NewzIntel.com

Category: Politics

  • MIL-Evening Report: Australia’s latest emissions data reveal we still have a giant fossil fuel problem

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Lovell, Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, UNSW Sydney

    According to Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, the latest emissions data show “we are on track to reach our 2030 targets” under the Paris Agreement. In 2024, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions were “27% below 2005 levels”. That’s great news, right?

    Well, yes and no. Australia continues to rely on changes in land use to compensate for emissions released into the atmosphere.

    In other words, Australia’s plants are considered to be taking more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere now than in 2005. Their efforts are captured in the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector, which is the single largest reason for the significant reduction in Australian emissions.

    Without accounting for land use, Australia’s emissions have only decreased 3% since 2005, not 27%.

    If Australia is serious about reducing emissions and tracking towards net zero by 2050, we need to tackle a series of inconvenient truths about fossil fuels. Fossil fuels feed into almost every aspect of our lives, not just cars and power plants. There are substitutes, but they are not easy to source – and they don’t come cheap.

    How fossil fuel exports drive up emissions here and overseas

    Australia is one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel exporters. The coal, oil and natural gas we export is either burnt or combined with our sizeable iron ore exports to produce iron. But the greenhouse gases are released overseas, so they don’t count in Australia’s emissions data.

    This is in line with our international commitments under the Paris agreement. But there is an argument to be made that even though Australia doesn’t burn those exports, we should acknowledge our central role in contributing to global emissions. We may need to account for these in future reporting.

    Australia’s export emissions are likely to be triple that of our domestic emissions. These emissions have been increasing consistently over the last decade.

    But the process of extracting fossil fuels and preparing them for export does show up in Australia’s domestic emission figures, through what’s called “fugitive emissions”. These fugitive emissions are the unavoidable leaks that occur when we pull fossil fuels out of the ground, store, transport and process them.

    In the year to 2024, fugitive emissions accounted for 10.6% of our emissions, which is far greater than emissions from industrial processes (6.8%).

    Disturbingly, recent analysis suggests fugitive emissions could be drastically underreported. Because these emissions are tricky to measure, they are often estimated on an average basis. This means reported values do not accurately reflect true releases.

    When it comes to fugitive and export emissions, Australia is not on track to meet 2030 targets. Recent export-focused fossil project approvals such as the North West Shelf gas project suggest we might even be backtracking.

    Chris Bowen on Insiders, Sunday June 1, 2025 (ABC News)

    The transition to renewables

    Closing dirty old coal-fired power stations and replacing them with renewable energy such as solar and wind power does cut emissions. The reduction in emissions from the electricity sector, down 23.7% on 2005 levels, is good news. But the difference is still small enough that seasonal variations from Tasmania’s hydro power plants can distort the annual figures.

    At least there is a plan in place for the energy transition. Big, slow wheels are in motion.

    Unfortunately the reality is we will need much, much more renewable energy in the future. Up to three times the current capacity of the National Electricity Market will be needed to cover future domestic energy requirements across electricity and other sectors out to 2050.

    Significantly more would be required to generate enough additional green energy to also produce green value-added commodities.

    Australia’s clean energy challenge

    Discussions around transitioning from fossil fuels typically overlook how deeply they are embedded in our everyday lives.

    Not just the fuel we use in our cars, but the roads we drive on. Not just the electricity we use to power our hospitals, but the steel used to build them and the pharmaceuticals we rely on.

    Globally, around 13% of fossil fuels are not burned but used to make these key chemicals. What’s the alternative?

    Clean electricity is the key.

    Electricity can be used to make hydrogen from water through electrolysis. This hydrogen can then replace fossil fuels in manufacturing – making products such as green steel and ammonia for fertiliser.

    When combined with non-fossil sources of carbon, hydrogen can also be turned into renewable fuels, such as sustainable aviation fuel. It can be used to synthesise green versions of petrochemicals used in industrial processes such as ethanol, propylene and ethylene, which are currently sourced from fossil fuels.

    This takes energy. Lots of it. Fortunately Australia has all the ingredients needed for a booming green industry – one that’s much broader than just renewable electricity.

    Currently, it costs more to produce these chemicals without using fossil fuels. That’s why some companies and state governments have been pulling back from their investments in green hydrogen.

    Most people talk about green hydrogen in the context of energy storage or export. But it can also enable the transition away from fossil fuels in other sectors. The technology exists to make these chemicals and products, without the emissions and it’s slowly but steadily moving closer toward price parity.

    If we can nail this switch to fossil-free alternatives to petrochemicals, Australia would be able to add value onshore, rather than exporting raw materials. For example, we could export iron, not iron ore. Methanol or ammonia, not hydrogen. Export the jumper, not the wool.

    Heavy industry driven by renewables?

    On Sunday, Bowen said he found some areas of the 2024 emissions figures “encouraging, like industrial emissions, way down and lower than 2021”.

    Unfortunately, this result was partly due to a decline in manufacturing. Onshore manufacturing capability has been steadily decreasing, despite increased fossil fuel extraction.

    Unless we ramp up green manufacturing – replacing fossil fuel exports with much needed renewable products and fuels – we will continue to bear responsibility, if not direct accountability, for large, exported emissions as well as onshore fugitive emissions.

    And no amount of changes to land use can account for that.

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

    – ref. Australia’s latest emissions data reveal we still have a giant fossil fuel problem – https://theconversation.com/australias-latest-emissions-data-reveal-we-still-have-a-giant-fossil-fuel-problem-257907

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Pro-Trump candidate wins Poland’s presidential election – a bad omen for the EU, Ukraine and women

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Simpson, Senior Lecturer, International Studies, University of South Australia

    Poland’s presidential election runoff will be a bitter pill for pro-European Union democrats to swallow.

    The nationalist, Trumpian, historian Karol Nawrocki has narrowly defeated the liberal, pro-EU mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, 50.89 to 49.11%.

    The Polish president has few executive powers, though the office holder is able to veto legislation. This means the consequences of a Nawrocki victory will be felt keenly, both in Poland and across Europe.

    With this power, Nawrocki, backed by the conservative Law and Justice party, will no doubt stymie the ability of Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his Civic Platform-led coalition to enact democratic political reforms.

    This legislative gridlock could well see Law and Justice return to government in the 2027 general elections, which would lock in the anti-democratic changes the party made during their last term in office from 2015–2023. This included eroding Poland’s judicial independence by effectively taking control of judicial appointments and the supreme court.

    Nawrocki’s win has given pro-Donald Trump, anti-liberal, anti-EU forces across the continent a shot in the arm. It’s bad news for the EU, Ukraine and women.

    A rising Poland

    For much of the post-second world war era, Poland has had limited European influence.

    This is no longer the case. Poland’s economy has boomed since it joined the EU in 2004. It spends almost 5% of its gross domestic product on defence, almost double what it spent in 2022 at the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    Poland now has a bigger army than the United Kingdom, France and Germany. And living standards, adjusted for purchasing power, are about to eclipse Japan’s.

    Along with Brexit, these changes have resulted in the EU’s centre of gravity shifting eastwards towards Poland. As a rising military and economic power of 37 million people, what happens in Poland will help shape Europe’s future.

    Impacts on Ukraine

    Poland’s new position in Europe is most clearly demonstrated by its central role in the fight to defend Ukraine against Russia.

    This centrality was clearly demonstrated during the recent “Coalition of the Willing” summit in Kyiv, where Tusk joined the leaders of Europe’s major powers – France, Germany and the UK – to bolster support for Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

    However, Poland’s unqualified support for Ukraine will now be at risk because Nawrocki has demonised Ukrainian refugees in his country and opposed Ukrainian integration into European-oriented bodies, such as the EU and NATO.

    Nawrocki was also backed during his campaign by the Trump administration. Kristi Noem, the US secretary of homeland security, said at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Poland:

    Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity to have just as strong of a leader in Karol if you make him the leader of this country.

    Trump also hosted Nawrocki in the Oval Office when he was merely a candidate for office. This was a significant deviation from standard US diplomatic protocol to stay out of foreign elections.

    Nawrocki has not been as pro-Russia as some other global, MAGA-style politicians, but this is largely due to Poland’s geography and its difficult history with Russia. It has been repeatedly invaded across its eastern plains by Russian or Soviet troops. And along with Ukraine, Poland shares borders with the Russian client state of Belarus and Russia itself in Kaliningrad, the heavily militarised enclave on the Baltic Sea.

    I experienced the proximity of these borders during fieldwork in Poland in 2023 when I travelled by car from Warsaw to Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, via the Suwalki Gap.

    This is the strategically important, 100-kilometre-long border between Poland and Lithuania, which connects the Baltic states to the rest of NATO and the EU to the south. It’s seen as a potential flashpoint if Russia were ever to close the gap and isolate the Baltic states.

    Poland’s conservative nationalist politicians are therefore less Russia-friendly than those in Hungary or Slovakia. Nawrocki, for instance, does not support cutting off weapons to Ukraine.

    However, a Nawrocki presidency will still be more hostile to Ukraine and its interests. During the campaign, Nawrocki said Zelensky “treats Poland badly”, echoing the type of language used by Trump himself.

    Poland divided

    The high stakes in the election resulted in a record turnout of almost 73%.

    There was a stark choice in the election between Nawrocki and Trzaskowski.

    Trzaskowski supported the liberalisation of Poland’s harsh abortion laws – abortion was effectively banned in Poland under the Law and Justice government – and the introduction of civil partnerships for LGBTQ+ couples.

    Nawrocki opposed these changes and will likely veto any attempt to implement them.

    While the polls for the presidential runoff election had consistently shown a tight race, an Ipsos exit poll published during the vote count demonstrated the social divisions now facing the country.

    As in other recent global elections, women and those with higher formal education voted for the progressive candidate (Trzaskowski), while men and those with less formal education voted for the conservative (Nawrocki).

    After the surprise success of the liberal, pro-EU presidential candidate in the Romanian elections a fortnight ago, pro-EU forces were hoping for a similar result in Poland, as well.

    That, for now, is a pipe dream and liberals across the continent will now need to negotiate a difficult relationship with a right-wing, Trumpian leader in the new beating heart of Europe.

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

    – ref. Pro-Trump candidate wins Poland’s presidential election – a bad omen for the EU, Ukraine and women – https://theconversation.com/pro-trump-candidate-wins-polands-presidential-election-a-bad-omen-for-the-eu-ukraine-and-women-257617

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Banking: Development Asia: Empowering Women, Greening Urban Transport in Uzbekistan

    Source: Asia Development Bank

    Until recently, legal restrictions in Uzbekistan limited women’s access to many jobs. Although a 2019 presidential decree abolished a list of more than 300 professions where female labor was either completely or partially prohibited, legal restrictions remained and prevented women from driving buses or freight vehicles weighing over 2.5 tons or carrying more than 14 passengers. This changed with Cabinet of Ministers’ Resolution No. 85 in February 2024, which officially lifted the remaining barriers.

    While this legislative reform marks a significant step forward, there are still obstacles that limit women’s full participation in public transport employment, highlighting the need for coordinated and effective solutions.

    A key obstacle is the lack of public awareness regarding available opportunities in the transport sector. Although there is strong demand for skilled drivers, information about the benefits of working as an electric bus driver—particularly for women—is still limited.

    Targeted information campaigns, showcasing success stories of female drivers, and media visibility of their contributions to urban mobility could play a vital role in reshaping public perceptions of the profession and inspire more women to consider careers in public transport.

    Working conditions also need to be improved since bus driving is physically and mentally demanding. The World Bank report Closing Gender Gaps in Transport recommends measures such as better shift scheduling, access to clean and well-lit rest areas, provision of sanitary facilities, and implementation of safety programs, which can attract more women to the profession. Modern electric buses, designed with ergonomic driver workstations, also help reduce physical strain and make vehicle operation more comfortable.

    Access to quality training remains a significant barrier. Acquiring the necessary driver’s license and completing required certification courses involve financial costs, which can deter potential candidates. To address this, government support through training subsidies and incentives for companies that hire female drivers could overcome these barriers and encourage higher female participation in the transport sector.

    MIL OSI Global Banks –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Electronic ID for Cattle mandatory in step forward for UK biosecurity

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    Press release

    Electronic ID for Cattle mandatory in step forward for UK biosecurity

    Changes introduced to cattle identification, registration, and reporting for cattle in England.

    Cattle identification and traceability in England will change over the next 2 years, in a major step forward in disease control and trade across the farming sector, Defra has announced today (Monday 2 June).

    From Summer 2026, Defra will introduce changes to cattle identification, registration and reporting that will improve the government’s ability to respond effectively to disease. These changes will also simplify regulations and support industry to boost productivity, food security and international trade.

    New requirements will see Electric ID (EID) mandatory for all new-born calves from 2027, using low frequency (LF) technology. This means animals with eID eartags are able to be scanned when animals are moved, rather than a visual read and manual input of the tag number. Electronic cattle traceability will strengthen the UK’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to animal disease outbreaks, protecting farmers and the rural economy.

    This will be supported by a new cattle movement reporting system which will be easier to use for farmers, markets, abattoirs and regulators alike. This will simplify existing regulations and support the livestock industry to boost productivity, food security and international trade.

    This comes as the government announced a £200 million investment in the UK’s main research and laboratory testing facilities at Weybridge to bolster protection against animal disease, and the recent announcement that livestock farmers in England can apply for a series of free annual vet visits on farm to check for diseases and receive biosecurity recommendations and tailored animal health and welfare advice.

    Biosecurity Minister, Baroness Hayman said: 

    This is a significant milestone in modernising how we manage cattle health, welfare and traceability in England.  

    These reforms strike the right balance in supporting farmers with clearer, simpler rules while helping the sector strengthen its productivity, resilience and global competitiveness.

    UK Chief Veterinary Officer Dr. Christine Middlemiss said:

    Electronic identification is a game-changer for disease traceability. It allows for faster, more accurate tracking of cattle movements, which is crucial in responding to outbreaks and maintaining our high biosecurity standards.  

    This shift puts England in step with best global practice and today’s early confirmation will provide the livestock industry the clarity it needs to begin preparing now — ensuring that the right tags, readers and systems are available at scale ahead of rollout.

    Defra will also take a more proportionate approach to enforcement, which will give keepers the opportunity to correct issues before further action is considered, as part of a broader move to reduce red tape while strengthening biosecurity. 

    Following the wide-reaching sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) deal recently agreed at the UK-EU summit, this decision will further benefit livestock businesses in England by reducing trade friction and boosting their ability to export agri-food products abroad. 

    Today’s changes follow the UK Government’s Cattle Identification Consultation 2023 which has been published today, which signalled strong industry support for the measures introduced.

    Updates to this page

    Published 2 June 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • Amit Shah inaugurates new central forensic science laboratory building in Kolkata

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (2)

    Speaking at the event, Shah said the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is committed to establishing a secure, transparent, and evidence-based criminal justice system. “This laboratory will serve as a crucial pillar in realizing that vision and aid in the implementation of the new criminal laws,” he said.
    The Union Minister emphasized the role of forensic science in securing convictions and ensuring justice, stating that a national network of FSLs is being established through a cluster approach, where 3–4 states will share facilities and resources. Beginning January 2026, the government plans to launch a campaign to integrate forensic practices down to the police station level, aiming to move from a system based on argument to one rooted in evidence.
    Shah also formally launched Narcotics Version 2.0 and Explosives Version 2.0, digital tools designed to simplify forensic processes. He noted that crimes are evolving in the digital age and that law enforcement must stay ahead through the adoption of science and technology.
    He highlighted the government’s commitment to reforms through the newly introduced Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA), which replace colonial-era laws. Shah said these laws empower investigators with clear legal backing for using technology and make forensic visits mandatory in cases involving sentences of more than seven years.
    The Home Minister also underlined progress in justice delivery, stating that 60% of chargesheets are now filed within 60 days and that provisions such as trial in absentia will help prosecute absconders using international mechanisms.
    To support this infrastructure, the government has approved 16 campuses of the National Forensic Science University (NFSU), with 7 already operational. Plans are in place to train 36,000 forensic professionals annually through these institutions, exceeding the country’s current estimated need of 30,000 trained experts per year.
    Additionally, 9 more NFSU campuses and 7 new CFSLs are being set up in states including Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Bihar, at a combined investment of over ₹2,100 crore. A National Forensic Data Centre, with an allocation of ₹200 crore, will also be established.
    Amit Shah said the modernization of India’s forensic infrastructure will help ensure that even the most marginalized citizen can approach the justice system with confidence. “It is our responsibility to create a system where justice is swift, science-based, and accessible to all,” he concluded.

  • Indian parliamentary delegation meets PKR leaders in Malaysia, seeks support against terrorism

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (2)

    n all-party Indian parliamentary delegation, led by JD(U) MP Sanjay Kumar Jha, met with representatives of Malaysia’s People’s Justice Party (PKR) in Kuala Lumpur on Monday, as part of India’s global outreach campaign following the Pahalgam terror attack and subsequent military response under Operation Sindoor.

    The delegation, which arrived in Kuala Lumpur on May 31, was briefed by India’s High Commissioner to Malaysia, B.N. Reddy. He underscored the strategic importance of India-Malaysia relations and “outlined the Malaysia-specific messaging to strongly convey India’s commitment to combat terrorism under Operation Sindoor.”

    According to a statement from the Indian High Commission, the delegation held “wide-ranging” interactions with members of the Indian diaspora and conveyed India’s “resolute stance against cross-border terrorism.”

    “Diaspora members, including voices from the Malaysian Indian Muslim community, unequivocally condemned terrorism. An appeal was made to amplify the message of unity and zero tolerance through various platforms and communities,” the statement said.

    The delegation also engaged with major Malaysian media outlets and social media influencers, stressing India’s new doctrine that “terror and talks cannot go together” and asserting that any act of terror will now be treated as an act of war.

    “The delegation paid heartfelt homage to the Malaysian national who lost her life in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, emphasizing that terrorism is a global menace that endangers all of humanity,” the statement said.

    Speaking to ANI, delegation leader Sanjay Kumar Jha outlined the significance of the multi-nation tour.

    “Our first visit was to Japan and it was an important country because so many trades of ours happen with Japan…Japan endorsed the stance of the country…Then we went to South Korea…they also appreciated and supported us…in Singapore also…we had positive talks…Jakarta has the highest Muslim population in the world…their stand against terrorism was in support of India…the whole world has criticised the Pahalgam attack,” he said

    He added: “We will be in Malaysia till the day after tomorrow…the President of Malaysia has strongly condemned (Pahalgam attack)…we have made two requests, the first one is that we are not part of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) even though India has a large Muslim population…Pakistan keeps passing resolutions against us…so we have sought support from Malaysia and Indonesia…Pakistan needs to be brought back to the FATF list, so we have kept this demand before all the countries to consider this and extend support to this. Malaysia has supported us in getting a permanent membership in the UN Security Council…,”

    Apart from Jha, the delegation includes MPs Aparajita Sarangi (BJP), Abhishek Banerjee (TMC), Brij Lal (BJP), John Brittas (CPI-M), Pradan Baruah (BJP), and Hemang Joshi (BJP), along with former Union Minister and senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid, and former Indian Ambassador to France Mohan Kumar.

    (With ANI inputs)

  • Viksit Bharat Requires Thriving Agriculture, Prosperous Farmers: Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Bihar

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (2)

    nion Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Monday emphasised the government’s firm commitment towards building a ‘Viksit Bharat’, stating that the path to national development passes through agricultural prosperity and farmers’ welfare.

    Union Minister Chouhan is in Motihari, Bihar. He is holding discussions focused on boosting agricultural productivity and ensuring better livelihoods for farmers in the state.

    Highlighting the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chouhan said, “The Prime Minister is committed to building a Viksit Bharat. For this, developed agriculture and prosperous farmers are essential. This is the guiding mantra of the Agriculture Department. Across the country, 16,000 agricultural scientists are engaging directly with farmers. Scientists, along with state and central agriculture departments and agricultural universities, are working together to find ways to increase production, reduce input costs, ensure fair prices for farmers, and provide compensation in case of losses.”

    “I have come to Bihar to support and serve the farmers here and help increase agricultural productivity,” he added.

    During his visit, Chouhan stressed that Bihar holds tremendous potential for agricultural development, and efforts are being made to ensure that farmers in the region benefit from scientific innovations, government schemes, and institutional collaboration.

    He added that the government is actively promoting agricultural diversification, natural farming, and focused initiatives like the Pulses Mission and Oilseeds Mission — all aimed at making Indian agriculture more resilient, sustainable, and profitable.

    Referring to the ongoing efforts under the government’s “Viksit Krishi Sankalp Abhiyan,” Chouhan said, “Ek Rashtra, Ek Krishi, Ek Team (One Nation, One Agriculture, One Team)” is the motto driving these initiatives. He underlined the importance of integrating the efforts of central and state governments, agricultural scientists, and universities to ensure long-term solutions for India’s agricultural challenges.

    (IANS)

  • Indian delegation meets UK Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel, highlights Operation Sindoor and India’s counter-terrorism resolve

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (2)

    n all-party Indian parliamentary delegation, led by BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad, met with the UK’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel and her team on Sunday to convey India’s unwavering resolve in combating cross-border terrorism.

    During the meeting, the delegation emphasized India’s evolving counter-terrorism doctrine, highlighting Operation Sindoor as a clear representation of the country’s “new normal” in its response to terror threats.

    “The All-Party Parliamentary Delegation met with Shadow Foreign Secretary @pritipatel and her team to share India’s firm resolve in combating cross-border terrorism. They also highlighted how #OperationSindoor exemplifies the new normal set by India in this ongoing effort,” the Indian High Commission in the UK said in a post on X.

    Earlier, the delegation engaged with members of the Indian diaspora at India House in London. In their address, the members reiterated India’s united stance against terrorism and reaffirmed the country’s commitment to taking decisive action against any acts of terror.

    “The All Party Delegation of MPs interacted with representatives of the large and diverse Indian Diaspora at India House in London today. They reaffirmed India’s united stance and unwavering commitment to combating terrorism in all its forms, and underlined the readiness of India to continue to decisively punish any and all acts of terror,” the High Commission noted.

    During the interaction, Ravi Shankar Prasad launched a scathing critique of Pakistan, calling it a failed democracy run by its military establishment.

    “Pakistan armed forces have made a country for themselves — unelected, unaccountable, and without popular mandate,” Prasad said. “Ayub Khan ruled for a decade, Yahya Khan for over seven years, Zia-ul-Haq for eleven, and General Musharraf for nine. Now there is General Munir, who was defeated in the field but promoted to field marshal. That is the whole scenario.”

    Prasad also condemned Pakistan for sheltering Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Praising Operation Sindoor, he pointed out that the terrorists responsible for hijacking Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in 1999 and securing the release of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar, were neutralized by Indian forces under the operation. He added that members of Azhar’s family were also killed during the offensive.

    Apart from Prasad, the delegation includes BJP MPs Daggubati Purandeswari and Samik Bhattacharya, Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi, Congress MPs Ghulam Ali Khatana and Amar Singh, former Union Minister MJ Akbar, and former Ambassador to Russia and the US, Pankaj Saran.

    (With inputs from ANI)

  • Kanimozhi-led delegation pays tribute to Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in Spain

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (4)

    An all-party Indian Parliamentary delegation led by DMK MP Kanimozhi Karunanidhi began the final leg of its five-nation visit in Madrid on Sunday.

    The Indian Embassy in Spain said in a statement on X: “The All-Party Parliamentary Delegation commenced the final leg of its five-nation visit in Madrid by paying homage to the bust of Mahatma Gandhi. The tribute was a solemn occasion to reflect on and honor the Mahatma’s enduring values of non-violence and peace.”

    Following the ceremony, the delegation engaged with members of the Indian community and emphasized that India remains unshakable and united in its fight against terrorism, which threatens global peace and humanity. The delegation highlighted that its diverse composition reflects a strong national consensus and resolve across political lines to combat this menace. They urged the Indian community in Spain to take pride in their roots, stand united and actively support India’s efforts to promote justice and peace.

    “During the interaction, members of the Indian diaspora shared that their Spanish acquaintances had reacted with shock and concern to the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam, reflecting growing international awareness of the challenges India faces in combating terrorism,” the statement said.

    The community also expressed strong support for India’s counter-terrorism efforts and conveyed their solidarity with the nation, the statement added. “The delegation is scheduled to engage with members of the Spanish government, parliamentarians and civil society representatives on the final day of their visit. These engagements will provide a platform to brief Spanish leaders on Operation Sindoor and to articulate India’s position as the world’s fourth-largest economy, committed to peace, stability and a resolute stance against terrorism.”

    In another post on X, the Indian Embassy said: “The All-Party Parliamentary Delegation had a insightful interaction with the Indian diaspora, reaffirming India’s unwavering commitment to peace in the face of terrorism. They emphasized that India will lead the global fight against terrorism, upholding the values of peace and resilience. The delegation with humility and conviction, called upon the community to stand united in pride and shared heritage. The diaspora responded with heartfelt enthusiasm, expressing deep solidarity with the nation and a strong sense of identity and belonging.”

    “The All-Party Parliamentary Delegation visiting Spain interacted with Arturo Fernandez Alvarez, a Spanish businessman, who is a survivor of the horrible terror attacks that took place in Mumbai on November 26, 2008. Arturo joined the delegation in condemning the menace of terrorism,” added the embassy.

    Apart from Kanimozhi, the delegation includes Samajwadi Party MP Rajeev Rai, BJP MP Captain Brijesh Chowta (Retd.), RJD MP Prem Chand Gupta, AAP MP Ashok Kumar Mittal, and Former Deputy Permanent Representative of India to the UN, Ambassador Manjeev Singh Puri and Ambassador Jawed Ashraf.

  • MIL-OSI USA: CONGRESSMAN BISHOP STATEMENT ON THE KILLING OF ISRAEL EMBASSY EMPLOYEES IN WASHINGTON, DC

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Sanford D Bishop Jr (GA-02)

    WASHINGTON – Congressman Sanford D. Bishop, Jr. (GA-02) issued the following statement in response to the killing of two Israel Embassy employees last night in Washington, DC:

    “It is heartbreaking that these two young Israel Embassy employees who were attending an event dedicated to peace were cut down in the prime of their lives. Antisemitism and political violence have no place in a civilized society. May the memories of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim be a blessing.”

    ###

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Rep. Neguse Introduces Legislation to Reinstate All Parks and Forest Staff Fired by DOGE Cuts

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Joe Neguse (D-Co 2)

    Washington, D.C. — As the National Park Service (NPS) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) brace for impact, with public reporting warning additional layoffs are imminent, Congressman Joe Neguse introduced landmark legislation that pushes back against further cuts to the federal workforce and moves to restore adequate staffing levels ahead of the agencies’ busy summer months. The bills, the Protect our Parks Act and Save Our Forests Act, direct administration officials to rehire individuals wrongfully terminated as part of Trump’s DOGE initiative.  

    Neguse, who serves as Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on Federal Lands, represents some of Colorado’s world-renowned parks and forests, including Rocky Mountain National Park and the Arapaho and Roosevelt and White River National Forests. Since the start of the year, he’s been a vocal opponent of the administration’s full-scale attack on the federal workforce, and his latest effort highlights the dramatic impact of cuts on parks and forests—leaving these shared spaces understaffed and vulnerable, with weakened wildfire prevention, search-and-rescue operations, and maintenance of campgrounds, trails, and restrooms. 

    “Coloradans are sounding the alarm: the Trump Administration’s federal funding and purging of the workforce have made our national parks and forests less safe and more prone to disaster. This is simply unacceptable,” said Congressman Neguse. “With the summer months fast approaching, we must act to reinstate terminated employees at our land management agencies to protect communities across the West.” 

    Both the Protect our Parks Act and Save Our Forests Act are co-led by Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (CA-02) and Vice Ranking Member Sarah Elfreth (MD-03), as well as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Forestry and Horticulture, Andrea Salinas (OR-06). They are championed by Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and John Hickenlooper (D-CO) in the United States Senate. 

    “The Trump Administration’s relentless and deeply damaging attacks on our federal workforce, especially the dedicated public servants at the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service, demand accountability,” said Ranking Member Jared Huffman. “From abrupt relocations to politically motivated firings, the career professionals who steward our public lands have been treated as expendable. With another wave of forced reductions reportedly imminent, Congress must act. The Protect Our Parks Act and the Save Our Forests Act will ensure these agencies are fully staffed, reinstate wrongfully terminated employees, and keep critical federal projects on track—from climate resilience and wildfire prevention to trail maintenance and infrastructure upgrades. We owe it to these workers, and to the American people who depend on them, to set this right.”

    “With summer fast approaching, we should be hiring more workers who can keep visitors safe at our national parks and protect our communities from wildfires. Instead, the Trump Administration is recklessly firing workers at both the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service – putting even more strain on these agencies at a time when they are already short-staffed,” said Congresswoman Salinas. “These job cuts are unacceptable, which is why I’m proud to introduce two bills that would restore staffing levels and rehire Park Rangers and Forest Service workers who were wrongfully terminated. America’s public servants deserve respect and appreciation for their hard work, and our legislation does just that.”

    “The National Park Service and National Forest Service are crucial to land conservation, historic preservation, and protecting our natural resources. Due to the illegal actions of this Administration, these agencies are operating on a skeleton crew and shoestring budget to carry out the work the law requires. I am proud to co-lead the Protect Our Parks Act and Save Our Forests Act with Assistant Leader Neguse, Ranking Member Huffman, and Rep. Salinas to reinstate staff and restore funding at the NPS and NFS,” said Congresswoman Elfreth.  

    Find additional details on the bills below:

    • The Protect our Parks Act directs the Secretary of Interior to ensure adequate staffing within the National Park System for the overall safety and wellbeing of visitor safety and natural and cultural resource protection. It also orders the reinstatement of any individuals terminated as part of the Trump Administration’s reckless mass firings (beginning on January 20, 2025).
    • The Save Our Forests Act directs the Secretary of Agriculture to ensure adequate staffing within the National Forest System, as well as proper resources for maintaining the health, diversity, and productivity of these lands. It also orders the reinstatement of any individuals terminated as part of the Trump Administration’s reckless mass firings (beginning on January 20, 2025). 

    Both bills also help keep critical federal projects moving forward, including those funded by widely supported and enacted laws such as the Great American Outdoors Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act. 

    They are endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters, The Wilderness Society, Environment America, National Federation of Federal Employees, and The Trust for Public Land; and the Protect our Parks Act has additional backing from the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA).  

    See what they’re saying below:  

    “With mass firings of land management staff, the Trump administration has put our public lands and our ability to enjoy and benefit from them at risk,” said LCV Conservation Program Director, America Fitzpatrick.“Legislation like the bills introduced today by Representatives Neguse, Huffman, Elfreth, and Salinas will serve to curb the fallout from the Trump administration’s dangerous policies that seek to decimate our parks and public lands. LCV thanks the bill sponsors for standing up for public servants who steward our parks and public lands, fight wildfire, educate the public, and share our nation’s history, and for continuing to fight back against this administration’s dangerous and indiscriminate firings.“ 

    “Our national parks are facing a crisis. Since January, roughly 13% of park staff have been pushed out due to pressured buyouts, retirements and resignations,” said President and CEO of National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), Theresa Pierno. “These workers are the backbone of our parks, maintaining trails, managing wildlife, guiding visitors, and protecting our natural and cultural heritage. Parks can’t thrive without the staff who protect them, which is why this bill is so critical right now. This bill would bring back essential staffing as parks face record-breaking crowds. NPCA commends Representatives Neguse, Huffman, Elfreth and Salinas for supporting the dedicated staff who care for America’s most cherished places every day.”

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    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Congressman Crow Works to Fight Corruption in Government

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Jason Crow (CO-06)

    AURORA — Congressman Jason Crow (D-CO-06) held a roundtable with Colorado constituents, along with End Citizens United, to discuss his efforts in Congress to fight corruption, enact meaningful campaign finance reform, get dark money out of politics and fight special interests.

    This constituent roundtable in Aurora follows shocking instances of corruption in the Trump Administration, including the President accepting a $400 million jet from a foreign government, the Trump family opening a private club for the wealthy to pay for direct access to government officials, and a high-dollar dinner hosted by Trump for the largest investors in his crypto meme coin that he has personally benefited from.

    “Ever since I came to Washington, I’ve fought to end corruption, take on special interests, and get dark money out of politics. Our system should represent all Americans, not just the elite few. That’s why I call out corruption when I see it and will continue to fight for common sense reforms,” said Congressman Crow.

    Participants included former U.S. Senator Jon Tester (D-MT); Tiffany Muller, President of End Citizens United; and Aly Belknap, Executive Director of Colorado Common Cause.

    Congressman Crow has long led the fight to root out corruption, including introducing the End Dark Money Act. This legislation would go a long way in fighting corruption and cracking down on dark money influencing U.S. elections. He also recently introduced the Shell Company Abuse Act, a bipartisan bill to limit foreign interference in U.S. Elections. Additionally, he previously served as the co-chair of the End Corruption Caucus, and has introduced other legislation, including the SHINE Act and DISCLOSE Act to end the influence of special interests in our elections. He also supports the TRUST in Congress Act to ban members of Congress and their families from owning or trading stocks.

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    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI China: Karol Nawrocki wins Poland’s presidential election

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

    Karol Nawrocki, an independent candidate backed by the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, won Poland’s presidential runoff election, according to the final vote count released by Polish National Electoral Commission (PKW) early Monday.

    The final result, reading “Elected in the second round,” was written next to Nawrocki’s name on the public website of PKW on Monday.

    Nawrocki, a historian and head of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, received 50.89 percent of the vote in the presidential runoff, ahead of Rafal Trzaskowski, the ruling Civic Coalition (KO) candidate and mayor of Warsaw, who garnered 49.11 percent.

    This was Nawrocki’s first presidential campaign — an uphill battle from the start. He consistently trailed Trzaskowski in polls, including Sunday evening’s initial exit survey.

    Born in 1983 in Gdansk, Nawrocki is set to succeed the incumbent president Andrzej Duda, whose second and final term ends on Aug. 6. 

    MIL OSI China News –

  • MIL-OSI China: Construction of 15 school buildings completed in Afghanistan’s Paktika province

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

    Authorities have completed the construction of the buildings of 15 schools in eastern Afghanistan’s Paktika province, the state-run Bakhtar news agency reported on Monday.

    The projects costed 192 million afghani (around 2.8 million U.S. dollars) in 14 districts, the state-owned media outlet added.

    Numerous schools have no proper buildings in Afghanistan, and the students learn in the open air. The Afghan interim government has announced to build buildings for schools across the country. 

    MIL OSI China News –

  • MIL-OSI China: Domestic helpers, nannies, butlers all in high demand

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

    An undated photo shows nannies learning how to take care of babies at a training center in Jimo, Shandong province. [Photo/Xinhua]

    Stella Tian, a 33-year-old office worker in Beijing, has two toddlers — a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old — and employs two nannies to help look after the children and simplify her life, as she and her husband have hectic work lives.

    “I have changed my nannies a few times. Some were not professional enough and didn’t get along well with my family members, and some had other plans that came up. It’s not easy to find a suitable nanny for the long term,” Tian said.

    Like Tian, demand for homemaking services among Chinese urban families is surging, and trained domestic helpers, nannies and nurses for the elderly are in great demand, promising to incubate a market expected to reach 1.3 trillion yuan ($181.1 billion) in 2026.

    The forecast, made by the Ministry of Commerce’s Department of Trade in Services and Commercial Services, together with data analysis provider iiMedia Research, said China’s household services sector has maintained rapid growth.

    Millions of middle-income Chinese families, especially those with young children and aging family members, are seeking professional helpers to ease life’s burdens, while it has sometimes been difficult for them to find satisfactory professional homemakers. Compared with diversified and high-quality demand, there are still problems such as a shortage of professional supply and nonstandard industry development.

    It is estimated that there is a shortage of over 20 million domestic workers in China, according to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. Demand for household services is no longer limited to daily chores, as online shopping and food deliveries have made it increasingly convenient for consumers, and they have indicated demand for higher-level specialized services, industry insiders said.

    To address such issues and further boost consumption, China has published a guideline to further promote the development of its home-based services sector, such as housekeeping, eldercare and childcare services, by expanding the scale and upgrading service quality. Such efforts aim to cultivate new growth points for the country’s services consumption, according to the document released by the Ministry of Commerce and eight other entities in late April.

    A series of measures have been proposed to improve the quality of household services supply, promote convenient consumption and optimize the consumption environment of the sector, according to the guideline.

    For example, the government will encourage household service enterprises to expand into emerging service areas such as professional deep cleaning, indoor air treatment and nutritional consulting, and strengthen integrated development with sectors such as home furnishings and interior decorating, the guideline said.

    In addition, social capital is encouraged to flow into the household services sector, and local governments may include homemaking occupations into local shortage directories. It is also suggested that more employment-oriented domestic service training should be offered, the guideline said.

    “Household services are an important sector that helps promote consumption, benefits people’s lives and stabilizes employment,” said Kong Dejun, director of the Department of Trade in Services and Commercial Services at the commerce ministry.

    “China will continue to expand domestic demand, strengthen supply-side structural reform, give full play to the country’s human resources advantages and cultivate new growth points of service consumption,” Kong said.

    Currently, China has over 30 million household service providers such as nannies and housekeepers. Last year, total revenue of the sector stood at 1.23 trillion yuan, up 6 percent year-on-year, the ministry said.

    Women are the main practitioners in the household services industry. The All-China Women’s Federation said the sector is showing a growing trend that practitioners are becoming younger and more professional, and it would continue to help promote the digitalization of the sector.

    On the demand side, the need for babysitters and caregivers for the elderly is huge. The number of those aged 60 and above has exceeded 300 million, and the over-65 population has topped 220 million. In addition, China has some 30 million youngsters aged below three, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

    China will cultivate a group of distinctive brands in the homemaking sector and foster more platform-based companies to help match supply and demand.

    “We will guide various regions to implement employment and entrepreneurship policies, and homemaking personnel should enjoy tax incentives and social security subsidies upon laws and regulations,” said Luo Shoufeng, deputy head of the department of migrant workers’ jobs at the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

    Catering to such demand, a number of platform-based homemaking service companies such as 58.com and Ayibang have continued to develop their business to raise the efficiency of supply-demand matching.

    Beijing-based life services platform 58.com said some 2.6 million homemakers have registered on the platform, and all of them will undergo pre-work training to ensure the provision of standardized and professional services.

    It has launched more than 200 training bases nationwide, integrating online teaching and offline training sessions, and the company became the first in the sector to introduce VIP membership services for consumers.

    “For emerging household services demand such as deep cleaning, clutter control and storage, pest management and home management services, we have launched more than 10 professional courses. Those include courses that we developed with entities in Japan and Hong Kong together, in an aim to foster more high-quality household service providers,” said Li Zijian, president of 58.com’s domestic business.

    In densely populated first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Guangdong province, demand for homemaking services has been the highest, 58.com found.

    Among different types of services, demand for household cleaning, home appliance cleaning, nannies and maternity matrons — or yuesao, who mainly care for newborns — has been the highest, the company said.

    Most consumers choose to hire day-shift nannies and part-time workers to assist with household chores and cooking. Demand for eldercare and childcare has continued to grow. In May, demand for nannies and eldercare service providers jumped 83 percent and 48 percent on a yearly basis, respectively.

    For deep cleaning of homes, consumers pay more attention to the thorough cleaning of kitchen oil stains, bathroom tiles and hard-to-clean corners and under spaces. For home appliances, cleaning demand for air-conditioners, range hoods and washing machines has been the highest. In May, demand for air-conditioning cleaning climbed by 76 percent month-on-month and 26 percent year-on-year.

    “Urbanites have shown an increasingly higher health awareness, and a growing number of consumers choose to clean their airconditioners before the arrival of summer to reduce respiratory diseases,” Li said.

    Meanwhile, China’s high-net-worth families are becoming younger, and they are showing a growing demand for hiring private butlers as they embrace such a trend in Western countries, and more college graduates, including those who have studied abroad, are looking to butlers as career choices.

    Private butlers usually act as senior life consultants for their employers’ core family management issues. Unlike ordinary housekeeping service personnel, private butlers usually need to understand advanced family affairs.

    They usually speak one or two foreign languages, understand children’s educational planning, and have knowledge about issues such as nutrition, luxury products and ironing. They also cook multiple cuisines and are skillful at safeguarding and risk management, according to Meiyinghui Family Service Co Ltd, a Beijing-based butler management company.

    The average salary of a private butler is about 200,000 yuan to 400,000 yuan annually for those who have one or two years of work experience, and the salary grows as they master more skills, thus attracting many people to engage in this profession.

    “Employers would like to hire young butlers, including college graduates. The demand has become higher, as more families have a growing awareness of hiring butlers. Besides, many families have been quite busy with business matters after the COVID-19 pandemic, and they need to hire someone for household management,” said Zhang Ran, founder and president of Meiyinghui Family Service.

    “Now, 70 percent of butlers in China are females. A lot of graduates and qualified people are still hesitating about engaging in this profession, and the supply of butlers is seeing a shortage. We plan to host a session to introduce the career path of the profession and attract more graduates,” Zhang said.

    Besides major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, some families in second-tier cities such as Qingdao in Shandong province and Shijiazhuang, Hebei province have also indicated high demand for hiring butlers, the company found.

    Butlers usually need to take a few months of training classes before they start working. Li Siwen is a teacher who conducts training sessions for butlers, earning a master’s degree in hotel management from the University of Manchester.

    “I’m quite interested in this sector. I used to work in the human resources management department of a company, and this job is similar. I mainly teach students psychology, color matching, sorting and organization of items, and business etiquette,” Li said.

    MIL OSI China News –

  • MIL-OSI China: Chinese well-drilling technology turns Egypt’s deserts into farmland

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

    As summer begins, patches of lush farmland stretch across Egypt’s Western Desert, an area that, until recently, was dominated by sand and rocks. Thanks to the deep wells drilled by the Egypt branch of China’s Zhongman Petroleum and Natural Gas Group (ZPEC), wheat, alfalfa and potatoes now thrive in tidy rows under the desert sun.

    These wells, part of a broader effort to reclaim desert land for agriculture, have transformed the barren landscape into productive farmland, offering a model for sustainable development in arid regions and underscoring the potential of international cooperation in addressing food security and ecological restoration.

    The project is an example of the high-quality Belt and Road cooperation. In Egypt, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has evolved into a platform for transformative collaboration, extending beyond infrastructure to encompass agriculture, technology and industry. By tackling pressing challenges such as food insecurity, unemployment and technological gaps, the initiative is helping to lay the groundwork for more resilient and sustainable growth.

    Drilling for resource of life

    Egypt, home to over 100 million people, grapples with the daunting task of expanding farmland in a country where only about 4 percent of the land is arable. To reduce reliance on food imports, the Egyptian government has stepped up efforts to reclaim desert land since 2015, with water sources development a crucial part of this push.

    ZPEC, operating in Egypt since 2016, has played a key role. Its teams — composed of Chinese and Egyptian employees — have drilled more than 680 wells across the country, from the Sinai Peninsula to Aswan.

    This photo taken on May 3, 2025 shows a well-drilling rig at night at the site of Owainat Water Well Project in the desert of New Valley Governorate, Egypt. [Photo/Xinhua]

    Zhao Baojiang, project manager for ZPEC’s Owainat well-drilling operation in Egypt, said his team has drilled 63 wells, each about 450 meters deep, in less than a year by overcoming such challenges as extreme temperatures, sandstorms, complex geology and logistical hurdles.

    “We’re having our first wheat harvest this year, and we’re very happy to cooperate with the Chinese company,” said Abou-elKhier Ibrahim, manager of the Owainat sector of the Future of Egypt agricultural project.

    Wheat, Egypt’s dietary cornerstone, is in high demand. According to a report released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, per capita wheat consumption in Egypt averages about 146 kg annually.

    Mohamed Elhosary, electromechanical division manager of the Owainat sector of the Future of Egypt agricultural project, estimated that each feddan (about 0.42 hectares) of the farmland in Owainat can yield 3 tons of wheat.

    “The yield from each feddan is sufficient to cover the annual wheat consumption of at least 20 Egyptians,” Zhao Wutao, general manager of the ZPEC branch in Egypt, told Xinhua.

    Innovation brings benefits

    In Minya Province, 360 km south of Cairo, ZPEC is also supporting the farm of Canal Sugar Company, a joint venture between Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. The farm allocated a significant portion of its land to sugar beet production for a large-scale local refinery.

    ZPEC engineers faced technical hurdles there as well. According to Abumesalam Mohamed Gouda, operations manager of ZPEC’s Egypt branch, the groundwater layer in Minya’s desert is unstable, and large-diameter drilling poses risks of collapse and leakage.

    Workers operate on a well-drilling rig at the site of Owainat Water Well Project in the desert of New Valley Governorate, Egypt, on May 3, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]

    To address these issues, the company’s technical team introduced air foam drilling technology, which uses stable foam as drilling fluid to prevent leakage and increase efficiency. This method was later shared with local companies to help improve their performance.

    Hassan Gamal, technical manager of the Canal Sugar farm, said that the 193 wells drilled by ZPEC can irrigate 30,000 feddans (12,600 hectares) of land. In 2023 alone, the farm planted 22,000 feddans (9,240 hectares) of beets, which were processed into sugar and sold widely. “This wouldn’t have been possible without ZPEC’s wells,” he said.

    Beyond agriculture, ZPEC’s work has also supported local employment and skills training.

    Mohamed Gaber, who joined ZPEC as a worker five years ago, is now a platform manager. He credited his Chinese colleagues for teaching him skills and helping him navigate challenges. “I always strive to do my best with the support of teammates, and I’m proud to grow in such a team,” he said.

    Growing Partnership

    For many Egyptians, these projects represent more than infrastructure — they represent progress toward greater food security, stable income, and a hopeful future, experts said, expressing their eagerness to expand collaboration with Chinese enterprises.

    “This is a notable and very positive contribution by the Chinese company in advancing agricultural development in Egypt,” Ahmed Galal, dean of the Higher Institute for Agricultural Cooperation in Cairo, told Xinhua.

    “Any efforts in extracting water or increasing Egypt’s water resources directly lead to positive results for agricultural development in Egypt … We certainly hope it continues,” he said.

    The well-drilling project is just part of broader cooperation between Egypt and China under the BRI. Other projects include the Central Business District of Egypt’s new administrative capital, a textile city in Sadat City, and the China-Egypt TEDA Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone in Ain Sokhna. These ventures are seen by Egyptian experts as essential engines for job creation, industrialization and joint development.

    This photo taken on May 3, 2025 shows makeshift rooms for workers at the site of Owainat Water Well Project in the desert of New Valley Governorate, Egypt. [Photo/Xinhua]

    “China is now increasingly viewed as a development partner that contributes to job creation and improved living standards,” said Waleed Gaballah, a member of the Egyptian Association for Political Economy, Statistics and Legislation.

    He stressed China’s leadership in renewable energy, electric vehicles and advanced manufacturing. “Providing access to these technologies at a reasonable cost to countries participating in the BRI could make a major shift in the way of life in their societies.”

    Echoing his view, Galal said he looks forward to more Chinese investment in his country, as the ongoing Egypt-China cooperation under the BRI is “fruitful and promising.”

    “We in Egypt truly need all such investments. I also hope this cooperation grows in all fields, because it is, first of all, mutually beneficial — a win-win situation in terms of shared gains and joint development,” he said.

    MIL OSI China News –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Over 3,300 respond to SIA Get Licensed consultation

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    Press release

    Over 3,300 respond to SIA Get Licensed consultation

    The Security Industry Authority (SIA) public consultation on proposed changes to licensing criteria receives over 3,300 responses.

    The consultation was centred around a number of proposed changes to further strengthen the criteria that determines what makes someone eligible to hold an SIA licence. 

    This included changes to the criteria on criminality and providing greater transparency on the wider ‘fit and proper’ test that all applicants and licence holders must meet. When implemented, the changes would also update the list of relevant offences the SIA takes into consideration in licensing decisions.

    Tim Archer, SIA Director of Licensing and Standards, said: 

    We were very happy to see such a strong level of response to our consultation. The proposed changes are designed and intended to further enhance public protection. Whilst we now need to undertake a detailed analysis of the responses, it looks like our proposals have been strongly supported by those working in the industry.

    Based on the feedback received from the consultation, the SIA will finalise its recommendations and seek ministerial approval in the autumn. If the proposed changes are agreed by ministers, the SIA will update Get Licensed and the new rules will come into effect.

    Background

    The SIA is the organisation responsible for regulating the private security industry in the UK, reporting to the Home Secretary under the terms of the Private Security Industry Act 2001. The SIA’s main duties are the compulsory licensing of individuals undertaking designated activities and managing the voluntary Approved Contractor Scheme (ACS).

    Media enquiries

    For media enquiries only, please contact:

    SIA press office

    Updates to this page

    Published 2 June 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Quiz the water experts about Taunton’s bathing water quality

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    Press release

    Quiz the water experts about Taunton’s bathing water quality

    Fancied a dip in the River Tone but unsure about its water quality? Come and ask your questions and share any concerns about the French Weir Park bathing water.

    Water quality experts will be at COACH, French Weir Park, Taunton on Saturday 21 June from 10am to 1pm

    Experts from the Environment Agency, Wessex Water, Somerset Wildlife Trust and Friends of French Weir Park will be ready to answer questions about the River Tone bathing water at the COACH Community Hub in French Weir Park on Saturday 21 June 2025 from 10am to 1pm.  

    These are just a few representatives of the steering group formed to improve bathing water quality at this site, which was officially designated in 2024.  

    Being designated means regular and consistent water samples are taken for analysis at set times of the year to check the levels of bacteria like E. Coli and intestinal enterococci.  However, being ‘designated’ doesn’t automatically mean water meets public hygiene standards for activities like swimming – a problem the new group is tackling.  

    Jim Flory of the Environment Agency said:

    There are strict standards on what goes into rivers to protect wildlife and the natural ecology of our rivers. But the standards to protect human health are higher.  

    A lot of investigation will be needed to uncover what sources of pollution feed into the River Tone. The public can help speed that up by eliminating the most obvious sources like picking up dog poo or looking after their septic tanks. This will free up people to focus on more serious issues.

    Results of all samples taken during the current round of monitoring will be available online at Swimfo to help inform public choice before taking a dip, Environment Agency officers will patrol the surrounding area, looking for obvious sources of pollution entering the watercourse as well as inspecting water company pipes and other types of equipment that discharges water into the river. 

    Background

    • 450 bathing waters in England were sampled last year and classified as either Excellent, Good, Sufficient or Poor. These classifications and information about water quality will be displayed at each bathing water and on bathing water profiles available to access on the Environment Agency’s Swimfo website.  

    • The Environment Agency took 7,420 samples during the 2024 bathing season. The Environment Agency takes up to 20 water samples at each of England’s designated bathing waters during the season.  

    • Our standards for bathing waters come from guidelines produced by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and are science based. They have been adopted by many countries through the EU Bathing Water Directive, which England’s Bathing Water Regulations are based on.

    Updates to this page

    Published 2 June 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Pasifika recipients say King’s Birthday honours not just theirs alone

    By Teuila Fuatai, RNZ Pacific senior journalist, Iliesa Tora, and Christina Persico

    A New Zealand-born Niuean educator says being recognised in the King’s Birthday honours list reflects the importance of connecting young tagata Niue in Aotearoa to their roots.

    Mele Ikiua, who hails from the village of Hakupu Atua in Niue, has been named a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to vagahau Niue language and education.

    She told RNZ Pacific the most significant achievement in her career to date had been the promotion of vagahau Niue in the NCEA system.

    The change in 2023 enabled vagahau Niue learners to earn literacy credits in the subject, and receive recognition beyond “achieved” in the NCEA system. That, Ikiua said, was about continuing to increase learning opportunities for young Niue people in Aotearoa.

    “Because if you look at it, the work that we do — and I say ‘we’ because there’s a lot of people other than myself — we’re here to try and maintain, and try and hold onto, our language because they say our language is very, very endangered.

    “The bigger picture for young Niue learners who haven’t connected, or haven’t been able to learn about their vagahau or where they come from [is that] it’s a safe place for them to come and learn . . . There’s no judgement, and they learn the basic foundations before they can delve deeper.”

    Her work and advocacy for Niuean culture and vagahau Niue has also extended beyond the formal education system.

    Niue stage at Polyfest
    Since 2014, Ikiua had been the co-ordinator of the Niue stage at Polyfest, a role she took up after being involved in the festival as a tutor. She also established Three Star Nation, a network which provides leadership, educational and cultural programmes for young people.

    Last year, Ikiua also set up the Tokiofa Arts Academy, the world’s first Niue Performing Arts Academy. And in February this year, Three Star Nation held Hologa Niue — the first ever Niuean arts and culture festival in Auckland.

    Niuean community members in Auckland . . . Mele Ikiua with Derrick Manuela Jackson (left) and her brother Ron Viviani. Image: RNZ Pacific

    She said being recognised in the King’s Birthday honours list was a shared achievement.

    “This award is not only mine. It belongs to the family. It belongs to the village. And my colleagues have been amazing too. It’s for us all.”

    She is one of several Pasifika honoured in this weekend’s list.

    Others include long-serving Auckland councillor and former National MP Anae Arthur Anae; Air Rarotonga chief executive officer and owner Ewan Francis Smith; Okesene Galo; Ngatepaeru Marsters and Viliami Teumohenga.

    Cook Islander, Berry Rangi has been awarded a King’s Service Medal for services to the community, particularly Pacific peoples.

    Berry Rangi has been awarded a King’s Service Medal for services to the community, particularly Pacific peoples. Image: Berry Rangi/RNZ Pacific

    Lifted breast screening rates
    She has been instrumental in lifting the coverage rates of breast and cervical screening for Pacific women in Hawke’s Bay.

    “When you grow up in the islands, you’re not for yourself – you’re for everybody,” she said.

    “You’re for the village, for your island.”

    She said when she moved to Napier there were very few Pasifika in the city — there were more in Hastings, the nearby city to the south.

    “I did things because I knew there was a need for our people, and I’d just go out and do it without having to be asked.”

    Berry Rangi also co-founded Tiare Ahuriri, the Napier branch of the national Pacific women’s organisation, PACIFICA.

    She has been a Meals on Wheels volunteer with the Red Cross in Napier since 1990 and has been recognised for her 34 years of service in this role.

    Maintaining a heritage craft
    She also contributes to maintaining the heritage craft of tivaevae (quilting) by delivering workshops to people of all ages and communities across Hawke’s Bay.

    Another honours recipient is Uili Galo, who has been made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the Tokelau community.

    Galo, of the Tokelau Aotearoa Leaders Council, said it is very gratifying to see his community’s efforts acknolwedged at the highest level.

    “I’ve got a lot of people behind me, my elders that I need to acknowledge and thank . . .  my kainga,” he said.

    “While the award has been given against my name, it’s them that have been doing all the hard work.”

    He said his community came to Aotearoa in the 1970s.

    “Right through they’ve been trying to capture their culture and who they are as a people. But obviously as new generations are born here, they assimilate into the pa’alangi world, and somehow lose a sense of who they are.

    “A lot of our youth are not quite sure who they are. They know obviously the pa’alangi world they live in, but the challenge of them is to know their identity, that’s really important.”

    Pasifika sports duo say recognition is for everyone
     Two sporting recipients named as Members of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the King’s Birthday Honours say the honour is for all those who have worked with them.

    Pauline-Jean Henrietta Luyten with Eroni Clarke of the Pasifika Rugby Advisory group. Image: RNZ Pacific

    Pauline-Jean Henrietta Luyten, who is of Tongan heritage, has been involved with rugby at different levels over the years, and is currently a co-chair of New Zealand Rugby’s Pacific Advisory Group.

    Annie Burma Teina Tangata Esita Scoon, of Cook Islands heritage, has been involved with softball since she played the sport in school years ago.

    While they have been “committed” to their sports loves, their contribution to the different Pasifika communities they serve is being recognised.

    Luyten told RNZ Pacific she was humbled and shocked that people took the time to actually put a nomination through.

    “You know, all the work we do, it’s in service of all of our communities and our families, and you don’t really look for recognition,” she said.

    “The family, the community, everyone who have worked with me and encouraged me they all deserve this recognition.”

    Luyten, who has links in Ha’apai, Tonga, said she has loved being involved in rugby, starting off as a junior player and went through the school competition.

    Community and provincial rugby
    After moving down to Timaru, she was involved with community and provincial rugby, before she got pulled into New Zealand Rugby Pacific Advisory Group.

    Luyten made New Zealand rugby history as the first woman of Pacific Island descent to be appointed to a provincial union board in 2019.

    She was a board member of the South Canterbury Rugby Football Union and played fullback at Timaru Girls’ High School back in 1997, when rugby competition was first introduced .

    Her mother Ailine was one of the first Tongan women to take up residence in Timaru. That was back in the early 1970s.

    As well as a law degree at Otago University Luyten completed a Bachelor of Science in 2005 and then went on to complete post-graduate studies in sports medicine in 2009.

    Pauline-Jean Henrietta Luyten with Sina Latu of the Tonga Society in South Canterbury. Image: RNZ Pacific

    She is also a founding member of the Tongan Society South Canterbury which was established in 2016.

    Opportunities for Pasifika families
    On her rugby involvement, she said the game provides opportunities for Pasifika families and she is happy to be contributing as an administrator.

    “Where I know I can contribute has been in that non-playing space and sort of understanding the rugby system, because it’s so big, so complex and kind of challenging.”

    Fighting the stereotypes that “Pasifika can’t be directors” has been a major one.

    “Some people think there’s not enough of us out there. But for me, I’m like, nah we’ve got people,” she stated.

    “We’ve got heaps of people all over the show that can actually step into these roles.

    “They may be experienced in different sectors, like the health sector, social sector, financial, but maybe haven’t quite crossed hard enough into the rugby space. So I feel it’s my duty to to do everything I can to create those spaces for our kids, for the future.”

    Call for two rugby votes
    Earlier this month the group registered the New Zealand Pasifika Rugby Council, which moved a motion, with the support of some local unions, that Pasifika be given two votes within New Zealand Rugby.

    “So this was an opportunity too for us to actually be fully embedded into the New Zealand Rugby system.

    “But unfortunately, the magic number was 61.3 [percent] and we literally got 61, so it was 0.3 percent less voting, and that was disappointing.”

    Luyten said she and the Pacific advisory team will keep working and fighting to get what they have set their mind on.

    For Scoon, the acknowledgement was recognition of everyone else who are behind the scenes, doing the work.

    Annie Scoon, of Cook Islands heritage, has been involved with softball since she played the sport in school years ago. Image: RNZ Pacific

    She said the award was for the Pasifika people in her community in the Palmerston North area.

    Voice is for ‘them’
    “To me what stands out is that our Pasifika people will be recognized that they’ve had a voice out there,” she said.

    “So, it’s for them really; it’s not me, it’s them. They get the recognition that’s due to them. I love my Pacific people down here.”

    Scoon is a name well known among the Palmerston North Pasifika and softball communities.

    The 78-year-old has played, officiated, coached and now administers the game of softball.

    She was born in the Cook Islands and moved with her family to New Zealand in 1948. Her first involvement with softball was in school, as a nine-year-old in Auckland.

    Then she helped her children as a coach.

    “And then that sort of lead on to learning how to score the game, then coaching the game, yes, and then to just being an administrator of the game,” she said.

    Passion for the game
    “I’ve gone through softball – I’ve been the chief scorer at national tournaments, I’ve selected at tournaments, and it’s been good because I’d like to think that what I taught my children is a passion for the game, because a lot of them are still involved.”

    A car accident years ago has left her wheelchair-bound.

    She has also competed as at the Paraplegic Games where she said she proved that “although disabled, there were things that we could do if you just manipulate your body a wee bit and try and think it may not pan out as much as possible, but it does work”.

    “All you need to do is just try get out there, but also encourage other people to come out.”

    She has kept passing on her softball knowledge to school children.

    In her community work, Scoon said she just keeps encouraging people to keep working on what they want to achieve and not to shy away from speaking their mind.

    Setting a goal
    “I told everybody that they set a goal and work on achieving that goal,” she said.

    “And also encouraged alot of them to not be shy and don’t back off if you want something.”

    She said one of the challenging experiences, in working with the Pasifika community, is the belief by some that they may not be good enough.

    Her advice to many is to learn what they can and try to improve, so that they can get better in life.

    “I wasn’t born like this,” she said, referring to her disability.

    “You pick out what suits you but because our island people — we’re very shy people and we’re proud. We’re very proud people. Rather than make a fuss, we’d rather step back.

    “They shouldn’t and they need to stand up and they want to be recognised.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Eugene Doyle: Writing in the time of the Gaza genocide

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    I want to share a writer’s journey — of living and writing through the Genocide.  Where I live and how I live could not be further from the horror playing out in Gaza and, increasingly, on the West Bank.

    Yet, because my country provides military, intelligence and diplomatic support to Israel and the US, I feel compelled to answer the call to support Palestine by doing the one thing I know best: writing.

    I live in a paradise that supports genocide
     I am one of the blessed of the earth. I’m surrounded by similarly fortunate people. I live in a heart-stoppingly beautiful bay.

    Even in winter I swim in the marine reserve across the road from our house.  Seals, Orca, all sorts of fish, octopus, penguins and countless other marine life so often draw me from my desk towards the rocky shore.  My home is on the Wild South Coast of Wellington. Every few days our local Whatsapp group fires a message, for example:  “Big pod of dolphins heading into the bay!”

    I live in Aotearoa New Zealand, a country that, in the main, is yawning its way through a genocide and this causes me daily frustration and pain.  It drives me back to the keyboard.

    I am surrounded by good friends and suffer no fears for my security. I am materially comfortable and well-fed. I love being a writer. Who could ask for more?

    I write, on average, a 1200-word article per week. It’s a seven days a week task and most of my writing time is spent reading, scouring news sites from around the world, note-taking, fact-checking, fretting, talking to people and thinking about the story that will emerge, always so different from my starting concept.

    I’m in regular contact with historians, ex-diplomats, geopolitical analysts, writers and activists from around the world and count myself fortunate to know these exceptional people.

    This article is different, simpler; it is personal — one person’s experience of writing from the far periphery of the conflict.

    I don’t want to live in a country that turns a blind or a sleep-laden eye to one of the great crimes against humanity. I have come to the hurtful realisation that I have a very different worldview from most people I know and from most people I thought I knew.

    Fortunately, I have old friends who share in this struggle and I have made many new friends here in New Zealand and across the world who follow their own burning hearts and work every day to challenge the role our governments play in supporting Israel to destroy the lives of millions of innocent people. To me, these people — and above all the Palestinian people in their steadfast resistance — are the heroes who fuel my life.

    Writing is fighting
     Most of us have multiple demands on our time; three of my good writer friends are grappling with cancer, another lost his job for challenging the official line and now must work long hours in a menial day job to keep the family afloat. Despite these challenges they all head to the keyboard to continue the struggle.  Writing is fighting.

    There’s so little we can all do but, as Māori people say: “ahakoa he iti, he pounamu” – it may only be a little but every bit counts, every bit is as precious as jade.

    That sentiment is how movements for change have been built – anti-Vietnam war, anti-nuclear, anti-Apartheid — all of them pro-humanity, all of them about standing with the victims not with the oppressors, nor on the sideline muttering platitudes and excuses.  As another writer said: “Washing one’s hands of the struggle between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” (Paolo Friere)  Back to the keyboard.

    My life until October 7th was more focussed on environmental issues, community organisation and water politics.  I had ceased being “a writer” years ago.

    One day in October 2023 I was in the kitchen, ranting about what was being done to the Palestinians and what was obviously about to be done to the Palestinians: genocide.  My emotions were high because I had had a deeply unpleasant exchange with a good friend of mine on the golf course (yes, I play golf). He told me that the people of Gaza deserved to be collectively punished for the Hamas attack of October 7th.

    I had angrily shot back at him, correctly but not diplomatically, that this put him shoulder-to-shoulder with the Nazis and all those who imposed collective punishment on civilian populations.  My wife, to her credit, had heard enough: “Get upstairs and write an article!  You have to start writing!”

    It changed my life. She was right, of course.  Impotent rage and parlour-room speeches achieve nothing. Writing is fighting.

    ’40 beheaded babies survived the Hamas attack’
     My first article “40 Beheaded Babies Survived the Hamas Attack” was a warning drawn from history about narratives and what the Americans and Israelis were really softening the ground for. Since then I have had about 70 articles published, all in Australia and New Zealand, some in China, the USA, throughout Asia Pacific, Europe and on all sorts of email databases, including those sent out by the exemplary Ambassador Chas Freeman in the US and another by my good friend and human rights lawyer J V Whitbeck in Paris.

    All my articles are on my own site solidarity.co.nz.

    As with historians, part of a writer’s job is to spot patterns and recurrent themes in stories, to detect lies and expose deeper agendas in the official narratives.  The mainstream media is surprisingly bad at this.  Or chooses to be.

    Just like the Incubator Babies story in Iraq, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in Vietnam, reaching right back to the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana in 1898, propaganda is often used as a prelude to atrocities.  The blizzard of lies after October 7th were designed to be-monster the Palestinians and prepare the ground for what would obviously follow.

    The narrative of beheaded babies promoted by world leaders, including President Biden, was powerfully amplified by our mainstream media; journalists at the highest level of the trade spread the lies.

    I have to tell you, it was frightening in October 2023 to challenge these narratives.  Every day I pored through the Israeli news site Ha’aretz for updates. Eventually the narrative fell apart — but by then the damage was done. Thousands of real babies had been murdered by the Israelis.

    Never before have so many of my fellow writers been killedFollowing events in Palestine closely, it still comes as a shock when a journalist I have read, seen, heard is suddenly killed by the Israelis. This has happened several times. When it does I take a coffee and walk up the ridiculously steep track behind my house and sit high above the bay on a bench seat I built (badly).

    That bench is my “top office” where I like to chew thoughts in my mind as I see the cold waves break on the brown rocks below.  High up there I feel detached and better able to ask and answer the questions I need to process in my writing.

    Why does our media pay little attention to the killing of so many fellow writers?  Why don’t they call out the Israelis for having killed more journalists than any military machine in history? Why the silence around Israel’s  “Where’s Daddy?” killing programme that has silenced so many Palestinian journalists and doctors by tracking their mobile phones and striking with a missile just when they arrive back home to their families?  Why does “the world’s most moral army” commit such ugly crimes? Where’s the solidarity with our fellow journalists?

    Is it because their skin is mainly dark?  Is that why, according to Radio New Zealand’s own report on its Gaza coverage, New Zealanders have more in common with Israelis than we do with Palestinians? RNZ refers to this as our “proximity” to Israelis. They’re right, of course: by failing to shoulder our positive duty to act decisively against Israel and the US we show that we share values with people committing genocide.

    Is this why stories about our own region — Kanaky New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands and so on, get so little coverage? I have heard many times the immense frustration of journalists I know who work on Pacific issues. The answer is simple: we have greater “proximity” to Benjamin Netanyahu than we do to the Polynesians or Melanesians in our own backyard. Really?

    Such questions need answers. Back to the keyboard.

    Solidarity
     I try not to permit myself despair. It’s a privilege we shouldn’t allow ourselves while our government supports the genocide.  Sometimes that’s hard.

    There’s a photo I’ve seen of a Palestinian mother holding her daughter that haunts me.  In traditional thobe, her head covered by her simple robe, she could easily be Mary, mother of Jesus. She stares straight at the camera. Her expression is hard to read. Shock? Disbelief? Wounded humanity?  Blood flows from below her eyes and stains her cheek and chin. Her forehead is blackened, probably from an explosive blast. She holds her child, a girl of perhaps 10, also damaged and blackened from the Israeli attack.  The child is asleep or unconscious; I can’t tell which.  The mother holds her as lovingly, as poignantly, as Mary did to Jesus when he came down from the cross.  La Pietà in Gaza.

    Why do some of us care less about this pair? Where is our humanity that we can let this happen day after day until the last syllable of our sickening rhetoric that somehow we in the West are morally superior has been vomited out.

    I’ll give the last word to another writer:

    “Verily I say unto you, in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Decades of searching and a chance discovery: why finding Leadbeater’s possum in NSW is such big news

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Distinguished Professor of Ecology, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University

    Until now, Victorians believed their state was the sole home for Leadbeater’s possum, their critically endangered state faunal emblem. This tiny marsupial is clinging to life in a few pockets of mountain ash and snow gum habitat in the Central Highlands of Victoria.

    But a few days ago, seven grainy photos taken by a trail camera in New South Wales revealed something very unexpected: a Leadbeater’s possum hundreds of kilometres away in the wet forests of Kosciuszko National Park.

    For decades, we and other researchers have sought proof this possum existed in these forests. Now we have it. This is a moment of celebration. But it also signals the importance of well-resourced biodiversity surveys in uncovering our most threatened species and large national parks for conserving them.

    While this newly discovered population reduces the risk of extinction, it doesn’t change the decline and risk of extinction of its Victorian relatives – or the steps needed to safeguard them.

    These photos from Kosciuszko National Park are the first proof that Leadbeater’s possum has a NSW population.
    NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, CC BY-NC-ND

    Detected entirely by chance

    In 2024, New South Wales threatened species ecologists Fred Ford and Martin Schulz set about looking for an entirely different species, the endangered smoky mouse. To find it, they set up a wide array of camera traps throughout wet forest areas of Kosciuszko National Park. A year later, they collected them and trawled through millions of photos.

    Among all these images (including of smoky mice), there were seven which stunned them. A camera deployed near Yarrangobilly Caves captured a tiny possum scampering through leaf litter, holding its distinctive club-shaped tail erect. The possum looks around the monitoring site, showing its back and face stripes and heart-shaped face.

    Experts at The Australian National University and Zoos Victoria verified the photos, setting the ecology world abuzz.

    A trail camera near Yarrangobilly Caves in Kosciuszko National Park captured the sighting.
    Destinations Journey/Shutterstock

    A hunch confirmed

    While we are delighted at this remarkable discovery, the detection is not a complete surprise.

    Over three decades ago, this article’s lead author searched for Leadbeater’s possum around Yarrangobilly and many other parts of Kosciuszko National Park, guided by a bioclimatic model suggesting the cool wet forests in Kosciuszko National Park should suit the possum.

    But detection cameras were not available then, and this possum is notoriously hard to spot. It’s tiny, nocturnal and spends its waking hours dashing through the dense understory of some of the world’s tallest forests looking for nectar, sap and insects.

    Species experts from Zoos Victoria and Deakin University have also scouted parts of Kosciuszko National Park over the past decade, identifying potentially promising habitat.

    In 2010 we got confirmation the possum had once occurred in the area, when jaw bones were identified among bones regurgitated by owls on the floor of a nearby cave.

    But other bones from the cave floor date back an estimated 140–200 years. The bones were far from proof of a living population.

    The possum’s existence remained an open question until these photos.

    What does this mean for this possum?

    We don’t know anything about this newly discovered Leadbeater’s possum population in NSW, other than the fact that it exists. Given the distance from the Victorian populations, we suspect that they may be genetically distinct.

    In theory, the existence of a separate population 250 km away from the Victorian populations cuts the risk a single megafire or other catastrophe could push the species to extinction.

    But while welcome, the discovery doesn’t reduce the need to urgently protect surviving Victorian populations, which remain highly threatened by bushfire, climate change, predation by cats, and the legacy of logging and land clearing.

    In Victoria, some populations have dwindled as low as 40 animals and inbreeding is now a concern.

    The possum typically relies on large old trees with hollows where it can breed and den. But these trees have substantially declined in Victoria over the past 150 years. Leadbeater’s possum also needs smaller trees for feeding and movement.

    Surveys across the historical range of the species in Victoria since 2017 have failed to find any other hidden populations. Most surveys have found the habitat highly degraded from logging and fire.

    The discovery won’t alter the possum’s critically endangered status at this stage, nor the ongoing work to support it.

    In welcome news, the NSW Environment Minister announced the possum’s state conservation listing will be fast-tracked.

    Of surveys and parks

    Why did it take so long to find the possum? The main reason: a lack of resources preventing targeted investigations.

    Even basic inventories of species have not been done across many of Australia’s important conservation areas.

    Without well conducted surveys and monitoring, we are left overly reliant on chance detections for critical information. There could be other populations of imperilled species waiting to be rediscovered.

    Properly managing our growing number of threatened species shouldn’t be based on luck. It should be enabled by adequate resources for threatened species recovery teams to discover, map, protect and manage threatened species and their habitat.

    Increasing federal spending on the care of nature to 1% of the budget would go a very long way to closing these gaps.

    Trail cameras, call playback and environmental DNA sampling mean we can now survey large and remote natural areas with relatively little effort for long periods of time.

    Big parks are essential

    Kosciuszko National Park supports much more than Australia’s highest mountains. The huge park spans 690,000 hectares, much of it forest.

    Many of our most imperilled species are hard to detect. Protecting extensive areas of good-quality habitat boosts the survival chances for these species, even if we don’t yet have proof of life.

    With so little high-quality habitat left in Australia, proper protection through new national parks (including in Victoria) is vitally important for the possum and many other species.

    Passive protection isn’t enough either – adequate funding is critical to stop the environmental condition of parks from declining, due to threats like invasive species and extreme fires.

    The world still contains wonder

    These seven photos have given ecologists and nature lovers a real boost to their spirits. As detection techniques improve, what else is out there waiting to be found?

    The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Leadbeater’s possum experts Dan Harley, Arabella Eyre, John Woinarski and Brendan Wintle to this article.

    David Lindenmayer receives funding from the Australian Government and the Victorian Government. He is a Councillor with the Biodiversity Council and a Member of Birds Australia.

    Darcy Watchorn works for Zoos Victoria, a not-for-profit zoo-based conservation organisation. He is a member of the Ecological Society of Australia, the Australian Mammal Society, the Society for Conservation Biology, and the Royal Society of Victoria.

    Jaana Dielenberg was employed by the now-ended Threatened Species Recovery Hub of the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program, which conducted research on the Leadbeater’s possum in Victoria. She is a Charles Darwin University Fellow and is employed by the University of Melbourne and the Biodiversity Council.

    – ref. Decades of searching and a chance discovery: why finding Leadbeater’s possum in NSW is such big news – https://theconversation.com/decades-of-searching-and-a-chance-discovery-why-finding-leadbeaters-possum-in-nsw-is-such-big-news-257957

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • South Korea’s political crisis from martial law to snap election

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (4)

    South Koreans will go to the polls in a snap election on Tuesday, voting for a president to replace Yoon Suk Yeol, who was ousted from office in April after his brief martial law attempt sent shockwaves through the country.

    Here are key events from martial law to Yoon’s impeachment, arrest, and indictment, and election day.

    December 3, 2024: Shortly before 10:30 p.m. (1330 GMT), Yoon declares on national television he is imposing martial law to root out “anti-state forces” and overcome political deadlock.

    An hour later the military issues a decree banning activity by political parties and lawmakers, and troops and police descend on the opposition-controlled parliament. Staffers use barricades and fire extinguishers to ward off special operations soldiers who arrive by helicopter and break windows as they enter parliament.

    Lawmakers hop fences to avoid the security cordons and crowds of protesters gather.

    December 4: Defying the military’s order, 190 lawmakers in the early hours unanimously vote to reject Yoon’s declaration and troops begin to leave.

    About three and a half hours later, Yoon gives another televised speech, announcing he is lifting martial law. The decree was in effect for about six hours.

    Opposition parties submit motion to impeach Yoon.

    U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell says Yoon “badly misjudged” his decision to declare martial law, which was “deeply problematic” and “illegitimate.”

    December 5: Yoon’s People Power Party, although divided, decides to oppose his impeachment.

    Yoon accepts the resignation of Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun. Police investigate Yoon, Kim and the interior minister on accusations of treason and related crimes over the declaration of martial law after opposition parties and activists filed complaints.

    December 6: PPP leader Han Dong-hoon says Yoon must be removed from power for trying to impose martial law. Some party members urge Yoon to resign.

    December 7: Yoon addresses the nation to apologise, saying he will put his fate in the hands of the PPP but not saying he will resign.

    A vote to impeach Yoon fails as the PPP boycotts, depriving parliament of a quorum.

    December 8: Prosecutors name Yoon as the subject of a criminal investigation over the martial law attempt. Ex-Defence Minister Kim is arrested.

    December 9: The justice ministry bars Yoon from leaving South Korea.

    December 10: Kwak Jong-geun, commander of the Army Special Warfare Command, tells a parliamentary committee that Yoon gave an order to “drag out” lawmakers from parliament after declaring martial law.

    Ex-Defence Minister Kim attempts suicide in jail.

    December 11: Police try to search Yoon’s office but are blocked from entering the building.

    December 12: Yoon says in another televised speech he will “fight to the end”, alleging North Korea had hacked South Korea’s election commission and expressing doubt over his party’s landslide election defeat in April. The National Election Commission denies the claim.

    December 14: Parliament impeaches Yoon with the support of 204 of the 300 lawmakers in the one-chamber parliament. At least 12 PPP members vote to impeach.

    Yoon’s presidential powers are suspended, and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo becomes acting president.

    December 16: The Constitutional Court begins reviewing the impeachment case.

    December 27: Parliament impeaches and suspends acting President Han, less than two weeks after suspending Yoon. Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok assumes the position of acting president.

    The court holds first public hearing in Yoon’s impeachment case.

    December 31: The Seoul Western District Court approves an arrest warrant requested by the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) after Yoon failed to appear for questioning over insurrection allegations.

    Yoon’s lawyers say the arrest warrant is illegal and invalid because the CIO does not have the proper authority.

    January 3: Presidential guards and military troops prevent authorities from arresting Yoon in a tense six-hour stand-off inside his compound in the heart of Seoul.

    January 7: The Seoul Western District Court approves an extension of the arrest warrant after the CIO’s failed attempt.

    January 14: The Constitutional Court adjourns the opening session of Yoon’s impeachment trial within minutes, after the embattled leader did not attend court.

    January 15: Yoon agrees to leave his compound after around 3,000 police arrive for a second arrest attempt. Yoon says in a message he only submitted to avoid bloodshed, and the CIO says he refuses to answer questions. He is the first sitting South Korean president to be arrested.

    January 19: Hundreds of Yoon supporters storm a court building after his detention was extended, smashing windows and breaking inside. Yoon continues to refuse to answer questions.

    January 21: Yoon attends his impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court for the first time. When questioned by a justice, he denies ordering military commanders to drag lawmakers out of parliament.

    January 23: The CIO transfers its case to prosecutors and asks them to indict Yoon for insurrection and abuse of power.

    January 24-25: A court twice rejects requests by prosecutors for an extension of Yoon’s detention while they do further investigation.

    January 26: Prosecutors indict Yoon on insurrection charges and ask that he be kept in custody.

    February 4-18: Constitutional Court holds five hearings in Yoon’s impeachment trial.

    February 20: Seoul Central District Court questions Yoon concerning lawyers’ request to cancel his arrest as “unlawful”, holds preparatory hearing for insurrection trial.

    Constitutional Court holds 10th hearing in Yoon’s impeachment trial.

    February 25: Court holds final hearing in Yoon’s impeachment trial. In his closing statement, Yoon defends his decisions as lawful and necessary to protect the country.

    Yoon attended eight of the 11 hearings.

    March 9: Yoon walks free after prosecutors decide not to appeal a court decision to cancel his arrest warrant on insurrection charges. He spent 54 days in jail.

    April 4: The Constitutional Court rules to remove Yoon permanently from office.

    April 8: Government sets June 3 as date for snap election.

    April 27: The liberal Democratic Party names its former leader and 2022 presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung as its candidate.

    May 1: Acting president Han steps down to launch presidential run. Finance minister Choi resigns after Democratic Party vows to start impeachment proceedings, leaving education minister Lee Ju-ho as the country’s third acting president since December.

    The Supreme Court reverses an appeals court ruling that cleared Lee of criminal violations of election law, and ordered a new sentence, threatening his eligibility to run for office.

    May 3: Yoon’s former labour minister, Kim Moon-soo, wins the main conservative People Power Party primary. Kim and Han spend the next week clashing over plans for a unity ticket.

    May 7: Appeals court delays ruling on Lee until after election.

    May 11: Han drops presidential bid after PPP confirms Kim as nominee.

    June 3: Election Day

    (Reuters)

  • MIL-OSI USA: Statement from Congresswoman Joyce Beatty on the Passing of Rep. Gerry Connolly

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congresswoman Joyce Beatty (3rd District of Ohio)

    I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of my good friend Congressman Gerry Connolly. 

    Known for his kind spirit and steadfast leadership on the House Oversight and House Foreign Affairs Committees, Congressman Connolly was a passionate advocate for Americans and Virginians, alike, and a champion for government accountability. 

    A protector of integrity and a proponent of transparency for the American people, Connolly was also a voice for America’s federal workforce, leading legislation that protected jobs and pushed back against partisan attempts to politicize civil servants.

    Connolly was also a democracy defender, leading domestic investigations into political interference in the 2020 Census, the January 6th insurrection, civil service regulations, and more. Internationally, on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he condemned authoritarian regimes and advocated for free and fair elections, holding world leaders accountable for their anti-democratic efforts, and keeping the U.S. at the forefront of human rights advocacy. 

    Connolly’s 30+ year career in public service has left an indelible mark on Congress and our country. His courage, leadership, and integrity will be sorely missed. My heart and prayers are with his family, friends and loved ones during this difficult time.

    May he rest in peace.

    ###

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • Russia and Ukraine step up the war on eve of peace talks

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (4)

    On the eve of peace talks, Ukraine and Russia sharply ramped up the war with one of the biggest drone battles of their conflict, a Russian highway bridge blown up over a passenger train and an ambitious attack on nuclear-capable bombers deep in Siberia.

    After days of uncertainty over whether Ukraine would even attend, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Defence Minister Rustem Umerov would meet Russian officials at the second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul on Monday.

    The first round of the talks more than a week ago yielded the biggest prisoner exchange of the war – but no sense of any consensus on how to halt the fighting.

    Amid talk of peace, though, there was much war.

    At least seven people were killed and 69 injured when a highway bridge in Russia’s Bryansk region, neighbouring Ukraine, was blown up over a passenger train heading to Moscow with 388 people on board. No one has claimed responsibility.

    Ukraine attacked Russian nuclear-capable long-range bombers at a military base deep in Siberia on Sunday, a Ukrainian intelligence official said, the first such attack so far from the front lines more than 4,300 km (2,670 miles) away.

    Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service, the SBU, acknowledged it carried out the attack, codenamed “Operation Spider’s Web,” planned for more than a year and a half.

    The intelligence official said the operation involved hiding explosive-laden drones inside the roofs of wooden sheds and loading them onto trucks that were driven to the perimeter of the air bases.

    A total of 41 Russian warplanes were hit, the official said. The SBU estimated the damage at $7 billion and said Russia had lost 34% of its strategic cruise missile carriers at its main airfields.

    Zelenskiy expressed delight at the “absolutely brilliant outcome,” and noted 117 drones had been used in the attack.

    “And an outcome produced by Ukraine independently,” he wrote. “This is our longest-range operation.”

    RUSSIA SAYS AIRCRAFT FIRES PUT OUT

    A Ukrainian government official told Reuters that Ukraine did not notify the United States of the attack in advance.

    Russia’s Defence Ministry acknowledged on the Telegram messaging app that Ukraine had launched drone strikes against Russian military airfields across five regions on Sunday.

    Air attacks were repelled in all but two regions — Murmansk in the far north and Irkutsk in Siberia – where “the launch of FPV drones from an area in close proximity to airfields resulted in several aircraft catching fire.”

    The fires were extinguished without casualties. Some individuals involved in the attacks had been detained, the ministry said.

    Russia launched 472 drones at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s air force said, the highest nightly total of the war. Russia had also launched seven missiles, the air force said.

    Russia’s military reported new drone attacks into Sunday evening, listing 53 attacks intercepted in a period of less than two hours, including 34 over the border Kursk region. Debris from destroyed drones triggered residential fires.

    Russia said it had advanced deeper into the Sumy region of Ukraine, and open source pro-Ukrainian maps showed Russia took 450 square km of Ukrainian land in May, its fastest monthly advance in at least six months.

    U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded Russia and Ukraine make peace and he has threatened to walk away if they do not – potentially pushing responsibility for supporting Ukraine onto the shoulders of European powers – which have far less cash and much smaller stocks of weapons than the United States.

    According to Trump envoy Keith Kellogg, the two sides will in Turkey present their respective documents outlining their ideas for peace terms, though it is clear that after three years of intense war, Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart.

    Russia’s lead negotiator, presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky, was quoted by TASS news agency as saying the Russian side had received a memorandum from Ukraine on a settlement.

    Zelenskiy has complained for days that Russia had failed to provide a memorandum with its proposals.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on prospects for a settlement and the forthcoming talks in Turkey, Lavrov’s ministry said.

    Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops to invade Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops. The United States says over 1.2 million people have been killed and injured in the war since 2022.

    In June last year, Putin set out opening terms for an immediate end to the war: Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.

    According to a copy of the Ukrainian document seen by Reuters with a proposed roadmap for a lasting peace, there will be no restrictions on Ukraine’s military strength after a deal is struck. Nor will there be international recognition of Russian sovereignty over parts of Ukraine taken by Moscow’s forces, and reparations for Ukraine.

    The document also stated that the current front line will be the starting point for negotiations about territory.

    (Reuters)

  • PM Modi to attend IATA’s 81st annual general meeting in New Delhi

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (4)

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi will participate in the 81st Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) on Monday at around 5 PM at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. The Prime Minister will also address the global gathering on the occasion.

    The IATA AGM and World Air Transport Summit (WATS) is being held in India after a gap of 42 years — the last such meeting took place in 1983. This year’s edition, scheduled from 1 to 3 June, brings together over 1,600 participants including global aviation industry leaders, senior government officials, and international media representatives.

    The Prime Minister’s participation underscores India’s commitment to building world-class air infrastructure and improving connectivity as part of its broader goal of economic growth and inclusive development.

    The summit will deliberate on key challenges and opportunities in the aviation sector, including the economics of the airline industry, air connectivity, energy security, sustainable aviation fuel production, financing decarbonisation, and innovation in aviation technology.

  • Integral Humanism is not a complex philosophy; it is the essence of Indian thought: Shivraj Singh Chouhan

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (4)

    Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Sunday addressed a National Memorial Symposium at the NDMC Convention Centre in New Delhi, commemorating the 60th anniversary of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya’s philosophy of ‘Integral Humanism.’

    The symposium brought together scholars, policymakers, and thought leaders to reflect on the relevance of this philosophy in contemporary India.

    Addressing the gathering, the Union Minister paid homage to Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya and underlined the global relevance of his thought. “I bow at the feet of revered Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Ji. I say this with complete conviction: the solutions to the problems the world faces today lie in the philosophy of Integral Humanism. It is not a complex philosophy; rather, it is the essence of Indian thought,” he said.

    Explaining the roots of the philosophy, Chouhan noted that Integral Humanism was Pandit Deendayal Ji’s response to Western political thought that had emerged post-monarchy under ideals such as liberty, equality, and fraternity. He said that Pandit Deendayal urged India not to imitate the West blindly, but to build its society on its own foundational values.

    Speaking about agriculture, the Minister said farming is the backbone of India’s economy. “I am not just the Agriculture Minister; I live the term ‘agriculture’. Farming and farmers run in my veins,” he added.

    Elaborating on different forms of human fulfillment, the Minister likened the joy of intellectual discovery to Newton’s experience with gravity and emphasized the balanced role of wealth in life. He said that Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya believed in the necessity of material resources for a dignified life but warned against making wealth an overriding pursuit.

    Highlighting the philosophy’s environmental ethos, Chouhan said the principle of ‘single consciousness’ applies not just to humans, but to all of nature. “The Earth is not only for humans; all living beings have an equal right to it,” he said. As part of this thought, he urged people to join the ‘Ek Ped Ma Ke Naam’ (One Tree in Mother’s Name) plantation campaign to preserve nature in a sacred way.

    The Minister also pointed to a decline in rural poverty and rising living standards as indicators of positive transformation. He emphasized the government’s commitment to women’s empowerment, mentioning the Lakhpati Didi Yojana as a significant step towards gender equity. “If we leave half of our population behind, the country can never progress,” he stated, adding that this is the land of Gayatri, Sita, Durga, Lakshmi, and Saraswati.

    Chouhan also announced that two new paddy varieties have recently been developed. These varieties are expected to boost yield by 30%, use 20% less water, and mature 20 days earlier, thereby increasing productivity and sustainability.

  • MIL-OSI China: Nawrocki holds narrow lead over Trzaskowski in Polish presidential runoff: late poll

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

    Karol Nawrocki is now narrowly leading Rafal Trzaskowski in Poland’s presidential runoff on Sunday, according to a late poll conducted by Ipsos. Earlier exit poll results had shown Trzaskowski ahead.

    Nawrocki, a historian and head of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, received 50.7 percent of the vote in the presidential runoff, ahead of Trzaskowski, the ruling Civic Coalition (KO) candidate and mayor of Warsaw, who garnered 49.3 percent, according to the late poll released by Ipsos at about 11 p.m. local time (2100 GMT).

    According to the Polish Press Agency, the late poll is based on official results from 50 percent of randomly selected polling stations where Ipsos conducted its survey. The statistical margin of error is estimated at 1 percentage point.

    Ipsos’s earlier exit poll showed that Trzaskowski received 50.3 percent of the vote, while Nawrocki, an independent candidate backed by the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, received 49.7 percent. Voter turnout was estimated at 72.8 percent.

    Final results are likely to be announced on Monday morning or early afternoon, according to the Polish National Electoral Commission (PKW).

    A closely contested first round was held on May 18, in which Trzaskowski secured 31.36 percent of the vote, followed by Nawrocki with 29.54 percent. As no candidate secured more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, the election proceeded to a runoff. 

    MIL OSI China News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Rep. Adams on the House Passage of the Republican Reconciliation Budget

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congresswoman Alma Adams (12th District of North Carolina)

    WASHINGTON, DC—Today, Congresswoman Alma S. Adams, Ph.D. (NC-12), Senior Member of the House Agriculture Committee and House Education & Workforce Committee, released a statement on the House passage of the Republican reconciliation budget.

    “Republicans have shown today that billionaires are their top priority, not the millions of people who will be harmed by the reckless GOP reconciliation budget,” said Congresswoman Adams. “This bill does nothing to combat waste, fraud, and abuse like they claim. Instead, it will cause average Americans across the country to suffer. More children will go to bed hungry. More working Americans will lose their healthcare. More families will face eviction and homelessness. More veterans and seniors will lose access to lifesaving basic needs programs. Americans will die because Republicans are choosing to place greed over our country.”

    “In North Carolina, this bill would mean putting the food security of 1.4 million SNAP recipients in jeopardy,” Adams continued. “656,000 North Carolinians covered under Medicaid expansion could lose their lifesaving healthcare. Our farmers and small business owners, the backbone of North Carolina’s economy, will find it even harder to make ends meet. My constituents will suffer so Republicans can make people like Elon Musk even richer.”

    “My office will continue working closely with state and local governments, non-profits, community and civic groups, and local leaders to support our community when Republicans in Congress won’t. I also encourage every North Carolinian to contact all members of Congress—Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate—to voice their concern and disapproval over this budget. This bill will hurt a lot of beautiful people. Now, more than ever, we need to fight to protect our basic needs programs and our futures,” Adams concluded.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Cole Votes in Favor of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Tom Cole (OK-04)

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | CONTACT: Olivia Porcaro 202-225-6165

    Washington, D.C. – Today, Congressman Tom Cole (OK-04) released the following statement after voting in favor of the House Republican Reconciliation bill, also known as the One Big, Beautiful Bill, which will codify President Trump’s agenda:

    “Last November, we were given a clear mandate by 77 million Americans who voted for change. The American people overwhelmingly voted for a secure border, the resurgence of American energy dominance, strong national security, an extension of the Trump tax cuts, and a more efficient federal government that roots out fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayer dollars. Now, today, in passing this Reconciliation bill, House Republicans have codified President Trump and the American people’s full agenda,” said Congressman Cole.

    “This legislation will deliver resources to secure our border and complete the border wall, make generational investments in America’s defense, and unleash our domestic energy potential, which will lower costs, create jobs, and protect national security. It will provide permanent tax relief for families, workers, and mom-and-pop businesses by making the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent and protecting the average taxpayer from a 22 percent tax hike,” said Congressman Cole.

    “Despite the lies that dishonest Democrats engaging in fearmongering are spreading, the One Big, Beautiful Bill will actually strengthen, secure, and sustain Medicaid by reestablishing Medicaid as a program that provides vital healthcare to vulnerable Americans and stopping the subsidization of illegal immigrants and capable adults who are just choosing not to work. Therefore, this is not Republicans cutting Medicaid. It is common-sense policy that will simply root out waste, fraud, and abuse within the program,” said Congressman Cole.

    “I am proud to have voted for the Republican Reconciliation legislation today, as it fulfills the promises we made to the American people, and I encourage the United States Senate to help us to deliver the result that the majority of Americans voted for,” said Congressman Cole.

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    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Cole Secures Funding for Historic Areas Affected by Natural Disasters

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Tom Cole (OK-04)

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | CONTACT: Olivia Porcaro 202-225-6165

    Washington, D.C. – Through his legislation, The American Relief Act, Congressman Tom Cole (OK-04) secured $50 million in competitive grant funding for the Historic Preservation Fund. This funding will allow areas, such as Historic Downtown Sulphur Commercial District, to be able to reconstruct and rehabilitate resources that were damaged or destroyed by natural disasters occurring in 2023 and/or 2024. After securing the funding, Congressman Cole released the following statement:

    “As a lifelong Oklahoman, I know just how much devastation and destruction natural disasters, like tornadoes, can cause. This past Spring, multiple tornadoes devastated parts of my district, including the Town of Sulphur and its Historic Downtown Commercial District. Therefore, today, I am proud to announce that $50 million secured in my legislation is now available to apply for to help rebuild and support the local downtowns, businesses, and historic areas that have been crushed,” said Congressman Cole. “As the representative for the Fourth District of Oklahoma, I will always ensure that I am fighting for my local communities, and I look forward to seeing this funding be put to good use.”

    How to apply for assistance:

    Entities will be able to apply for two types of funding needs – preservation and capacity.

    PRESERVATION:

    For this grant, eligible applicants are state governments, city of town governments, county governments, Native American tribes, certain nonprofits, special district governments, public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, independent school districts, Native American tribal organizations, and private institutions of higher education. The funding can be used for construction and rebuilding efforts of Historic Preservation Funding sites that have incurred damage in a natural disaster in 2023 and/or in 2024.

    To apply for the emergency supplemental historic preservation fund for preservation needs, click here. The application period is now open and will close on July 15, 2025.

    CAPACITY:

    For this grant, eligible applicants are nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status, Native American tribes, and state governments. This funding can be used for capacity building, completing compliance requirements, survey, planning, and design.

    To apply for the emergency supplemental historic preservation fund for capacity needs, click here. The application is now open and will close on June 12, 2025.

    Please stay tuned for future announcements as additional disaster assistance is released and available to Oklahomans.

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    MIL OSI USA News –