Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
BEIJING, Sept. 24 — China has improved its obesity treatment guidelines for private medical institutions as soaring obesity rates threaten the health of people of all ages.
According to a 2020 report from the National Health Commission (NHC), 34.3 percent of the country’s adults were overweight and 16.4 percent were obese. Research predicts that overweight and obesity rates among Chinese adults could reach 65.3 percent by 2030.
Chinese minors are also facing significant weight challenges. Currently, about 19 percent of people aged 6 to 17 and 10.4 percent of children under 6 are overweight or obese.
As treatment options for obesity grow more diverse, more and more patients are turning to health care providers for professional treatment plans. Medication, surgical intervention and lifestyle changes are some of these options.
A new initiative has seen the establishment of a weight management center to offer expert guidance to private health care facilities that provide weight loss services, aiming to enhance their ability to diagnose and treat obesity.
Obesity is regarded as a significant trigger for a variety of chronic diseases, including diabetes and cancer. It is a major obstacle to realizing China’s long-term health goals, such as raising the nation’s average life expectancy to 79 by 2030, as proposed in the country’s Outline of Healthy China 2030.
To combat the rising obesity rates, China has introduced a series of initiatives aimed at raising public awareness of weight management and the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
In February, the NHC released a set of dietary guidelines to offer advice on food choices and provide recipes tailored to various dietary habits across different regions of China.
Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region
Public urged to stay vigilant against dengue fever and other mosquito-borne diseases during holidays Public urged to stay vigilant against dengue fever and other mosquito-borne diseases during holidays ******************************************************************************************
With the approach of the National Day holiday, the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health today (September 24) appealed to members of the public who intend to travel to stay alert to the situation of mosquito-borne diseases in their destinations. In view of the recent increase in dengue fever (DF) activity in neighbouring areas, the CHP specifically reminded members of the public to adopt necessary anti-mosquito precautions to guard against the disease when travelling abroad. From September 1 to yesterday (September 23), the CHP recorded 12 imported DF cases; the patients had been to Guangdong Province (4), India (3), Nepal (2), the Philippines (2) and Malaysia (1) during the incubation period. The CHP has been closely monitoring the latest DF situation in neighbouring and overseas areas. DF is endemic in many tropical and subtropical areas of the world. The latest surveillance data showed that there was a significant increase in DF cases noted in some places in Asia compared to the same period last year. According to information from the Singapore Ministry of Health, a total of 11 847 DF cases have been recorded from January to September 14 this year, which is higher when compared to 6 755 cases recorded in the same period in 2023. In addition, Malaysia has recorded 98 442 cases from January to September 7 this year, which was a 19.3 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2023. According to the Health Commission of Guangdong Province, the number of DF cases recorded in Guangdong Province in the past three months has been increasing, with 233 and 1 220 cases in July and August 2024 respectively. Most of the cases were locally acquired infection. Information from the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention further showed that more than 1 400 DF local cases have been recorded in September (as of September 15), with the highest numbers of cases recorded in Foshan, Guangzhou and Zhongshan. According to the World Health Organization, the global incidence of DF has markedly increased over the past two decades, posing a substantial public health challenge. In 2023, ongoing transmissions, combined with an unexpected spike in DF cases, had resulted in close to a historic high of over 6.5 million cases, and more than 7 300 dengue-related deaths reported in over 80 countries/territories. Since the beginning of 2024, the Americas, including Brazil, Argentina and Peru, have recorded over 11 million cases, a record number. Detailed information on the latest DF situation in Hong Kong, as well as neighbouring and overseas countries and areas, has been uploaded to the CHP website (www.chp.gov.hk/files/pdf/df_imported_cases_and_overseas_figures_eng.pdf). A spokesman for the CHP urged members of the public to stay vigilant and adopt appropriate anti-mosquito measures during their travel to prevent DF, as well as other mosquito-borne diseases including Japanese encephalitis, zika virus infection, malaria, etc. The CHP spokesman reiterated that members of the public should follow stringent anti-mosquito measures when travelling. When travelling to areas where vector-borne diseases are common, they may consider to arrange travel health consultation with a doctor at least six weeks before the journey for risk assessment during which the need for any vaccinations, chemoprophylaxis and vector preventive measures will be determined. The following measures on mosquito control could reduce the chance of acquiring mosquito-borne disease during travel:
Wear loose, light-coloured, long-sleeved tops and trousers; Use DEET-containing insect repellent on exposed parts of the body and clothing. For details about the use of insect repellents and the key points to be observed, please refer to ‘Tips for using insect repellents’; and When engaging in outdoor activities, avoid using fragrant cosmetics or skin care products, re-apply insect repellents according to instructions, and apply insect repellents after sunscreen if both are used.
“Returned travellers should consult a doctor promptly if developing symptoms such as fever, respiratory symptoms, rash or painful swelling, and inform the doctor of their travel history for prompt diagnosis and treatment,” the spokesman added. The CHP will continue to monitor the local and overseas situation of infectious diseases and provide the latest information to members of the public in a timely manner for a better understanding of the development of infectious diseases and preparation on precautionary works. For more information, please refer to the CHP website on GAS infection (www.chp.gov.hk/en/healthtopics/content/24/107780.html), DF (www.chp.gov.hk/en/healthtopics/content/24/19.html) and travel health service (www.travelhealth.gov.hk).
Ends/Tuesday, September 24, 2024Issued at HKT 20:00
Source: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe – OSCE
Headline: The OSCE Mission to BiH Donates Specialized Equipment to Police K9 Units across the country
The OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina has donated specialized equipment to K9 police units. (OSCE) Photo details
The OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina (Mission) has donated today specialized equipment to K9 police units across the country. The donation includes essential work gear and is part of the Mission’s project on Addressing Security and Safety Risks of Illegal Possession, Misuse, and Trafficking of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) and their Ammunition in Bosnia and Herzegovina. K9 units will receive muzzles, Kevlar suits, training sleeves, scent detection boxes, specialized SALW suitcases, alpinist equipment for dogs as well as a scent detection carousel, altogether worth approximately EUR 70,000
The equipment will increase the weapons and explosives detection capacities of various agencies across BiH, including the BiH Border Police, the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA), the Police of Brčko District BiH, the Republika Srpska Ministry of Interior, the Federal Police Administration, as well as the Ministries of Interior of the Tuzla Canton, Una-Sana Canton, and Zenica-Doboj Canton.
“We are proud to be able to provide this gear to our partners across the country. It will significantly enhance the ability of police K9 units to detect concealed weapons, ammunition, and explosives,” said Ambassador Brian Aggeler, Head of the OSCE Mission to BiH. “This donation would not have been possible if it were not for our international partners and the support that they have provided to the Project. Through our joint efforts we can help BiH address serious security threats and increases safety for all citizens,” he added.
Mlađen Božović, Chief of Cabinet of the Minister of Security, expressed his satisfaction with the ongoing efforts to equip police agencies, enhancing their operational capabilities in the fight against illegal arms trade. He stated that: “These criminal activities present an increasing security challenge for all countries. Police agencies must adapt by continually strengthening their capacity to detect illegal weapons and disrupt smuggling routes. Preventing the illegal arms trade remains a top priority for the Ministry of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our goal is to enhance security and prevent criminal activities related to weapons by curbing smuggling, both in the region and across the European Union member states.”
The OSCE Mission to BiH remains committed to support authorities at all levels in mitigating security risks posed by the illegal possession, misuse, and trafficking of SALW and their ammunition. By this commitment, the Mission contributes to creating a safer and more secure environment for all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The multi-year project: Addressing Security and Safety Risks of Illegal Possession, Misuse, and Trafficking of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) and their Ammunition in Bosnia and Herzegovina is implemented by the Mission thanks to the generous support provided by Austria, the Czech Republic, the European Union, Germany, France, Liechtenstein, Norway, Slovakia, Türkiye, and the United States.
Harbour Grace RCMP is continuing to investigate a collision that occurred between two vehicles on the Veterans Memorial Highway on the evening of September 20, 2024.
Shortly before 7:15 p.m. on Friday, police received a report of the collision that occurred on the highway near Tilton. A truck towing a utility trailer crossed over the centre line and collided with an oncoming SUV. Two of the three occupants of the truck fled the scene on foot. The third occupant was located with serious injuries at the scene. The two occupants of the SUV received non-life-threatening injuries. All three individuals were transported to Carbonear General Hospital.
RCMP Police Service Dog (PSD) Marlow and her handler were engaged and, while approaching the scene of the collision, observed a man in a wooded area on the side of the highway. The man, who had serious injuries, was identified as one of the occupants from the truck and was arrested for leaving the scene of the collision. He was transported to the hospital for treatment of serious injuries and was released from police custody.
The third occupant of the truck was tracked by PSD Marlow and her handler from the scene of the collision to a business in Spaniards Bay. Officers learned that the man had departed the business prior to their arrival. Efforts are underway for his arrest.
A quantity of suspected cocaine, as well as numerous prescription pills, were located and seized from inside the truck.
The investigation is continuing with charges pending.
RCMP NL continues to fulfill its mandate to protect public safety, enforce the law, and ensure the delivery of priority policing services in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Two youths have been charged following an assault with a weapon in St. George.
On September 16, 2024, at approximately 8:50 p.m., the St George RCMP Detachment responded to a report of an assault on Portage Street, in St. George. When police arrived on scene, they found a 43-year-old male victim. The man was transported to hospital with what were believed to be serious, but non-life-threatening injuries.
Shortly after, police were able to identify two youths of interest. The first youth was arrested September 17, 2024, and the second youth was arrested on September 18, 2024.
On September 19, 2024, the two youths appeared in Saint John Provincial Youth Court, and were charged with aggravated assault. They were both later released on conditions and are expected to return to court at a later date.
Police are asking anyone who may have witnessed the assault to contact the St. George RCMP at 506-755-1130. Information can also be provided anonymously through Crime Stoppers by calling 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), by downloading the secure P3 Mobile App, or by Secure Web Tips atwww.crimenb.ca.
CINCINNATI, Sept. 24, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Paycor HCM, Inc. (Nasdaq: PYCR) (“Paycor”), a leading provider of human capital management (HCM) software, today announced a suite of innovative features designed to transform time-off management for the modern workforce. These cutting-edge additions to Paycor’s HCM platform streamline time-off operations through automation, real-time visibility and proactive controls to drive efficiency and promote employee well-being.
“It’s so important for workers to feel in control of their time, and Paycor’s new time-off features help leaders address this pain point,” said Ryan Bergstrom, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Paycor. “Our new experience helps workers unplug, empowers employees and leaders to take control of time-off management, reduces stress, and ensures smooth operations. We’re proud to offer flexible solutions that not only meet the needs of today’s workforce but also set a new standard for the future of work.”
Key benefits include:
Better Insights & Visibility to Help Leaders Make Decisions Paycor now offers seamless integration of time-off requests with scheduling, providing leaders with real-time visibility of these requests while building schedules. This feature allows for enhanced productivity and coordination through comprehensive visibility into time-off schedules for employees and leaders. Seamless integration across our ecosystem through APIs and data streams, including automatic syncing to cloud-based calendars, ensures accurate and up-to-date information.
Faster Communication and Approvals Time Off Advisor provides employees with peak time visibility through blackout dates and balance forecasting, enabling better planning and communication with managers for time-off planning. Within this module, leaders can establish predefined criteria for automatically approving or denying time off requests. Additionally, managers can conveniently manage approvals on-the-go through preferred methods, such as the mobile app or email.
Prevent Burn-out and Encourage Time Away Paycor Paths offers bite-sized training to empower leaders to recognize and prevent causes of burnout while easily accessing time-off balances and requests to identify potentially at-risk employees via the COR Leadership Dashboard.
Paycor has received several accolades for these enhancements, including “Best Advance in Time” and “Best Advancement in Online Coaching Tools” from Brandon Hall Group and “Business Intelligence Solution” from Titan Business Awards.
To learn more about how our time experience can streamline operations and provide flexibility to your workforce, visit Paycor Time & Attendance.
About Paycor Paycor’s human capital management (HCM) platform modernizes every aspect of people management, from recruiting, onboarding, and payroll to career development and retention, but what really sets us apart is our focus on leaders. For more than 30 years, we’ve been listening to and partnering with leaders, so we know what they need: a unified HR platform, easy integration with third party apps, powerful analytics, talent development tools, and configurable technology that supports specific industry needs. That’s why more than 30,000 customers trust Paycor to help them solve problems and achieve their goals. Learn more at paycor.com.
Media Relations: Carly Pennekamp 513-954-7282 PR@paycor.com
Investor Relations: Rachel White 513-954-7388 IR@paycor.com
Acquisition of German HESA Solutions GmbH – MySchleppApp
Nextalia SGR and Alkemia Capital SGR lead the Series B round of the Italian scale-up in the digital motor assistance sector
MILAN, Sept. 24, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — hlpy, the leading Italian scale-up in full digital services for mobility and vehicle assistance, has successfully completed a capital raise of 18 millioneuros aimed at strengthening its growth process in major European markets and acquiring a leading operator in Germany in digital roadside assistance: HESASolutionsGmbH–MySchleppApp.
The operation was co-led by Nextalia SGR through the Nextalia Venture fund and the current partner Sinergia Venture Fund of Alkemia Capital SGR, with the participation of all major shareholders of hlpy, including TheTechshopSGR,CDPVentureCapital –fondoCorporatePartnersI,ServiceTech, and Simest. The Series B consists of 80% capital increase and 20% long-term financing provided by credit institutions.
Thanks to this financial injection, hlpy accelerates its international expansion plan and announces its first M&A operation in Europe with the acquisition of 100% of thecapital of HESA Solutions GmbH, commercially known as MySchleppApp, one of the leading digital roadside assistance companies in Germany and Austria, with annualgrowthratesexceeding130%.
The acquisition of MySchleppApp allows hlpy to consolidate its position as theprimary European operator of full-digital roadside assistance, offering its services not only in Italy, France, and Spain but also in Germany and Austria. These services include assistance, repair, and vehicle maintenance through the use of a software platform based on machine learning and artificial intelligence.
MySchleppApp delivers its services through a network of over 1,500 partners on the ground, with operations and a technology platform that integrate well with hlpy’s.
“This operation,” explained Valerio Chiaronzi, CEO of hlpy,“supported by leadinginvestors,strengthenshlpy’sleadershipintheEuropeanmarketfordigitalcarassistance.The capital increase reflects our shareholders’ confidence in hlpy’s growth path, whichrecorded a revenue increase of 157% in 2023 compared to 2022, and this year will alsogrowbytripledigits.Despiteexponentialorganicgrowth,wesawtheopportunitypresentedbyMySchleppAppastherightonetoseizetoenteranimportantmarketlike Germanyandclearlymarkourgrowthtrajectoryandfuture:tobecomealeaderinmobilityservices, redefining the rules and standards in roadside assistance, as well as in vehiclerepair and maintenance, without any geographical limits. We are excited to welcome theMySchleppAppteam,withwhomwehaveformedauniquesynergyfromdayone,thanksto shared corporate values, an operational model, and a technological approach alignedwithourvision.
“We also believe that the integration of our realities can bring concrete benefits to ourbusinesspartners–manyofwhomarecommonandcross-country–who,post-integration,willhaveaholisticviewoftheirvehiclesanddriversinmultiplecountries.”
“We are proud and excited to join the hlpy group,” added Santosh Satschdeva, CEOofHESASolutionsGmbH.“TheintegrationbetweenhlpyandMySchleppApprepresentsthe union of two of the most technologically advanced entities in the vehicle assistancesectorinEurope,withthecommongoalofprovidingourcommercialpartnersanddriverswith a superior customer experience, while also reducing operational costs and vehicledowntime. Together, we can expand a unique service model without any geographicalbarriers,acceleratingthegrowthofthenetworkandcustomerbase.”
hlpy was born in Milan in May 2020 with the aim of reinventing vehicle assistance. Thanks to its innovative digital platform, hlpy aims to create value for insurance companies, car manufacturers, rental companies, rescue operators, and, above all, to make the service more reliable and secure for end users.
HESA Solutions GmbH, with its brand MySchleppApp, was founded in Germany in 2016. The business focus is on roadside assistance and support in the event of vehicle breakdowns. MySchleppApp’s approximately 75 clients include automobile manufacturers, fleet managers, and leasing companies. Its strength lies in the fully digital management of rescue requests, with a highly efficient rescuer engagement process and short waiting times for customers.
Photos accompanying this announcement are available at:
SUFFOLK, Va. and MIDLOTHIAN, Va., Sept. 24, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Hampton Roads based TowneBank (NASDAQ: TOWN) and Village Bank and Trust Financial Corp. (NASDAQCM: VBFC) (“Village”), the parent company of Village Bank, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement and plan of reorganization pursuant to which TowneBank will acquire Village and Village Bank. The proposed transaction will enhance TowneBank’s continued and growing presence in the Richmond MSA while providing opportunity for diverse revenue synergies with Towne Financial Services Group and strategic capital deployment.
“Our TowneBank family is humbled and excited to partner with Village Bank and its team members,” said G. Robert Aston, Jr., Executive Chairman of TowneBank. “We believe our partnership can bring additional products and expanded services to the clients of Village Bank while meaningfully enhancing our Richmond presence, which is core to our franchise and future growth.”
“We’re excited to partner with TowneBank,” said Jay Hendricks, President and Chief Executive Officer of Village. “This merger is not just a business decision but a strategic move to enhance the value we deliver to our customers. This partnership will give us the ability to continue to meet our customers’ banking needs with greater resources and products while providing increased opportunities for our employees.”
Based on financials reported as of June 30, 2024, the combined companies would have total assets of $17.8 billion, loans of $12.1 billion and deposits of $14.9 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, shareholders of Village will receive $80.25 per share in cash for each share of Village outstanding common stock. This corresponds to an aggregate transaction value of approximately $120.0 million, based on Village common stock currently outstanding.
TowneBank expects the transaction to be approximately 6% accretive to earnings per share with fully phased-in cost savings on a GAAP basis.
In consideration of the transaction, extensive due diligence was performed by the management teams of TowneBank and Village. The definitive agreement was approved by the boards of directors of TowneBank and Village. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2025 and is subject to customary conditions, including regulatory approval, as well as the approval of Village’s shareholders.
Piper Sandler & Co. served as the financial advisor and Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP served as legal counsel to TowneBank in the transaction. Janney Montgomery Scott served as the financial advisor and Williams Mullen served as legal counsel to Village in the transaction.
About TowneBank: Founded in 1999, TowneBank is a company built on relationships, offering a full range of banking and other financial services, with a focus of serving others and enriching lives. Dedicated to a culture of caring, Towne values all employees and members by embracing their diverse talents, perspectives, and experiences.
Today, the bank operates over 50 banking offices throughout Hampton Roads and Central Virginia, as well as Northeastern and Central North Carolina – serving as a local leader in promoting the social, cultural, and economic growth in each community. TowneBank offers a competitive array of business and personal banking solutions, delivered with only the highest ethical standards. Experienced local bankers providing a higher level of expertise and personal attention with local decision-making are key to the TowneBank strategy. TowneBank has grown its capabilities beyond banking to provide expertise through its controlled divisions and subsidiaries that include Towne Wealth Management, Towne Insurance Agency, Towne Benefits, TowneBank Mortgage, TowneBank Commercial Mortgage, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Towne Realty, Towne 1031 Exchange, LLC, and Towne Vacations. With total assets of $17.1 billion as of June 30, 2024, TowneBank is one of the largest banks headquartered in Virginia.
About Village Bank and Trust Financial Corp. Headquartered in Midlothian, Virginia, Village Bank and Trust Financial Corp. is the holding company for Village Bank. Village Bank was founded in 1999 and operates nine branch offices serving the greater Richmond Metropolitan area and Williamsburg, Virginia. Village Bank and Trust Financial Corp. had total assets of $747.7 million as of June 30, 2024. Additional information is available at the company’s website, http://www.villagebank.com.
Media contact: G. Robert Aston, Jr., Executive Chairman, TowneBank, 757-638-6780 William I. Foster III, Chief Executive Officer, TowneBank, 757-417-6482 James E. Hendricks Jr., Chief Executive Officer, Village Bank and Trust Financial Corp., 804-419-1253
Investor contact: William B. Littreal, Chief Financial Officer, TowneBank, 757-638-6813 Deborah M. Golding, Vice President, Village Bank and Trust Financial Corp., 804-897-3900
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains certain forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are not historical facts, but instead represent only the beliefs, expectations, or opinions of TowneBank and Village and their respective management teams regarding future events, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and beyond the control of TowneBank and Village. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of such words as: “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “plan,” “estimate,” or words of similar meaning, or future or conditional terms, such as “will,” “would,” “should,” “could,” “may,” “likely,” “probably,” or “possibly.” These statements may address issues that involve significant risks, uncertainties, estimates, and assumptions made by management, including statements about (i) the benefits of the transaction, including future financial and operating results, cost savings, enhancement to revenue and accretion to reported earnings that may be realized from the transaction and (ii) TowneBank’s and Village’s plans, objectives, expectations and intentions and other statements contained in this press release that are not historical facts. In addition, these forward-looking statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties, estimates and assumptions with respect to future business strategies and decisions that are subject to change and difficult to predict with regard to timing, extent, likelihood and degree of occurrence. Although TowneBank’s and Village’s respective management teams believe that estimates and assumptions on which forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, such estimates and assumptions are inherently uncertain. As a result, actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results discussed in these forward-looking statements because of possible uncertainties.
The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in the forward-looking statements: (1) the business of Village and Village Bank may not be successfully integrated into TowneBank, or such integration may take longer, be more difficult, time-consuming or costly to accomplish than expected; (2) the expected growth opportunities or cost savings from the transaction may not be fully realized or may take longer to realize than expected; (3) deposit attrition, operating costs, customer losses and business disruption following the transaction, including adverse effects on relationships with employees and customers, may be greater than expected; (4) the regulatory approvals required for the transaction may not be obtained on the proposed terms or on the anticipated schedule; (5) the shareholders of Village may fail to approve the transaction; (6) economic, legislative or regulatory changes, including changes in accounting standards, may adversely affect the businesses in which TowneBank and Village are engaged; (7) competitive pressures in the banking industry that may increase significantly; (8) changes in the interest rate environment that may reduce margins and/or the volumes and values of loans made or held as well as the value of other financial assets held; (9) an unforeseen outflow of cash or deposits or an inability to access the capital markets, which could jeopardize TowneBank’s or Village’s overall liquidity or capitalization; (10) changes in the creditworthiness of customers and the possible impairment of the collectability of loans; (11) insufficiency of TowneBank’s or Village’s allowance for credit losses due to market conditions, inflation, changing interest rates or other factors; (12) adverse developments in the financial industry generally, such as the recent bank failures, responsive measures to mitigate and manage such developments, related supervisory and regulatory actions and costs, and related impacts on customer and client behavior; (13) general economic conditions, either nationally or regionally, that may be less favorable than expected, resulting in, among other things, a deterioration in credit quality and/or a reduced demand for credit or other services; (14) weather-related or natural disasters, acts of war or terrorism, or public health events (such as the COVID-19 pandemic); (15) changes in the legislative or regulatory environment, including changes in accounting standards and tax laws, that may adversely affect TowneBank’s or Village’s businesses; (16) cybersecurity threats or attacks, whether directed at us or at vendors or other third parties with which we interact, the implementation of new technologies, and the ability to develop and maintain reliable electronic systems; (17) competitors may have greater financial resources and develop products that enable them to compete more successfully; (18) changes in business conditions; (19) changes in the securities market; and (20) changes in the local economies with regard to TowneBank’s and Village’s respective market areas.
Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements are discussed in TowneBank’s reports (such as Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K) filed with the Federal Deposit Corporation (“FDIC”) and Village’s reports (such as Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K) filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). TowneBank and Village undertake no obligation to update or clarify these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Additional Information This press release does not constitute a solicitation of any vote or approval. Village will deliver a definitive proxy statement to its shareholders seeking approval of the transaction and related matters. In addition, each of TowneBank and Village may file other relevant documents concerning the proposed transaction with the FDIC and SEC.
Investors, TowneBank shareholders and Village shareholders are strongly urged to read the definitive proxy statement regarding the proposed transaction when it becomes available and other relevant documents filed with the FDIC and SEC, as well as any amendments or supplements to those documents, because they will contain important information about TowneBank, Village and the proposed transaction. Free copies of the definitive proxy statement, as well as other filings containing information about Village, may be obtained after their filing at the SEC’s website (http://www.sec.gov). In addition, free copies of the definitive proxy statement, when available, also may be obtained by directing a request by telephone or mail to Village Bank and Trust Financial Corp., 13319 Midlothian Turnpike, Midlothian, Virginia 23113, Attention: Investor Relations (telephone: (804) 897-3900), or by accessing Village’s website at https://www.villagebank.com under “About Us Investor Relations.” The documents described above also may be obtained by directing a request by telephone or mail to TowneBank, 6001 Harbour View Boulevard, Suffolk, Virginia 23425, Attention: Investor Relations (telephone: (757) 638-6794), or by accessing TowneBank’s website at https://townebank.com under “Investor Relations.” The information on TowneBank’s and Village’s websites is not, and shall not be deemed to be, a part of this presentation or incorporated into other filings either company makes with the FDIC or SEC.
TowneBank, Village, and their respective directors and executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from the shareholders of Village in connection with the proposed transaction. Information about the directors and executive officers of Village and other persons who may be deemed participants in the solicitation, including their interests in the transaction, will be included in the proxy statement when it becomes available. Information about TowneBank’s directors and executive officers can be found in TowneBank’s definitive proxy statement in connection with its 2024 annual meeting of shareholders, filed with the FDIC on April 11, 2024. Additional information about Village’s directors and executive officers can be found in Village’s definitive proxy statement in connection with its 2024 annual meeting of shareholders filed with the SEC on April 9, 2024. Free copies of each document may be obtained as described in the preceding paragraph.
AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 24, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — QuestionPro, a global leader in online survey and research services today announced the agenda and speaker lineup for its annual customer event, XDay 2024 North America. The event takes place Thursday, October 3, 2024 from 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (U.S. Central Time) at the Thompson Austin in Austin, Texas. The event features keynotes, in-depth panels, and one-to-one chats with industry leaders on a range of topics related to the future of insights, experience, and delight.
The day begins with opening remarks from Vivek Bhaskaran, QuestionPro’s founder and CEO, whose irreverent personality is combined with deep industry knowledge and vision. He will unveil exciting new products and feature updates across QuestionPro product lines and set the stage for a day of innovation and inspiration.
Bhaskaran is followed immediately by the morning keynote from Dr. Dipul Patadia, a visionary healthcare executive with over 20 years of experience of leadership, innovation and insights. As the Head of Health System Strategy and Innovation at Salesforce, he has been pivotal in aligning technology with the unique needs of health systems. His extensive background, including roles as Chief Medical Officer at hospitals within Ascension and Advocate Health, uniquely equips him with insights into the melding of data, and new trends.
Attendees will benefit from his leadership in national healthcare organizations and advisory roles with multiple healthcare startups. Expect to gain actionable insights into transforming your data, AI-driven empowerment, and leading with human centric data.
Following the morning keynotes will be a series of practitioner-led breakouts featurimg experts who have held senior roles at some of the most recognized brands in the world, including: Microsoft, Twitch, HubSpot, Cost Plus World Market and others. Panels, workshops and keynotes will cover workplace experience; AI in research and experience; deep dives on CX and many others. A full agenda is available via the web at: https://www.questionpro.com/xday/2024/
The afternoon keynote address will be delivered by Tim Sanders, currently the Vice President of Research Insights at G2. He brings a deep understanding of AI, digital transformation, and customer-centric strategies after serving as Vice President of Client Strategy at Upwork and many other prestigious institutions. As an Executive Fellow at Harvard’s Digital Data Design Institute, he drives AI adoption and data-driven business decisions. With a rich history at Yahoo and a bestselling author, Tim’s insights on leadership, digital transformation, and change management are not to be missed.
The event concludes with a rooftop dinner reception at Arriba Abajo, on top of the Thompson Hotel. Arriba Abajo beckons guests with its unique blend of cantina concept and elevated hospitality while captivating guests with its awe-inspiring rooftop patio and pool.
About QuestionPro: Founded in 2006, QuestionPro is a global provider of online survey and research services that help companies make better decisions through data. Our fully integrated online platform includes surveys, research & insights, customer experience (CX) and workforce/employee experience software. We additionally offer polling, journey mapping, employee 360s, and data visualization. Our clientele ranges from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies, who rely on us for insights about customers, employees, and the marketplace. With offices in the US, Canada, Mexico, U.K., Germany, Japan, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and India, we offer customers 24-7 access to highly trained support specialists and engineers. More information is available at www.questionpro.com.
BURLINGTON, Mass., Sept. 24, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Cerence Inc. (NASDAQ: CRNC), AI for a world in motion, today announced that Tuya Smart (NYSE: Tuya, HKEX: 2391), a global cloud platform service provider, is partnering with Cerence to provide multi-lingual text-to-speech (TTS) for its cloud developer platform designed specifically for two-wheeled vehicles, including motorcycles, e-bikes, and more.
Tuya’s cloud developer platform provides its customers – in this case, the more than 100 two-wheeler manufacturers using the “Works with Smart Life” app – with a complete set of smart solutions, including apps, cloud capabilities, hardware, and more. Tuya will integrate Cerence TTS into its cloud developer platform designed for two-wheeler solutions, which will further enable riders to request and hear via voice real-time riding speed, riding time, battery information, phone and text messages, etc., making each ride safer and more enjoyable. In the future, the companies will partner to bring additional Cerence solutions to Tuya’s cloud developer platform, further enhancing voice-powered interaction for two-wheeler riders.
“As voice-powered interaction continues to gain relevance and usage among consumers, it only makes sense that we would enhance our offerings with voice capabilities,” said Tony Kong, General Manager of Outdoor Business Department, Tuya Smart. “By leveraging Cerence’s industry-leading TTS, we bring best-in-class technology to our customers looking to enhance the two-wheeler rider experience with improved safety and functionality.”
“Two-wheelers continue to present an exciting opportunity for Cerence to expand its industry-leading innovation to new areas of transportation,” said Nils Schanz, Chief Product Officer, Cerence. “We look forward to expanding the reach of our two-wheeler solutions, and transforming the rider experience, by partnering with Tuya to reach developers driving innovation within two-wheeler manufacturers.”
About Cerence Inc. Cerence (NASDAQ: CRNC) is the global industry leader in creating unique, moving experiences for the mobility world. As an innovation partner to the world’s leading automakers and mobility OEMs, it is helping advance the future of connected mobility through intuitive, AI-powered interaction between humans and their vehicles, connecting consumers’ digital lives to their daily journeys no matter where they are. Cerence’s track record is built on more than 20 years of knowledge and 500 million cars shipped with Cerence technology. Whether it’s connected cars, autonomous driving, e-vehicles, or two-wheelers, Cerence is mapping the road ahead. For more information, visit www.cerence.com.
About Tuya Smart Tuya Inc. (NYSE: TUYA; HKEX: 2391) is a global leading cloud platform service provider with a mission to build a smart solutions developer ecosystem and enable everything to be smart. Tuya has pioneered a purpose-built cloud developer platform with cloud and generative AI capabilities that delivers a full suite of offerings, including Platform-as-a-Service, or PaaS, Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, and smart solutions for developers of smart device, commercial applications, and industries. Through its cloud developer platform, Tuya has activated a vibrant global developer community of brands, OEMs, AI Agents, system integrators and independent software vendors to collectively strive for smart solutions ecosystem embodying the principles of green and low-carbon, security, high efficiency, agility, and openness.
Fort Lauderdale, Sept. 24, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Cross Keys Capital, LLC, a leading independent investment banking firm providing M&A advisory services, is pleased to announce it acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Propel Engineering, a distinguished civil engineering firm based in West Palm Beach, FL, in its partnership with Traffic & Mobility Consultants (TMC), a portfolio company of Grovecourt Capital Partners.
Founded in 2013, Propel Engineering has built an impressive reputation for delivering high-quality civil engineering services, with a particular focus on highway design, traffic analysis, and structural design. The firm’s expertise in working with both public and private sector clients, including the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), aligns perfectly with TMC’s growth strategy and commitment to excellence in transportation engineering.
Traffic & Mobility Consultants is a Florida-based engineering company specializing in Transportation Planning and Traffic Engineering. Founded in 2012, TMC serves private clients and governmental agencies at the local, county, and state levels. TMC’s goal is to provide its clients with the highest quality services, offering innovative, strategic, and effective solutions for safe and efficient mobility.
Maj Alam, Founder and President of Propel Engineering, commented, “Over the past decade, Propel Engineering has established itself as a trusted partner in Florida’s transportation infrastructure development. By joining TMC, we’re not just combining our expertise – we’re amplifying our ability to deliver innovative solutions for complex engineering challenges. This partnership will allow us to take on larger, more impactful projects and contribute even more significantly to Florida’s rapidly evolving transportation landscape. We’re excited about the enhanced value we’ll bring to our clients and the new opportunities this creates for our talented team.”
Neil Dhruve, Director at Cross Keys Capital, shared his excitement, saying that “Working with Maj was an absolute pleasure, and we are excited to watch unfold all the incredible opportunities the combined companies are able to realize.”
The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Greenberg Traurig acted as legal advisor to TMC. Cross Keys Capital acted as M&A advisor to Propel, and De Biase | Alvarez acted as legal advisor to Propel Engineering
About Cross Keys Capital
Cross Keys Capital is a leading middle-market investment bank providing a full range of investment banking merger and acquisition advisory services to a variety of businesses.
This was Cross Keys’ 10th successful sell-side engagement completed in 2024.
Source: Africa Press Organisation – English (2) – Report:
NEW YORK, United States of America, September 24, 2024/APO Group/ —
The African Development Bank (www.AfDB.org) has urged Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and other development partners to scale up innovative partnerships and initiatives to build peace and security in Africa, home to eleven of the world’s most conflict-affected states.
Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade, African Development Bank Vice-President for Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery Complex led the charge during a session held September 21, on the sidelines of the 79th Assembly of the United Nations titled: Investing in Prevention: Scaling up Peace – A Call to Action for DFIs.
Over the last 20 years, the level of global conflict has escalated, with one-fifth of Africa’s population residing in conflict affected areas, affecting the future of the world’s fastest-growing continent.
“Our goal today is very clear. We would like to mobilise institutions to prioritise peace building and through innovative partnerships and new financial mechanisms. This is a call for action.” Akin-Olugbade said in opening remarks.
The New Agenda for Peace, which is at center stage of the UN’s Summit of the Future, highlights how different actors, including DFIs can serve as peace agents, and emphasises the role of partnerships, especially in the context of fragile and conflict affected countries, urging increased political and financial mobilisation to prevent conflicts.
The effect of three decades of a devastating civil war in Mozambique are still evident, Amilcar Tivane, Mozambique’s Vice-Minister of Economy and Finance told participants, stressing the need for prevention.
The Mozambique government has learned innovative solutions to deal with the root causes of conflict and to address lingering security challenges in northern Mozambique such as terrorism and insurgency. What has worked is a resilience building strategy together with partnerships, Tivane said. The country is also launching a new initiative for peace for the reconstruction of affected tourism areas
« We have learned that prevention is critical, » he said. « Sometimes its difficult (for governments) to acknowledge that the social dimensions could have a significant impact.»
Issa Faye, Director General of the Islamic Development Bank ( IsDB) said his institution’s blend of ordinary and concessional financing has been key to the successful financial support for 32 fragile African countries out of the 52 they support.
The IsDB have aided thousands of refugees through programmes to address skills gap, training and education, combining economic empowerment and food security.
Faye underlined Islamic financing as a concept framing a lot of the institution’s programmes and stressed the need to find alternative financing which is dedicated, responsive and resilient.
Risk perception, another major constraint to financing peace initiatives in Africa, was the subject of Pradeep Kurukulasuriya, the Executive Secretary of the UN Capital Development Fund (UN CDF), submission. He offered a concrete example of successful de-risking of a peace initiative in Burundi.
« UN DCRF works to de-risk so that larger streams of finance can flow from the larger and more established institutions, » he said.
Since 2021, UNCDF has been working in collaboration with the UN Peacebuilding Fund and the Government of Burundi to address interconnected and transnational root-causes of instability and nature loss in the Kibara National Park and surrounding buffer zones. The joint initiative with several partners including UNESCO, uses a unique blended finance approach.
Peace finance needs new a lens
Itonde Kakoma, President of Interpeace said a new paradigm approach, which moved away from the donor focus and instead sees development partners investing in peace investment hubs and creating a pipeline of peace positive projects, is much needed.
He said the need to connect development finance and peace building while leveraging the private sector to build peace, safety and social cohesion between communities living in complex environments, was more imperative than ever.
« We have a conviction that the Sustainable Development Goals can be unlocked by peace finance, » Kakoma said.
Other participants such as Elizabeth Spehar, Assistant Secretary General, United Nations Peacebuilding Support stressed the importance of inclusion and the role of DFI’s such as the African Development Bank.
“We need the economic might of the DFI’s. We have to work on this together,” she said.
Spehar paid tribute to the African Development Bank which emphasizes peace and security as public goods in its new Ten-year strategy (2024-2033). The Bank’s joint pilot project in Central African Republic with UNHCR has the UN “working with communities on the peace part and the African Development Bank working on the employment part,” Spehar said.
The Bank has been on the forefront of systematically addressing issues of fragility in Africa and has built up over 20 years of experience in building Africa’s resilience by providing intellectual leadership and dedicated financial instruments, such as the Transition Support Facility, which mobilizes additional resources for affected countries. The Bank’s Private Sector Credit Enhancement Facility allows it to do more private investments in these riskier markets.
The audience also heard from the g7+, Asian Development Bank, Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (CSPPS), the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Aswan Forum, UNHCR, and the African Union Peace Fund whose Director Dagmawit Moges spoke of the institution’s reforms and the importance of governance.
“We’ve gone beyond theory and talk. We at the African Development Bank are interested in strengthening partnerships. We are not going to work in silos. We are looking forward to continuing this discussion at COP 29 and at the Africa Resilience Forum next year,” Akin-Olugbade said.
It’s been less than six months since Google Cloud Next, and the pace of innovation across industries has been nothing short of extraordinary. We’re proud of our AI leadership and differentiation as we continue pushing the technology frontier for our customers. From launching more powerful versions of Gemini 1.5 Pro, to rolling out general availability for Gemini Flash and Imagen 3, to investing in our Vertex AI platform, our teams have been building off the product momentum of Next. And all of this innovation is driving incredible use of our products.
Today, as part of our Gemini at Work global event, we are showcasing nearly 50 new customer stories from organizations around the world to highlight just how impactful generative AI can be when you put it to work at scale — including Pods, Snap, Volkswagen US, Warner Bros. Discovery and many others. We’re inspired by what customers are building and excited by how quickly they’ve been able to move ideas from experimentation into production with our Vertex AI platform. We’re also seeing major boosts in productivity through Gemini for Google Workspace, with customers saving an average of 105 minutes per user, per week, according to our recent study of enterprise customers.
They can access and customize the best foundation models from both Google and the industry, including Gemini. We are the only Cloud provider to offer widely-used first-party, third-party, and open models. Enterprises want to choose a platform that gives them choice.
They can create sophisticated gen AI agents and experiences faster with our single, integrated development platform, Vertex AI. It sits on top of our world-class infrastructure and is the only unified platform that lets customers discover and access models, tune and augment models, and create, ground, deploy, and manage AI agents and experiences.
They can be more productive with our AI agents. We offer Gemini for Google Cloud and Gemini for Google Workspace, as well as purpose-built agents for Customer Engagement and Search. Customers are really appreciating these packaged agents, in addition to building their own.
They are deploying models with confidence, with the most comprehensive approach to grounding in enterprise truth. This significantly improves response accuracy and completeness, and lets them control their brand voice and customer experience.
Six types of AI agents
We continue to see customers and partners benefiting from AI agents — intelligent systems that go beyond simple chat and predictions, to proactively take actions. What makes AI agents unique is they help achieve specific goals, whether that’s guiding a shopper to the perfect pair of shoes, helping an employee look for the right health benefits, or supporting nursing staff with smoother patient hand-offs during shift changes. We see AI agents centering around six use cases:
Customer agents help make great recommendations
Customer agents work seamlessly across channels including the web, mobile, and point of sale, and can be integrated into product experiences with voice and video.
Bell Canada pioneered using digital agents to provide self-service — improving customer experience and delivering $20 million in cost savings.
Best Buy resolves issues up to 90 seconds faster using automated call summarization.
GoTo Group launched Dira, a Bahasa Indonesia AI-powered voice assistant integrated into their GoPay fintech app. Customers use voice commands and complete tasks like bill payments and money transfers with fewer steps. Check out a live demo of the app from GoTo in this video.
ScottsMiracle-Gro built an AI agent on Google Cloud Vertex AI to provide tailored gardening advice and product recommendations.
Snap deployed the multimodal capability of Gemini within their “My AI” chatbot and has since seen over 2.5x as much engagement within Snapping to My AI in the United States.
10:25
Telecom Italia (TIM) implemented a Google-powered voice agent to address many customer calls, increasing efficiency by 20%.
UPS Capital uses an agent built on Google Cloud technology to analyze package movements, insurance claims, and address data in real time to identify anomalies.
Volkswagen US built a virtual assistant in the myVW app, where drivers can explore their owners’ manuals and ask questions such as, “How do I change a flat tire?” or “What does this digital cockpit indicator light mean?” Users can also use Gemini’s multi-modal capabilities to see helpful information and context on indicator lights simply by pointing their smartphone cameras at their dashboards. Watch how the myVW app works in this demo.
We continue to build on this momentum with our own packaged agents. For example, today we are announcing Customer Engagement Suite with Google AI, an end-to-end application that combines the rich features of our leading Contact Center AI solution with the latest gen AI capabilities.
This new solution offers four key benefits:
Omnichannel features, so you can orchestrate consistent customer experiences across web, mobile, voice, email, and apps with a single platform.
Multimodal approach, so your customers can use text, voice, and images.
Rule-based controls AND generative AI so you can address a broad range of issues that may come up from your customers. For instance, a customer speaking with a bank representative may have to verify their identity through a specific set of verification questions. At the same time, they may ask the bank: “Tell me what’s the best mortgage offering for me? Can you compare it across the products you offer?” The first requires a deterministic flow. The second requires a generative flow.
Grounding to provide the highest levels of accuracy
All of this can be connected with any customer service application — whether it’s a SaaS application like Salesforce, Servicenow, SAP, Dynamics, or Oracle — or an on-premise app.
Employee agents help workers collaborate and get more done
Employee agents can streamline processes, manage repetitive tasks, answer employee questions, as well as edit and translate critical communications.
Click Therapeutics develops prescription digital therapeutics designed to treat disease. Their Clinical Operations team leverages Gemini for Google Workspace to transform complex operations data into actionable insights; so they can quickly pinpoint ways to streamline the patient experience in clinical trials.
Dun & Bradstreet built an email-generation tool with Gemini that helps sellers create tailored, personalized communications to prospects and customers for its research services. They also developed intelligent search capabilities to help users with complex queries like, “Find me all the companies in this area with a high ESG rating.”
Elanco, a world leader in animal health, has implemented a gen AI framework, powered by Vertex AI and Gemini, to support critical business processes, such as Pharmacovigilance, Customer Orders, and Clinical Insights. This has resulted in an estimated ROI of $1.9 million since launching last year.
Randstad is using Gemini for Google Workspace to enhance our relationships internally and externally with candidates, making them more efficient and giving them time back to focus on the human aspect of their work.
10:25
SURA Investments, the largest Asset Manager in Latin America, developed a gen AI-powered analysis model for employees built on Google Cloud that allows them to better understand customer needs. It has already improved sentiment analysis on more than 90% of calls and delivered a 10-point increase in customer satisfaction.
Thomson Reuters added Gemini Pro to its suite of large language models (LLM). The 2 million token context window makes some skills as much as 10x times faster to process and unlocks the ability to create new skills that require the LLM to process entire documents in context
The employee agents we deliver through Gemini for Google Workspace, our leading collaboration and productivity tools, are helping customers get more done, with greater confidence and in less time. In a recent survey of our enterprise customers using Gemini, we found they save an average of 105 minutes per user, per week. And it’s not just about getting more done, but getting it done really well — 75% of daily Gemini for Workspace users say it improves the quality of their work.
To help more people boost productivity with AI, we’re making the Gemini app with enterprise-grade data protection available as part of existing Google Workspace subscriptions. Starting next month, customers will have a round-the-clock brainstorming partner, research assistant, and more, to help where they need it most.
Data agents help you do research and data analysis more effectively
Data agents can help answer questions about internal and external sources, synthesize research, develop new models — and, best of all, help find the questions we haven’t even thought to ask yet, and then get the answers.
Bayer’s Crop Science team developed a Field Answers application built on Vertex AI to make critical, timely decisions in the field, contributing to more sustainable and efficient farming.
The CME Group is building a first-of-its-kind cloud-based commodities trading platform with Google Cloud’s AI tools built in, offering CME’s trading customers access to deeper insights and smarter trades as well as rapid experimentation on new trading strategies that won’t interrupt existing trade flows
Hiscox, one of the oldest syndicates in Lloyd’s of London, used BigQuery and Vertex AI to create the first AI-enhanced lead underwriting model, automating quoting for complex risks, from three days down to a few minutes.
Ipsos, a multinational market research firm, built a data analysis tool grounded in Google Search for its market researchers, eliminating the need for time-consuming requests to analysts.
Intelligencia AI, a healthcare technology company, uses Cloud SQL for Postgres for the data infrastructure that powers its AI-driven drug development predictions, enabling the company to deliver accurate and transparent results to customers, while reducing overhead.
NeuroPace, a medical device company, built a solution using Google Cloud gen AI technologies, to quickly identify effective epilepsy treatment options. By analyzing brainwave patterns, they can find similar patients and apply successful therapies faster.
Warner Bros. Discovery built an AI captioning tool with Vertex AI and saw a 50% reduction in overall costs, and an 80% reduction in the time it takes to manually caption a file without the use of machine learning.
10:25
Security agents significantly increase the speed of investigations
Security agents automate monitoring and response for greater vigilance and compliance controls. They can also help guard data and models from cyberattacks, such as malicious prompt injection.
Apex Fintech has accelerated the creation of complex threat detections, reducing the time required from hours to mere seconds with Google SecOps.
Certify OS is working with Google Cloud to automate credentialing, licensing, and monitoring of medical providers for healthcare networks, relieving the burden of time-consuming and often siloed information.
Fiserv is working with Gemini in Security Operations to summarize threats, find answers, and detect, validate, and respond to security events faster.
NetRise‘s “Trace” product is enabling AI-powered semantic search — built using Google Cloud gen AI — in the software supply chain.
Creative agents can help everyone build design, artistic or production skills
Creative agents can empower organizations with the best design and production skills, working across images, slides, and more. Many businesses are building agents alongside their marketing teams, audio and video production teams, and creative teams to help explore and build creative concepts.
Formula E is using Google Cloud gen AI to summarize two-hour-long race commentary into a two-minute podcast in any language, using driver data and ongoing seasonal storylines.
Globo, the largest media group in Latin America, is using Google Cloud’s AI to hyper-personalize content for its streaming users, and create a better experience for spectators.
PODS, working with advertising agency Tombras, used Gemini to create the “World’s Smartest Billboard,” a campaign on their trucks that could adapt to each neighborhood in New York City. The ads used live feeds of data so they updated in real-time hitting all 299 neighborhoods in just 29 hours creating more than 6,000 headlines.
10:25
PUMA is using Imagen to customize product photos on their website, saving time and ensuring they are locally relevant. Puma India has already seen a 10% increase in click-through rate, and they share how they did it in this demo.
Radisson Hotel Group worked with Accenture and Google Cloud to use Vertex AI and Gemini models to personalize its advertising at scale by training AI models on extensive datasets stored in BigQuery; ad teams saw productivity rise 50% while revenue increased from AI-powered campaigns by more than 20%.
Google’s open platform drives more momentum with partners and customers
The success of AI depends on an open platform that offers choice, is easy to integrate with existing systems, and is supported by a broad ecosystem. Google Cloud works closely with important partners, like Accenture and Deloitte, who report more than 45% of their Google Cloud gen AI projects have moved from proof of concept to production. In addition, expanded partnerships and dedicated Google Cloud centers of excellence with Accenture, BCG, Cognizant, Deloitte, HCLTech, KPMG, McKinsey, PwC, and Wipro have spurred thousands of successful projects. This collaborative ecosystem is the key to unlocking AI’s true potential. At Google Cloud, we truly value our partnership with this ecosystem, which is vital to helping our entire industry in its transformation — from systems updates to organizational change management to an overall mindset shift.
We’re inspired by the ingenuity and speed with which our customers are embracing gen AI. And we continue to work hard to partner with customers to help them deliver real business value in the form of incremental leads, conversions, sales, and profits. We’re committed to taking a bold and responsible approach to make AI helpful for everyone, helping organizations of all sizes solve real-world challenges in entirely new ways.
This is the new way to cloud. It’s a journey we’re on together with all of you — our customers and partners — all around the world.
MSF suspended outreach activities in Yei, Central Equatoria state, South Sudan, after a critical security incident.
MSF cannot resume activities until the safety of our staff is assured.
Juba – Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has suspended all outreach activities in Yei, in Central Equatoria state, South Sudan, until further notice, following a critical security incident involving MSF staff and staff from a partner organisation on Friday, 20 September 2024. We strongly condemns this attack against health workers in an area where people already face difficulty accessing healthcare.
“We are deeply shocked by this unacceptable attack on the provision of neutral and impartial humanitarian assistance for communities in need,” says Iqbal Huda, MSF’s Head of Mission in South Sudan. “As a result of the attack, our outreach movements and activities to communities surrounding Yei and Morobo have been suspended until we can have concrete guarantees that medical humanitarian services and lifesaving work can continue unhindered in the area.”
At approximately 3 pm on Friday, two clearly marked MSF vehicles were coming back to the town of Yei from an outreach activity, when along the road unknown armed men forced our staff to disembark from their vehicles at gunpoint, while looting MSF and the staff’s personal belongings. The armed men then forcibly took an MSF staff member and a staff member of a partner organisation to the bush, while letting the two remaining MSF staff members, the drivers, proceed with their vehicles.
While the two abducted staff were safely released 24 hours later, this is the third attack on humanitarian organisations occurring around Yei in three months, pointing to a systematic attack on the provision of humanitarian aid. Until the safety of MSF activities and staff are assured, MSF cannot guarantee resumption of activities in the area.
The real victims of these incidents are the most vulnerable people living in underserved areas, as MSF is the only provider of healthcare services in this area outside of Yei town.
“Attacks against humanitarians and healthcare workers are unacceptable and they directly affect the provision of healthcare for communities who desperately need it. We call on all armed groups to uphold their responsibilities under international humanitarian law and respect the provision of humanitarian assistance,” says Huda.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been working in the region that today constitutes the Republic of South Sudan since 1983. In Yei, MSF offers primary healthcare services by supporting four Ministry of Health facilities, delivering outpatient consultations, routine vaccinations, and maternal and child healthcare. MSF also conducts mobile clinics and provides community-based healthcare through the Boma Health Initiative programme in the area.
In South Sudan, MSF teams provide a range of services including general healthcare, mental healthcare and specialist hospital care. Our mobile teams also provide health assistance to displaced people and remote communities in six of the country’s 10 states and in two administrative areas. In addition to responding to emergencies and disease outbreaks, we also carry out preventative activities, such as vaccination campaigns, seasonal malaria chemo-prevention, safe drinking water and distribution of non-food items.
You could also be interested in
Palestine
Access to medical care at risk in West Bank as Israeli incursions intensify
Press Release5 Sep 2024
Gaza-Israel war
With Al-Aqsa hospital under threat, MSF opens field hospital in central Gaza
Press Release28 Aug 2024
South Sudan
Action needed on HIV and tuberculosis amid South Sudan’s crises
South Africa is set to experience a mix of warm and cool temperatures in the coming days, with a significant drop in temperatures and even light snowfall expected later this month, according to the South African Weather Service (SAWS).
This after the weekend’s freezing temperatures and snowfall in some parts of the country caused havoc on the roads, resulting in one fatality.
Forecaster at the South African Weather Service (SAWS) Lehlogonolo Thobela provided an outlook for the week ahead, highlighting warm conditions across much of the country.
“Today we are expecting just warm temperatures over the central parts, ranging between 26 and 30 degrees Celsius, that’s on average in the Northern Cape province.
“In Gauteng, the weather will be cooler in the south but warm in the northern areas, with maximum temperatures reaching about 25 degrees in the north and about 24 to 22 degrees over the southern parts,” Thobela said.
The Eastern Cape will experience varied conditions, with cool weather in the northeastern parts but warmer and even hot temperatures in the south.
“It will be quite cool over most parts of the northeastern parts of the Eastern Cape but warm over most of the province and hot over the southern parts,” Thobela explained.
The Western Cape, meanwhile, will see cooler conditions in the west but warmer weather in the east.
“Just warm temperatures are expected across the country,” Thobela said.
Looking ahead to Wednesday, Thobela forecasted hot temperatures in the Lowveld of Mpumalanga, with highs of 34 degrees Celsius, and similarly warm to hot conditions in Limpopo.
“It will be warm over most parts of the country, with maximums between 25 and 30 degrees over the central parts,” he noted.
He said that cooler weather will persist in the Western Cape, especially along the west coast, where temperatures are expected to reach a maximum of 22 degrees.
The heat is set to continue through the week, especially in Limpopo and the northern parts of KwaZulu-Natal, with hot conditions predicted for the 26th and 27th of September.
“It will be hot over most parts of Limpopo on the 26th and 27th,” Thobela said.
Central regions like the Free State, North West, and Gauteng will remain warm during this period.
However, a significant temperature drop is expected later in the month, starting on the 29th of September.
“It will be cold over the southern parts, and the Western Cape will be very cold, with maximums ranging between 10 and 14 degrees Celsius,” Thobela said.
The Eastern Cape will remain cool, with colder conditions in the central and southwestern parts.
On the 30th of September, cold conditions will spread to KwaZulu-Natal and parts of the Free State.
“There is some light snow expected over the highland areas of the Eastern Cape, as well as the southwestern parts of KwaZulu-Natal and the border of Lesotho, between the 30th [of September] and the 1st of October,” Thobela revealed, though he assured that the snowfall would be light.
The cold snap will extend to the escarpment of Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal on the 1st of October, with temperatures starting to recover by the 2nd.
South Africans are advised to prepare for fluctuating temperatures and possible snow in high-lying areas over the next week. – SAnews.gov.za
This post originally appeared on theTransform with Google Cloud blog. It was first published April 12, 2024; last updated with new use cases September 24, 2024.
Since generative AI first captured the world’s attention, there’s been a vigorous discussion about what, exactly, the new technology is best used for. While we all enjoyed those early funny chats and witty limericks, we’ve quickly discovered that many of the biggest AI opportunities are clearly in the enterprise, government, and with exciting new companies.
When we first published this post during Google Cloud Next ‘24, we showcased 101 of the best use cases out of the hundreds featured across the event. Now, we’re adding another 84 to the list as customers across the globe continue to put generative AI to work.
[If you’ve visited this post in the past, you can find the newest use cases listed at the top of each section.]
In a matter of months, organizations have gone from AI helping answer questions, to AI making predictions, to generative AI agents. What makes AI agents unique is that they can take actions to achieve specific goals, whether that’s guiding a shopper to the perfect pair of shoes, helping an employee looking for the right health benefits, or supporting nursing staff with smoother patient hand-offs during shifts changes.
In our work with customers, we keep hearing that their teams are increasingly focused on improving productivity, automating processes, and modernizing the customer experience. These aims are now being achieved through the AI agents they’re developing in six key areas: customer service; employee empowerment; code creation; data analysis; cybersecurity; and creative ideation and production.
Hundreds of Google Cloud customers have now put AI agents and gen-AI solutions into production throughout their businesses and the world — with many seeing a tangible return on investment. They have come to rely on Google Cloud technologies that include our AI infrastructure, Gemini models, Vertex AI platform, Google Workspace, and Google Distributed Cloud.
Here’s a snapshot of how 185 of these industry leaders are putting AI to use today, creating real-world use cases that will transform tomorrow.
Customer agents
Similar to great sales and service people, customer agents are able to listen carefully, understand your needs, and recommend the right products and services. They work seamlessly across channels including the web, mobile, and point of sale, and can be integrated into product experiences with voice and video.
1.Alaska Airlines is developing natural language search, providing travelers with a conversational experience powered by AI that’s akin to interacting with a knowledgeable travel agent. This chatbot aims to streamline travel booking, enhance customer experience, and reinforce brand identity.
2. Bennie Health uses Vertex AI to power its innovative employee health benefits platform, providing actionable insights and streamlining data management in order to enhance efficiency and decision-making for employees and HR teams.
3. Beyond 12, a tech-enabled nonprofit focused on student empowerment, has developed an AI-powered college coach to offer scalable coaching to first-generation students that’s available over text, app, and the web.
4. CareerVillage is building an app called Coach to empower job seekers, especially underrepresented youth, in their career preparedness; already featuring 35 career development activities, the aim is to have more than 100 by next year.
5. Character.ai built its realistic conversational chat platform using the full stack of Google Cloud AI services, including for model training and daily operations, allowing it to manage terabytes of conversations each day without interruption.
6. Click Therapeutics develops prescription digital therapeutics designed to treat disease. Its Clinical Operations team leverages Gemini for Google Workspace to transform complex operations data into actionable insights, so they can quickly pinpoint ways to streamline the patient experience in clinical trials.
7. Formula E can now summarize a two-hour long race commentary into a 2-minute podcast in any language, incorporating driver data and ongoing seasonal storylines.
8. General Motors’ OnStar has been augmented with new AI features, including a virtual assistant powered by Google Cloud’s conversational AI technologies that are better able to recognize the speaker’s intent.
9. Gojek, an Indonesia-based super app, launched “Dira by GoTo AI,” a Bahasa Indonesia AI-powered voice assistant integrated into their GoPay service, allowing customers to use voice command to eliminate typing and scrolling, and complete tasks like bill payments and money transfers with fewer steps.
10. GroupBy, an ecommerce service provider, developed an AI-first Search and Discovery Platform powered by Vertex AI Search for Retail. This solution is meticulously designed to optimize revenue, strengthen brand loyalty, and drive sales growth for B2C and B2B retailers.
11. Hotelplan Suisse built a chatbot trained on the business’s travel expertise to answer customer inquiries in real-time, and, following that success, it plans to use gen AI to create travel content.
12. Justicia Lab is developing an AI-powered assistant that will simplify legal processes for asylum seekers and immigrants; by uploading a picture from a legal letter or document, users can extract valuable information and then receive personalized guidance and next steps.
13. Mercado Libre has incorporated semantic search into its digital shopping platforms, using AI embeddings from the Vertex AI Agent Builder, which greatly improved product recommendations and discoverability for more than 200 million consumers across Latin America.
14. Motorola’s Moto AI leverages Gemini and Imagen to help smartphone users unlock new levels of productivity, creativity, and enjoyment with features such as conversation summaries, notification digests, image creation, and natural language search — all with reliable responses grounded in Google Search.
15. mRelief has built an SMS-accessible AI chatbot to simplify the application process for the SNAP food assistance program in the U.S., featuring easy-to-understand eligibility information and direct assistance within minutes rather than days.
16. Personal AI offers a “personal language model” using only the data of one individual or brand and allowing them to control and own how it is used. Built on your own data, facts, and opinions, it creates a responsive and interactive messaging experience that helps people be more productive and deepen relationships.
17. PODS worked with the advertising agency Tombras to create the “World’s Smartest Billboard” using Gemini — a campaign on its trucks that could adapt to each neighborhood in New York City, changing in real-time based on data. It hit all 299 neighborhoods in just 29 hours, creating more than 6,000 unique headlines.
18. Quora developed Poe, its own generative AI platform for people to discover and chat with AI-powered bots, including Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, Meta’s Llama, and Mistral’s Large 2 — many of which are hosted on Google Cloud’s purpose-built AI infrastructure.
19. ScottsMiracle-Gro built an AI agent on Vertex AI to provide tailored gardening advice and product recommendations for consumers.
20. Snap has deployed the multimodal capability of Gemini within its “My AI” chatbot and has since seen over 2.5-times as much engagement within Snapping to My AI in the United States.
21. Tabiya has built a conversational interface, Compass, that helps young people find employment opportunities; the platform asks questions and requests information, drawing out skills and experiences and matching those to appropriate roles.
22. Telecom Italia (TIM) implemented a Google-powered voice agent to address many customer calls, increasing efficiency by 20%.
23. UPS Capital launched DeliveryDefense Address Confidence, which uses machine learning and UPS data to provide a confidence score for shippers to help them determine the likelihood of a successful delivery.
24. Volkswagen of America built a virtual assistant in the myVW app, where drivers can explore their owners’ manuals and ask questions, such as, “How do I change a flat tire?” or “What does this digital cockpit indicator light mean?” Users can also use Gemini’s multimodal capabilities to see helpful information and context on indicator lights simply by pointing their smartphone cameras at the dashboard.
25. ADT is building a customer agent to help its millions of customers select, order, and set up their home security.
26. Alaska Airlines is developing a personalized travel search experience using advanced AI techniques, creating hyper-personalized recommendations that engage customers early and foster loyalty through AI-generated content.
27. Best Buy is using Gemini to launch a generative AI-powered virtual assistant this summer that can troubleshoot product issues, reschedule order deliveries, manage Geek Squad subscriptions, and more; in-store and digital customer-service associates are also gaining gen-AI tools to better serve customers anywhere they need help.
28. The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority is using Vertex AI to modernize transportation operations for a smoother, more efficient journey.
29. Etsy uses Vertex AI training to optimize their search recommendations and ads models, delivering better listing suggestions to buyers and helping sellers grow their businesses.
30. IHG Hotels & Resorts is building a generative AI-powered chatbot to help guests easily plan their next vacation directly in the IHG One Rewards mobile app.
31. ING Bank aims to offer a superior customer experience and has developed a gen-AI chatbot for workers to enhance self-service capabilities and improve answer quality on customer queries.
32. Magalu, one of Brazil’s largest retailers, has put customer service at the center of its AI strategy, including using Vertex AI to create “Lu’s Brain” to power an interactive conversational agent for Lu, Magalu’s popular brand persona (the 3D bot has more than 14 million followers between TikTok and Instagram).
33. Mercedes Benz will infuse e-commerce capabilities into its online storefront with a gen AI-powered smart sales assistant. Mercedes also plans to expand its use of Google Cloud AI in its call centers and is using Vertex AI and Gemini to personalize marketing campaigns.
34. Oppo/OnePlus is incorporating Gemini models and Google Cloud AI into their phones to deliver innovative customer experiences, including news and audio recording summaries, AI toolbox, and more.
35. Samsung is deploying Gemini Pro and Imagen 2 to their Galaxy S24 smartphones so users can take advantage of amazing features like text summarization, organization, and magical image editing.
36. The Minnesota Division of Driver and Vehicle Services helps non-English speakers get licenses and other services with two-way real-time translation.
37. Pepperdine University has students and faculty who speak many languages, and with Gemini in Google Meet, they can benefit from real-time translated captioning and notes.
38. Sutherland, a leading digital transformation company, is focused on bringing together human expertise and AI, including boosting its client-facing teams by automatically surfacing suggested responses and automating insights in real time.
39. Target uses Google Cloud to power AI solutions on the Target app and Target.com, including personalized Target Circle offers and Starbucks at Drive Up, their curbside pickup solution.
40. Tokopedia, an Indonesian ecommerce leader, is using Vertex AI to improve data quality, increasing unique products being sold by 5%.
41. US News saw a double-digit impact in key metrics like click-through rate, time spent on page, and traffic volume to its pages after implementing Vertex AI Search.
42-45. IntesaSanpaolo, MacquarieBank, and Scotiabank are exploring the potential of gen AI to transform the way we live, work, bank, and invest — particularly how the new technology can boost productivity and operational efficiency in banking.
Employee agents
Employee agents help workers be more productive and collaborate better together. These agents can streamline processes, manage repetitive tasks, answer employee questions, as well as edit and translate critical communications.
46. 2bots offers technology solutions, such as chatbots and virtual agents, built with Google Cloud’s AI solutions; these intelligent chatbots and content generation tools are transforming the way companies interact with their customers.
47. Augment is building an AI personal assistant that offers enhanced note-taking and collects information across your apps, including calendar, email, texts, and social media, so users can more quickly and easily find personal information and keep their lives organized.
48. Bayes Impact builds AI products to support nonprofits, and its flagship product, CaseAI, is a digital case manager that integrates with an NGO’s current system to add smart features to draft action plans tailored to a beneficiary’s unique history; caseworkers have saved 25 hours of work per week on average.
49. Bell Canada has built customizable contact center solutions for its business customers that offer AI-powered agents to address callers, and Agent Assist, which listens when a human agent is on, offering suggestions and sentiment analysis. AI has contributed $20 million in savings across customer operations.
50. Best Buy can generate conversation summaries in real time using Contact Center AI, allowing live agents to give their full attention to understanding and supporting customers, resulting in a 30-to-90-second reduction in average call time and after-call work. Both customers and agents have cited improved satisfaction.
51. Camanchaca, a Chilean seafood company, took only six weeks to develop Elon, a virtual assistant that aims to provide more efficient customer service through digital channels, enhancing Camanchaca’s customer interactions.
52. Certify OS is automating credentialing, licensing, and monitoring of medical providers for healthcare networks, relieving the burden of time-consuming and often siloed information.
53. Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs widely uses Gemini for Google Workspace, estimating that employees are saving an average five hours per week just with AI capabilities in Gmail. Gemini is also streamlining time-consuming, manual processes through uses like AI-generated transcriptions and auto-formatting of pharmaceutical lab results or FDA compliance documentation.
54. Dun & Bradstreet built an email-generation tool with Gemini that helps sellers create tailored, personalized communications to prospects and customers for its research services. The company also developed intelligent search capabilities to help users with complex queries like, “Find me all the companies in this area with a high ESG rating.”
55. England’s Football Association is training Vertex AI on the FA’s historical and current scouting reports so they can be transformed into concise summaries, helping national teams discover future talent.
56. Fireflies.ai can transcribe, summarize, and analyze meetings, recordings, and other voice conversations to save time and improve collaboration and information sharing across teams.
57. Fluna, a Pan-African digital services company, has automated the analysis and drafting of legal agreements using Vertex AI, Document AI, and Gemini 1.5 Pro, achieving an accuracy of 92% in data extraction while ensuring security and reliability for sensitive information.
58. Hemominas, Brazil’s largest blood bank, partnered with Xertica to develop an omnichannel chatbot for donor search and scheduling, streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency. The AI solution has the potential to save half-a-million lives annually by attracting more donors and optimizing blood supply management.
59. Hiscox used BigQuery and Vertex AI to create the first AI-enhanced lead underwriting model for insurers, automating and accelerating the quoting for complex risks from three days down to a few minutes.
60. LiveX AI delivers AI Agents that swiftly enhance product education, boost customer conversion, reduce churn, and provide personalized customer support, with the goal of offering everyone a seamless VIP experience across their customer journey.
61. Opportunity@Work is applying gen AI to scale a suite of software tools and APIs that help employers identify “STAR” job candidates — “skilled through alternative routes” such as community college, military service, and on-the-job experience — helping fill roles in a tight market and expand opportunities.
62. QuantumMetric has introduced Felix AI, powered by Gemini Pro, to simplify digital analytics and decision making. Felix AI automatically summarizes a user’s web or mobile session and consolidates the moments that matter most into short, readable summaries for customer service workers.
63. Randstad, a large HR services and talent provider, is using Gemini for Workspace across its organization to transform its work culture, leading to a more culturally diverse and inclusive workplace that’s seen a double-digit reduction in sick days.
64. Sprinklr built Sprinklr AI+ into its unified customer experience management platform, giving brands gen-AI capabilities for customer service, insights, social media management, and marketing that has enterprise-grade governance, security, and data privacy built-in.
65. Thomson Reuters added Gemini Pro to its suite of large language models approved for employee use; with its 2-million-token context window, Gemini makes some tasks as much as 10-times faster to process and can process entire documents in context.
66. Warner Bros. Discovery built an AI captioning tool with Vertex AI and saw a 50% reduction in overall costs, and an 80% reduction in the time it takes to manually caption a file without the use of machine learning.
67. The U.S. Air Force built a new proof-of-concept portal for searching, browsing, and reading e-published PDFs — all within a 90-day deadline that leveraged the prebuilt tools and speed of Vertex AI Search and Conversation.
68. Avery Dennison empowered their employees with generative AI to enable secure, flexible, and borderless collaboration for enhanced productivity to drive growth.
69. Bank of New York Mellon built a virtual assistant to help employees find relevant information and answers to their questions.
70. Bayer is building a radiology platform that will assist radiologists with data analysis, intelligent search, and to create documents that meet healthcare requirements needed for regulatory approval. The bioscience company is also harnessing BigQuery and Vertex AI to develop additional digital medical solutions and drugs more efficiently.
71. Bristol Myers Squibb is transforming its document processes for clinical trials using Vertex AI and Google Workspace. Now, documentation that took scientists weeks now gets to a first draft in minutes.
72. BenchSci develops generative AI solutions empowering scientists to understand complex connections in biological research, saving them time and financial resources and ultimately bringing new medicine to patients faster.
73. Cintas is using Vertex AI Search to develop an internal knowledge center for customer service and sales teams to easily find key information.
74. Covered California, the state’s healthcare marketplace, is using Document AI to help improve the consumer and employee experience by automating parts of the documentation and verification process when residents apply for coverage.
75. Dasa, the largest medical diagnostics company in Brazil, is helping physicians detect relevant findings in test results more quickly.
76. DaVita leverages DocAI and Healthcare NLP to transform kidney care, including analyzing medical records, uncovering critical patient insights, and reducing errors. AI enables physicians to focus on personalized care, resulting in significant improvements in healthcare delivery.
77. Discover Financial helps their 10,000 contact center representatives to search and synthesize information across detailed policies and procedures during calls.
78. HCA Healthcare is testing Cati, a virtual AI caregiver assistant that helps to ensure continuity of care when one caregiver shift ends and another begins. They are also using gen AI to improve workflows on time-consuming tasks, such as clinical documentation, so physicians and nurses can focus more on patient care.
79. The Home Depot has built an application called Sidekick, which helps store associates manage inventory and keep shelves stocked; notably, vision models help associates prioritize which actions to take.
80. Los Angeles Rams are utilizing AI across the board from content analysis to player scouting.
81. McDonald’s will leverage data, AI, and edge technologies across its thousands of restaurants to implement innovation faster and to enhance employee and customer experiences.
82. Pennymac, a leading US-based national mortgage lender, is using Gemini across several teams including HR, where Gemini in Docs, Sheets, Slides and Gmail is helping them accelerate recruiting, hiring, and new employee onboarding.
83. Robert Bosch, the world’s largest automotive supplier, revolutionizes marketing through gen AI-powered solutions, streamlining processes, optimizing resource allocation, and maximizing efficiency across 100+ decentralized departments.
84. Symphony, the communications platform for the financial services industry, uses Vertex AI to help finance and trading teams collaborate across multiple asset classes.
85. Uber is using AI agents to help employees be more productive, save time, and be even more effective at work. For customer service representatives, they’ve launched new tools that summarize communications with users and can even surface context from previous interactions, so front-line staff can be more helpful and effective.
86. The U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs is using AI at the edge to improve cancer detection for service members and veterans. The Augmented Reality Microscope (ARM) is deployed at remote military treatment facilities around the world. The prototype device is helping pathologists find cancer faster and with better accuracy.
87. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has improved the quality and efficiency of their patent and trademark examination process by implementing AI-driven technologies.
88. Verizon is using generative AI to help teams in network operations and customer experience get the answers they need faster.
89. Victoria’s Secret is testing AI-powered agents to help their in-store associates find information about product availability, inventory, and fitting and sizing tips, so they can better tailor recommendations to customers.
90. Vodafone uses Vertex AI to search and understand specific commercial terms and conditions across more than 10,000 contracts with more than 800 communications operators
91. WellSky is integrating Google Cloud’s healthcare and Vertex AI capabilities to reduce the time spent completing documentation outside work hours.
92. Woolworths, the leading retailer in Australia, boosts employees’ confidence in communications with “Help me write” across Google Workspace products for more than 10,000 administrative employees. It’s also using Gemini to create next-generation promotions, as well as for quickly assisting customer service reps in summarizing all previous customer interactions in real time.
93-97. Box, Typeface, Glean, CitiBank, and Securiti AI discuss developing AI-powered apps across the enterprise, with measurable returns on investment for marketing, financial services, and HR use cases.
98-99. Highmark Health and Freenome join Bristol Myers Squibb to explore how AI can improve efficiency and innovation across care delivery, drug discovery, clinical trial planning, and bringing medicines to market.
Code agents
Code agents are helping developers and product teams to design, create, and operate applications faster and better, and to ramp up on new languages and code bases. Many organizations are already seeing double-digit gains in productivity, leading to faster deployment and cleaner, clearer code.
100. Labelbox has built a fully managed AI model evaluation solution directly integrated into the Vertex AI platform, allowing Google Cloud users to seamlessly launch human evaluation jobs and set specific criteria for evaluation, such as question-answering and summarization; this eases and accelerates the ability to deploy human-in-the-loop AI systems with higher levels of trust and authority.
101. Leroy Merlin, a global home improvement retailer, developed its Pull Request Analyzer using Vertex AI. This generative AI solution summarizes code changes, helping developers understand projects faster and improve code review efficiency.
102. Linear, a product development platform, built Similar Issues, a feature that uses AI to detect and prevent duplicate or overlapping tickets and ensures cleaner and more accurate data representation.
103. Magic is building a developer platform with a 100-million-token context window, so organizations can upload extremely large code bases and more easily query and build on them using gen AI assistance.
104. Pinecone provides infrastructure for developers to build accurate, secure, and scalable AI applications, allowing companies to easily ground gen AI apps in their proprietary data for use in AI search, retrieval-augmented generation, coding agents, and more.
105. Regnology built its Ticket-to-Code Writer tool with Gemini 1.5 Pro to automate the conversion of bug tickets into actionable code, significantly streamlining the software development process.
106. Weights & Biases, a creator of AI tools for developers, created W&B Weave, a lightweight toolkit to track, evaluate, and debug gen AI applications built with Gemini, so teams can confidently go from demo to production.
107. Capgemini has been using Code Assist to improve software engineering productivity, quality, security, and developer experience, with early results showing workload gains for coding and more stable code quality.
108. Commerzbank is enhancing developer efficiency through Code Assist’s robust security and compliance features.
109. Quantiphi saw developer productivity gains of more than 30% during their Code Assist pilot.
110. Replit developers will get access to Google Cloud infrastructure, services, and foundation models via Ghostwriter, Replit’s software development AI, while Google Cloud and Workspace developers will get access to Replit’s collaborative code editing platform.
111. Seattle Children’s hospital is using AI to boost data engineering productivity and accelerate development.
112. Turing is customizing Gemini Code Assist on their private codebase, empowering their developers with highly personalized and contextually relevant coding suggestions that have increased productivity around 30 percent and made day-to-day coding more enjoyable.
113. Wayfair piloted Code Assist, and those developers with the code agent were able to set up their environments 55 percent faster than before, there was a 48 percent increase in code performance during unit testing, and 60 percent of developers reported that they were able to focus on more satisfying work.
Data agents
Data agents are like having knowledgeable data analysts and researchers at your fingertips. They can help answer questions about internal and external sources, synthesize research, develop new models — and, best of all, help find the questions we haven’t even thought to ask yet, and then help get the answers.
114. 180Seguros is powering its data management platform for employees with Google Cloud AI and BigQuery to improve operational metric tracking, allowing for 3X faster query times.
115. Addy AI is helping mortgage lenders and banks automate their lending processes with custom AI models trained on Vertex AI. For example, the platform can extract loan opportunity details from lengthy email threads with numerous attachments.
116. Bayer Crop Science has developed Climate FieldView, a comprehensive agricultural platform with more than 250 layers of data and billions of data points; AI-powered recommendations allow farmers to design and monitor their fields for greater yields and efficient fertilization, with the added benefit of reduced carbon emissions.
117. CME Group is building a first-of-its-kind cloud-based commodities trading platform with AI tools built-in, offering CME’s trading customers access to deeper insights and smarter trades as well as rapid experimentation on new trading strategies that won’t interrupt existing trade flows.
118. Digits is developing next-gen accounting software for startups and small businesses; using AI-driven bookkeeping, expense management, and financial analysis, Digits enables business owners to achieve financial clarity and focus on growth.
119. Elanco, a leader in animal health, has implemented a gen AI framework supporting critical business processes, such as Pharmacovigilance, Customer Orders, and Clinical Insights. The framework, powered by Vertex AI and Gemini, has resulted in an estimated ROI of $1.9 million since launching last year.
120. Full Fact, a UK-based nonprofit working in 18 countries to combat misinformation, is now using gen AI to actively monitor stories so its 30 fact-checking partner organizations can focus on addressing specific claims and harmful information.
121. Fullstory, a digital behavioral data platform, is building the ability to analyze and summarize user behavior on a site to create more informed and enriching chatbot experiences; responses are more relevant and accurate, ultimately improving virtual agent performance and customer experience
122. GamudaBerhad, a Malaysian infrastructure and property management company, has integrated a Gemini-powered conversational agent into its cloud-based Tunnel Insight platform, providing faster information and insights during construction projects.
123. IntelligenciaAI is using AI models to research novel new drugs, relying on Google Cloud’s AI-optimized infrastructure to deliver scalable research that is accurate and transparent to meet the stringent needs of medicine.
124. IPRally built a custom machine-learning platform that uses natural language processing on the text of more than 120 million global patent documents, creating an accurate, easily searchable database that adds more than 200,000 new sources a week.
125. Ipsos built a data analysis tool for its teams of market researchers, eliminating the need for time-consuming requests to data analysts, which is powered by Gemini 1.5 Pro and Flash models as well as Grounding with Google Search to enhance real-world accuracy from contemporaneous Search information.
126. Materiom, a startup researching zero-waste, bio-based alternatives to fossil-fuel-made products like plastics, is creating a gen AI tool that enables entrepreneurs to develop novel compostable materials with broad applications; AI offers faster research and information gathering to speed up the development process.
127. Mendel has built a clinical AI system designed to break down the longstanding silos in medical data, boosting accuracy, accessibility, and ultimately patient health outcomes.
128. NeuroPace, a medical device company, built a solution to quickly identify effective epilepsy treatment options best suited to different patients; by analyzing brainwave patterns, it can find similar patients and apply successful therapies, streamlining personalized care.
129. NotCo, a Chilean food tech company, partnered with Eleven Solutions to develop a conversational AI chatbot powered by Gemini; the chatbot has revolutionized data access, allowing employees to instantly query their SAP system and gain real-time insights for faster, data-driven decision-making.
130. SURA Investments, the largest asset manager in Latin America, developed an AI-based analysis model for employees that allows them to better understand customer needs and improve customer experience and satisfaction.
131. AI21 Labs offers a BigQuery integration called Contextual Answers that allows users to query data conversationally and get high-quality answers quickly.
132. Anthropic has partnered with Google Cloud to offer its family of Claude 3 models on Vertex AI — providing organizations with more model options for intelligence, speed, cost-efficiency, and vision for enterprise use cases.
133. The Asteroid Institute is using AI to discover hidden asteroids in existing astronomical data. This is a major focus for astronomers researching the evolution of the Solar System, investors and businesses hoping to fly missions to asteroids, and for all of us who want to prevent future large asteroid impacts on Earth.
134. Contextual is working with Google Cloud to offer enterprises fully customizable, trustworthy, privacy-aware AI grounded in internal knowledge bases.
135. Cox 2M, the commercial IoT division of Cox Communications, is able to make smarter, faster business decisions using AI-powered analytics.
136. Essential AI, a developer of enterprise AI solutions, is using Google Cloud’s AI-optimized TPU v5p accelerator chips to train its own AI models.
137. Generali Italia, Italy’s largest insurance provider, used Vertex AI to build a model evaluation pipeline that helps ML teams quickly evaluate performance and deploy models.
138. Globo, one of Brazil’s largest media networks, is using Service Extensions and Media CDN to fight piracy during live events by blocking pirated streams in real time.
139. Golden State Warriors are using AI to improve the fan experience content in their Chase Center app.
140. Hugging Face is collaborating with Google across open science, open source, cloud, and hardware to enable companies to build their own AI with the latest open models from Hugging Face and Google Cloud hardware and software.
141. Kakao Brain, part of Korean technology company Kakao Group, has built a large-scale AI language model that is the largest Korean language-specific LLM in the market, with 66 billion parameters. They’ve also developed a text-to-image generator called Karlo.
142. Mayo Clinic has given thousands of its scientific researchers access to 50 petabytes worth of clinical data through Vertex AI search, accelerating information retrieval across multiple languages.
143. McLaren Racing is using Google AI to get up-to-the-millisecond insights during races and training to gain a competitive edge.
144. Mercado Libre is testing BigQuery and Looker to optimize capacity planning and reservations with delivery carriers and airlines to fulfill shipments faster.
145. Mistral AI will use Google Cloud’s AI-optimized infrastructure, to further test, build, and scale up its LLMs, all while benefiting from Google Cloud’s security and privacy standards.
146. MSCI uses machine learning with Vertex AI, BigQuery and Cloud Run to enrich its datasets to help our clients gain insight into around 1 million asset locations to help manage climate-related risks.
147. NewsCorp is using Vertex AI to help search data across 30,000 sources and 2.5 billion news articles updated daily.
148. Orange operates in 26 countries where local data must be kept in each country. They are using AI on Google Distributed Cloud to improve network performance and deliver super-responsive translation capabilities.
149. Spotify leveraged Dataflow for large-scale generation of ML podcast previews, and they plan to keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with data engineering and data science to build better experiences for their customers and creators.
150. UPS is building a digital twin of its entire distribution network, so both workers and customers can see where their packages are at any time.
151. Workday is using natural language processing in Vertex Search and Conversation to make data insights more accessible for technical and non-technical users alike.
152. Woven — Toyota‘s investment in the future of mobility — is partnering with Google to leverage vast amounts of data and AI to enable autonomous driving, supported by thousands of ML workloads on Google Cloud’s AI Hypercomputer. This has resulted in resulting in 50% total-cost-of-ownership savings to support automated driving.
152-153. Broward County, Florida, and Southern California Edison are using geospatial capabilities and AI to improve infrastructure planning and monitoring, generate new insights, and create regional resilience for communities facing climate challenges today and tomorrow.
154-155. Kinaxis and Dematic are building data-driven supply chains to address logistics use cases including scenario modeling, planning, operations management, and automation.
156-157. NOAA and USAID are among the U.S. government agencies using Google Cloud AI to unlock critical data insights to streamline operations and improve mission outcomes — all with an emphasis on responsible AI.
Security agents
Security agents assist security operations by radically increasing the speed of investigations, automating monitoring and response for greater vigilance and compliance controls. They can also help guard data and models from cyberattacks, such as malicious prompt injection.
158. Apex Fintech is using Gemini in Security to accelerate the writing of complex threat detections from hours to a matter of seconds.
159. Exabeam has built a generative AI copilot for security analysts into its New-Scale Security Operations Platform.
160. Fiserv, a developer of financial services technology, can now summarize threats, find answers, and detect, validate, and respond to security events faster with the Gemini in Security Operations platform.
161. NetRise developed Trace to provide software supply chain security by introducing AI-powered intent-driven searches; these allow users to search their assets based on the underlying motives or purposes behind the code and configurations, rather than solely relying on signature-based methods.
162. Palo Alto Networks is using Gemini to create a grounded AI assistant for 24/7 security platform support in order to improve agent efficiency and response time; grounding the assistant in organizational data and security protocols has greatly improved the accuracy of responses.
163. BBVA uses AI in Google SecOps to detect, investigate, and respond to security threats with more accuracy, speed, and scale. The platform now surfaces critical security data in seconds, when it previously took minutes or even hours, and delivers highly automated responses.
164. Behavox is using Google Cloud technology and LLMs to provide industry leading regulatory compliance and front office solutions for financial institutions globally.
165. Charles Schwab has integrated their own intelligence into the AI-powered Google SecOps, so analysts can better prioritize work and respond to threats.
166. Fiserv’s security operations engineers create detections and playbooks with much less effort, while analysts get answers more quickly.
167. Grupo Boticário, one of the largest beauty retail and cosmetics companies in Brazil, employs real-time security models to prevent fraud and to detect and respond to issues.
168. Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex XSIAM, the AI-driven security operations platform, is built on more than a decade of expertise in machine-learning models and the most comprehensive, rich, and diverse data store in the industry. Backed by Google’s advanced cloud infrastructure and advanced AI services, including BigQuery and Gemini models, the combination delivers global scale and near real-time protection across all cybersecurity offerings.
169. Pfizer can now aggregate cybersecurity data sources, cutting analysis times from days to seconds.
Creative agents
Creative agents can expand your organization with the best design and production skills, working across images, slides, and exploring concepts with workers. Many organizations are building agents for their marketing teams, audio and video production teams, and all the creative people that can use a hand. With creative agents, anyone can become a designer, artist, or producer.
170. AdoreMe marketers write differentiated product descriptions in one hour, a tedious task which used to take 30-40 hours a month thanks to Gemini for Google Workspace.
171. Globo, the largest media group in Latin America, is using Google Cloud’s AI to hyper-personalize content for its streaming users, and create a better experience for spectators.
172. Higgsfield.ai built a number of text-to-video apps for consumers, including Diffuse 2.0, which can combine users photos, videos, and texts through AI models to create more realistic avatars.
173. Jasper trains its suite of creativity-, writing-, and marketing-focused AI models on Google’s AI infrastructure, delivering on-brand, data-optimized assets faster and at scale to teams large and small.
174. Puma is using Imagen to customize product photos on its website, saving time and ensuring they are locally relevant across markets; PUMA India has already seen a 10% increase in click through rate.
175. RadissonHotel Group personalized its advertising at scale in collaboration with Accenture and using Vertex AI and Gemini models, training them on extensive datasets stored in BigQuery; ad teams saw productivity rise around 50% while revenue increased from AI-powered campaigns by more than 20%
176. SquareEnix is using customer data to develop AI-optimized marketing assets to keep its gamers engaged, sharing personalized emails suited to each player’s preferences, leading to a 20% increase in email opens and a 10% increased retention rate.
177. Urmobo, a mobile-device management platform, created a virtual agent, Odin, that significantly improved user experience and reduced support tickets by enabling clients to interact with the platform using natural language.
178. The World Bank is developing a tool to extract key information from research literature on the causal impact of development interventions, with the ultimate goal to empower decision-makers to allocate the $220B in annual aid and trillions in annual impact investing more effectively.
179. Belk ECommerce is using generative AI to craft better product descriptions, a necessary yet time-consuming task for digital retails that has often been done manually.
180. Canva is using Vertex AI to power its Magic Design for Video, helping users skip tedious editing steps while creating shareable and engaging videos in a matter of seconds.
181. Carrefour used Vertex AI to deploy Carrefour Marketing Studio in just five weeks — an innovative solution to streamline the creation of dynamic campaigns across various social networks. In just a few clicks, marketers can build ultra-personalized campaigns to deliver customers advertising that they care about.
182. Major League Baseball continues to innovate its Statcast platform, so teams, broadcasters, and fans have access to live in-game insights.
183. Paramount currently relies on manual processes to create the essential metadata and video summaries used across its Paramount+ platform for showcasing content and creating personalized experiences for viewers. VertexAI Text Bison is now helping to streamline this process.
184. Procter & Gamble used Imagen to develop an internal gen AI platform to accelerate the creation of photo-realistic images and creative assets, giving marketing teams more time to focus on high-level planning and delivering superior experiences for its consumers.
185. WPP will integrate Google Cloud’s gen AI capabilities into its intelligent marketing operating system, called WPP Open, which empowers its people and clients to deliver new levels of personalization, creativity, and efficiency. This includes the use of Gemini 1.5 Pro models to supercharge both the accuracy and speed of content performance predictions.
To find even more customers using our AI tools to build agents and solutions for their most important enterprise projects, visit the Google Cloud customer hub.
Sri Lanka has sworn in 55-year-old leftist politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake as its new president. There was no clear winner after the first round of votes from Saturday’s election had been counted. But Dissanayake, who is commonly known by his initials AKD, emerged victorious after a count of the second-choice votes.
His election is something of a watershed. It was the first time since Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948 that the presidential race was decided by a second round of counting after either of the top two candidates failed to win the mandatory 50% of the vote. And it was also the only time that voters have elected a candidate who does not belong to the country’s traditional ruling elite.
Sri Lanka has long been held in the tight grip of a handful of powerful political families. The Rajapaksa dynasty, for example, had dominated Sri Lankan politics for well over two decades before mass protests over a severe economic crisis unseated the country’s leader, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in 2022.
AKD’s campaign rhetoric centred largely around corruption as the key culprit in the economic woes facing the country. Previous governments have been linked not only to corruption, but also to human rights abuses and the military’s encroachment on the civilian space. Persuaded by his logic of openness and transformation, voters saw AKD as an opportunity to change Sri Lanka’s stale political system.
Following his election, AKD declared in characteristic Marxian mode: “This victory belongs to all of us.” Assuaging the demands of the masses for change will be a priority.
Voters have chosen a new president for the first time since mass protests unseated Sri Lanka’s leader in 2022. Color Collector / Shutterstock
AKD comes from a strong leftwing ideological background. He leads a political outfit called the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP), which is by no means a heavyweight party. It has only three members in the country’s 225-member parliament, and does not come with an attractive pedigree.
The JVP is seen in Sri Lanka as a fringe reactionary party due to its involvement in violent insurrections and targeted assassinations that left thousands dead in the 1980s. Given Sri Lanka’s fractious ethno-nationalist politics, how the JVP and its new national leader carry the masses forward on a national regeneration project would be anybody’s guess.
But AKD has shown himself to be aware of the underlying tensions in the country and, since becoming the JVP’s leader in 2008, has apologised for the party’s past violence. In his swearing-in speech, AKD declared: “We need to establish a new clean political culture … We will do the utmost to win back the people’s respect and trust in the political system.”
The road ahead
There are several critical challenges that AKD needs to face head on – the most important of which concerns the country’s failing economy. After all, it was acute economic hardship that drove the citizenry to vote for political change.
In the past, a substantial portion of whatever Sri Lanka managed to procure through its two main sources of income, tourism and remittances sent home by citizens living abroad, went towards settling its external debts. However, these earnings were hit badly by the pandemic and the country’s economic woes spiralled out of control.
The rate of inflation soared and dwindling reserves of foreign currency resulted in acute shortages of essential goods and services. Then, in May 2022, Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time in its history.
This scenario quickly led to a national emergency. Faced with the most devastating economic crisis since independence, a countrywide uprising (colloquially known as the aragalaya) ousted Gotabaya Rajapaksa from office.
The removal of Rajapaksa secured an uneasy peace, and things have since tentatively improved on the economic front. Ranil Wickremesinghe took over as the interim president in 2022 and his administration managed to secure a loan worth US$3 billion (£2.2 billion) from the International Monetary Fund.
The economy now appears to be on a slow path of recovery. It is expected to grow in 2024 for the first time in three years, supported by a narrower trade deficit and growing remittances.
Sri Lanka’s interim president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has congratulated Dissanayake on winning the election. Ruwan Walpola / Shutterstock
AKD is aware of the enormity of the burden he carries. As he admitted while accepting the role of president: “I have said before that I am not a magician – I am an ordinary citizen. There are things I know and don’t know. My aim is to gather those with the knowledge and skills to help lift this country.”
His pro-working class and anti-political elite campaigning without doubt made AKD popular among youth, and helped him secure victory. But his ideology may well be at odds with the foreign lenders who have kept the economy afloat for past two decades.
Sri Lanka’s new president faces a precarious balancing act to satisfy both a population high on hopes of populist subsidies and the demands of external lenders to tighten the country’s belts.
Amalendu Misra is a recipient of British Academy and Nuffield Foundation Fellowships.
At our Gemini for Work event in Sunnyvale, California, we showcased how companies are using Google Cloud’s generative AI technology to transform their businesses. From healthcare providers to car makers to retailers, our customers are solving crucial problems and becoming more efficient using generative AI — and they’re choosing Google Cloud as their partner to make it happen. Here’s a look at how Google AI is reshaping businesses across the globe.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Orlaith Darling, PhD Candidate, Contemporary English Literature and Critical Theory, Trinity College Dublin
On the level of theme, the Irish writer Sally Rooney is firmly in her wheelhouse in her new novel Intermezzo. We find Peter and Ivan Koubek having just lost their father and trying to forge a life through and past this bereavement by way of intimate relationships.
Peter, a barrister in his early 30s, is embroiled in a semi-secret situation-ship with a much younger college student and former sex worker, Naomi. He balances this with his longstanding and largely chaste relationship with a former long-term girlfriend, Sylvia.
Ivan, a decade younger and aeons less suave than his older brother, has meanwhile taken up with Margaret, a 36-year-old woman he meets while playing chess in Leitrim, a county in the north-west of Ireland.
So far, so familiar. Anyone seeking plot-driven fiction without a romantic bent from Rooney should know better by now.
The minor stylistic differences between Intermezzo and her other books reviewers have noted are all moderated by the manifest continuities in Rooney’s authorly concerns.
We read Rooney because she is that unusual writer whose characters raise serious and abiding questions about the particular historical, social and economic moments they inhabit. Her characters manage to do so without ever feeling like anything less than fully developed, psychologically complex individuals.
In Conversations with Friends and Normal People, the faltering of young relationships and first love tested the characters’ ideologies against their behaviours, their politics against their morals. In Beautiful World, emails allowed Alice and Eileen the space to describe what it feels like to live in a moment of historical crisis even as life (in the alternating chapters) carries on unchanged.
This very Rooney-esque tension is, in Intermezzo, parlayed as a struggle between brothers, where Peter castigates various beliefs of Ivan’s and Ivan accuses Peter of privileging principle over conduct.
Ivan thinks that “Peter is the kind of person who goes along the surface of life very smoothly.” This, for the record, is not at all reflected in Peter’s inner monologue, which proceeds via truncated sentence fragments and is peppered by wishes that he was dead.
Life, for Peter, seems to be closing in, and is all the more claustrophobic given the seemingly total clarity with which he remembers “When life was perfect.” He at once envies and feels a great depth of compassion for those whose lives are constantly buffeted by the material forces from which his well-paying job shields him.
Ivan has, at various times, felt himself existing outside of life. He can explain eloquently his opinions on the late capitalist economy (fake), he has a physics degree, a formidable reputation in competitive chess and a history of subscribing to questionable YouTube channels of a distinctly incel flavour. Yet, in Ivan, we see Rooney’s great optimism for people and how they might be redeemed.
Ivan frequently confronts the difficulty of paying rent, of living in a world where a person cannot do something as prosaic as have a dog. But these problems are tempered by a feeling that the world is nevertheless beginning to open up for him. As he muses, it is surely better to face down these “never-ending struggle[s]” with optimism than be worn down by them. When he meets Margaret, he feels increasingly assured that the world does “make room for goodness and decency.”
This newest book is perhaps Rooney’s most mature reflection on how relationships operate as exercises in optimism, both in each other and in the world itself. Intermezzo is remarkable and bracing on the exchange of promises that happens in relationships, on the currency of hope they run on, and mutual, voluntary emotional debts they create. These debts, of course, are not always repaid, and that is part of the point: the stakes of love are high, and we run the risk of defaulting and being defaulted on.
And yet, for Rooney, this risk is always worth taking. It must be, because it is all there is. Rooney’s is a world in which relationships sustain us and in which small daily miracles make life seem more bearable than is proportionate. This might be as simple as the unthinking care enacted by such an everyday chore as “making up [a] packed lunch, Nutella sandwiches, an apple wrapped in kitchen roll” for someone else, or the unrationed totality of love a dog shows its owner after an absence.
As with each of her novels before this, Rooney’s power as a writer is to focus attention on the crazy hope we place in other people’s ability to sustain us and the anxiety we feel about what we could possibly offer in return. And, against all suggestions of departure, this is the main point of continuity across Rooney’s oeuvre.
Rooney appears to share the views of many of her characters. Like Frances in Conversations with Friends who says “[y]ou live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position”. Like Marianne in Normal People who believes that “people can really change one another”. Like Eileen in Beautiful World who hopes that “the most ordinary thing about human beings is not violence or greed but love and care.” And, like Ivan in Intermezzo, she is an optimist.
Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.
Orlaith Darling receives funding from the Irish Research Council.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Following the G7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting at the High-Level Week of the UN General Assembly, the following statement was made by Chair Antonio Tajani.
1. Introduction
In today’s meeting in New York, in the wake of the Summit of the Future, the G7 Foreign Ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and the High Representative of the European Union reiterated their commitment to upholding the rule of law, humanitarian principles and international law, including the Charter of the United Nations, and to protecting human rights and dignity for all individuals.
They re-emphasized their determination to foster collective action in order to preserve peace and stability to address global challenges, such as the climate crisis and to advance the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In doing so, the G7 members renewed their commitment to the promotion of free societies and democratic principles, where all persons can freely exercise their rights and freedoms.
2. Summit for the Future
In the spirit of the renewed determination to strengthen the multilateral system based on the UN Charter’s principles, as reflected in the Pact for the Future adopted at the Summit of the Future by world Leaders, the G7 members committed to continue working with countries and all relevant stakeholders within the UN system through dialogue, mutual understanding and respect in the pursuit of common solutions, with the aim of upholding and reforming the multilateral system so that it better reflects today’s world and is fit to respond to the complex global challenges of the future. They reaffirmed their commitment to work with all UN member states to strengthen the roles of the UNSG as well as the UNGA. They also recommitted to the reform of the UNSC.
3. Steadfast Support to Ukraine
The G7 members reaffirmed their unwavering support to Ukraine as it defends its freedom, sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity, against Russia’s brutal and unjustifiable war of aggression. The G7 members strongly condemned Russia’s blatant breach of international law, including the UN Charter, and of the basic principles that underpin the international order. They strongly condemned the serious violations of international humanitarian law perpetrated by Russia’s forces in Ukraine, which have caused a devastating impact on the civilian population. Violence against civilians, including women, children, and prisoners of war is unacceptable.
They expressed their outrage at Russia’s repeated attacks against critical infrastructure and they condemned in the strongest possible terms any targeting of civilian buildings and even hospitals. Ensuring the protection and resilience of Ukraine’s energy grid and its power generation capacity remains a fundamental and urgent priority as winter approaches. They welcomed the international conference on energy security held on August 22. .as well as the ongoing coordination of the G7 energy group. They reiterated their commitment to help Ukraine meet its urgent short-term financing needs, as well as support its long-term recovery and reconstruction priorities.
Russia must end its war of aggression and pay for the damage it has caused to Ukraine. The G7 members reiterated their commitment to explore and use all possible lawful avenues by which Russia is made to meet those obligations.
The launch of the Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) Loans for Ukraine, as mandated by G7 leaders, will make available approximately USD 50 billion in additional funding to Ukraine that will be serviced and repaid by future flows of extraordinary revenues stemming from the immobilization of Russian sovereign assets held in the European Union and other relevant jurisdictions.
The G7 Foreign Ministers and the High Representative are working, together with Finance Ministers, to operationalize the G7 Leaders’ commitment by the end of the year. They will maintain solidarity in this commitment to providing this support to Ukraine. The G7 members confirmed that, consistent with all applicable laws and their respective legal systems, Russia’s sovereign assets in their jurisdictions will remain immobilized until Russia ends its aggression and pays for the damage it has caused to Ukraine.
They also committed to strengthening the Ukraine Donor Platform to help coordinate the disbursal of funds and ensure they align with Ukraine’s highest priority needs at a pace it can effectively absorb. This will play a key role in advancing Ukraine’s reforms in line with its European path and in contributing to a successful Ukraine Recovery Conference to be held in Italy in 2025.
Any use of nuclear weapons by Russia in the context of its war of aggression against Ukraine would be inadmissible. They therefore condemned in the strongest possible terms Russia’s irresponsible and threatening nuclear rhetoric, as well as its posture of strategic intimidation. They also expressed their deepest concern about the reported use of chemical weapons as well as riot control agents as a method of warfare by Russia in Ukraine.
The G7 members remained committed to holding those responsible accountable for atrocities in Ukraine, in line with international law. They also condemned the seizures of foreign companies and called on Russia to reverse these measures and seek acceptable solutions with the companies targeted by them.
They condemned Russia’s seizure and continued control and militarization of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which poses severe risks for nuclear safety and security, potentially affecting the entire international community. They reiterated their support to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s efforts directed at mitigating such risks.
They underlined once again their support for Ukraine’s right of self-defense and reiterated their commitment to Ukraine’s long-term security, recalling the launch of the Ukraine Compact in Washington on 11 July 2024. They re-affirmed the intention to increasing industrial production and delivery capabilities to assist Ukraine’s self-defense. They highlighted their support to Ukraine in its efforts to modernize its armed forces and strengthen its own defense industry. They expressed their resolve to bolster Ukraine’s air defense capabilities to save lives and protect critical infrastructure.
They remained committed to raising the costs of Russia’s war of aggression by building on the comprehensive package of sanctions and economic measures already in place. Though existing measures have had a significant impact on Russia’s war machine and ability to fund its invasion, its military is still posing a threat not just to Ukraine but also to international security.
The G7 members expressed the intention to continue taking appropriate measures, consistent with their legal systems, against actors in China and in third countries that materially support Russia’s war machine, including financial institutions, and other entities that facilitate Russia’s acquisition of items for its defense industrial base.
They expressed their intention to continue to apply significant pressure on Russian revenues from energy and other commodities. This will include improving the efficacy of the oil price cap policy by taking further steps to tighten compliance and enforcement, including against Russia’s shadow fleet, while working to maintain market stability.
They especially emphasized the urgency to support Ukraine’s energy security, including by coordinating international assistance through the G7+Ukraine Energy Coordination Group. They underscored the importance to continue working with the Ukrainian authorities and International Financial Institutions through the Ukraine Donor Platform, and by mobilizing private investments and fostering participation of civil society.
They highlighted the reality of millions of internally displaced Ukrainians and the importance of an inclusive rights-based, gender-responsive recovery, including the reintegration of veterans and civilians with disabilities, and to address the needs of women, children as well as other population groups who have been disproportionately affected by Russia’s war of aggression. They reiterated their condemnation of Russia’s unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children and welcomed coordinated efforts to secure their safe return. They called on Russia to release all persons it has unjustly detained and safely return all civilians it has illegally transferred or deported, starting with children. They welcomed the Ministerial Conference on the Human Dimension of Ukraine’s 10 point peace formula that will be hosted by Canada on October 30-31.
They reiterated the need to support Ukraine’s agriculture sector, which is critical for global food supply, particularly for the most vulnerable nations, and called for unimpeded exports of grain, foodstuffs, fertilizers and inputs from Ukraine.
They acknowledged the importance to involve the private sector in the sustainable economic recovery of Ukraine. They welcomed and underscored the significance of Ukraine itself continuing to implement domestic reform efforts, especially in the fields of anti-corruption, justice system reform, decentralization, and promotion of the rule of law. These endeavors are in line with the Euro-Atlantic path Ukraine has embraced. The G7 members were unanimous on the need to continue to support efforts of the Ukrainian government and people in these endeavors.
They resolutely condemned Russia’s holding of illegitimate ‘elections’ in the occupied Ukrainian Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. Russia’s actions once again demonstrate its blatant disregard for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence, and the UN Charter. They called on all members of the international community to refrain from recognizing Russia’s illegitimate actions.
They welcomed the Summit on Peace in Ukraine that took place in Switzerland on June 15-16 and its focus on the key priorities needed to achieve a framework for peace based on international law, including the UN Charter and its principles, and respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. They remained committed to follow up on the Conference through constructive engagement with all international partners to reach a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.
The G7 members acknowledged that Russia continues to expand its campaigns of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). They condemned Russia’s use of FIMI to support its war of aggression against Ukraine. They reiterated their determination to bolster the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism by developing a collective response framework to counter foreign threats to democracies.
4. Situation in the Middle East
The G7 members reiterated their condemnation of Hamas’ horrendous attacks on October 7, 2023. 101 hostages are still in the hands of Hamas. They noted with deep concern the trend of escalatory violence in the Middle East and its repercussions on regional stability and on the lives of civilians shattered by this conflict, from the Gaza Strip to the Israeli-Lebanese Blue Line. Actions and counter-reactions risk magnifying this dangerous spiral of violence and dragging the entire Middle East into a broader regional conflict with unimaginable consequences. They called for a stop to the current destructive cycle, while emphasizing that no country stands to gain from a further escalation in the Middle East.
They expressed their deep concern about the situation along the Blue Line. They recognized the essential stabilizing role played by the Lebanese Armed Forces and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon in mitigating that risk. They demanded the full implementation of UNSCR 1701 (2006) and urged that all relevant actors implement immediate measures towards de-escalation.
The G7 members reaffirmed their strong support for the ongoing mediation efforts undertaken by the United States, Egypt and Qatar to reach a resolution between the parties to the conflict in Gaza. They reiterated their full commitment for the implementation of the UNSC Resolution 2735 (2024) and the comprehensive deal outlined by President Biden in May that would lead to an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all hostages, a significant and sustained increase in the flow of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza, and an enduring end to the crisis, to secure a pathway to a two-state solution with a safe Israel alongside a sovereign Palestinian state. They urged the parties to the conflict to unequivocally accept the ceasefire proposal, stressing the need for countries in a position to directly influence the parties to cooperate in strengthening mediation efforts. They called for the full implementation of the terms of the ceasefire proposal without delay and without conditions.
They called on all parties to fully comply with international law, including international humanitarian law. They expressed their deep alarm for the heavy toll this conflict has taken on civilians, deploring all losses of civilian lives equally and noting with great concern that, after nearly a year of hostilities and regional instability, it is mostly civilians, including women and children, who are paying the highest price. Protection of civilians must be an absolute priority for all parties at all times.
The G7 members expressed concern at the unprecedented level of food insecurity affecting most of the population in the Gaza Strip. Securing full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access in all its forms and through all relevant crossing points remains an absolute priority. They urged all parties to allow the unimpeded delivery of aid and ensure protection of humanitarian workers by properly implementing de-confliction measures. They recognized the crucial role played by UN agencies and other humanitarian actors in delivering assistance especially health care for the most vulnerable persons, including the polio vaccination campaign. They expressed their support for UNRWA to effectively uphold its mandate, emphasizing the vital role that the UN Agency plays.
The G7 members reaffirmed their unwavering commitment, through reinvigorated efforts in the Middle East Peace Process, to the vision of a two-state solution where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders, consistent with international law and relevant UN resolutions, and in this regard stress the importance of unifying the Gaza strip with the West Bank under Palestinian Authority. We note that mutual recognition, to include the recognition of a Palestinian state, at the appropriate time, would be a crucial component of that political process. They expressed their concern about the risk of weakening the Palestinian Authority and underlined the importance of maintaining economic stability in the West Bank. They welcomed the EU’s 400 million Euro emergency package for the Palestinian Authority. All parties must refrain from unilateral actions and from divisive statements that may undermine the prospect of a two-state solution, including the Israeli expansion of settlements and the “legalization” of settlement outposts. They condemned the rise in extremist settler violence committed against Palestinians, which undermines security and stability in the West Bank and threatens prospects for a lasting peace. They expressed their deep concern regarding the deteriorating security situation in the West Bank.
They reiterated their commitment to working together – and with other international partners – to closely coordinate and institutionalize their support for civil society peacebuilding efforts, ensuring that they are part of a larger strategy to build the foundation necessary for a negotiated and lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. The G7 members called on Iran to contribute to de-escalation of tensions in the region. They demanded that Iran cease its destabilizing actions in the Middle East. They underlined that they stand ready to adopt further sanctions or take other measures in response to further destabilizing initiatives.
They reiterated their determination that Iran must never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon and that the G7 will continue working together, and with other international partners, to address Iran’s nuclear escalation. A diplomatic solution remains the best way to resolve this issue. As the IAEA remains unable to verify that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful, they urged Iran’s leadership to cease and reverse nuclear activities that have no credible civilian justification and to cooperate with the IAEA without further delay to fully implement their legally binding safeguards agreement and their commitments under UNSCR 2231(2015).
They condemned in the strongest possible terms Iran’s export and Russia’s procurement of Iranian ballistic missiles. Evidence that Iran has continued to transfer weaponry to Russia despite repeated international calls to stop represents a further escalation of Iran’s military support to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Russia has used Iranian weaponry such as UAVs to kill Ukrainian civilians and strike their critical infrastructure.
They reiterated that Iran must immediately cease all support to Russia’s illegal and unjustifiable war against Ukraine and halt such transfers of ballistic missiles, UAVs and related technology, which constitute a direct threat to the Ukrainian people as well as European and international security more broadly.
They reaffirmed their steadfast commitment to hold Iran to account for its unacceptable support for Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine that further undermines global security. In line with their previous statements on the matter, they underscored that they are already responding with new and significant measures.
They also reiterated their deep concern about Iran’s human rights violations, especially against women and minority groups. They reiterated their call on Iran to allow access to the country to relevant UN Human Rights Council Special Procedures mandate holders.
De-escalation efforts in the region must also include the immediate and unconditional termination of any attack by the Houthis against international and commercial vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea. The G7 members reiterated their strong condemnation of these attacks and the right of countries to defend their vessels from attacks. They called for the immediate release by the Houthis of the Galaxy Leader and its crew. They expressed their strong concern about the August 21 attack on the merchant vessel Sounion and the ongoing risk of an environmental catastrophe as salvage operations continue. They welcomed the efforts by the EU maritime operation Aspides and by the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect vital sea lanes. They appreciated the efforts of those countries that are committed to protect freedom of navigation and trade, as well as maritime security, in line with UNSCR 2722 (2024) and in accordance with international law.
5. Fostering partnerships with African Countries
The G7 members reaffirmed their commitment to support African nations in the pursuit of sustainable development as well as the creation of jobs and growth. The focus remains on fostering fair partnerships, built on shared principles, democratic values, local leadership, and practical initiatives.
They reiterated their intention to align actions with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the specific needs of African countries, including plans to improve local and regional food security, infrastructure, trade, and agricultural productivity. They expressed their support for the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area, a crucial factor for Africa’s growth in the next decade.
The G7 members emphasized the need to strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation with African countries and regional organizations. In addition to maintaining financial support for African nations, they expressed their determination to improve the coordination and effectiveness of G7 resources, mobilizing domestic resources and encouraging increased private investments.
They welcomed the African Union’s permanent membership in the G20, and the creation of an additional Chair for Sub-Saharan Africa on the IMF Executive Board in November.
They reaffirmed their commitment to the G20 Compact with Africa, a tool aimed at enhancing private investment, driving structural reforms, supporting local entrepreneurship, and fostering cooperation, particularly in the energy sector. The G7 Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), and initiatives like the EU’s Global Gateway can contribute to promote sustainable, resilient, and economically viable infrastructure in Africa, ensuring transparency in project selection, procurement, and financing. In this framework, they welcomed Italy’s Mattei Plan for Africa.
They recognized that sustainable development, peace and security and democracy go hand in hand, reaffirming their commitment to help African governments in strengthening democratic governance and respect for human rights, while addressing conditions conducive to terrorism, violent extremism, and instability.
They expressed their deep concern about the destabilizing activities of the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group and other Russia-supported entities. They called for accountability for all those responsible for human rights violations and abuses.
6. Indo-Pacific
The G7 members reiterated their commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, based on the rule of law, which is inclusive, prosperous and secure, grounded on sovereignty, territorial integrity, peaceful resolution of disputes, fundamental freedoms and human rights. They reaffirmed the importance of working together with regional partners and organizations, notably the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). They reaffirmed their thorough support for ASEAN centrality and unity. They reaffirmed their intention to work to support Pacific Island Countries’ priorities, as articulated through the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.
As they seek constructive and stable relations with China, they recognized the importance of direct and candid engagement to express concerns and manage differences. They reaffirmed their readiness to cooperate with China to address global challenges. They expressed their deep concern at the China’s support to Russia. They called on China to step up efforts to promote international peace and security, and to press Russia to stop its military aggression and immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw its troops from Ukraine. They encouraged China to support a comprehensive, just and lasting peace based on territorial integrity and the principles and purposes of the UN Charter, including through its direct dialogue with Ukraine. They also expressed their deep concern at China’s ongoing support for Russia’s defense industrial base, which is enabling Russia to maintain its illegal war in Ukraine and has significant and broad-based security implications. They called on China to cease the transfer of dual-use materials, including weapons components and equipment, that are inputs for Russia’s defense sector.
They recognized the importance of China in global trade. However, they expressed their concerns about China’s persistent industrial targeting and comprehensive non-market policies and practices that are leading to global spillovers, market distortions and harmful overcapacity in a growing range of sectors, undermining our workers, industries and economic resilience and security, as well as impacting on currencies. The G7 members are not decoupling or turning inwards. They are de-risking and diversifying supply chains where necessary and appropriate and fostering resilience to economic coercion. They called on China to refrain from adopting export control measures, particularly on critical minerals, that could lead to significant supply chain disruptions. Together with partners, the G7 members will invest in building their respective industrial capacities, promote diversified and resilient supply chains, and reduce critical dependencies and vulnerabilities.
They remained seriously concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas and reiterated their strong opposition to any unilateral attempt to change the status quo by force or coercion. They reaffirmed that there is no legal basis for China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea, and they reiterated their opposition to China’s militarization and coercive and intimidation activities in the South China Sea. They re-emphasized the universal and unified character of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and reaffirmed UNCLOS’s important role in setting out the legal framework that governs all activities in the oceans and the seas. They reiterated that the award rendered by the Arbitral Tribunal on 12 July 2016 is a significant milestone, which is legally binding upon the parties to those proceedings and a useful basis for peacefully resolving disputes between the parties. They reiterated their strong opposition to China’s dangerous use of coast guard and maritime militia in the South China Sea and its repeated obstruction of countries’ high seas freedom of navigation. They expressed deep concern about the dangerous and obstructive maneuvers, including water cannons and ramming, by the China Coast Guard and maritime militia against Philippines vessels.
The G7 members reaffirmed that maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is indispensable to international security and prosperity, and called for the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues. There is no change in the basic position of the G7 members on Taiwan, including stated One-China policies. They supported Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations as a member where statehood is not a prerequisite and as an observer or guest where it is.
They remained concerned by the human rights situation in China, including in Xinjiang and Tibet. They are also worried about the crackdown on Hong Kong’s autonomy and independent institutions, and ongoing erosion of rights and freedoms. They urged China and the Hong Kong authorities to act in accordance with their international commitments and applicable legal obligations.
The G7 members strongly condemned North Korea’s continuing expansion of its unlawful nuclear and ballistic missile programs in violation of multiple UNSC resolutions and its continuous destabilizing activities. They reiterated their call for the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and demanded that North Korea abandons all its nuclear weapons, existing nuclear programs, and any other WMD and ballistic missile programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner, in accordance with all relevant UNSC resolutions. They called on North Korea to return to dialogue to promote peace and stability in the Korean peninsula. They urged all UN Member States to fully implement all relevant UN Security Council resolutions. They reiterated their deep disappointment with Russia’s veto last March on the mandate renewal of the UNSC 1718 Committee Panel of Experts.
They condemned in the strongest possible terms the increasing military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, including North Korea’s export and Russia’s procurement of North Korean ballistic missiles and munitions in direct violation of relevant UNSCRs, as well as Russia’s use of these missiles and munitions against Ukraine. They are also deeply concerned about the potential for any transfer of nuclear or ballistic missiles-related technology to North Korea, in violation of the relevant UNSCRs. They urged Russia and North Korea to immediately cease all such activities and abide by relevant UNSCRs. They urged North Korea to respect human rights, facilitate access for international humanitarian organizations, and resolve the abductions issue immediately.
They called on China not to conduct or condone activities aimed at undermining the security and safety of our communities and the integrity of our democratic institutions, and to act in strict accordance with its obligations under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
7. Regional Issues
Venezuela
The G7 members reiterated their deep concern about the situation in Venezuela, following the vote on July 28.
They emphasized that the announced victory of Maduro lacks credibility and democratic legitimacy, as indicated by reports of the UN Panel of Experts and independent international observers as well as data published by the opposition. They underscored that it is essential for electoral results to be complete and independently verified to ensure respect for the will of the Venezuelan people.
They expressed their outrage for the arrest warrant and constant threats to the security of Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who decided to seek refuge in Spain. According to the above-mentioned independent reports, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia appears to have won the most votes.
They urged Venezuelan representatives to cease all human rights violations and abuses, arbitrary detentions and widespread restrictions on fundamental freedoms, particularly affecting the political opposition, human rights defenders, and representatives of independent media and civil society. They called for the release of all political prisoners and for a path to freedom and democracy for the people of Venezuela.
They urged the international community to keep Venezuela high on the diplomatic agenda and they expressed their support for efforts by regional partners to facilitate the Venezuelan-led democratic and peaceful transition that the people of Venezuela have clearly chosen in the polls.
Haiti
The G7 members expressed their determination to continue supporting Haitian institutions – including the Transitional Presidential Council (CPT) and the Government of Prime Minister Conille – in their commitment to create the necessary conditions of general security and stability for the convening, by February 2026, of free and fair elections. The expression of popular will would set the foundation for the full restoration of democracy and the rule of law in Haiti.
They also expressed full support to the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, which is providing critical support to the Haitian National Police as they counter criminal gangs engaged in illicit trafficking and inflicting brutal violence upon the population.
The G7 members emphasized the importance of continued support to the MSS mission through financial contributions to the UN Trust Fund as well as contributions in kind. They expressed their strong appreciation for the commitment of the Government of Kenya – which has already deployed 380 personnel on the ground – to support the Haitian National Police in restoring peace and security.
They called on all countries that have committed to deploy their contingents to the MSS mission to do so as soon as possible, to consolidate the mission and its fundamental role in the Country. They called on Haiti’s partners to continue their humanitarian assistance to the Haitian people and to expedite their financial and in-kind contributions to the MSS mission to help ensure that the mission is resourced for success.
They called also on the United Nations Security Council to consider a UN Peace Operation to maintain the security gains of the Haiti National Police and the MSS mission for holding free and fair elections and called on the Secretary-General accordingly to provide support.
The G7 members welcomed the work of the G7 Working Group on Haiti in monitoring institutional, political, social and security developments in Haiti, with a view to supporting the stabilization of the country and the restoration of full democratic governance.
Libya
The G7 members reiterated their unwavering commitment to Libyan stability, sovereignty, independence and unity. They expressed deep concern about recent developments in the country, in particular those involving the leadership of the Central Bank of Libya and the High Council of State, which show the fragility and unsustainability of the present status quo. They urged relevant Libyan parties to rapidly reach the necessary compromises to begin to restore the institutional integrity of the Central Bank of Libya and its standing with the international financial community. They called on Libyan political actors to refrain from taking harmful unilateral actions that create further political tension and fragmentation and make the country vulnerable to harmful foreign interference.
They noted advances made in the organization of local elections and they called for a free, fair and inclusive participation of all Libyans. It is now imperative to relaunch a Libyan-led and Libyan-owned political process facilitated by the UN towards free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections.
They expressed their support and commended the efforts made by UNSMIL officer in charge Stephanie Koury in support of the stabilization of Libya. They called on the Secretary General to appoint a new Special Representative without delay.
Sudan
The G7 members reiterated their grave concern over the ongoing fighting, mass-displacement and famine in Sudan.
They condemned the serious human rights violations and abuses against the civilian population, including widespread sexual and gender-based violence, as well as international humanitarian law violations by both sides to the conflict. They called for an immediate end to the escalating violence, which is creating further displacement, and urged the warring parties to ensure the protection of civilians. They reiterated their commitment to holding accountable all those responsible for violations of international law in Sudan.
They condemned the emergence of famine in Sudan as a direct consequence of efforts to restrict access of humanitarian actors. They noted recent progress in relation to the re-opening of the Chad-Sudan Adre border crossing, in the wake of the Paris Conference and of the Geneva talks. They called for full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access both into Sudan and across lines of conflict so aid can reach all those in need.
They urged all parties to cease hostilities immediately and to engage in serious negotiations aimed at achieving a lasting ceasefire, humanitarian access and protection of civilians without pre-conditions.
They called on external actors to refrain from fueling the conflict, to respect the UN arms embargo on Darfur, and to play a responsible role in resolving the crisis.
They welcomed mediation efforts by regional and international actors and organizations to facilitate a durable peace for the country.
Inclusive, national dialogue, aimed at restoring democracy, re-establishing and strengthening the civilian and representative institutions after the end of the conflict, is a prerequisite for lasting peace. The G7 Members emphasized that it is necessary for representatives of Sudanese civil society, including women, to be fully engaged in the reflection on the political future of the country.
Coventry City Council has received an award for the way it works to support the Armed Forces.
The Council received the Silver Award from the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme.
Cllr Linda Bigham, the Council’s Armed Forces Champion, received the award at the National Memorial Arboretum from Air Vice Marshall Adam Sansom.
Cllr Bigham said: “The Council and the city of Coventry are proud supporters of our Armed Forces.
“They have done so much for us over the years, and we owe them a debt of gratitude. We are honoured to receive the Silver Award and we promise we will continue our work to help those who wear, or have worn their uniforms with such pride and courage.
“This award will help us to show them we are there for them and we care, and it will help us to inspire others to offer their support to the Forces, families, their veterans and cadets.
“Coventry is a city of peace and reconciliation and that work is supported so well by the Armed Forces. We look forward to building closer links in the years ahead.”
The Employer Recognition Scheme works to encourage employers to support the Armed Forces and their personnel and inspire others through their work. The award is open to all companies and businesses, as well as public organisations such as the emergency services, local authorities, and NHS trusts.
To earn the Silver Award, employers must have pledged to support the Armed Forces, including existing or prospective employees who are members of the community, and they must have signed the Armed Forces Covenant.
They have to promote being Armed Forces-friendly and be open to employing reservists, veterans (including the wounded, injured and sick), cadet instructors and military spouses/partners.
They have to proactively demonstrate that service personnel and the Armed Forces community are not unfairly disadvantaged as part of their recruiting and selection processes; and ensure that the workforce is aware of their positive policies towards defence people issues. They must also show support to training by providing at least five days’ additional unpaid/paid leave and demonstrate support to the Cadet movement.
The Council has been a long-time supporter of the Armed Forces and is proud to be signed up to the Armed Forces Covenant.
The Covenant is a promise to acknowledge and understand that those who serve or have served in the Armed Forces, and their families, should be treated with fairness and respect in the communities, economy, and society they serve with their lives.
Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region
Hong Kong and Türkiye enter into tax pact Hong Kong and Türkiye enter into tax pact *****************************************
The Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Mr Christopher Hui, on behalf of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, signed in Hong Kong today (September 24) a comprehensive avoidance of double taxation agreement (CDTA) with Türkiye. This signifies the Government’s sustained efforts in expanding Hong Kong’s CDTA network, in particular with tax jurisdictions participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. Representing the Government of Türkiye was the Commissioner of the Turkish Revenue Administration, Mr Bekir Bayrakdar. This CDTA is the 51st agreement that Hong Kong has concluded. It sets out the allocation of taxing rights between the two jurisdictions and will help investors better assess their potential tax liabilities from cross-border economic activities. Mr Hui said, “Türkiye is participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. The signing of the CDTA between Hong Kong and Türkiye at the Fifth Belt and Road Initiative Tax Administration Cooperation Forum highlights the commitment of the two jurisdictions to deepening tax co-operation under the Belt and Road Initiative. I have every confidence that this CDTA will further promote economic and trade relations between Hong Kong and Türkiye, and contribute to the high-quality development of the Belt and Road Initiative through enhanced connectivity. “We will continue to negotiate with trading and investment partners with a view to expanding Hong Kong’s CDTA network. This will enhance the attractiveness of Hong Kong as a business and investment hub, and consolidate the city’s status as an international economic and trade centre.” In accordance with the Hong Kong-Türkiye CDTA, Hong Kong companies can enjoy double taxation relief in that any tax paid in Türkiye, whether directly or by deduction, will be allowed as a credit against the tax payable in Hong Kong in respect of the same income, subject to the provisions of the tax laws of Hong Kong. Moreover, the Hong Kong-Türkiye CDTA also provides the following tax relief arrangements:(a) Türkiye’s withholding tax rate for Hong Kong residents on dividends will be capped at 5 per cent or 10 per cent (depending on the percentage of their shareholdings); while that on interest and royalties will be capped at 10 per cent, and further reduced to 7.5 per cent if the interest is received by a financial institution in respect of a loan or debt instrument with a maturity period exceeding two years, or if the royalties are for the use of, or the right to use, industrial, commercial or scientific equipment;(b) Hong Kong airlines operating flights to and from Hong Kong and Türkiye will be taxed at Hong Kong’s corporation tax rate on their profits, and will not be taxed in Türkiye; and(c) Profits from international shipping transport earned by Hong Kong residents arising in Türkiye will not be taxed in Türkiye. The CDTA will come into force after the completion of ratification procedures by both jurisdictions. In Hong Kong, the Chief Executive in Council will make an order under the Inland Revenue Ordinance (Cap. 112), which is subject to negative vetting by the Legislative Council. Details of the Hong Kong-Türkiye CDTA can be found on the Inland Revenue Department’s website (www.ird.gov.hk/eng/pdf/Agreement_Turkiye_HongKong.pdf).
Ends/Tuesday, September 24, 2024Issued at HKT 20:15
Source: CoreLogic – Analysis By Nick Goodall, CoreLogic NZ Head of Research
$1 million isn’t what it used to be when it comes to owning property. That being said the $1 million figure still carries an outsize significance for many people.
Today’s Pulse article looks at where these properties are – with no prizes for guessing that areas such as Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland and Tāhuna, Queenstown feature prominently.
$1 million + sales activity is dominated by Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland Starting with recent agreed sales (contract date since 1st June), it’s no surprise to see that many of the $1 million+ deals have been in the ‘usual suspects’, including areas such as Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Ōtautahi Christchurch, and Tāhuna Queenstown. Indeed, the Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland super-city accounts for 52% of all $1 million+ sales across NZ in the past three months, with around half that figure coming in just two sub-markets; Auckland City and North Shore, markets with some very sought-after suburbs.
Meanwhile, Ōtautahi Christchurch accounts for around 7% of all $1 million+ sales recently, with 4% in Tāhuna Queenstown. That figure may not seem particularly high for an expensive area such as Queenstown, but when you consider it only has about 0.6% of NZ’s total stock of dwellings, it certainly punches above its weight in terms of $1 million+ sales activity.
Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington City also accounts for just over 4% of $1 million+ sales activity of late, while other main centres such as Kirikiriroa Hamilton and Tauranga also feature on the list.
But other, smaller areas with decent levels of $1 million+ sales that might not necessarily spring to mind straightaway include Waipa and Waikato Districts, Pārāwai-Kapanga Thames-Coromandel, Western Bay of Plenty, Taupō, and Herewini Selwyn. In some cases, those areas are heavy with lifestyle blocks or large detached houses on sizeable sections, while others are of course popular holiday/retirement locations with high-value housing.
$1 million+ stocks are also prominent in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, but elsewhere too.
Looking at stock levels instead of recent sales tells an interesting story. For this section, we’re looking at suburb-level data, using estimated median values for each area – based on our Automated Valuation Model (AVM), which provides a likely price were that property to sell now. These AVMs are used by banks in the mortgage lending process and are available for 97% of residential property across NZ.
Once you apply a minimum size filter of 200 existing properties for each area, we are looking at 1,191 suburbs across Aotearoa NZ, with 337 of those having a current median value of at least $1 million; or in other words around 28% of suburbs across the country are in the $1 million+ ‘club’.
There are no surprises that Auckland has 167 (50%) of those suburbs, which equates to 70% of all suburbs across the super-city. Put another way, seven in every 10 Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland suburbs has a median property value of $1 million+, and the very top end of the spectrum includes suburbs such as Herne Bay, Saint Marys Bay, Westmere, and Remuera.
But in terms of the share of suburbs with a median value of $1 million+ (and also a reasonable number of $1 million+ suburbs), Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland isn’t at the top of the list. That’s actually Tāhuna Queenstown (89%) and Western Bay of Plenty (71%). In Tāhuna Queenstown’s case, the generally high level of property values makes it inevitable that a large share of suburbs would sit in the $1 million+ bracket, and for Western Bay of Plenty a key driver is simply the composition of the property stock – lifestyle blocks (which are larger and higher value) account for around 35% of properties in that area, versus less than 10% nationally.
Waipa, Waikato, Waimakariri, and Te Tai o Aorere Tasman also have relatively high shares of lifestyle properties (around 25% or more), which helps explain their presence in the first chart, while Taupō is a popular (and expensive) property market in general with plenty of holiday homes, with Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington City and Ōtautahi, Christchurch also featuring due to larger size and presence of well-established, up-market areas.
An arbitrary number
The rise in nominal property values over time means that the $1 million ‘barrier’ doesn’t mean as much as it did in the past. That said, it’s still a useful threshold to look at, and it’s another way of showing how stretched housing affordability really is for the average household in key urban markets such as Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, but also in areas such as the Waikato Region and Tāhuna Queenstown too.
The new debt to income ratio caps for mortgage lending will have an important role to play in providing some sort of restraint for house prices over the medium to long term. But ultimately it’s about getting a higher physical supply of property in relation to demand, and on that front, it’s certainly been encouraging to see the Government pushing hard – with measures such forcing councils to designate enough land for 30 years of development.
Intervention of Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell
Intervention of Archbishop Peter Soon-Taick Chung, O.C.D
Intervention of Bishop Paul Kyung Sang Lee
Intervention of Miss Gabriela Su-Ji Kim
At 11.30 this morning, a press conference, “Towards World Youth Day Seoul 2027” was livestreamed from the Holy See Press Office.
The speakers were: His Eminence Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, Archbishop Peter Soon-Taick Chung, O.C.D., of Seoul, president of the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) for Seoul 2027, Bishop Paul Kyung Sang Lee, general coordinator of World Youth Day Seoul 2027, and Miss Gabriela Su-Ji Kim, a young Korean.
The following were also present in the hall and available to the press: Dr. Gleison De Paula Souza, secretary of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, the Reverend Fr. Franco Galdino, coordinator of the Youth Office of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, and the Reverend Fr. Peter Yang, executive secretary of the Local Organizing Committee of Seoul 2027.
The following are their interventions:
Intervention of Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell
Good morning everyone and thank you for being here today!
The Holy Father has chosen the city of Seoul, Korea, as the venue for the next World Youth Day in 2027. For the latest WYD which was held in Lisbon, Portugal, young people went on pilgrimage to the western border of Europe, and now they are being asked to set out for the Far East as ‘a marvellous sign of the universality of the Church and our dream of unity’, in the words of the Holy Father.[1]
The Church in Asia and Korea
After World Youth Day in Manila in 1995, it is coming to Asia again, the ‘cradle of the world’s major religions’, with its ‘intricate mosaic of its many cultures, languages, beliefs and traditions, which comprise such a substantial part of the history and heritage of the human family’ as St John Paul II said in his Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia.[2]
Every World Youth Day is a golden opportunity for the local Church hosting it to celebrate its distinct culture and faith together with other Churches. In Korea, Catholics make up 11% of the population. Although a minority, the Church is full of vitality and initiatives of all kinds. It is enriched by the heroic witness of so many martyrs, and it continues to radiate, very strongly, a light of faith and hope that reaches all believers in every part of the world.
So what are the opportunities presented by World Youth Day in Seoul? First of all, like every WYD, it is an opportunity for all young people to rediscover the beauty of Christian life, and to bring to the ordinary circumstances of daily life a renewed desire to be disciples of Jesus and faithful to his Gospel. The rediscovery of Christian life, then, can be fertile ground for the blossoming of many vocations, to marriage or to the priesthood and consecrated life. All of this will have great benefits for the Church in Korea, for the Asian continent, and for the Church globally.
Secondly, Asia is very receptive to the coexistence of cultures, to dialogue and to complementarity. This will be of great help to young pilgrims on their path of learning to become messengers of peace in a world so torn by conflict and confrontation.
Thirdly, the dynamic Asian context will help young people to think about the dialogue between faith and modernity. They live in a world where they are confronted by challenges of global scope. These include a loss of meaning and purpose felt in some societies, the digital revolution, the climate crisis, economic inequalities, etc. The big questions that these challenges raise will stimulate young people to make their personal contribution so that contemporary culture may be permeated and transformed by the Gospel, with its power, light and freshness.
The theme of the journey from Lisbon to Seoul: 2023-2027
As you know, every year young people are invited to celebrate World Youth Day in their local Churches on the Solemnity of Christ the King. Last week, the Holy Father’s Message for the 39th WYD to be celebrated on 24 November was published, ‘Those who hope in the Lord will run and not be weary’ (cf. Is 40:31). This theme marks the stages of an inner pilgrimage that began with the invitation made in Lisbon to arise and set out (cf. WYD Lisbon 2023).
For the Jubilee Year of 2025, young people are called to be pilgrims of hope in Rome and, over the next two years, they will be guided along a path that will culminate in World Youth Day in Seoul 2027. The two themes for this path are included in the documentation you have received that has just been published. The theme chosen by the Holy Father for the 40th WYD is: ‘You also are my witnesses, because you have been with me’ (John 15:27); the theme chosen by the Holy Father for the 41st WYD is: ‘Take courage! I have overcome the world’ (John 16:33).
That last theme — I will repeat it, ‘Take courage! I have overcome the world!’ (John 16:33) — will therefore be the theme of the 41stWYD in Seoul in 2027.
Both themes are taken from the Gospel of John. They belong to what is known as Jesus’ ‘farewell discourse’ (cf. John 13-17), when he prepares his disciples to experience the mystery of his passion and death, in the certainty of his resurrection. The two themes focus, therefore, on witnessing and on the courage that stems from Jesus’ paschal victory.
The traditional handing over of the WYD Cross and Icon: 24 November 2024
As is customary after every international WYD, the young people of Lisbon will hand over the symbols of WYD to the young people of Seoul: the Youth Cross and the icon of Mary Salus populi romani. This is an evocative ‘passing of the baton’ that will mark the beginning of the Korean Church’s spiritual preparation for World Youth Day. I am announcing that this handover will take place on 24 November, the Solemnity of Christ King of the Universe, during Holy Mass in St Peter’s Basilica.
The Youth Cross, also known as the WYD Cross, is always a pilgrim cross. Young Koreans will carry it everywhere — in the cities, in the countryside, among the suffering, the imprisoned and the poor — to bring closeness and consolation to all. However, it is also a jubilee cross because it was entrusted by St John Paul II to young people at the end of the Holy Year of Redemption in 1984. This aspect takes on special significance this year because of the approaching Jubilee. St John Paul II entrusted it to young people with these words: ‘Carry it throughout the world as a symbol of Christ’s love for humanity, and announce to everyone that only in the death and resurrection of Christ can we find salvation and redemption.’[3]
The Cross will be taken by young people to Asia, accompanied by the icon of Mary Salus populi romani, a sign of Mary’s maternal affection and of the Church’s own maternal concern for all humanity.
Our hope is that many young people, even those who have never participated in a WYD, will walk a path over the next three years — above all an interior one –, and come to meet each other in Asia together with the Successor of Peter, and may they all bear courageous witness to Christ together.
_________________________
[1] Angelus, Apostolic journey of Pope Francis to Portugal on the occasion of the 37th World Youth Day, Parque Tejo
(Lisbon), Sunday, 6 August 2023.
[2] John Paul II, Post-synodal exhortation, Ecclesia in Asia, no. 6.
[3] John Paul II, To young people when entrusting them with the Cross of the Holy Year of Redemption, Sunday 22 April 1984.
Intervention of Archbishop Peter Soon-Taick Chung, O.C.D
I extend my heartfelt gratitude to the Holy Father for proclaiming the theme scripture for World Youth Day Seoul 2027.
In the coming year, young people from around the globe will gather in Rome to celebrate a jubilee year as pilgrims of hope who “hope in the Lord and will run without growing weary.”
This jubilee seeks to renew the young people’s hearts in Christ as they embrace the Pope’s invitation, carrying the newly declared motto with them on their pilgrimage to Seoul, resting on the eastern edge of Asia.
The Korean Catholic Church stands as a testament to the voluntary and dynamic faith of its first believers, who embraced the seeds of the Gospel without the assistance of missionaries, guided by the Holy Spirit. In 2027, numerous young people from all over the world will gather to meet the young believers of Korea, who have inherited the steadfast faith of their ancestors. Together, they will rekindle a passionate zeal for faith.
During times of persecution, the early Korean faithful sent earnest letters to the Pope, fervently requesting missionaries to preserve their gifted faith and to unite with the universal Church. This appeal moved Pope Gregory XVI to establish the Vicariate Apostolic of Chosun, thereby dispatching missionaries and enabling the faith to flourish despite persecution. Just as he did with the early Korean Church, the Pope has once again embraced our Church’s request, inviting young people from all over the world to join the WYD pilgrimage by attending the WYD Seoul 2027.
The pilgrimage of WYD Seoul 2027 will be more than just a large gathering. It will be a meaningful journey where young people, united with Jesus Christ, reflect on and discuss the modern challenges and injustices they face. It will be a grand celebration, allowing everyone to experience the vibrant and energetic culture created by Korean youth. It will also be an opportunity to immerse in and share the dynamic and passionate culture that Korea’s youth have created. Furthermore, through this celebration, Korean young people will gain the invaluable chance to exchange and engage with the concerns and passions of their peers.
Through this collective journey, WYD pilgrims will become “courageous missionaries,” inspired to live out the joy of the Gospel they have found. The Church, united through this period, will listen carefully to the young voices and accompany the youth throughout the pilgrimage. I pledge my utmost commitment to ensuring that the youth from around the world may experience the profound joy of being the integral members of the Church. To young people around the world, we warmly invite you to join us for World Youth Day Seoul 2027!
Thank you.
Intervention of Bishop Paul Kyung Sang Lee
First and foremost, I extend my heartfelt gratitude to our Holy Father for providing the theme scripture that resonates deeply with the circumstances faced by the Catholic Church of Korea and the challenges confronting today’s youth.
Korea stands in a unique context distinct from previous World Youth Day hosts, characterized by the harmonious coexistence of diverse religious traditions. Within this environment, the Catholic Church of Korea has steadfastly embodied the Christian virtues of “forgiveness” and “sharing,” fostering these values in society while coexisting peacefully with other faiths. Amid the persistent reality as a “divided nation,” the Church has diligently worked to resolve the conflicts inherent in this division over the past seven decades, seeking peace and unity for the Korean people. The emergence of K-Catholic and K-faith among our youth is a testament to these sustained efforts. Our young people and young faithful remain open to interreligious dialogue and aspire towards harmonious and peaceful coexistence.
Preparations for the World Youth Day, aimed at sharing our spiritual heritage with the youth worldwide, have already begun in earnest. Following the selection of the host city last year, the Local Organizing Committee was inaugurated in December, alongside the formation of a preliminary research team of young individuals dedicated to spreading the spirituality of World Youth Day. Starting from February 2024, we launched a campaign dedicated to offering a billion Rosaries. This summer, we held a talk concert (at the front yard of Myeongdong Cathedral) fostering genuine conversations among young people and celebrated the Kick-off Ceremony of the World Youth Day Seoul 2027.
From this autumn, we will host Youth Masses and Youth Encounters in 19 deaneries across our diocese. In May of the coming year, we will host a diocesan-wide youth festival. Obviously open to all young people so practically it will be nationwide festival. More importantly, Seoul LOC is always collaborating with Doc of Bishops Conferences of Korea.
Through the Mystery of Life Awards, we encourage young scholars devoted to Christian spirituality to participate and share their scholarly contributions with the universal Church and the global community. As we approach the Jubilee Year, we expect to bring approximately 1,000 young pilgrims to participate in the Jubilee of Youth. It is our fervent hope that through this pilgrimage, they will come to discern the empowering force of hope bestowed by faith and experience a profound personal encounter with Christ within the universal Church.
The logo for WYD Seoul 2027, capturing the vision and aspirations of this momentous event, centered around the theme, “Take courage, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), chosen by the Holy Father. Central to the logo is a cross; the red and blue colors symbolize Christ’s triumphant victory over the world. The left element, reaching upward, signifies God in Heaven, while the right element, pointing downward, symbolizes Earth, illustrating the fulfillment of God’s will on Earth through their unity.
Inspired by traditional Korean art, the overall design employs brushstroke techniques unique to Korean painting and subtly incorporates the Hangul characters representing “Seoul.” At the same time, the logo captures the vibrant energy of youth and skillfully incorporates the letters WYD into its composition.
Additionally, the red on one side of the cross symbolizes the blood of the martyrs, harmonizing with the empowering theme, “Take courage.” The blue represents the vitality of youth and symbolizes God’s calling. Together, these colors echo the Taegeuk pattern on the Korean flag.
Finally, the yellow color that shines behind the cross represents the Christ, who is the “Light of the World.” Christ has overcome the world. He shines upon our Church like the sun rising from the East. And He guides the Church towards unity.
Through this diverse symbolism, the logo for the WYD Seoul 2027 integrates the multiple meanings of martyrdom, youth, Seoul, WYD, and the cross, celebrating the glory of victory achieved through the Holy Spirit. It heralds the call to the young people of Korea and the world to proclaim the faith of the martyrs to the world of our time.
Beyond the symbolism of the logo, we are dedicated to ensuring that the fruits of World Youth Day lead to genuine growth and renewal within the Church. We will undertake this journey, moving forward step by step with unwavering trust in the Lord and with courageous resolve.
Thank you.
Intervention of Miss Gabriela Su-Ji Kim
Youth Leadership and opportunities for evangelization
Hello, my name is Kim Suji Gabriella and I am here to share my passion for youth leadership and the role I hope World Youth Day will have in rekindling our faith. First, I would like to express my gratitude to the Holy Father, who invited everyone to Korea for the next World Youth Day in Seoul, as well as to all those who are working to prepare for this event. My journey in serving youth began as a catechist for middle and high school students in my parish. After experiencing WYD Krakow in 2016, I had the honor of attending the Synod Journeying with Young People in Rome in 2017 as a Korean delegate. This precious experience of meeting and interacting with the Pope and fellow young people has fueled my commitment to serve in the Church.
The COVID-19 pandemic that swept the world prevented many from attending church. As the dark days stretched on, many young people drifted away from the faith, and community dissolved. Now that we can gather once more, we face the challenge of a scattered flock, struggling to pass on the experience of faith. However, I am confident that WYD Seoul 2027 will provide a crucial opportunity to rekindle the flames of faith, not only in Korea but also around the world.
We have been invited to embark on a journey to live the spirit of the Synod. With a joyful “Yes,” we will join with young people from around the world. Through WYD Seoul 2027, we will forge a path of unity, hope, courage, and passion, welcoming people from all walks of life, not just Catholic believers, to walk together in harmony. I trust that our Lord Jesus Christ will walk with us on this pilgrimage to the “Far East” and beyond and I am hopeful that all of you in this room will accompany us as well. Thank you.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 24, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Standard Lithium Ltd. (“Standard Lithium” or the “Company”) (TSXV:SLI) (NYSE American:SLI) (FRA:S5L), a leading near-commercial lithium company, today announced its financial and operating results for the fiscal fourth quarter and year ended June 30, 2024.
“We delivered on our promises in fiscal 2024 with the advancement of our world-class lithium brine assets and by securing a strategic partnership with global energy major, Equinor,” said David Park, CEO and Director of Standard Lithium. “Standard Lithium holds globally-significant lithium brine assets in the Smackover with the potential to help meet the growing demand for sustainable lithium production in the U.S. We are the most advanced DLE play in North America, having proven direct lithium extraction at a commercial scale. The Standard Lithium team has done an outstanding job of differentiating itself from the pack by systematically de-risking its business, including the consummation of it’s partnerships with Equinor and Koch. Now, with the recent announcement of the conditional DOE grant of US$225 million, is the time for us to prioritize, focus and execute. We look forward to working closely with our partners to advance our South West Arkansas and East Texas projects.”
Highlights Subsequent to the Fourth Quarter Ended June 30, 2024
All amounts are in US dollars unless otherwise indicated.
Received conditional $225 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (“DOE”) for the South West Arkansas Project.The grant is expected to support the construction of the Central Processing Facility for Phase 1 of the SWA project and is dependent on successful negotiations with the DOE. The grant is one of the largest ever awarded to a U.S. critical minerals project.
Appointed David Park as Chief Executive Officer and Director of the Company. On September 1, 2024, Mr. Park, a highly experienced executive with a strong energy and industrial sector background, assumed the position of Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Park joined the company as a strategic advisor in July 2023 following his retirement from Koch Industries after 28 years.
Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Highlights
Secured strategic partnership with global energy major Equinor to advance the South West Arkansas (“SWA”) and East Texas projects.Equinor ASA (“Equinor”) acquired a 45% interest in two Standard Lithium entities holding the SWA and East Texas projects for a gross investment of up to $160 million. The transaction immediately strengthened the Company’s financial position and resulted in no dilution to existing shareholders.
De-risked commercialization of the direct lithium extraction (“DLE”) process. The Company successfully installed, commissioned, and continues to operate the Li-ProTM Lithium Selective Sorption commercial scale unit at its Demonstration Plant in El Dorado, Arkansas. The Company’s partner, Koch Technology Solutions, supplied the commercial scale unit, which is believed to be the largest commercial-scale column operating in a DLE facility globally. The results to date have exceeded design parameters, including average lithium recovery of 97.3%, key contaminant rejection of greater than 99%, and boron rejection greater than 95%.
Executed drilling programs yielding the highest-ever reported lithium brine values in North America. The South West Arkansas Project’s current resource averages among the highest lithium concentrations in North America. As part of its PFS for SWA, the Company reported an Upper Smackover Indicated and Middle Smackover Inferred resource of 1.4 Mt and 0.4 Mt lithium carbonate equivalent, respectively, at an average lithium concentration of 437 mg/L. In East Texas, the Company delivered globally-significant results with confirmed lithium concentrations up to 806 mg/L and an average concentration of 644 mg/L in the drilled area. The drill results represent the highest-ever reported and confirmed lithium brine concentrations in North America.
Advanced and de-risked the South West Arkansas Project. The Company delivered a Preliminary Feasibility Study (“PFS”) for the project in the first half of the fiscal year, demonstrating robust economics assuming average annual production of 30,000 tonnes per annum (“tpa”) of lithium hydroxide beginning in 2027. Post publishing the PFS, the Company secured brine production rights and purchased a 118-acre parcel of land to further advance the project. Most recently, SWA received a conditional $225 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in support of its construction and development. The grant was awarded based on an updated scope from the original PFS; the Project’s design is being updated and now targets a larger total output of 45,000 tpa of lithium carbonate to be developed in two phases of 22,500 tpa each. SWA is being developed in partnership with Equinor, with ownership shared 55% by Standard Lithium and 45% by Equinor. Ausenco Engineering Canada ULC is leading the Definitive Feasibility Study and Front-end Engineering and Design currently underway to support the larger project scope.
Strengthened the senior management team with the appointment of key executives. Michael Barman was appointed Chief Development Officer and Salah Gamoudi joined as Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Barman most recently served as Managing Director in Investment Banking at Stifel Nicolaus Canada Inc. (formerly GMP Securities L.P.) and brings over two decades of banking experience advising senior executives and their boards. Mr. Gamoudi brings extensive experience from the oil and gas sector. Prior to joining the Company, he served as Chief Financial Officer of SandRidge Energy, Inc. where he successfully generated significant value for its shareholders.
Delivered the Definitive Feasibility Study (“DFS”) for the Phase 1A project at LANXESS South Plant.The DFS assumed an average annual production of 5,400 tpa of lithium carbonate over a 25-year operating life beginning in 2026. Phase 1A represents a modest scale-up from the Company’s existing Demonstration Plant that has been operating since May 2020. Advancement of the Phase 1A project is dependent on ongoing commercial discussions with LANXESS and the finalization of the Arkansas lithium royalty.
Established an at-the-market equity program. Net proceeds to the Company for the fiscal year totaled C$2.8 million and US$13.3 million from the issuance of 1.5 million shares on the TSX Venture Exchange and 9.1 million shares on the NYSE American LLC, respectively. No issuances have been completed under the ATM Program since April 10, 2024.
Cash and working capital of C$52.9 million and C$39.6 million, respectively, as of June 30, 2024.
The Company has no term or revolving debt obligations as of June 30, 2024.
Consolidated Financial Statements
This news release should be read in conjunction with the Company’s Consolidated Financial Statements and MD&A for the year ended June 30, 2024, which are available on the Company’s issuer profile on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov.
Q4 AND FISCAL YEAR 2024 RESULTS CONFERENCE CALL AND WEBCAST
The Company will hold a conference call and webcast to discuss its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 on Tuesday, October 1st at 3:30 p.m. ET. Access to the call is available via webcast or direct dial.
Conference Call and Webcast Details Standard Lithium Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2024 Results Call and Webcast October 1, 2024 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Participant Information: USA / International Toll +1 (646) 307-1963 USA – Toll-Free (800) 715-9871 Canada – Toronto (647) 932-3411 Canada – Toll-Free (800) 715-9871
Standard Lithium is a leading near-commercial lithium development company focused on the sustainable development of a portfolio of large, high-grade lithium-brine properties in the United States. The Company prioritizes projects characterized by the highest quality resources, robust infrastructure, skilled labor, and streamlined permitting. Standard Lithium aims to achieve sustainable, commercial-scale lithium production via the application of a scalable and fully integrated Direct Lithium Extraction (“DLE”) and purification process. The Company’s flagship projects are located in the Smackover Formation, a world-class lithium brine asset, focused in Arkansas and Texas. In partnership with global energy leader Equinor ASA, Standard Lithium is advancing the South West Arkansas project, a greenfield project located in southern Arkansas, and actively exploring promising lithium brine prospects in East Texas. Additionally, the Company is advancing the Phase 1A project in partnership with LANXESS Corporation, a brownfield development project located in southern Arkansas. Standard Lithium also holds an interest in certain mineral leases in the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, California.
Standard Lithium trades on both the TSX Venture Exchange and the NYSE American under the symbol “SLI”; and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol “S5L”. Please visit the Company’s website at www.standardlithium.com.
Qualified Person
Steve Ross, P.Geol., a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, and Vice President Resource Development for the Company, has reviewed and approved the relevant scientific and technical information in this news release.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release may contain certain “Forward-Looking Statements” within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. When used in this news release, the words “anticipate”, “believe”, “estimate”, “expect”, “target”, “plan”, “forecast”, “may”, “schedule” and other similar words or expressions identify forward-looking statements or information. These forward-looking statements or information may relate to intended development timelines, future prices of commodities, accuracy of mineral or resource exploration activity, reserves or resources, regulatory or government requirements or approvals, the reliability of third party information, continued access to mineral properties or infrastructure, fluctuations in the market for lithium and its derivatives, changes in exploration costs and government regulation in Canada and the United States, and other factors or information. Such statements represent the Company’s current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social risks, contingencies and uncertainties. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements or information to reflect changes in assumptions or changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such statements and information other than as required by applicable laws, rules and regulations.
I want to begin by thanking the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, and WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesusas, as well as all of our distinguished guests present for this special occasion.
Our gathering today marks a critical milestone; we are one year away from the next UN high-level meeting on NCDs, and just less than six years out from the 2030 SDG deadline.
Yet despite the ticking clock above our heads, underinvestment in health services has become a deadly norm; the gap between the need for, and availability of, quality care and support for people affected by NCDs remains as wide as ever.
Meanwhile, the SDGs, intricately linked with NCDs and mental illness, are careening off-track.
We are best placed to improve health outcomes for NCDs only if we fully know and understand the complex relationship between NCDs and the global goals.
Excellencies,
Let me briefly outline this connection on three fronts.
First, we must fully understand the link between health, climate change and air pollution.
Extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, impact people living with NCDs by worsening their conditions.
When food systems are disrupted, the opportunities and capacities to maintain healthy diets diminish.
When the air we breathe is toxic, our health can no longer be sustained. Ninety-nine per cent of humanity breathes polluted air – leading to an estimated 8 million premature deaths – including more than 700,000 children under five.
Small island nations understand this deadly interplay all too well, and I commend the bold action championed by many on this front.
Second, NCDs and the economy are inextricably linked.
High out-of-pocket payments for NCD treatment push many people into poverty. Chronic conditions also take people out of work with little or no alternative income, continuing the vicious cycle.
Third, and finally, let me underscore the tragic connection between health, conflict and emergencies.
We are living through a time where conflicts are raging across the globe. In times like these of crisis, the needs of people living with NCDs and mental health conditions, are often left unmet and left behind.
Access to essential medicines is cut off.
Acute mental distress increases.
The impacts of COVID-19 still linger on. The world is still catching up on delayed vaccinations and key health services, most of which are related to the prevention of NCDs.
Excellencies,
We are gathered here today because only political will can help turn the tide. Your political commitments and actions are critical to building more resilient health systems that address these equity gaps.
To succeed in the fight against NCDs, governments must act decisively by integrating One Health principles, strengthening national NCD action plans, ensuring equitable access for vulnerable populations, and allocating sustainable funding to public health initiatives that reduce NCD risk factors and address root causes.
The critical role of research for development, robust data systems, accelerating innovation and technologies in advancing solutions to NCDs is also key.
So today, my ask of you is simple: let’s collaborate across borders, sectors, and disciplines to build a more resilient, healthy world for all.
I hope our conversation today will spark optimism and the bold decision-making that is needed at this critical juncture.
We have 52 weeks left to the next high-level meeting on NCDs – let’s make them count.
Source: United States of America – Department of State (video statements)
President Biden Addresses the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, on September 24, 2024.
———-
Under the leadership of the President and Secretary of State, the U.S. Department of State leads America’s foreign policy through diplomacy, advocacy, and assistance by advancing the interests of the American people, their safety and economic prosperity. On behalf of the American people we promote and demonstrate democratic values and advance a free, peaceful, and prosperous world.
The Secretary of State, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, is the President’s chief foreign affairs adviser. The Secretary carries out the President’s foreign policies through the State Department, which includes the Foreign Service, Civil Service and U.S. Agency for International Development.
Get updates from the U.S. Department of State at www.state.gov and on social media!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/statedept
Twitter: https://twitter.com/StateDept
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/statedept
Flickr: https://flickr.com/photos/statephotos/
Subscribe to the State Department Blog: https://www.state.gov/blogs
Watch on-demand State Department videos: https://video.state.gov/
Subscribe to The Week at State e-newsletter: http://ow.ly/diiN30ro7Cw
State Department website: https://www.state.gov/
Careers website: https://careers.state.gov/
White House website: https://www.whitehouse.gov/
Terms of Use: https://state.gov/tou
A series of recruitment talks organised by the Civil Service Bureau in Beijing and Shanghai wrapped up today, attracting over 1,800 Hong Kong people who are interested in applying for civil service posts in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government.
Five recruitment talks on the administrative officer (AO) and executive officer (EO) grades were held at the Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office in Shanghai (SHETO), East China University of Political Science & Law, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Renmin University of China, and China University of Political Science & Law respectively.
The participants, mostly university students, joined the talks online or in person.
At the seminars, participants were introduced to the entry requirements, training programmes, examination and interview arrangements, as well as tips on preparing for AO and EO grade exams.
In addition, the bureau had specifically arranged for serving AO and EO colleagues who had studied or lived on the Mainland to share their work and personal experiences.
The bureau’s representatives also attended a SHETO event to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, taking the occasion to introduce the AO and EO grades to the young participants, with a view to encouraging them to apply for civil service posts in the Hong Kong SAR Government.
A joint recruitment exercise is being held for the civil service grades of AO, EO II, assistant trade officer II and transport officer II. The application deadline is October 4.
CashX’s Self-Service Kiosks and Mobile Wallet App Launch Across the OPMX Retail Network in California, Colorado and Texas Beginning in October 2024
SAN DIEGO and SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 24, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — CashXAI Inc. (“CashX”) and OPMX are pleased to announce that they have signed an international agreement to install CashX Self Service Financial Services Kiosks at OPMX customers’ retail locations including approximately 500 supermarkets in California, Colorado and Texas. This expands CashX’s reach to comprise 5,000 retailers across the United States and over 5,000 locations in Mexico and Latin America.
In addition to physical kiosk access, CashX offers its CashX Mobile Wallet Application, which enables consumers digital access to all their financial needs without an evaluation of financial history. This mobile solution consists of services including check cashing, money transfer, mobile recharge, bill payment, gift cards, e-tickets and other high demand financial transactions.
Stephen Combe, CEO of CashX, said, “We are delighted to partner with OPMX and expand their offering with accessible financial offerings, providing additional vital services to the Latin Community. Pharmacies and supermarkets have long been a hub in Latin neighborhoods and stocked with OPMX’s well known and trusted brands and products that provide that close-to-home feel to consumers from other countries. With our recent steps to innovate CashX’s financial services infused with AI retail sector marketing technology, we provide consumers an adjacent essential utility that digitizes and simplifies routine purchases.”
Fernando Garces, CEO of OPMX, commented, “We proudly maintain a strong presence in well-recognized locations that cater to the Hispanic community. Our strategic distribution network allows us to reach our valued customers in these vibrant communities, making our products readily available and accessible to those who matter most to us – adding Financial Services and helping our customer’s gain access to financial freedom is a key extension to our mission. We would also like to thank our channel partner, Mr. Quedon Baul for bringing this opportunity to us and facilitating the partnership between OPMX and CashX.”
CashXRollout Plan
Installation of CashX solutions will begin in October 2024 in approximately 500 retailers in California, Colorado and Texas, with a parallel rollout throughout Mexico. Further expansion to all states and additional key countries in Latin America is expected in early 2025. The total network is expected to cover 5 countries and over 15,000 retail locations.
The second phase of the rollout will launch CashX’s next generation of kiosks with AI integrated retail marketing strategies of consumers at point of sale, which is empowering the future interplay of business, consumers and retail advertising.
AboutCashXAIInc.
CashXAI Inc., a leader in financial innovation, offers a dynamic platform for individuals lacking traditional banking access. The CashXAI mobile app simplifies converting cash into digital currency, supporting transactions from check cashing to money transfer without requiring a bank account. With an extensive retail network, CashXAI provides unparalleled financial freedom and management capabilities, empowering users to effortlessly control their finances from anywhere. CashXAI stands at the forefront of bridging financial gaps for underbanked communities. Further illustrating CashX’s innovative business structure, its previously announced intellectual property license agreement with Alpha Modus permits CashX with the exclusive right to use all of Alpha Modus’ patented intellectual property in connection with CashX’s promotional, advertising, and operational functions, including co-development arrangements with Alpha Modus, within the Exclusive Industry. The “Exclusive Industry” means the industry relating to self-service kiosks located in retail food, drug and convenience stores for the purpose of serving Unbanked and Underbanked consumers, by offering banking, phone and insurance solutions to the consumer. An “Unbanked” consumer means a person that does not have a checking or savings account with an FDIC-insured institution, and an “Underbanked” consumer means a person that has or had a checking or savings account with an FDIC-insured institution, but regularly uses non-traditional banks such as Venmo or the Cash App, or lenders such as a check cashing company or payday lender.
For more information, please visit the CashX website at https://cashx.ai/.
AboutOPMX
OPMX are leaders in the Latino pharmaceutical market in the United States through stores and brands that connect consumers with their countries of origin, evoking trust and a feeling of being close to home.
Latino consumers have a strong sense of cultural identity and pride in their heritage, and by seeing brands that represent their culture, they can feel an emotional connection to the products and companies behind them. With a focus on quality, cultural relevance, and a dedication to serving the Hispanic market in the United States, our pharmaceutical products stand as a testament to our unwavering commitment to providing innovative, effective, and compassionate healthcare solutions to this vibrant and diverse audience. Discover more at www.opmx.us
Forward-LookingStatementsDisclaimer
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the following words: “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “ongoing,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “project,” “should,” “will,” “would,” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. Forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future performance or results and will not necessarily be accurate indications of the times at, or by, which such performance or results will be achieved. Forward-looking statements are based on information available at the time the statements are made and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainty and other factors that may cause our results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from the information expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements in this press release. This press release should be considered in light of all filings of the Company that are contained in the Edgar Archives of the Securities and Exchange Commission at SEC.gov.
DALLAS, Sept. 24, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — TriumphPay announced today the addition of Ascent Global Logistics (“Ascent”), a leading global provider of expedited, time-critical logistics solutions, to the TriumphPay Network, as a full audit and payments participant. By joining the TriumphPay Network, Ascent is taking a significant step toward providing a more streamlined payment experience.
“At Ascent, our carriers are at the heart of everything we do, and their success directly impacts the level of service we provide to our customers,” said Jack Korslin, chief financial officer of Ascent Global Logistics. “We’re excited to begin our partnership with TriumphPay by rolling out enhanced payment solutions to our carriers in our brokerage business segment, with plans to expand to the rest of our carrier network in the near future.”
Adding Ascent to the TriumphPay Network represents another significant milestone for the ongoing growth and expansion of the network. In the second quarter, network engagement was $51.3 billion in unique brokered freight transactions, nearing 50% of the freight market.
“We are thrilled to welcome Ascent Global Logistics to our network,” said Aaron P. Graft, vice chairman and chief executive officer of Triumph Financial. “As we continue to build the density of our network, adding new brokers is critical to achieving our long-term goals. Creating density is the foundation for delivering even greater efficiency and value to our customers. With each new participant, we’re enhancing the ecosystem and network effect, making it more beneficial for all participants.”
TriumphPay provides innovative payment processing solutions tailored for the transportation industry. These solutions empower freight brokers to achieve heightened operational efficiency, improved financial transparency, and enhanced fraud mitigation.
Ascent joins leading, notable U.S. freight brokers on the TriumphPay Network. For more information, visit www.ascentlogistics.com and www.triumphpay.com.
About TriumphPay TriumphPay is the premier network for freight brokers, factors, shippers and carriers in the North American trucking industry, offering a structured, secure data exchange. The TriumphPay Network and integrated technology solutions remove friction and reduce fraud in the presentment, audit and payment of approximately $51.3 billion in unique brokered freight transactions. TriumphPay is a division of TBK Bank, SSB, Member FDIC, and a member of the Triumph Financial, Inc. (Nasdaq: TFIN) portfolio of brands. For more information, visit us at www.triumphpay.com.
About Ascent Global Logistics Ascent Global Logistics, headquartered in Belleville, Michigan, is a leading global provider of expedited, time-critical logistics solutions and other direct transportation services. The company connects customers to its extensive carrier network, internal ground fleet and airline via its proprietary, digital PEAK freight marketplace, which provides robust carrier capacity and transparent pricing, backed by 24/7/365 logistics experts. Ascent’s offerings include air charter and ground expedited solutions as well as truckload, less-than-truckload, global forwarding, brokerage, and managed transportation services. The experienced Ascent team solves customers’ most challenging logistics needs by providing industry-leading service and top-tier satisfaction. To learn more, visit www.ascentlogistics.com.
Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Investors are cautioned that such statements are predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. Triumph Financial’s expected financial results or other plans are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see “Risk Factors” and the forward-looking statement disclosure contained in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 13, 2024. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date made and Triumph Financial undertakes no duty to update the information.
Source: Triumph Financial, Inc.
Investor Relations Contact: Luke Wyse Triumph Financial, Inc. Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations lwyse@tfin.com
Media Contacts: Amanda Tavackoli Triumph Financial, Inc. Senior Vice President, Director of Corporate Communication atavackoli@tfin.com