for future physical test work.

    “The new LIST headquarters in Oak Ridge, TN will be converted into a “closed area,” which will allow LIST to perform research on its laser enrichment technology and protect said technology as Classified in accordance with NRC regulations, prior to DOE declaring the LIST technology as Restricted Data,” said Keith Everly, Head of Security and IP Management of LIS Technologies Inc. “We will work closely with the regulatory frameworks to streamline the process and ensure regulatory compliance of CRISLA, the technology that LIST plans to commercialize.”

    Figure 1 – LIS Technologies Inc. Contracts Leading Construction Specialist to Oversee Retrofitting of its Secured Facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee

    “I’m thrilled that major upgrades to our new facility in Oak Ridge will start soon, which will allow us to take the next steps towards the rebirth of our patented, US-origin laser enrichment technology,” said Christo Liebenberg, Chief Executive Officer of LIS Technologies Inc. “We are taking a pro-active approach with the security upgrade. It is a short matter of time before we demonstrate that the CRISLA process can produce practical quantities of enriched uranium product. We want our facility to be ready and secure before the DOE classifies the technology. This is a major threshold for the Company and positions us closer towards to our ultimate goal of enriching uranium for the next generation of advanced nuclear reactors in the United States.”

    The proprietary technology is the only proven US-origin laser enrichment solution and is scalable, efficient, and cost-effective. Optimized for both Low-Enriched Uranium (LEU) and High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU), it overcomes the limitations of traditional pulsed 16µm CO2 lasers, featuring a streamlined design due to its lower absorption and shorter wavelength at 5.3µm. Demonstrated in the 1980s and 90s, this technology is protected by a patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

    About LIS Technologies Inc.

    LIS Technologies Inc. (LIST) is a USA based, proprietary developer of a patented advanced laser technology, making use of infrared wavelengths to selectively excite the molecules of desired isotopes to separate them from other isotopes. The Laser Isotope Separation Technology (L.I.S.T) has a huge range of applications, including being the only USA-origin (and patented) laser uranium enrichment company, and several major advantages over traditional methods such as gas diffusion, centrifuges, and prior art laser enrichment. The LIST proprietary laser-based process is more energy-efficient and has the potential to be deployed with highly competitive capital and operational costs. L.I.S.T is optimized for LEU (Low Enriched Uranium) for existing civilian nuclear power plants, High-Assay LEU (HALEU) for the next generation of Small Modular Reactors (SMR) and Microreactors, the production of stable isotopes for medical and scientific research, and applications in quantum computing manufacturing for semiconductor technologies. The Company employs a world class nuclear technical team working alongside leading nuclear entrepreneurs and industry professionals, possessing strong relationships with government and private nuclear industries.

    For more information please visit: http://www.LaserIsTech.com 

    For further information, please contact:
    Email: info@laseristech.com
    Telephone: 800-388-5492
    Follow us on Twitter
    Follow us on LinkedIn

    Forward Looking Statements

    This news release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In this context, forward-looking statements mean statements related to future events, which may impact our expected future business and financial performance, and often contain words such as “expects”, “anticipates”, “intends”, “plans”, “believes”, “will”, “should”, “could”, “would” or “may” and other words of similar meaning. These forward-looking statements are based on information available to us as of the date of this news release and represent management’s current views and assumptions. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, events or results and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may be beyond our control. For LIS Technologies Inc., particular risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in our forward-looking statements include but are not limited to the following which are, and will be, exacerbated by any worsening of global business and economic environment: (i) risks related to the development of new or advanced technology, including difficulties with design and testing, cost overruns, development of competitive technology, loss of key individuals and uncertainty of success of patent filing, (ii) our ability to obtain contracts and funding to be able to continue operations and (iii) risks related to uncertainty regarding our ability to commercially deploy a competitive laser enrichment technology, (iv) risks related to the impact of government regulation and policies including by the DOE and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission; and other risks and uncertainties discussed in this and our other filings with the SEC. Only after successful completion of our Phase 2 Pilot Plant demonstration will LIS Technologies be able to make realistic economic predictions for a Commercial Facility. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date of this news release. These factors may not constitute all factors that could cause actual results to differ from those discussed in any forward-looking statement. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as a predictor of actual results. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this news release, except as required by law.

    Attachment

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: AMD Instinct MI300X Accelerators Available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for Demanding AI Applications

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    — Customers including Fireworks AI are powering their AI inference and training workloads with new OCI Compute instances —

    — OCI Supercluster leads among cloud providers with support for up to 16,384 AMD Instinct MI300X GPUs in a single ultrafast network fabric —

    SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) —  AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced that Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has chosen AMD Instinct™ MI300X accelerators with ROCm™ open software to power its newest OCI Compute Supercluster instance called BM.GPU.MI300X.8. For AI models that can comprise hundreds of billions of parameters, the OCI Supercluster with AMD MI300X supports up to 16,384 GPUs in a single cluster by harnessing the same ultrafast network fabric technology used by other accelerators on OCI. Designed to run demanding AI workloads including large language model (LLM) inference and training that requires high throughput with leading memory capacity and bandwidth, these OCI bare metal instances have already been adopted by companies including Fireworks AI.

    “AMD Instinct MI300X and ROCm open software continue to gain momentum as trusted solutions for powering the most critical OCI AI workloads,” said Andrew Dieckmann, corporate vice president and general manager, Data Center GPU Business, AMD. “As these solutions expand further into growing AI-intensive markets, the combination will benefit OCI customers with high performance, efficiency, and greater system design flexibility.”

    “The inference capabilities of AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators add to OCI’s extensive selection of high-performance bare metal instances to remove the overhead of virtualized compute commonly used for AI infrastructure,” said Donald Lu, senior vice president, software development, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “We are excited to offer more choice for customers seeking to accelerate AI workloads at a competitive price point.”

    Bringing Trusted Performance and Open Choice for AI Training and Inference
    The AMD Instinct MI300X underwent extensive testing which was validated by OCI that underscored its AI inferencing and training capabilities for serving latency-optimal use cases, even with larger batch sizes, and the ability to fit the largest LLM models in a single node. These Instinct MI300X performance results have garnered the attention of AI model developers.

    Fireworks AI offers a fast platform designed to build and deploy generative AI. With over 100+ models, Fireworks AI is leveraging the benefits of performance found in OCI using AMD Instinct MI300X.

    “Fireworks AI helps enterprises build and deploy compound AI systems across a wide range of industries and use cases,” said Lin Qiao, CEO of Fireworks AI. “The amount of memory capacity available on the AMD Instinct MI300X and ROCm open software allows us to scale services to our customers as models continue to grow.”

    Supporting Resources

    About AMD
    For more than 50 years AMD has driven innovation in high-performance computing, graphics, and visualization technologies. Billions of people, leading Fortune 500 businesses, and cutting-edge scientific research institutions around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work, and play. AMD employees are focused on building leadership high-performance and adaptive products that push the boundaries of what is possible. For more information about how AMD is enabling today and inspiring tomorrow, visit the AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) website, blog, LinkedIn, and Twitter pages.

    AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, Instinct, ROCm, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

    Trademarks
    Oracle, Java, MySQL and NetSuite are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation. NetSuite was the first cloud company—ushering in the new era of cloud computing.

    Contact:
    David Szabados
     AMD Communications
    +1 408-472-2439
    david.szabados@amd.com

    Mitch Haws
    AMD Investor Relations
    +1 512-944-0790 
    mitch.haws@amd.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: CS chairs inter-departmental working group meeting on festival arrangements (with photo)

    Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region

         As directed by the Chief Executive, the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Chan Kwok-ki, chaired the inter-departmental working group meeting on festival arrangements today (September 26) to holistically review and steer the overall co-ordination work of various government departments in welcoming visitors to Hong Kong during the National Day Golden Week. The Deputy Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Cheuk Wing-hing; the Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism, Mr Kevin Yeung; the Under Secretary for Security, Mr Michael Cheuk; and representatives of the Home and Youth Affairs Bureau, the Transport and Logistics Bureau, and other relevant Government departments attended the meeting.     At the meeting, Mr Chan instructed various departments to better prepare for receiving visitors during the Mainland’s National Day Golden Week, actively coordinate and consolidate supporting services of boundary control points (BCPs), traffic and public transport, promptly respond to various emergency situations, and strengthen information dissemination, with a view to providing quality experience to residents and visitors in celebration of the National Day.Estimated visitor flow and preparatory work     According to the Immigration Department (ImmD)’s estimate, around 7.01 million passengers (including Hong Kong residents and visitors) will pass through Hong Kong’s sea, land and air control points during the Mainland’s National Day Golden Week (October 1 to October 7) this year, among which 5.98 million passengers will pass through land control points. The number of outbound and inbound passengers using land boundary control points will peak on October 1 (Tuesday).     In terms of Mainland inbound visitors, it is estimated that about 1.23 million passengers will visit Hong Kong via various sea, land and air control points during the seven-day Mainland’s National Day Golden Week.     The Travel Industry Authority has reminded travel agents receiving Mainland inbound tour groups to stagger arrival time as far as possible, and will coordinate with agencies such as tourist spots to adopt appropriate diversion measures to enable proper management of the flow of visitors and tour buses, with a view to offering a pleasant travel experience to visitors.     There will be a rich array of celebratory activities before, during and after the Mainland’s National Day Golden Week. Major mega events include the “Celebration of National Day – The Next Generation Chorus Performance” at the West Kowloon Cultural District on September 30 night (Monday) and the 2024 National Day Fireworks Display at the Victoria Harbour on October 1 night (Tuesday). The Hong Kong Police Force (Police) will arrange sufficient police manpower to implement corresponding crowd management measures and special traffic arrangements as necessary to ensure that all celebrations will be conducted in a safe and orderly manner. Various district offices will also closely monitor the flow of visitors within their corresponding districts during the Mainland’s National Day Golden Week and strengthen management of the relevant spots having regard to the actual circumstances.Coordinate control points, traffic and public transport facilities     The Inter-departmental Joint Command Centre set up by Hong Kong Customs, the Police, the ImmD and other departments will be activated from September 28 (Saturday) to October 7 (Monday) to monitor the real-time situation at various control points, maintain close liaison with the Mainland port authorities through the established port hotlines and real-time notification mechanism, and take timely contingency actions to flexibly deploy manpower at the BCPs to ensure smooth operation of the land control points. The Security Bureau will also activate the Emergency Monitoring and Support Centre in a timely manner to closely monitor and co-ordinate the public order situation at various BCPs and facilitate interdepartmental follow-up actions where necessary to respond promptly to various kinds of emergencies.     For transport arrangements, the Transport Department (TD) has worked with relevant Mainland authorities and relevant operators to formulate plans to strengthen services at various ports, including increasing the frequency of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HZMB) shuttle bus (Gold Bus) and the Lok Ma Chau-Huanggang cross-boundary shuttle bus (Yellow Bus), as well as arranging dedicated public transport lanes at the HZMB Port, Lok Ma Chau/Huanggang Port and Shenzhen Bay Port as necessary, with a view to ensuring smooth public transport services. Regarding local public transport services, the TD has approached various public transport operators proactively to enhance the capacity, and reserve vehicles and manpower to meet the travel needs of visitors. Amongst them, the MTR Corporation Limited will enhance train service of railway lines during September 28 to October 13, with a total of about 950 extra trips, so as to facilitate the travelling of local residents and visitors. The TD’s Emergency Transport Co-ordination Centre will operate 24 hours to closely monitor the traffic conditions and public transport services of different districts including various BCPs and major stations. The TD will adopt various measures including increasing the frequency of public transport services as appropriate so as to cope with the service demand and passenger flow, and will disseminate the latest traffic information through various channels.     As regards the two homeporting calls of a mega cruise ship at the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal during the Mainland’s National Day Golden Week, while the cruise terminal operator will continue to coordinate with the cruise company, transport service operators and travel agents etc. to make proper transport planning, the Tourism Commission (TC) has also liaised with the bus companies and the taxi trade through the TD to provide additional support. Shuttle bus services will also be strengthened subject to demand. As it is anticipated that many Mainland visitors will come to Hong Kong to join cruise itineraries via the land BCPs, the TC has also assisted the trade in coordinating with BCPs to ensure smooth immigration clearance. Direct coach services will be provided to take visitors from the BCPs to the cruise terminal.Weather forecast     The weather in Hong Kong is expected to be generally fine during the Mainland’s National Day Golden Week, with low chances of being affected by heavy rain and tropical cyclones. A fresh to strong northeasterly monsoon is expected to arrive in Guangdong on the National Day, followed by a couple of days of slightly cooler and drier weather, with a minimum temperature of around 22 degrees Celsius in the urban areas. The above forecast is a preliminary assessment, and the Observatory will update the forecast depending on the latest weather changes.Information dissemination     To facilitate visitors in planning their itineraries, the inter-departmental working group will strengthen information dissemination including the latest inbound visitor arrivals, the situation at various BCPs, information on celebratory events, transport arrangements and the latest weather information, etc, to facilitate residents and visitors to plan their itineraries according to the latest situation.     The Tourism Board (TB) has also launched a dedicated webpage to consolidate various useful information during the Mainland’s National Day Golden Week, including the operating arrangements of major tourist attractions in Hong Kong, details of various unique celebratory events, special discount and promotional activities around the National Day, so as to facilitate residents and visitors to plan their itineraries more conveniently. The TB has also stepped up promotion in the Mainland, including launching special offers with major online integrated tourism platforms in the Mainland, in order to promote large-scale events with characteristics, explore the unique cultural and tourism experiences in Hong Kong through the promotional channel of the platforms and boost spending of more Mainland visitors in Hong Kong as well as enhance visitors’ experience.

    MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Annual report 2023 – 2024 and new business plan published

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    The Adjudicator’s Office are pleased to announce the publication of its 2023 to 2024 annual report and new 3-year business plan for 2024 to 2027.

    2023 to 2024 annual report and new business plan published

    The Adjudicator’s Office are pleased to announce the publication of its 2023 to 2024 annual report. For the first time this also includes an in-depth report and set of recommendations on a specific theme: Applying Customer Circumstances to Decision Making.

    We are also publishing our new three-year business plan and an updated Service Level Agreement (SLA) with HMRC and the Valuation Office Agency (VOA).

    The Adjudicator Mike McMahon said: “I am delighted to be publishing my first annual report as Adjudicator and our new business plan today. Our role is to challenge all of our stakeholders to provide the best outcomes for their customers and the annual report is a key part of this.

    “I am pleased that this annual report will see our first published in-depth insight report for HMRC into applying customer circumstances to decision making. I am keen that we become more transparent and publishing more information is part of that.”

    The full set of documents that have been published on our site today are:

    • 2023 to 2024 annual report: Providing a reflection of our performance during the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024
    • Insight report: Applying Customer Circumstances to Decision Making. Our formal report using our insight and expertise to analyse specific themes and make recommendations to HMRC to improve services for customers.
    • Business plan: Confirming our objectives over the next three years from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2027
    • Updated Service Level Agreement: We have updated our Service Level Agreement (SLA) with HMRC and VOA. The new SLA will come into effect from 26 September 2024.
    • Quality standards: For the first time we are publishing our quality standards, which underpin our work to make sure we provide our customers and stakeholders a quality service.

    In addition, over the coming weeks we will be publishing our Service Standards and our first set of quarterly performance metrics.

    Updates to this page

    Published 26 September 2024

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: NIO minister Fleur Anderson praises community resilience after visiting arson attack Church

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    The minister visited the Church of the Holy Name in Greenisland following a recent arson attack

    NIO minister Fleur Anderson and Rev Dr Isobel Hawthorne-Steele look at the damage inside the Church of the Holy Name.

    The Northern Ireland Office minister Fleur Anderson has visited the Church of the Holy Name in Greenisland to show solidarity following a recent arson attack. 

    The Church provides an integral service to local people through a community shop and a range of activities that involve all ages as well as offering a place for parishioners to gather.

    It was badly damaged in a fire on September 1. 

    Minister Anderson, who is Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the NIO, spoke with the Rev Dr Isobel Hawthorne-Steele, Minister of the Church about the attack and viewed the scale of the destruction.

    She also heard about the experiences of the community in the aftermath of the attack. 

    Minister Anderson said: “The discussions I had with Rev Dr Hawthorne-Steele were very constructive.

    “It was sad to see the scale of the destruction to a place that is a beacon of hope for many in the community.

    “It was encouraging to hear the positive support shown by local churches in Greenisland, the understanding shown to the families of the young boys involved and the plans for the future rebuilding.

    “I stand in solidarity with this entire community and I commend their resilience and forgiveness. 

    “I must also commend the quick response of the Northern Ireland Fire Service, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, for their valiant efforts in tackling the blaze.”

    The Rev Dr Hawthorne-Steele said:

    “Having met with the minister it was encouraging to learn that she is a fellow community practitioner with extensive experience in building community cohesion and promoting transformative grassroots initiatives. 

    “Having spent considerable time chatting and seeing first hand the devastation caused by the fire to our parish centre and church, the minister captured the full impact of the far-reaching consequences on our church and the wider community that this disaster has caused. 

    “As a church, we greatly appreciate the fact that the minister acknowledged the efforts we are making to grow resilience in partnership with multi-faceted groups and organisations that work within this local area as we rebuild and renew our faith by revealing God’s grace.”

    NIO minister Fleur Anderson and Rev Dr Isobel Hawthorne-Steele outside the Church of the Holy Name where the damage can bee seen.

    NIO minister Fleur Anderson and Rev Dr Isobel Hawthorne-Steele look inside the Parish Centre which was affected by the recent arson attack.

    Updates to this page

    Published 26 September 2024

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –