Category: Transport

MIL-OSI Security: Weston Man Pleads Guilty to Insider Trading Offense

Source: US FBI

David X. Sullivan, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, and P.J. O’Brien, Special Agent in Charge of the New Haven Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, announced that RYAN SQUILLANTE, 40, of Weston, waived his right to be indicted and pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Vernon D. Oliver in Hartford to an insider trading offense.

According to court documents and statements made in court, working from his home, Squillante was employed as the Head of Equity Trading at Irving Investors, an investment company headquartered in Denver, Colorado. As a result of his position at Irving Investors, Squillante received material non-public information (“MNPI”) about various publicly traded companies. On 15 different occasions between August 2022 and May 2023, Squillante used MNPI for his own benefit by executing transactions in securities of these companies, making a total profit of $220,912.

As an example, in February 2023, Squillante received MNPI about Praxis Precision Medicines, Inc. (“Praxis”), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company whose common stock traded on the NASDAQ. Between February 27 and March 2, 2023, Squillante “sold short” 38,086 shares of Praxis at an average price per share of approximately $3.04. On March 3, 2023, before the market opened, Praxis announced poor results from its drug trial, stating that the drug’s effects did not achieve its primary endpoint with statistical significance. Following the announcement, Squillante “covered” his short sale by purchasing 38,086 Praxis shares at an average price per share of approximately $1.82, making a profit of approximately $46,421.

Squillante pleaded guilty to securities fraud, an offense that carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years. Judge Oliver scheduled sentencing for August 29.

This matter is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the assistance of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather L. Cherry.

MIL Security OSI –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Security: Waterbury Man Sentenced to Prison for Role in Drug Trafficking Ring

Source: US FBI

David X. Sullivan, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that JOSE DELROSARIO-CANELA, also known as “Domi,” 39, of Waterbury, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Michael P. Shea in Hartford to 32 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for his participation in a Waterbury drug trafficking ring.

According to court documents and statements made in court, the FBI’s Waterbury Safe Streets Gang Task Force and other law enforcement agencies investigated two drug trafficking organizations based in the city of Waterbury. One organization operated in the area of William Street and the other operated in the area of Maple Avenue. The investigation, which included court-authorized wiretaps on multiple phones, video surveillance, GPS tracking of vehicles, and numerous controlled purchases of narcotics, revealed that the two organizations distributed cocaine, crack, and fentanyl through a network of sellers. The organizations shared sources of supply and worked together to further their operations.

During the investigation, law enforcement made two controlled purchases of crack cocaine from Delrosario-Canela, one of the main street-level distributors for the Maple Avenue organization.

Seventeen individuals were charged with federal offenses as a result of the investigation. Delrosario-Canela and several codefendants were arrested on November 29, 2023. In association with the arrests, investigators executed multiple search warrants and seized approximately 700 grams of crack cocaine, more than 900 vials (“caps”) of crack, approximately 200 grams of loose fentanyl, more than 1,600 dose bags of fentanyl/heroin, two stolen firearms, numerous rounds of ammunition, and more than $39,000 in cash.

Delrosario-Canela has been detained since his arrest. On February 11, 2025, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances.

The FBI’s Waterbury Safe Streets Gang Task includes members from the FBI, the Waterbury Police Department, the Naugatuck Police Department, and the Connecticut Department of Correction. The DEA, U.S. Marshals Service, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Connecticut State Police, Wolcott Police Department, and Meriden Police Department have assisted the investigation.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Natasha Freismuth and Shan Patel through the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) Program. Additional information about the OCDETF Program can be found at https://www.justice.gov/OCDETF.

U.S. Attorney Sullivan thanked the Waterbury State Attorney’s Office for its cooperation in the investigation and prosecution of this case.

MIL Security OSI –

June 11, 2025

MIL-OSI Russia: IMF Staff Completes 2025 Article IV Mission to Turkmenistan

Source: IMF – News in Russian

June 10, 2025

End-of-Mission press releases include statements of IMF staff teams that convey preliminary findings after a visit to a country. The views expressed in this statement are those of the IMF staff and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF’s Executive Board. Based on the preliminary findings of this mission, staff will prepare a report that, subject to management approval, will be presented to the IMF’s Executive Board for discussion and decision.

Growth slowed in 2024 due to weak hydrocarbon exports. The main economic challenge is to translate hydrocarbon wealth into more diversified, sustainable, and inclusive growth.
A more market-based strategy, reforms to the monetary and exchange rate frameworks, increased public spending efficiency, and enhanced governance and transparency would support the transition to a more diversified and robust economy.
Further improvements in the availability, quality, and reliability of economic statistics would help inform policy makers and increase transparency and credibility.

Washington, DC: An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission led by Ms. Anna Bordon visited Ashgabat during May 21-June 3, 2025. The purpose of the visit was to review the country’s economic landscape, including its financial developments, economic outlook, risks, and policies aimed at promoting diverse, inclusive, and sustainable growth. The mission met with senior government officials, representatives of the private and financial sectors, and the diplomatic community. At the end of the visit, Ms. Bordon issued the following statement:

“Economic activity moderated in 2024, and inflation softened in recent months. IMF staff estimate that growth slowed to 3.0 percent in 2024 from 4.5 percent in 2023, owing to weak hydrocarbon exports. Inflation decelerated from 3.8 percent at end 2024 to 1.1 percent in March 2025 owing to a sharp slowdown in food inflation combined with deflation in non-food items and low inflation in services. Credit growth and monetary conditions have been tighter since the second half of 2023, while the parallel market exchange rate has remained broadly stable. The current account surplus narrowed from 5.9 percent of GDP in 2023 to 4.4 percent in 2024.

“Looking ahead the economy is expected to expand at around 2.3 percent in 2025 and over the medium term. Hydrocarbon exports growth is expected to be negative in 2025, but to gradually pick up to around 2 percent over the medium term while non-hydrocarbon growth is expected to remain subdued, given the challenging business environment, investment inefficiencies, significant real exchange rate overvaluation, and protectionism. Inflation is projected to pick up gradually over the medium term due to looser monetary conditions, returning to its recent historical average of 8 percent, which is primarily fueled by the long-standing policy of increasing public sector wages and pensions by 10 percent annually. The external position is projected to gradually deteriorate, shifting from a surplus to a deficit, driven by lower hydrocarbon prices, declining oil exports, and an overvalued currency. Rising wages are also expected to fuel import demand, further weakening the trade balance. Risks to the outlook remain tilted to the downside.

“The nonhydrocarbon primary balance improved in 2024, with higher revenues more than offsetting an increase in capital spending. Looking ahead, the deficit is anticipated to narrow further over the medium term, with capital spending expected to moderate. To leverage this positive trajectory, it is crucial for Turkmenistan to focus its spending on enhancing physical and human capital. This will require improving spending efficiency and public investment management, transitioning towards performance-based public wage increases, and reforming state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

“Strengthening fiscal reporting and public financial management (PFM) should be a top priority. Turkmenistan should expedite the implementation of medium-term budgeting, establishment of a single treasury account, and the expansion of fiscal reporting coverage. Reforming SOEs is also pivotal in managing fiscal risks, enhancing fiscal transparency, and fostering private sector development by reducing the state footprint.

“The Central Bank of Turkmenistan (CBT) should focus on price and financial stability. Until recently, the CBT had typically kept monetary policy loose to support the government’s long-term development objectives. Since the second half of 2023, however, CBT net lending to banks has slowed considerably, owing to SOE repayments. Going forward, commercial bank lending for development purposes, if needed, should be supported by the state budget, and not by the CBT. The CBT should also modernize its central bank operations and accelerate its efforts to strengthen financial regulation, supervision, and crisis management.

“Unifying the exchange rates would support Turkmenistan’s diversification objectives and reduce economic distortions and governance vulnerabilities. Turkmenistan should consider a significant upfront adjustment of the official exchange rate combined with sufficiently tight macroeconomic policies, a clear communication strategy, and enhanced social benefits to protect the most vulnerable. Post-adjustment, the devalued official exchange rate can remain the monetary anchor, with the CBT ready to provide FX to meet demand. Exchange restrictions on current international transactions should also be eliminated, to create a level-playing field, improve efficiency, and alleviate FX shortages. The adjustment measures and supporting reforms need to be sequenced carefully, while recognizing inherent uncertainties.

“Turkmenistan is adequately prioritizing economic diversification. A pre-requisite for diversification is macroeconomic stability, including as a core element the unification of the exchange rates and elimination of exchange restrictions. Moving away from a centrally planned economy will require continued efforts to liberalize prices and reduce the state footprint to allocate resources more efficiently. A more market-oriented economy will also require improving governance, skills, infrastructure, digitalization, and logistics while accelerating the efforts toward WTO accession.

“Further improvements in the availability, quality, and reliability of economic statistics would help inform policy makers and increase transparency and credibility.

“The IMF team is grateful to the authorities and other stakeholders for their warm hospitality and insightful and candid discussions.”

Turkmenistan: Selected Economic and Financial Indicators, 2022–26


	Est.	Est.	Est.	Proj.	Proj.
	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026

Output and prices	(Annual percentage change)
Real GDP 1/	3.0	4.5	3.0	2.3	2.3
Real hydrocarbon GDP	-6.4	-0.6	-10.6	-2.6	1.8
Real nonhydrocarbon GDP	5.2	5.6	5.7	3.0	2.3
Consumer prices (end of period)	3.0	1.4	3.8	4.0	6.0
Consumer prices (period average)	11.2	-1.6	4.6	3.9	5.0

Investment and savings	(In percent of GDP)
Gross investment	18.2	17.0	16.0	13.0	12.9
Of which: State budget	0.5	0.9	1.6	0.7	0.7
Gross savings	27.9	22.9	20.4	15.1	13.3

Fiscal sector	(In percent of GDP)
Overall fiscal balance 2/	3.4	0.1	-0.1	0.3	-0.3
Revenue	16.4	13.8	14.4	14.1	13.7
Expenditure	13.0	13.7	14.5	13.8	14.1
Total public debt 3/	7.9	5.8	3.6	3.3	3.1

Monetary sector	(12-month percent change, unless otherwise indicated)
Credit to the economy 4/	8.2	0.3	2.2	5.4	5.9
Credit to GDP ratio	58.6	53.1	49.6	49.9	49.6
Broad money, incl. foreign currency deposits at CBT	-2.6	-2.5	10.1	5.3	6.7

External sector	(In percent of GDP, unless otherwise indicated)
Exports of goods (In millions of US$)	14,727	12,963	12,168	11,218	11,068
Imports of goods (In millions of US$)	7,188	7,401	7,665	8,407	9,085
Current account balance	9.7	5.9	4.4	2.1	0.4
Foreign direct investment	2.0	0.9	0.4	0.0	0.0
Total public sector external debt	7.9	5.8	3.6	3.3	3.1

Memorandum items:
Nominal GDP (in millions of manat)	198,371	219,848	240,363	251,884	268,110
Nominal GDP (in millions of US$)	56,677	62,814	68,675	71,967	76,603


Sources: Turkmen authorities; and Fund staff estimates and projections.
1/ Staff uses its own GDP estimates given that the narrative underlying the official GDP growth estimates is hard to reconcile with other available data. In particular, official GDP growth is extremely stable, despite shocks, including the pandemic.
2/ Excluding receipts from government bond issuance and privatization proceeds.
3/ Includes domestic state government debt and external public and publicly guaranteed debt.
4/ Including credit to SOEs.

IMF Communications Department

MEDIA RELATIONS

PRESS OFFICER: Mayada Ghazala

Phone: +1 202 623-7100Email: MEDIA@IMF.org

https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2025/06/10/pr-25190-turkmenistan-imf-completes-2025-article-iv-mission

MIL OSI

MIL OSI Russia News –

June 11, 2025

MIL-OSI Economics: Apple services deliver powerful features and intelligent updates to users this fall
Source: Apple

Headline: Apple services deliver powerful features and intelligent updates to users this fall

June 10, 2025

UPDATE

Apple services deliver powerful features and intelligent updates to users this fall

New features include AutoMix and updates to Lyrics in Apple Music; preferred routes and Visited Places in Apple Maps; easy-to-track orders with Apple Intelligence in Apple Wallet; the introduction of Digital ID; and more

With the release of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26, and watchOS 26 this fall, Apple is bringing exciting new features and adding more intelligence across its services, delivering even greater everyday functionality to users. This includes an enhanced listening experience in Apple Music; easier navigation with preferred routes and Visited Places in Apple Maps; new ways to make and track purchases with Apple Intelligence in Apple Wallet; customized playback experiences with Apple Podcasts; a refreshed boarding pass in Wallet; the introduction of Digital ID; and more.

“Apple’s services are integral to many parts of a user’s day, and we’re excited to bring features that pack even more power and fun into their everyday moments,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Services. “These updates will help users better navigate and explore the world around them with Apple Maps, offer an enhanced Apple Music experience, elevate how they shop with Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, and so much more.”

“AI and machine learning are a core part of what makes Apple’s services feel so personal and intuitive to our users around the world,” said Jeff Robbin, Apple’s vice president of Services Engineering. “They love the ease and simplicity that intelligent features like natural language search and App Store review summaries have brought, and we’re excited to continue adding thoughtful, tailored experiences to Apple’s services — including AutoMix, which mixes songs like a DJ in Apple Music, the option to use Enhance Dialogue to isolate voices and make them sound clearer in Apple Podcasts, and more.”

Apple Music Introduces AutoMix, Upgrades to Lyrics, and More

Apple Music delivers an elevated listening experience with AutoMix, which mixes one song into the next, just like a DJ. Using AI to analyze audio features, it crafts unique transitions between songs with time stretching and beat matching to deliver continuous playback and an even more seamless listening experience.

This fall, Apple Music brings Lyrics Translation, which lets users understand the meaning of their favorite songs, and Lyrics Pronunciation, which enables users to sing along when lyrics are in another language. The new features use machine learning to translate lyrics — with fine-tuning from language experts — to ensure the emotion, cultural context, and lyrical intent are fully preserved.

With Sing, the sing-along experience reaches a whole new level, allowing users to transform iPhone into a handheld microphone for Apple TV and have their voice amplified as they belt out their favorite songs with friends. And with real-time lyrics and visual effects that light up the screen, Sing reaches a new level of fun.

Additionally, users can pin their favorite music to the top of their Library in Apple Music for easy access.

Apple Maps Gets More Intelligent and Personalized with Preferred Routes and Visited Places

Apple Maps makes everyday life easier with new enhancements that help users navigate their preferred routes and keep track of places they’ve previously visited, all while protecting user privacy.¹ iPhone can now use on-device intelligence to learn and understand the routes users take between the places they frequently visit, like home and work. The Maps widget then shows users a preview of their commute so they know what to expect before they leave, and commute notifications alert users of significant delays and offer alternate routes, even before their journey begins.

With Visited Places, users can allow iPhone to intelligently detect the places they visit and spend time in — like restaurants or shops — and they’ll automatically be saved to Maps. Users can search for places they’ve visited, and easily share them with family and friends. Visited Places are built with privacy in mind; they’re protected with end-to-end encryption, cannot be accessed by Apple, and can be easily removed with just a swipe.

A Customized Playback Experience with Apple Podcasts

Apple Podcasts delivers more customization to the listening experience, including a wider range of playback speeds and Enhance Dialogue. Users will be able to find the perfect listening speed for them, with speed options from 0.5x to 3x, and save their preferred setting for each show. Using real-time audio processing and machine learning, users can turn on Enhance Dialogue to hear speech more clearly over background sounds.

New Ways to Track Orders with Apple Intelligence and Apple Wallet, and Make Purchases with Apple Pay

Apple Wallet now uses Apple Intelligence to automatically identify, summarize, and display order tracking details from emails sent from merchants or delivery carriers. This works across all orders, giving users the ability to see their full order details, progress notifications, and more, all in one place.

Additionally, Apple Pay expands the ability to pay with rewards and installments to in-store purchases for added flexibility and choice. Users can view and pay with rewards — as well as access installment loan offers from eligible credit or debit cards — when making an Apple Pay purchase in person with iPhone.

The ability to access installments from credit and debit cards, including from pay-over-time providers, when making an in-store Apple Pay purchase will roll out in the U.S. with Affirm, Cash App Afterpay, Klarna, Synchrony, and U.S. Bank; in the UK with Monzo and Klarna; and in Canada with Klarna. The ability to redeem rewards for in-store purchases with Apple Pay will be available beginning in the U.S. with Synchrony and U.S. Bank.²

Send and Receive Money in Group Chats with Apple Cash

Apple Cash provides a convenient way for users to request, send, and receive money directly within group conversations in Messages, making it easier to settle up after dinner or pay friends back for concert tickets.³ Users can send money to an individual or request money from everyone in the group.

More Convenient Travel with a Refreshed Boarding Pass Experience and Digital ID in Wallet

In Apple Wallet, a refreshed boarding pass experience delivers rich, relevant information straight to users’ fingertips with Live Activities that offer real-time updates about their flights. For added convenience, users can also share their flight’s Live Activities so friends and family can stay up to date on their journeys.

Refreshed boarding passes also allow users to conveniently access Maps to navigate airports and explore local recommendations, all in one place from their pass; quickly use Find My to track important items and report lost baggage; view key services on an airline’s app, such as seat upgrades and standby lists; and more. Refreshed boarding passes will be available starting with Air Canada, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue, Jetstar, Lufthansa Group, Qantas, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, and Virgin Australia.

Digital ID offers a secure and private new way for users to store and present their ID information using their iPhone and Apple Watch. Users can seamlessly create and add a Digital ID to Apple Wallet using a U.S. passport.

With REAL ID implementation in effect, at launch, Digital ID provides another way for users to conveniently and securely present an ID in person at select TSA checkpoints for identity verification purposes during domestic travel. Digital ID is not a replacement for a physical passport, and cannot be used for international travel and border crossing in lieu of a U.S. passport. Like all IDs in Apple Wallet, this new solution takes advantage of the privacy and security features already built into iPhone and Apple Watch.

Additionally, Verify with Wallet on the Web enables users to seamlessly and securely present their eligible driver’s license or state ID in Wallet to websites for age and identity verification, starting with Chime, Turo, Uber Eats, and U.S. Bank, as well as the Arizona MVD, Georgia DDS, and Maryland MVA.

Ready-Made Custom Plans Unlock Consistent Routines in Apple Fitness+

Custom Plans in Apple Fitness+ make it simpler than ever to follow a personalized schedule, automatically creating plans based on users’ workout and meditation preferences, including their top activities, durations, trainers, music, and more.

To keep users motivated, Stay Consistent provides a premade schedule of activities that matches their current routine. With Push Further, users receive a plan that increases the time of each day’s workout sessions — or even adds another day — making it perfect for those looking to challenge themselves. For anyone new to Fitness+, Get Started provides a ready-made plan built from selected interests or popular activities, giving users a helpful starting point. Additionally, Custom Plans are now centrally located in a dedicated Plans page.

A New Daily Puzzle Brings a Fresh, Friendly Challenge to Apple News+

Apple News adds Emoji Game to Apple News+ Puzzles, joining Crossword, Mini-Crossword, Quartiles, and Sudoku. Emoji Game brings to life one of users’ favorite ways to communicate in a fun and engaging way, with players challenged to use emoji to complete three phrases, with the goal of solving the puzzle in as few moves as possible. Users can share puzzles, track stats and streaks, and compete with others through Game Center leaderboards. Emoji Game features a daily puzzle available in the U.S. and for English-speaking users in Canada, and can be accessed from the Following tab in the News app.

Apple’s services make everyday activities more personal, productive, and enjoyable, and these new features and additional intelligent updates continue to deliver thoughtful, tailored experiences to users across the globe.

Availability

The Apple Intelligence features detailed require supported devices, which include all iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPad mini (A17 Pro), and iPad and Mac models with M1 and later that have Apple Intelligence enabled and Siri and device language set to the same supported language: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean, or Chinese (simplified). More languages will be coming by the end of this year: Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese (Portugal), Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (traditional), and Vietnamese. For more information, visit apple.com/apple-intelligence. Features are subject to change. Some features may not be available in all languages or regions, and availability may vary due to local laws and regulations. For more information about availability, visit apple.com.
1. Preferred routes and Visited Places are not available in all regions.
2. Available on cards from participating banks and card providers in certain markets. Subject to eligibility and approval. In the U.S., Apple Pay is a service provided by Apple Payments Services LLC, a subsidiary of Apple Inc. Neither Apple Inc. nor Apple Payments Services LLC is a bank. Any card used in Apple Pay is offered by the card issuer.
3. Apple Cash services are provided by Green Dot Bank, Member FDIC. Apple Payments Services LLC, a subsidiary of Apple Inc., is a service provider of Green Dot Bank for Apple Cash accounts. Neither Apple Inc. nor Apple Payments Services LLC is a bank. Learn more about the terms and conditions. Only available in the U.S. on eligible devices.
Press Contacts

Heather Norton

Apple

heather_norton@apple.com

Kimberly Mai

Apple

k_mai@apple.com

Apple Media Helpline

media.help@apple.com
MIL OSI Economics –
June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI NGOs: Violent looting prompts permanent closure of MSF hospital in Ulang, South Sudan News Jun 10, 2025

Source: Doctors Without Borders –

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced today its decision to permanently close its hospital in Ulang, in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State, as well as withdraw support for 13 primary health facilities in the county due to safety and security concerns.

MSF suspended all medical services on April 14, 2025 after armed individuals forced their way into the hospital and its offices, threatened staff and patients, and violently looted and destroyed property throughout the facility.

The hospital’s infrastructure, in which MSF had invested millions of dollars, was completely destroyed. In addition, intruders looted medicines worth over $150,000—enough to run the hospital for months and care for thousands of patients. This has left the hospital in ruins and unable to function.

“They took everything: medical equipment, laptops, patients’ beds and mattresses from the wards, and approximately nine months’ worth of medical supplies, including two planeloads of surgical kits and drugs delivered just the week before,” said Zakaria Mwatia, MSF head of mission for South Sudan. “Whatever they could not carry, they destroyed.”

“The extensive losses from the looting have left us without the necessary resources to continue operations,” Mwatia added. “We have no other option but to make the difficult decision to close the hospital and [halt] our support for 13 primary health care facilities, as they all relied on the hospital for medical supplies, referrals, and technical support.”

A string of attacks on health care

This was the second attack on MSF in the area in less than three months. In January, two clearly marked MSF boats were shot at by unknown gunmen on their way to Ulang after delivering medical supplies to Nasir County Hospital, forcing everyone on board to jump into the water and swim to safety. Less than a month after the looting, another MSF hospital was bombed in Old Fangak, forcing MSF to suspend activities.

Such attacks on health care facilities severely disrupt access to health care services for communities that depend on MSF for medical assistance. The closure of MSF facilities has left the area—which spans more than 124 miles from the Ethiopian border to Malakal—without any secondary health care facility. Pressure has increased significantly on the few remaining health structures, especially in Malakal, which has recorded an influx of patients in recent weeks.

“The security situation in the area remains volatile, with ongoing clashes in neighboring regions,” Mwatia said. “MSF prioritizes the safety of its staff and patients and the integrity of our services, but the current environment makes it impossible to ensure either. We are deeply concerned by the growing trend of attacks on health care and the devastating impact this has on communities. We urgently call for the protection of patients, health care workers, and medical facilities at all times.”

MSF remains committed to communities

Since its launch in 2018, the MSF project in Ulang has provided vital health care services to over 150,000 people across Ulang County. This included running a secondary care hospital and supporting 13 primary health care facilities throughout the region. Over the past seven years, MSF has carried out more than 139,730 outpatient consultations, admitted 19,350 patients, treated 32,966 cases of malaria, and assisted 2,685 maternal deliveries, among other essential services. During this time, MSF also facilitated patient referrals by boat along the Sobat River, provided support to Nasir County Hospital, and responded to multiple emergencies and disease outbreaks.

Despite these closures, MSF remains committed to responding to the health care needs of displaced and vulnerable people in Ulang and Nasir counties. A mobile emergency team is assessing the needs and preparing to provide short-term health care services along the Sobat Corridor, wherever security conditions allow. MSF continues to provide health care services in its other projects in Upper Nile State, including in Malakal and Renk counties, and in other locations across South Sudan.

MIL OSI NGO –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI NGOs: Children in Darfur, Sudan, urgently need immunisation as measles spreads

Source: Médecins Sans Frontières –

Port Sudan – For a year now, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Darfur, Sudan, have been witnessing outbreaks of measles in the four Darfur states where we currently work. While massive vaccination campaigns are finally ongoing in several locations across the region, MSF calls on health authorities and medical organisations to increase efforts to catch up on the immunisation of children who have never been vaccinated.

The first surge of measles cases observed and treated by MSF were in June 2024 in Rokero, in Central Darfur, where MSF teams have been running the local Ministry of Health hospital since 2020. At the start of 2025, cases were also reported in East Jebel Marra, South Darfur, and in Forbrenga, West Darfur. More recently, new surges are also being observed in Zalengei, Sortony, and in Tine, East Chad – all places where we run activities.

From June 2024 until the end of May 2025, more than 9,950 patients were treated for measles in health facilities run or supported by MSF in the region. Around 2,700 were complicated cases requiring hospitalisation, and 35 deaths were recorded. To manage the influx of patients, we had to expand our paediatric bed capacity in three hospitals.

One of the root causes of this situation is the region’s already low immunisation coverage.

“In Forbrenga, 30 per cent of the measles patients we are receiving are above five years but only 5 per cent of them are vaccinated,” says Sue Bucknell, deputy head of mission in West Darfur. “This suggests that the lack of vaccination dates back further than the recent conflict.”

“The ongoing conflict is also contributing to this outbreak, constraining the capacities of medical staff to both prevent and respond to outbreaks of contagious diseases,” says Dr Cecilia Greco, medical coordinator for Central Darfur. “Mass population displacement has made the illness spread even faster across the region, further complicating the situation.”

Since the war broke out, constant administrative impediments and regular blockades of key supply roads have caused vaccine shortages throughout Darfur. This led to disruption in routine immunisation programmes in several locations, sometimes for months. In Sortony, for example, an internally displaced people’s camp in North Darfur hosting more than 55,000 people, vaccination activities totally stopped from May 2024 to February 2025.

One of the three extensions, in which MSF teams treat severe cases of measles. On this day, 11 patients were sharing the 10 available beds. Since June 2024, our teams witness an ongoing outbreak of measles in North Jebel Marra. Over the past ten months, MSF treated more than 1,900 patients – mostly children under 5 – and has registered 11 deaths. Medical data gathered by our teams shows that the 70% of children we admitted, were never vaccinated.
Thibault Fendler/MSF

These constraints and shortages have also limited medical organisations’ capacity to roll out proper response campaigns. Last year, MSF carried out several vaccination campaigns, such as in November 2024 in North Jebel Marra where 9,600 children were vaccinated.

However, due to limited vaccine supplies, our teams were forced to reduce the target number and to exclude children over age five, despite clear needs. This inevitably reduced the long-term impact of these campaigns. In North Jebel Marra, while the vaccination campaign initially slowed the outbreak, cases began to rise sharply again from February.

Although mass vaccination campaigns are now happening in different parts of Darfur, negotiations and procedures have been lengthy. After MSF first raised the alarm about the multiple surges our teams were witnessing, it took months before the Federal Ministry of Health in Port Sudan and UNICEF released the needed vaccines from their stocks, finally enabling mass vaccination campaigns to be launched in different areas of Darfur.

Last week, 55,800 children from age nine months to 15 years were vaccinated in Forbrenga as part of a campaign led by the Ministry of Health and supported by MSF. Around 93,000 more children are set to receive the vaccine in North Jebel Marra and Sortony by the end of this week, in a similar campaign.

“Even if they represent a certain achievement, these campaigns should have happened much sooner. Many measles cases and their consequences could have been prevented,” says Dr Greco. “And as much as they are needed, such reactive campaigns are only a band-aid to an open wound unless massive efforts are put in place on immunisation and prevention across Darfur, including its most remote areas.”

There is the threat of further outbreaks of disease unless such efforts are initiated.

“Measles is not the only contagious illness currently present in Darfur with the potential to turn into outbreaks,” says Bucknell. “Over the last 10 days, about 200 suspected cholera cases were brought to MSF-supported health facilities in two different Darfur states. This follows a significant cholera outbreak in Khartoum state and other parts of Sudan.”

“It is essential that federal and local health authorities, UN agencies and all medical organisations on the ground collaborate, not only to catch up on the vaccination of all the children left behind by immunisation programmes over the years, but also to enhance their ability to respond quickly and efficiently should any other outbreaks, like cholera, start spreading over Darfur,” says Dr Greco. “This includes the capacity to supply vaccines in and across Sudan, without facing the same impediments.”

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MIL OSI NGO –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Attorney General Alan Wilson announces Florence Co. health worker charged with Medicaid fraudRead More

Source: US State of South Carolina

(COLUMBIA, S.C.) – South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson announced that his office’s Vulnerable Adults and Medicaid Provider Fraud unit (VAMPF) has arrested Jacqueline Burgess, 59 years old, of Scranton, SC, on one count of Medical Assistance Provider Fraud {43-07-0060}. Burgess was booked into the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center on June 10, 2025.

An investigation by VAMPF revealed that, between December 4, 2023 and June 21, 2024, Burgess is alleged to have knowingly and willfully caused false claims for payments to the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that administers the State’s Medicaid program. Specifically, it is alleged that Burgess, as a care attendant with Tender Care Home Health Care, submitted false timesheets indicating that she had rendered care services for a Medicaid beneficiary when she did not.

This case was referred to law enforcement by Tender Care Home Health Care, which cooperated fully with investigators. This case will be prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office.

Medical Assistance Provider Fraud is a class A misdemeanor and, upon conviction, has a penalty of up to three years in prison and a fine of not more than $1,000.

Pursuant to federal regulations, VAMPF has authority over Medicaid provider fraud; abuse and neglect of Medicaid beneficiaries in any setting; and the abuse, neglect, and exploitation of individuals residing in assisted living facilities or nursing homes.

Attorney General Wilson stressed all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until they are proven guilty in a court of law.

The South Carolina Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, dba VAMPF, receives 75 percent of its funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under a grant award totaling $2,889,252 for federal fiscal year 2025. The remaining 25 percent, totaling $963,084 for FFY 2025, is funded by South Carolina.

MIL OSI USA News –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Sly Stone: influential funk pioneer who embodied the contradictions at the heart of American life

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Behr, Senior Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University

There’s immense variety in popular music careers, even beyond the extremes of one-hit wonders and the long-haulers touring stadiums into their dotage. There are those who embody a specific era, burning briefly and brightly, and those whose legacy spans decades.

Straddling both of those, and occupying a distinctive space in popular music history, is Sylvester Stewart, better known as Sly Stone, who died at the age of 82 on Monday June 9.

A pioneer of funk whose sound spread far beyond the genre, his band Sly and the Family Stone synthesised disparate strands of American popular music into a unique melange, tracking the musical and social shifts as the 1960s wore into the 1970s.

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A musical prodigy and multi-instrumentalist from a young age, Stone was born in Texas in 1943 and raised in California, in a religious Pentecostal family. He had put out his first single aged 13 – a locally released gospel song with three of his siblings, who would later join him in Sly and the Family Stone.

A record producer and DJ by his early twenties, he imbibed the music of British acts like The Beatles and Rolling Stones, and applied his eclectic tastes and musical versatility to producing local psychedelic and garage rock acts in the emergent San Francisco scene.

By the time commercial popular culture had flowered into a more exploratory “counterculture” in 1967’s Summer of Love, the ebb and flow of personnel across local bands had coalesced into a line-up including the Stone siblings – Sly, Freddie, and their sister Vaetta, with their other sister Rose joining in 1968. Pioneering socially, as well as aesthetically, Sly and the Family Stone had diversity at its core – a mixed sex, multi-racial and musically varied band.

This was notable for a mainstream act in an America still emerging from the depths of segregation, and riven with strife over the struggle for civil rights. While their first album in 1967 A Whole New Thing enjoyed comparatively little traction, 1968‘s Dance to the Music presaged a run of hits.

Their sonic collision of sounds from across the commercial and social divide – psychedelic rock, soul, gospel and pop – struck a chord with audiences simultaneously looking forward with hope to changing times, and mindful of the injustice that was still prevalent.

Singles like Everyday People, Stand, and I Want to Take You Higher, melded a party atmosphere with social statements. They were calls for action, but also for unity: celebratory, but pushing the musical envelope.

While the band wore its innovations lightly at first, their reach was long. Bassist Larry Graham was a pioneer of the percussive slap bass that became a staple of funk and fusion. And their overall sound brought a looser, pop feel to the funk groove, in comparison to the almost militaristic tightness of that other funk pioneer, James Brown.

Where Brown’s leadership of his group was overt, exemplified by his staccato musical directions in the songs, and the call and response structure, Stone’s band had more of an ensemble feel. Musical lines and solos were overlaid upon one another, often interweaving – more textured rather than in lock-step. It was a sound that would reach an almost chaotic apogée with George Clinton’s Funkadelic later in the 1970s.

The party couldn’t last. As the optimism of the 1960s gave way to division in the 1970s, Stone’s music took a darker turn, even if the funk remained central. The album There’s A Riot Going On (1971), and its lead single It’s Family Affair contained lyrics depicting social ills more explicitly. The music – mostly recorded by Sly himself – was sparser, the vocals more melancholic.

The unity of the band itself was also fracturing, under pressure from Stone’s growing cocaine dependency. The album Fresh (1973) featured classics like In Time and If You Want Me To Stay, but they were running out of commercial road by 1974’s Small Talk, and broke up soon after.

Periodic comebacks were punctuated by a troubled personal life, including, at its nadir, reports of Stone living out of a van in Los Angeles, and arrests for drug possession. By the time he achieved a degree of stability, his star may have faded, but his legacy was secure.

Stone embodied the contradictions of American popular music – arguably even America itself: brash and light-hearted on the one hand, with a streak of darkness and self-destructiveness on the other.

The handclaps and joyous shouts harked back to his gospel roots, but his embrace of electric instruments aligned soul with rock and pop. He was a funk artist who played at the archetypal hippie festival, Woodstock, and a social commentator whose party sounds were shot through with urgency.

He paved the way for the likes of Prince and Outkast, but also informed jazz and fusion. Jazz pioneer Miles Davis acknowledged Stone’s influence on his own turn towards electric and funk sounds in the late 1960s and early 1970s on landmark albums like Bitches Brew.

Sly Stone’s joyful provocations may not have lasted at the commercial centre, but his mark was indelible. His struggles were both personal and social, but his sense of groove, and of a collective voice, demonstrated the value of aligning traditions with new ideas – a musical America that was fractious, but still a family affair.

Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council

– ref. Sly Stone: influential funk pioneer who embodied the contradictions at the heart of American life – https://theconversation.com/sly-stone-influential-funk-pioneer-who-embodied-the-contradictions-at-the-heart-of-american-life-258616

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: The political opportunism behind Reform UK’s support for abolition of the two-child limit on benefits

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Chris Grover, Professor in Social Policy, Lancaster University

The leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, recently announced that if in government, his party would abolish the two-child limit on benefits. This social security policy restricts the payment of means-tested benefits to the first two children of a family.

Farage explained the announcement as being pro-natalist – intended to encourage a higher birth rate – as well as being “pro-worker”. Farage said that the abolition of the two-child limit “makes having children just a little bit easier” for “lower paid workers”.

He noted that Reform wanted “to encourage people to have children”. Such arguments are familiar in the European political right, although the UK’s Conservative opposition criticised Reform’s proposal.

To be in government, Reform has two possible routes: to build a coalition of voters for it, or to split left-leaning voters. Its proposal to abolish the two-child limit may be aimed at both.

On the one hand, it might be supported by left-leaning voters who are able to accept Reform’s broader policy agenda. On the other hand, it might be aimed at encouraging left-leaning voters who find Reform’s agenda problematic to move to parties (such as the Greens and Liberal Democrats) who are less equivocal in their commitment to abolishing the two-child limit than the Labour government.

Social security policies winning votes

Social security policies have long been used as part of political strategising. The situation with the two-child limit is complicated, though, because both anti- and pro-natalist views of social security (and it predecessors) have been popular at particular moments.

Political and popular arguments have long been made that supporting the poorest families leads to them having too many children. This, so the argument goes, reproduces, rather than addresses, the poverty they face. Examples can be found, for instance, in the 1834 poor law commission report in relation to “bastardy” and large families, Sir Keith Joseph’s 1970s focus upon the “cycle of deprivation”, as well as “underclass” arguments in the 1980s and 1990s.

The two-child limit was announced in the 2015 budget and introduced in 2017 with the reasoning that “those in receipt of tax credits should face the same financial choices about having children as those supporting themselves solely through work.”

The two-child limit on benefits restricts welfare payments for children to the first two children in a family.
Len44ik/Shutterstock

In contrast, the architect of the British welfare state, William Beveridge, noted in 1942 that children’s allowances (now child benefit) would help “housewives as mothers” in their “vital work in ensuring the adequate continuance of the British race and of British ideals in the world.” The 1945 Labour election victory in support of the welfare state suggests pro-natalist policies can contribute to electoral success.

The expansion of tax credits in the 1990s and 2000s were partly explained in pro-natalist terms. Tony Blair, for instance, noted: “The working tax credit enables half a million mothers to choose to stay at home.” That, in other words, tax credits enabled women to choose having and raising children over paid work.

Recent polling, however, suggests that the anti-natalist two-child limit polls well among voters, especially Reform voters. In 2024, for example, YouGov found 60% of Britons thought the two-child limit should be kept. The figure was 84% for Reform voters.

Targeting voters

The abolition of the two-child limit may have been adopted to increase Reform’s appeal to left-leaning voters. Providing additional support for families through social security may be attractive to voters concerned with social injustice. The two-child limit increases child poverty. Affected families are unable to provide even the most basic needs, such as food, clothing and heating.

Nevertheless, Reform’s proposal is also embedded in caveats and would be paid for through means appealing to its existing voters. So, for example, Farage emphasised that the abolition of the two-child limit would be restricted to only British families. It would not be extended to families “who come into the country and suddenly decide to have a lot of children”.

By keeping the two-child limit for migrant families, Reform’s proposals are consistent with existing immigration and asylum policies. It has been observed in an inquiry by All Party Parliamentary Groups on poverty and on migration that policies like this are, at least in part, “designed to push people into poverty in the hope that it will deter others from moving to the UK.” And, therefore, the abolition of the two-child limit can be seen as part of Reform’s pledge to severely curtail immigration.

Farage also argued that the abolition of the two-child limit would be paid for by other policies that are central to Reform’s electoral agenda. These include stopping asylum seekers being housed in hotels and the abolition of net zero policies. It is also consistent with Reform’s view that jobs in Britain should be filled by British people. This, it believes, will help reduce reliance on migrant labour from overseas.

There is little evidence that the introduction of the two-child limit had the desired impact on lowering poorer households’ birth rates. And it is unclear whether the proposed abolition of the two-child limit rooted in a British-only, pro-natalist agenda is enough to attract left-leaning voters.

These voters might, for example, be more concerned with Reform’s position on immigration and asylum seeking, as well as the social injustice of the undoubted poverty in which families subjected to the two child limit on benefits live.

Reform’s strategy then may be to further encourage those voters to turn from its closest rival – the Labour party – to other political parties. Whichever is the case, the situation will undoubtedly shift if the Labour government does take the step of abolishing the two-child limit.

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

– ref. The political opportunism behind Reform UK’s support for abolition of the two-child limit on benefits – https://theconversation.com/the-political-opportunism-behind-reform-uks-support-for-abolition-of-the-two-child-limit-on-benefits-258042

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Spending review: Rachel Reeves is about to make a £600 billion gamble on growth

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Steve Schifferes, Honorary Research Fellow, City Political Economy Research Centre, City St George’s, University of London

UK chancellor Rachel Reeves faces her biggest test with the government’s departmental spending plans for the three years from next April until the general election. With nearly £600 billion a year to spend, her decisions will impact on every aspect of public life and shape the political weather for years to come.

She believes the key to reviving Labour’s fortunes as its poll ratings tumble lies in boosting economic growth.

So the government has promised that its policies will increase the UK’s anaemic growth rate and enhance productivity. Reeves is looking to capital spending on big projects that will boost the economy, such as the £14.2 billion government investment in a new nuclear power plant at Sizewell in Suffolk.

Last year she revised the government’s fiscal rules to give herself the space to borrow an extra £113 billion over three years to transform Britain’s ageing infrastructure. She has already made it clear that she wants to boost transport investment outside of London, as well as invest in research and development, including green energy.

But there are challenges ahead. In the first place, the effect of infrastructure investment takes a long time to feed through. This is partly because of the lag between planning the projects and when they come on-stream.

It will take time before the full effect will be felt on productivity, which has been growing more slowly than expected. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) suggested in March that the latest government plans for planning reform might increase productivity by just 0.2% in the longer term.

There are also some real trade-offs as to where the increased capital investment will go – and which sectors will benefit most. The chancellor has emphasised her commitment to putting more money into projects outside London and south-east England that have had less public investment in the past.

But London and the south-east is where productivity is highest and where further investment might have a bigger effect on economic growth.

It appears that there may be less funding for social housing, which may threaten the government’s ambitious target of building 1.5 million homes over the parliament. There may also be less available to repair schools and hospitals.

And the plans to boost defence spending on expensive military equipment – such as frigates and fighter planes – will also count as capital spending. As such, it could further reduce the amount available for infrastructure investment.

The departmental trade-offs

Despite the relative abundance of cash for infrastructure, the tighter fiscal rules on day-to-day spending mean that many departments are facing a squeeze on their budgets. The government plans to allow total day-to-day departmental spending on average to rise by just 1.2% per year in real terms during the next three years. This probably spells a real-terms cut for some “unprotected” departments.

This is because the money will not be distributed equally. The Department of Health and Social Care gets 40% of all departmental spending and is likely to be the big winner.

It has already received a big increase in the last spending round, with an 11% increase in capital spending is likely to get even more to realise an ambitious ten-year plan for improving services in the NHS in England.

If health spending were to go up by 2.5% (well under its historic average), this could mean very little increase for many other government departments. And if it is increased by 3.5% this will imply real-terms cuts for other areas.

The situation is made more difficult by the government’s decision to prioritise two other areas: defence and schools. For defence, it is committed to raising spending to 2.5% by 2027 and to 3% in the next parliament.

And for education, Reeves has pledged an extra £4.5 billion per year for more teachers, childcare places and free school meals. The decisions have a strong political dimension, as health and education tend to be the most popular spending priorities among the public.

Boosting the education spend tends to play well with the UK public.
Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

The spending review, however, only covers half of total government spending. The more unpredictable part is annually managed expenditure, mainly on benefits and interest payments on government debt.

The Treasury sets an overall target (known as the spending envelope) on how much will be spent in these areas. But it now faces a crunch point over the unpopular decisions to cut disability benefits and keep the two-child benefit cap.

Reeves’ partial U-turn on the winter fuel payment, which will now be paid to 9 million pensioners, will cost an additional £1.25 billion a year but may have been a political necessity.

But a full U-turn on the two other issues will be much more expensive. Taken together, such a change might breach the fiscal rules, which give only £10 billion of “headroom” in a total government budget of more than £1.2 trillion. So while there will be some rowing back, the finances suggest any more major U-turns are unlikely.

To make matters worse, these spending plans are based on an economic forecast made by the OBR in March. This did not include the effect of US president Donald Trump’s tariff plans. Since then, both the IMF and the OECD downgraded their UK growth forecasts for both 2025 and 2026, and despite a recent small upgrade by the IMF, growth is still significantly lower than previously expected.

Even though Britain seems to have secured a deal with the US, the effect of tariffs on global growth will still damage the UK’s prospects as a trading nation.

This will make it harder for the government to meet its fiscal targets in the autumn budget while sticking to the departmental spending plans. The chancellor will then have three options. She can look for more cuts in benefits spending.

She could try to find other sources of tax revenue, for example by tweaking the rules on taxing pensions or extending the freeze on upgrading tax bands. Or, more radically, she could modify the fiscal rules to give herself more flexibility – for example by having only one economic forecast a year, as the IMF has suggested.

Ultimately Labour’s electoral prospects will depend on whether it has succeeded in boosting living standards. While the productivity drive could work, the UK economy remains at the mercy of wider global economic forces.

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

– ref. Spending review: Rachel Reeves is about to make a £600 billion gamble on growth – https://theconversation.com/spending-review-rachel-reeves-is-about-to-make-a-600-billion-gamble-on-growth-258526

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: What the new British zoo standards mean for animal welfare

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Samantha Ward, Associate Professor of Zoo Animal Welfare, Nottingham Trent University

Mila Supinskaya Glashchenko/Shutterstock

If you visit a zoo, you might be captivated by the animals you see — majestic lions, curious meerkats, soaring birds of prey. But this is not always the case. Some zoos don’t always give us that impression of “happy animals” where they can behave naturally and be left alone by visitors if they wish.

The UK, Scottish and Welsh governments recently released new zoo standards for Great Britain. So what does this mean for the future of zoos?

I have been working in and with zoos for over 20 years. I am a bit of a zoo-nerd but that doesn’t mean that I like them all. I am an advocate for good animal welfare in zoos and so I can recognise the ones that are good and not so good.

Britain is one of a few countries such as Belgium, South Korea and New Zealand that have specific zoo legislation. The new British standards will be enforced in 2027, giving below-par zoos two years to up their game.

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I speak here in my role as associate professor of zoo animal welfare at Nottingham Trent University, but I also sit on the UK Zoos Expert Committee and helped to write the new standards. One of the biggest changes is the replacement of the word “should” with “must”. The standards now say: “Zoos must provide appropriate accomodation”. This makes all elements of the guidance much more enforceable.

One of the most common complaints I hear when I say I work with zoos is that the animals don’t have as much space as they do in the wild. That is correct: zoos cannot provide the same amount of space for a lot of species. But good quality space can allow these animals to behave like they would in wild habitats.

One of the most controversial animals when talking about space is elephants. In 2017 the UK government issued updated requirements for them which brought in enclosure-size requirements, something that had never happened for any species in British zoos before.

Under the new standards, zoos will have until 2040 to increase their elephant provisions. Indoor space allocation for a herd of up to four females has been doubled to 600m². This then increases by 100m² for each additional elephant (compared to 80m² in the 2017 requirements).

Bull facilities – zoos that house individual male elephants – need to provide 320m² of indoor space per bull. Outdoor areas for bull and cow elephants must provide a minimum shared space of 20,000m² (or 2.8 UK sized football pitches) for up to five group-living adults. This must be increased by at least 2,500m² for each additional animal over two years old. This is over 30 times larger than the current standards.

The new standards stipulate that zoos must provide more natural habitats that better replicate how elephants live in the wild. There are also requirements for more detailed behavioural monitoring and things that help keep elephants active and engaged in their environment.

Howver, animal welfare charity the RSPCA still feels that these updates are not good enough. It believes that elephants (and some other species) are not suitable for captivity as they have complex cognitive needs and space requirements.

From my perspective, Britain has the most specific (and now) welfare-driven standards for elephants in the world. If Britain were to ban the housing of elephants, we would be shipping them to lower quality habitats, care and monitoring. Is this really what we want for the elephants in British zoos?

What else is changing

Another area where there has been much criticism in the past relates to providing animals from specific climates or environments with the correct conditions, such as reptiles, amphibians, tropical birds and primates. While a high number of animals seem to cope well in the UK’s colder climate, there is research to show that some animals need specialised environments, without which they can suffer from severe health problems, low welfare and even death.

The new standards require zoos to develop detailed environmental management plans for species that rely on artificial life-support systems such as aquariums, vivariums, tropical houses or desert habitats. Animals also cannot be removed from their enclosures for interactions or talks with the public.

These environmental management plans outline the environmental parameters required for that animal to thrive and behave naturally, and they need to be monitored to ensure that provisions do not slip.

Birds of prey have new welfare protections in British zoos.
chrisdorney/Shutterstock

There are also extra requirements for birds of prey. Although controversial, tethering is currently a recognised management practice for birds of prey, including owls, hawks and falcons. You don’t need to be a welfare scientist to understand how a bird might feel about being tethered to a post for long periods of time.

The 2012 standards stipulated that tethered birds should be flown at least four times per week, though there were no time restrictions on how long they could be tethered. The new standards emphasise that birds can only be tethered for a maximum of four hours in a 24 hour period and only as a management tool that benefits the bird (such as training for flight displays, transportation or veterinary treatment).

There is new emphasis on what is known as behavioural enrichment. Whether it’s puzzle feeders for primates, scent trails for big cats or novel objects for parrots, enrichment helps prevent boredom, reduce stress and promote natural behaviour.

Enrichment can be resource intensive and therefore difficult to implement, but the new standards make it a core requirement. Enrichment activities must aim to replicate natural behaviour such as foraging, climbing or problem solving. Zoos are required to document and evaluate these activities, track how animals respond and adjust strategies accordingly.

These updates reflect a deeper understanding of what animals need to thrive, not just survive. As a zoo welfare scientist, I feel there is always more that can be done to improve the welfare of animals in zoos (such as banning touch pools and tethering altogether).

But it is important that zoos and aquariums evaluate the costs (to the animals) and benefits (to the visitors) to make ethical and welfare-based decisions themselves.

These new standards will improve the conditions for animals in zoos, as well as help zoos to make the right decisions about the animals they house and care for.

Samantha Ward is the welfare specialist on the Zoo Experts Committee, part of DEFRA, who helped write the new zoo standards.

– ref. What the new British zoo standards mean for animal welfare – https://theconversation.com/what-the-new-british-zoo-standards-mean-for-animal-welfare-258001

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Rosebank oilfield: why more UK oil means more global emissions

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Fergus Green, Associate Professor in Political Theory and Public Policy, UCL

Frode Koppang / shutterstock

The UK government will soon face a momentous decision over whether to approve production in the Rosebank oilfield off the coast of Shetland.

Rosebank is the UK’s biggest undeveloped field. Its proponents – the largest of which is Norwegian state-owned petroleum company, Equinor – estimate that it will produce the equivalent of up to 500 million barrels of oil between 2026 and 2051. When burned, this oil will generate up to 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is more than the combined annual emissions of 28 low-income countries.

Thanks to recent court cases, the climate effects of those “combustion emissions” will need to be taken into account by the government when it decides whether to approve production at Rosebank. In a new report, two colleagues and I reviewed the evidence concerning the implications of new oil and gas fields in the UK.

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There is a rapidly dwindling global carbon budget for holding temperature increases to below 1.5°C of warming (the more conservative end of the Paris agreement’s temperature goal).

Globally, the emissions from burning the fossil fuels in oil and gas fields and coalmines that are already operating or under development far exceed that budget. In this context, Rosebank’s combustion emissions are highly significant, as they add considerably to that excess.

We also found that the projected production from existing fields is sufficient to meet or exceed global oil and gas demand in modelled economic scenarios in which climate warming is restrained to within 1.5°C. This is further evidence that new fields are not consistent with achieving globally agreed temperature goals.

However, it is often asserted by supporters of new fields that keeping UK oil in the ground won’t reduce global emissions, because another producer will supply the demand and reap the benefits. This is a gross and dangerous oversimplification which, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, “defies basic economics of supply and demand”.

Allowing a new field like Rosebank would increase the supply of oil globally, resulting in a fall in its price which, though small, would cause more oil to be consumed. As UK government advisers at the Climate Change Committee have acknowledged, new petroleum projects “support a larger global market overall” for petroleum. Stopping Rosebank would have the opposite effect, and lead to less oil consumed.

Rosebank is found about 80 miles west of Shetland and its puffins.
Philippe Clement / shutterstock

The oil industry likes to trumpet the UK’s relatively low upstream emissions – that is, from the process of extracting oil – compared with those of competitors overseas. But this is a distraction from the bigger issue: the additional greenhouse gases emitted from consuming the extra oil that new fields produce.

A recent peer-reviewed study by economists and experts in the emissions-intensity of oil and gas production concluded that limiting oil supply will almost always lead to lower overall emissions, regardless of the intensity of upstream emissions from different fields. It is highly likely that leaving Rosebank’s oil in the ground will result in lower global greenhouse gases than would occur if the field were developed.

However, this focus on Rosebank’s aggregate emissions ignores two further reasons the field’s development consent should be refused on climate grounds.

A litmus test of climate leadership

First, exploiting new sources of oil supply like Rosebank locks in future oil and gas production, ultimately making it economically, politically and legally harder to wind the industry down.

Second, as the Climate Change Committee also stated, decisions by the UK government concerning petroleum production have an important “signalling effect” internationally and at home.

Internationally, the UK government has rightly acknowledged that climate action “must be accelerated drastically” to keep the average global temperature rise “below 1.5°C”.

The UK has a proud reputation for climate leadership. It was the first country to enact a legally binding framework to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it rapidly phased out coal-fired power generation, and in 2019 it became the first country to adopt a net zero emissions target.

Building on this legacy, the foreign secretary David Lammy has vowed to “push for the ambition needed to keep 1.5 degrees alive”. But approving Rosebank would signal to the world that the UK government is not sincere about keeping the Paris agreement’s 1.5°C goal “alive”, after all.

Some might think that aspirations to climate leadership are futile given the Trump administration’s “drill, baby, drill” approach to fossil fuels. But Trump’s recklessness at a critical time for global climate efforts makes UK climate leadership more important than ever.

The UK already chairs a suite of international energy transition alliances focused on the international phase-out of coal-fired power, the scale-up of renewables, and the financing of these transitions. It could plug a gap in its influence by rejecting Rosebank and joining the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance, a “club” of (currently) 25 national and sub-national governments that are working to phase-out oil and gas production and persuade other countries to follow suit.

And it could deepen cooperation with the EU to drive down oil and gas demand and scale up clean energy throughout the region, yielding benefits that will outlive the Trump administration.

Domestically, rejecting Rosebank would send a powerful signal to investors about the sincerity of the government’s commitment to achieve economic growth by becoming a “clean energy superpower”, as the governing Labour party pledged to do at the last election.

But the benefits of clean prosperity must extend to the people and communities caught up in the transition, too. The UK’s North Sea oil and gas reserves, along with the jobs their production supports, are in terminal decline.

Oil and gas workers and the communities in which they are based already face a volatile future. New fields like Rosebank would create some additional jobs in this declining industry. But they cannot arrest its long-term decline.

The government recognises that this transition is already taking place and will continue. With targeted regional and industrial investment, support for workers and their families, and careful planning that meaningfully involves affected communities, the UK has an opportunity to demonstrate to the world how to achieve a just transition away from oil and gas.

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Fergus Green has received consulting fees from and provided expert evidence on behalf of an environmental nongovernmental organisation engaged in climate-related litigation against a fossil fuel company. He informally consults with a number of environmental nongovernmental organisations in relation to fossil fuel production issues in the UK and elsewhere. He is a member of the Just Transition Expert Group of the Powering Past Coal Alliance (the role is unremunerated).

– ref. Rosebank oilfield: why more UK oil means more global emissions – https://theconversation.com/rosebank-oilfield-why-more-uk-oil-means-more-global-emissions-253055

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Why the salmon on your plate contains less omega-3 than it used to – and how the industry can address that

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Richard Newton, Lecturer in Aquaculture, University of Stirling

Maria_Usp/Shutterstock

Farmed Atlantic salmon has become one of the most highly traded food commodities in the world, enjoyed for its versatility as much as for its health benefits. It has long been known that eating oily fish such as salmon is the best way to consume long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. These are essential for brain development, mental health and cognition.

In salmon, omega-3 fatty acids must come from the fish’s diet. For farmed fish, this means fishmeal and fish oil – so–called “marine ingredients” made from ground-up wild fish such as anchovy and fish by-products.

But the global supply of omega-3s is severely limited, whether from farmed or wild seafood. Many of the key fisheries supplying marine ingredients reached full exploitation in the mid-1990s. Since the growth of salmon aquaculture, increasing volumes of the limited marine ingredients supply have been taken up by fish farming.

This has raised concerns over sustainability and inflated the cost of these ingredients. The result has been a steady decline in the proportion of fish oil in farmed salmon diets, which has been replaced by plant oils. But these oils do not contain long-chain omega-3s.

In turn, the amount of omega-3s in a portion of salmon halved between 2006 and 2015. However, the salmon industry increasingly uses omega-3 as a key selling point for its product – two portions of farmed Scottish salmon per week would meet the recommended intake for an adult at current levels.

If the salmon industry is to continue to grow and maintain the omega-3 targets, it must be more efficient. And the seafood industry as a whole must do more to prevent omega-3 losses through its value chains. Part of the efficiency journey has been to produce more fish oil.

This can be done by harnessing the value of fishery and aquaculture byproducts such as trimmings, skins and heads, so that more omega-3s are kept in the food (and feed) system.

There is a growing incentive to use the whole fish – consequently there has been good progress in improving the use of byproducts. It is now estimated that around half of global fish oil supply is sourced from fishery, and particularly aquaculture, processing sources. However, there is still a lot of waste and logistical difficulties in storing and transporting seafood byproducts.

Much of the industry incentive to use byproducts has been economic, as the global shortage of fish oil pushed prices above US$8,000 (£5,900) per tonne in 2024. Evidence from the past 20 years suggests that overall use of wild fish in the European salmon industry has dropped (replaced by plant ingredients), while production has grown several-fold.

Despite improvements and reductions in the use of marine ingredients, the industry still comes under huge pressure from NGOs and conservation groups. They are concerned about the use of fish as feed, which may damage public perceptions of the aquaculture industry.

To assess the use of fish as feed in aquaculture, the “fish in fish out” (Fifo) ratio was conceived, which measures the ratio of fish biomass included in fish feeds to the biomass of fish ultimately produced for consumption. The goal is for more fish to be produced for human consumption than is used as feed, and this would result in a Fifo of less than 1.

New measure for nutrients

Certification bodies such as the Aquaculture Stewardship Council and Best Aquaculture Practices have adopted different forms of the Fifo metric. However, until now, Fifo has not addressed one of the fundamental reasons for including marine ingredients in aquafeeds – providing omega-3s to consumers. It has neither considered the omega-3 content within feed fish, nor in the final product.

Similarly, studies examining nutrient retention in salmon have only looked at that from feed to the farmed fish. The omega-3 lost in the process of turning the fish raw material in feed is not currently measured. By introducing our new measure, the nutrient Fifo (nFifo), nutrients can be followed from wild fish capture, its separation into meal and oil, and through to the final product sold to consumers.

Certification bodies like the Aquaculture Stewardship Council could adopt the new metric for nutrition.
T. Schneider/Shutterstock

The method used in nFifo favours the use of byproduct resources over virgin raw materials, so that diets containing byproducts receive a lower nFifo. In theory, this should promote circular economy initiatives.

This is crucial in the marine ingredients industry. Seafood is highly perishable and the byproducts especially so. But they are also some of the richest sources of omega-3s, such as from herring or mackerel.

However, the cost of retaining, stabilising, storing and transporting byproducts is often prohibitive. This is especially true on board fishing boats, where space is at a premium and byproducts are often dumped at sea.

Introducing metrics that prevent bioresources being wasted is essential for sustainable food production. Current salmon feed contains around 20% to 25% marine ingredients, but only around 5% is from byproducts. This results in a nFIFO of 2.17.

Incorporating only marine ingredients sourced from byproducts reduces that nFifo to below 0.5. Crucially, this still provides the same level of omega-3s to the consumer.

If the seafood industry is serious about sustainable production, it needs to become much more efficient with resources. The nFifo metric links the use of wild fish to omega-3s consumed in farmed salmon for the first time – but it could also be applied to other species and nutrients.

The methodology is similar to that used for environmental impact indicators for climate change, land or water use. It makes it possible to assess the trade-offs of including and substituting marine ingredients in fish diets at different points of production.

For example, while marine ingredients may raise concerns around their impact on fisheries, they have comparatively low carbon footprints and almost no land or water footprints compared to plant ingredients. This could potentially lead to more balanced and sustainable approaches to seafood production.

It is hoped that the nFifo metric and an accessible tool for calculating it (there is one provided on the Blue Food Performance website) will be adopted by certifiers. It could also lead to more complex sustainability indicators becoming mainstream, letting consumers make informed choices about the nutritional and environmental credentials of the products they buy.

Richard Newton is the Chair of the Climate Action Committe for Best Aquaculture Practice and the Stakeholder Advisory Group for Seafood Watch. He has previously received funding in 2019 and 2013 from the International Fishmeal Fishoil Organisation to map supplies of underutilised by-product resources.

Dave Little has received funding from various organisations supporting sustainable aquaculture development and has been affiliated to various organisations working to to improve farmed seafood assurance

– ref. Why the salmon on your plate contains less omega-3 than it used to – and how the industry can address that – https://theconversation.com/why-the-salmon-on-your-plate-contains-less-omega-3-than-it-used-to-and-how-the-industry-can-address-that-258228

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Beards and microbes: what the evidence shows

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Primrose Freestone, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Microbiology, University of Leicester

Bernardo Emanuelle/Shutterstock.com

Beards have long attracted suspicion, sometimes seen as stylish, sometimes as unsanitary. But how dirty are they, really?

Human skin is home to billions of microorganisms – mainly bacteria, but also fungi and viruses – and facial hair provides a unique environment for them to thrive. Research shows that beards, in particular, support a dense and diverse microbial population, which has fuelled a persistent belief that they are inherently unhygienic. The Washington Post recently reported that some toilets contain fewer germs than the average beard.

But are beards truly a hygiene risk? A closer look at the evidence reveals a nuanced picture.

The microbial population on skin varies by location and is influenced by factors such as temperature, pH, humidity and nutrient availability. Beards create a warm, often moist environment where food debris and oils can accumulate – ideal conditions for microbial growth.

These microbes thrive not just because of the warm, moist conditions beards provide, but also because of constant exposure to new contaminants and microbes, especially from hands that frequently touch surfaces and the face.

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Concerns among scientists about beard hygiene date back over 50 years. Early studies showed that facial hair could retain bacteria and bacterial toxins even after washing. This led to the enduring idea that beards act as bacterial reservoirs and could pose an infection risk to others.

For healthcare workers, this has made beards a point of controversy, especially in hospitals where pathogen transmission is a concern. However, hospital-based research has shown mixed results. One study found that bearded healthcare workers had higher bacterial loads on their faces than clean-shaven colleagues.

Another investigation, looking at whether it would be hygienic to evaluate dogs and humans in the same MRI scanner, found that most men’s beards contained significantly more microbes than dog fur, including a greater presence of harmful bacteria. The researchers concluded: “Dogs are no risk to humans if they use the same MRI.”

Dogs and humans can share the same MRI scanner.
Dmytro Zinkevych/Shutterstock.com

However, other studies have challenged the idea that beards increase infection risk. For example, one investigation found no significant difference in bacterial colonisation between bearded and clean-shaven healthcare workers.

The same study also reported that bearded doctors were less likely to carry Staphylococcus aureus, a major cause of hospital infections, and that there was no increase in infection rates among patients treated by bearded surgeons wearing surgical masks.

Beards can sometimes spread skin infections, such as impetigo — a contagious rash often caused by S aureus, which is commonly found in facial hair.

In rare cases, parasites like pubic lice – which usually live in the groin area – can also show up in beards, eyebrows or eyelashes, particularly in cases of poor hygiene or close contact with an infected person.

The case for good beard hygiene

Neglected beards can foster irritation, inflammation and infection. The skin beneath a beard – rich in blood vessels, nerve endings and immune cells – is highly sensitive to microbial and environmental stressors. When sebum, dead skin, food debris and pollutants accumulate, they can irritate the skin and provide fuel for fungal and bacterial growth.

Experts strongly recommend washing your beard and face every day. Doing so removes dirt, oils, allergens and dead skin, helping prevent microbial buildup.

Dermatologists also advise moisturising to prevent dryness, using a beard comb to clear debris, and trimming to control loose hairs and reduce shedding. These steps help maintain not only hygiene but also beard health and appearance.

So, are beards dirty? Like most things, it depends on how well you care for them. With daily hygiene and proper grooming, beards pose little risk and may even be healthier than we once thought.

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

– ref. Beards and microbes: what the evidence shows – https://theconversation.com/beards-and-microbes-what-the-evidence-shows-256917

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: The National Gallery at 200: is this rehang a bold relaunch or rinse and repeat?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Conlin, Professor of Modern History, University of Southampton

The National Gallery has recently rehung its entire collection. Taking hundreds of paintings off the wall and replacing them in a new arrangement requires considerable mental and physical labour on the part of curators, conservators and technicians.

A rehang tends to elicit strong reactions from anyone with a stake in the collection – and in the case of a public gallery, “anyone” means “everyone”.
Unsurprisingly then, it has only been done twice at the National Gallery since the second world war.

Last month, I attended a launch party for the gallery’s new Sainsbury Wing entrance. It marked the end of NG200, a year-long programme of events celebrating the gallery’s 200th birthday. As the author of the gallery’s authorised bicentenary history, I had written about the refurbishment, albeit with only computer-generated impressions of what it would look like. Now I could see for myself.

Inside the launch party for the gallery’s new Sainsbury Wing entrance.
Jonathan Conlin, CC BY-SA

Back in 1946, the director of the National Gallery was eager to offer both reassurance about his rehang and the promise of striking new juxtapositions. “The traditional grouping by schools has been largely maintained,” Sir Philip Hendy noted, “but a good many exceptions have been made, partly for the sake of a more harmonious and stimulating ensemble and partly for the sake of historical truth.”

The rehang, Hendy argued, would show how “the spirit of the time is usually more important than national boundaries, and that ideas can transcend both”. A striking example was Hendy hanging Bronzino’s An Allegory With Venus and Cupid (1545) next to Holbein’s The Ambassadors, painted just 12 years earlier.

“I enjoyed the intellectual shocks provided, lavishly, in the juxtaposition of unexpected artists,” wrote one regular visitor from Godalming in Surrey. But she soon found herself wondering if there was “some subtle plan” behind “having the Botticellis all in different rooms, the Venetians just anywhere, and the Rembrandts torn asunder?”

Evacuation of paintings from the National Gallery during the second world war, shortly before the last rehang.
Imperial War Museum

The Bronzino and the Holbein were split up fairly quickly, perhaps in response to criticism from other confused visitors. While they have not been reunited on the same wall, as I stood back from The Ambassadors in room four, I could turn my head to the left and see Venus and Cupid neatly framed by the door to neighbouring room two.

At least, I could have seen it, had Neil MacGregor not been standing in front of it. The National Gallery’s director from 1987 to 2002, MacGregor oversaw the last complete rehang as well as the construction of the Sainsbury Wing, which opened in 1991.

This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry – and celebrate the wins, too.

At that time, the gallery’s then-head of exhibitions, Michael Wilson, replaced the traditional grouping by schools with the wing system, which organised the hang around three broad pan-European epochs. It was a profound shift, perhaps linked to broader pan-European political visions that would lead to the introduction of a common European currency in 1999.

Former National Gallery trustee Robert Benson (as drawn by John Singer Sargent) believed art should be hung chronologically.
Wiki Commons

This was a world away from the previous arrangement. “Pictures must be hung in historical sequence,” trustee Robert Benson noted in 1914. “A salon carré, or a Tribuna, of masterpieces of all schools is an objective far ahead.”

For Benson, it was clear that the collection could only be understood “school by school”. Each painter “must be appreciated and judged in relation to the chef d’école of whose artistic lineage, or entourage, he forms part”. Collecting works from the “period of eclecticism and decadence” that followed each chef d’école (the initiator or leader of a school of painting) was of secondary importance.

But as a result, in the National Gallery that Benson (a wannabe gallery director) helped create and that MacGregor inherited, there were shocks aplenty as the visitor jumped from one school to another.

Having followed the French school through from Corneille de Lyon’s Man in a Black Biretta (c. 1538-61) through Jacques-Louis David’s Jacobus Blauw (1795) to Cézanne’s Hillside in Provence (c. 1890-1912), you then jumped four or more centuries back to start over again with the Dutch or the Italians.

The redesigned wing

These shocks were compounded by gestures towards period interiors: terrazzo tile for the Italians, dark wood panelling for the Dutch. Opened in 1975, the northern extension’s carpet, suspended ceilings and floating walls were hailed as “a model of discretion and reticence in comparison to the grandeur of the Victorian interiors”.

Under MacGregor’s wing system, “the spirit of the time” came first – nowhere more so than in the Sainsbury Wing, designed to set up a conversation between the artists of the Northern Renaissance and the Italian Renaissance. The system recognised that the Alps had not been a barrier to the exchange of artistic ideas, and had been criss-crossed by many Renaissance artists, including Albrecht Dürer.

The postmodern American architects chosen to design the Sainsbury Wing, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, larded their design with a series of knowing, sometimes mannered quotations from much older buildings.

The redesign of this Grade I-listed building by the American architect Annabelle Selldorf has now opened up Venturi and Scott Brown’s dark, crypt-like ground floor foyer. Squat columns originally intended to create a sense of anticipation have been thinned and in some cases removed. As the Twentieth Century Society noted in its planning objection, “the key sense of compression” (released upon climbing the stair) has been lost.

Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria has not been hung in a specific women artists room.
National Gallery

A ‘tamer’ rehang

Upstairs in the galleries, theme rooms have been introduced, scattered among the otherwise chronological hang. The choice of themes is tamer than the 2023 rehang of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where some of the themes feel forced – such as “Tiepolo and multiracial Europe”.

The National Gallery has resisted the temptation to devote a gallery to women artists: Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria (c. 1615-17) hangs between Caravaggios in room three, not next to Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun’s Self Portrait in a Straw Hat (1782) in room 15.

Those who admired the way in which MacGregor invited non-believers to engage with Christian art on an emotional level may nonetheless feel that an opportunity has been lost. This is a rehang that could have shocked more than it did.

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Jonathan Conlin is the author of the National Gallery’s authorised bicentenary history, The National Gallery: A History.

– ref. The National Gallery at 200: is this rehang a bold relaunch or rinse and repeat? – https://theconversation.com/the-national-gallery-at-200-is-this-rehang-a-bold-relaunch-or-rinse-and-repeat-258334

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: The world needs bold, equitable climate action at the 2025 G7 summit
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sharon E. Straus, Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto

As climate change and disrupted weather patterns impact countries around the world, leaders must act to mitigate the negative effects on public health.

Leaders from six western countries and Japan will soon gather in Kananaskis, Alta., for the Group of Seven (G7) meeting from June 15 to 17, 2025. In the lead-up to this meeting, the Royal Society of Canada hosted the Science 7 (S7). This is an engagement meeting of the leading academies of the G7 member countries.

Following discussion and deliberation, three statements aimed at advancing science for society were published, entitled Advanced Technologies and Data Security, Sustainable Migration and Climate Action and Health Resilience.

One of us (Sharon Straus) oversaw the S7 statement on Climate Action and Health Resilience. This statement draws attention to the health impacts of climate change and recommends several mitigation strategies.

Wide-ranging health impacts

Experts on health and climate change have outlined the growing impact of delayed climate action. The data are clear. Extreme weather events such as heat, floods, droughts and wildfires are having wide-ranging health impacts.

In the 10 years between 2014-2023, there was a 167 per cent increase in heat-related deaths in those aged 65 years and older compared with the 10 years between 1990-99. Extreme weather events also directly impact food and water security, as well as infectious diseases and chronic diseases.

The health consequences of climate change are not only the result of environmental factors. Of equal importance are recent decisions eliminating funding for programs that mitigate the risks of climate change.

Consider for example, the multiple threats to recent progress in eliminating malaria. The World Malaria Report published in December 2024 by the World Health Organization estimated that 2.2 billion malaria cases and 12.7 million malaria deaths were averted between 2000 and 2023.

Now, many countries anticipate a malaria resurgence. Antimalarial drug resistance, mosquito resistance to insecticides, changes in temperature and humidity affecting mosquito survival and the emergence of new mosquito species linked to climate change — combined with the recent abrupt funding freeze from the United States — are leading to a perfect storm.

Economic impact of climate change

The economic burden of climate change, which includes more health-care use, lost productivity, adaptation and mitigation expenses — to say nothing of the costs of rebuilding — is massive.

Much of that burden is borne by those who live in low- and middle-income countries (80 per cent of the world’s population) and who are the lowest contributors to carbon dioxide emissions.

To put this in perspective, in 2021, the United Nations Environment Program estimated the costs of annual adaptation for vulnerable countries at US$70 billion and predicted this would increase to US$140-300 billion by 2030.

In addition to the costs of adaptation aimed at reducing vulnerability to climate change, there are the costs associated with losses resulting from climate change. The 2024 Lancet Countdown estimated that the average annual economic losses due to extreme weather-related events reached US$227 billion between 2019-2023. This value exceeds the gross domestic product of approximately 60 per cent of the world’s economies.

What about Canada?

In Canada, warming is happening at twice the global rate with resulting heat, wildfires and floods. There is also evidence of significant impacts on mental health and chronic diseases, leading to an increased need for health care.

Indigenous communities, older adults and those who have experienced homelessness are disproportionately impacted by climate change. Indigenous Peoples, especially those living in remote and northern areas, are particularly vulnerable.

Currently there are 37 long-term and 40 short-term drinking water advisories in First Nations communities across Canada. The lack of safe, clean drinking water can exacerbate climate-related food and water insecurity and lead to infectious disease transmission.

The number of people experiencing homelessness is growing and many of these individuals are over 50 years old. These older adults are physiologically 15-20 years older than their housed counterparts and are at higher risk of chronic diseases, including those exacerbated by climate change.

Similarly, frail older adults are at higher risk of health effects of climate change. It is worth remembering the impact of poor air quality and lack of air conditioning during the COVID-19 pandemic on those living in long-term care homes.

Climate change costs health-care systems more each year. The Canadian Institute for Climate Choices recently estimated that health-related hospitalizations will increase by 21 per cent by mid-century. Our health systems are not prepared for this.

In addition, the costs of death and reduced quality of life from heat-related climate change is estimated to rise between $3 billion and $3.9 billion by the middle of this century. Factoring in other impacts such as those from air pollution, flooding and wildfires, the total estimated costs are in the tens to hundreds of billions.

S7’s recommendations

The S7 statement on Climate Action and Health Resilience includes seven recommendations. Addressing the disproportionate impact of climate change on populations who are particularly vulnerable and investing in innovative solutions are among them. Particularly critical are societal and political innovations that involve affected communities, including Indigenous communities.

The S7’s climate and health resilience recommendations include:
- Developing and optimizing climate change mitigation strategies to transform health and social services (such as early warning infectious disease systems and biomonitoring).
- Developing new regulations nationally and internationally to transform health, public health and social services, increasing their readiness and safeguarding health from climate change impact.
- Providing economic and regulatory incentives to foster adaptation and resiliency of health systems.
- Investing in innovative solutions (including vaccine development for emerging diseases, wastewater surveillance) to mitigate climate change and its health risks.
The G7 summit is an opportunity to centre climate change discussions and act on the S7 recommendations. Bold investment in innovations that address the health challenges resulting from climate change will benefit us all and drive new economic activity and resilience.

Climate change is a health issue, a social justice issue and an economic issue, and the time to act is now. Scientists, policymakers, clinicians and the public must work together.

Sharon E. Straus receives research funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Public Health Agency of Canada. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Françoise Baylis is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

– ref. The world needs bold, equitable climate action at the 2025 G7 summit – https://theconversation.com/the-world-needs-bold-equitable-climate-action-at-the-2025-g7-summit-256876
MIL OSI – Global Reports –
June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Teens say they can access firearms at home, even when parents lock them up, new research shows

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Katherine G. Hastings, PhD Candidate in Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia

Most households that own firearms have more than one − and owners often don’t secure all of them. StockPlanets/E+ via Getty Images

More than half of U.S. teens living in households with firearms believe they can access and load a firearm at home. Even when their parents report storing all firearms locked and unloaded, more than one-third of teens still believe they could access and load one. These are the main findings of our new study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

We are behavioral scientists investigating youth injury prevention and youth safety. In this study, we analyzed national survey data from nearly 500 parents who owned firearms and their teens. One survey asked the parents to report how many firearms they had in the home and how they stored each one. Another asked their teens to estimate how quickly they could access and load a firearm at home.

While the presence of unlocked and loaded firearms in the home was weakly linked to perceived access among teens, we found that parents’ storage practices alone were a poor predictor of whether teens believed they could access a firearm. What’s more, in households with more than one firearm, locking up more firearms was not at all linked to perceived access among teens if at least one remained unsecured.

In short, just one unlocked firearm can undo the protective benefit of securing all other firearms in the home, our results showed.

Why it matters

In the U.S., firearms are now the leading cause of death among children and teens. In most of these cases, the firearm used belonged to a parent, relative or friend.

Our study focused on teens’ beliefs about firearm access, not their actual access. However, these perceptions may provide important clues around firearm access and use. Prior research shows that teens who believe they can access a firearm are more likely to access and carry one. This is particularly concerning for teens who already have a higher risk for dying by suicide.

One of the most widely supported ways to reduce teen injuries and deaths by firearms is to encourage owners to keep firearms locked and unloaded. However, most firearm-owning households in the U.S. have multiple firearms, and owners often store some firearms securely but not all.

Firearms are the leading cause of death among children and teens.
Kypros/Stock Photos Gun Safe via Getty Images

Despite evidence that securely storing firearms saves lives, efforts to promote that messaging may be less effective when it is not universally applied to all firearms in the home or when teens still know how to access them.

Our study also points to the need for messaging and safety strategies that consider teen behavior amid household firearm dynamics. For example, teens may observe where firearms are stored or know where keys or combinations are kept and unlock firearms in moments of impulsivity or emotional distress. Beyond securely storing firearms, encouraging parents to treat every firearm in the household as a potential source of risk and talking with teens about how to address conflicts and promote mental and emotional well-being may also be protective.

Additionally, our study adds support for universal laws that require securely storing all firearms in homes in which children live and mandating routine assessments of teen firearm access by pediatricians.

What still isn’t known

It is still unclear how teens’ beliefs about their access to firearms affects whether they actually seek them out – or how the variability of parents’ practices on storing firearms affects teen access.

Another important question is how teens’ perceptions of their access to firearms at home may vary depending on cultural backgrounds, geography and different households’ attitudes and beliefs around firearm use.

Additionally, our study looked only at teens ages 14 to 18. Further research is needed to explore these associations among younger children in firearm-owning households.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Rebeccah Sokol receives funding from the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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

– ref. Teens say they can access firearms at home, even when parents lock them up, new research shows – https://theconversation.com/teens-say-they-can-access-firearms-at-home-even-when-parents-lock-them-up-new-research-shows-256550

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Presidential Permit Authorizing Green Corridors, LLC, to Construct, Maintain, and Operate a Commercial Elevated Guideway Border Crossing Near Laredo, Texas, at the International Boundary Between the United States and Mexico

US Senate News:

Source: US Whitehouse
By virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States of America (the “President”), I hereby grant permission, subject to the conditions set forth herein, to Green Corridors, LLC (the “Permittee”), to construct, maintain, and operate a commercial elevated guideway crossing located on the United States border with Mexico in Laredo, Texas, as described in the “Presidential Permit Application: Green Corridors Intelligent Freight Transportation System” dated October 3, 2024, by the Permittee to the Secretary of State and made complete with additional information provided by the Permittee on February 14, 2025 (collectively, the “Application”), in accordance with 33 U.S.C. 535d and associated procedures.
     The term “Border facilities” as used in this permit consists of the elevated guideway and bridge over the Rio Grande which connects inland terminals near Monterrey, Mexico, in the state of Nuevo Leon and near Interstate 35, north of Laredo, Texas, its approaches, and any land, structures, installations, or equipment appurtenant thereto located on the United States side of the international boundary between the United States and Mexico, located just downstream from the Laredo-Colombia Solidarity International Bridge at the connection between Texas State Highway 255 and the Nuevo Leon State Highway Spur 1.
     This permit is subject to the following conditions:
     Article 1. The Border facilities herein described and all aspects of their operation are subject to all the conditions, provisions, and requirements of this permit and any subsequent Presidential amendment to it. The construction, maintenance, and operation of the Border facilities shall be in all material respects as described in the Application.
     Article 2. The standards for and the manner of construction, maintenance, and operation of the Border facilities are subject to inspection by the representatives of appropriate Federal, State, and local agencies. The Permittee shall grant officers and employees of such agencies that are duly authorized and performing their official duties free and unrestricted access to said Border facilities.
     Article 3. The Permittee shall comply with all applicable Federal laws and regulations regarding the construction, maintenance, and operation of the Border facilities.
     Article 4. (1) The Permittee shall take or cause to be taken all appropriate measures to mitigate adverse impacts on or disruption of the human environment in connection with the construction, maintenance, and operation of the Border facilities. Mitigation measures are those that avoid, minimize, or compensate for adverse impacts.
     (2) The Permittee shall hold harmless and indemnify the United States for any claimed or adjudged liability arising out of construction, maintenance, and operation of the Border facilities, including environmental contamination from the release, threatened release, or discharge of hazardous substances or hazardous waste.
     (3) The Permittee is responsible for obtaining any required Federal, State, and local permits, approvals, and authorizations prior to commencing construction activities. The Permittee shall implement the mitigation identified in any environmental decision documents prepared in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act and Federal permits, including stormwater permits and permits issued in accordance with section 402 of the Clean Water Act (33 U.S.C. 1342). The Permittee shall comply with applicable Federal, State, and local environmental laws.
     Article 5. The Permittee shall immediately notify the President or his designee of any decision to transfer custody and control of the Border facilities or any part thereof to any executive department or agency (agency) of the United States Government. Said notice shall identify the transferee agency and seek the approval of the President for the transfer of the permit. In the event of approval by the President of such transfer, this permit shall remain in force and effect, and the Border facilities shall be subject to all the conditions, permissions, and requirements of this permit and any amendments thereof. The Permittee may transfer ownership or control of the Border facilities to a non-Federal entity or individual only upon the prior express approval of such transfer by the President, which approval may include such conditions, permissions, and requirements that the President, in the President’s discretion, determines are appropriate and necessary for inclusion in the permit, to be effective on the date of transfer.
     Article 6. The Permittee is responsible for acquiring and maintaining any right-of-way grants or easements, permits, and other authorizations as may become necessary or appropriate. To ensure the safe operation of the Border facilities, the Permittee shall maintain them and every part of them in a condition of good repair and in compliance with applicable law and use of best management practices.
     Article 7. To the extent authorized by law, and consistent with any Donation Acceptance Agreements (DAAs) already executed with the Permittee under the Donation Acceptance Authority found in 6 U.S.C. 301a and section 559 of title V of division F of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014 (Public Law 113-76), as amended, as continued by 6 U.S.C. 301b, the Permittee shall provide to the Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (Commissioner) of the Department of Homeland Security and the heads of any other relevant agencies, at no cost to the United States, suitable inspection facilities, infrastructure improvements, equipment, and maintenance, as set forth in the DAAs. Nothing in this permit obligates such agencies to provide a particular level of services or staffing for such inspection facilities or for any other aspect of the port of entry associated with the Border facilities.
     Article 8. Before beginning design activities, the Permittee shall fulfill requirements associated with the following conditions, as refined by the relevant agencies below and as consistent with applicable law:
     (1) Provide a plan for the approval of the Commissioner detailing how the Permittee will fund and deliver the border facilities, staffing, vehicles, out year refresh cost and data sharing necessary for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to implement a design-appropriate inspections procedure and sustain it thereafter;
     (2) Provide a plan for the approval of the Administrator of General Services (Administrator) and the Commissioner detailing how the Permittee will fund the necessary operations and maintenance costs for the Border facilities upon commencement of operations and thereafter;
     (3) Provide a plan for the approval of the Administrator and the Commissioner detailing how the Permittee will fund construction, outfitting (furniture, fixtures, and equipment to include information technology and necessary inspection technologies), technology integration, and outyear refresh of said program elements for the Border facilities detailed in their Application; and
     (4) Provide a plan for, and to the satisfaction of, the Secretary of Transportation detailing the Permittee’s design, deployment, operation, and related topics to enable the Department of Transportation to determine the regulatory framework that will govern the Permittee’s operations, as well as how the Permittee will ensure the necessary funding for appropriate Department of Transportation inspection facilities and staffing.
Relevant agencies will coordinate with the Permittee to further refine the above conditions, as necessary, within 1 year of permit issuance.
     Article 9. Before initiating construction, the Permittee shall obtain the concurrence of the United States Section of the International Boundary and Water Commissions, United States and Mexico.
     Article 10. The Permittee shall not initiate construction until the Department of State has provided notification to the Permittee that the Department of State has completed its exchange of diplomatic notes with the Government of Mexico regarding authorization. The Permittee shall provide written notification to the President or his designee at the time that the construction authorized by this permit begins, at the time as such construction is completed, interrupted, or discontinued, and at other times as may be requested by the President.
     Article 11. Upon request, the Permittee shall provide appropriate information to the President or his designee with regard to the Border facilities. Such requests could include requests for information concerning current conditions, environmental compliance, mitigation, or anticipated changes in ownership or control, construction, connection, operation, or maintenance of the Border facilities.
     Article 12. The Permittee shall file any applicable statements and reports required by applicable Federal law in connection with the Border facilities.
     Article 13. The Permittee shall make no substantial change inconsistent with the Application to the Border facilities, in the location of the Border facilities, or in the operation authorized by this permit, unless such changes have been approved by the President. The President may terminate, revoke, or amend this permit at any time at his sole discretion. The Permittee’s obligation to implement any amendment to this permit is subject to the availability of funds. If the Permittee permanently closes the Green Corridors Intelligent Freight Transportation System and it is no longer used as an international crossing, then this permit shall terminate, and the Permittee may manage, utilize, or dispose of the Border facilities in accordance with applicable authorities. This permit shall continue in full force and effect for only so long as the Permittee continues the operations hereby authorized.
     Article 14. This permit shall expire 5 years from the date of its issuance if the Permittee has not commenced construction of the Border facilities by that date.
     Article 15. This permit is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
     IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this 9th day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-ninth.
DONALD J. TRUMP

MIL OSI USA News –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Senior Congressional Intelligence & Defense Leaders Press DNI Gabbard Over Illegal Interference with Independence of the ICIG

US Senate News:

Source: United States Senator for Commonwealth of Virginia Mark R Warner

WASHINGTON – Today, Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense Chris Coons (D-DE), Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Jim Himes (D-CT-04), and Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense Betty McCollum (D-MN-04) sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard expressing “grave concern” about her recent interference in the independence of the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG).

In the letter, the lawmakers strongly objected to Director Gabbard’s decision to unilaterally terminate the Acting Counsel to the ICIG and to appoint a “Senior Advisor” to work within the ICIG’s office while reporting directly to the Director herself. The letter notes that these actions were taken without the approval of the Acting ICIG, in direct contravention of federal statues designed to protect the independence of the Inspector General’s office. Director Gabbard’s actions were brought to Congress’s attention in a letter the Acting Inspector General sent to lawmakers on May 28.

“Your actions violate both the letter and the spirit of the law,” the lawmakers wrote. “Despite your obligation to keep the congressional oversight committees fully and currently informed, our committees were notified of your decision to terminate the Acting Counsel, not by your office, but by the Acting ICIG.”

The lawmakers underscored that Director Gabbard’s appointment of a Senior Advisor inside the ICIG’s office compromised the ability to carry out its statutory mission of identifying and preventing waste, fraud, and abuse in the intelligence community.

“[The Acting ICIG’s] letter also disclosed that you have appointed a ‘Senior Advisor’ within the Office of the ICIG who reports to you but works in the ICIG’s office spaces, which presents significant concerns not only for the independence of the ICIG but also the ability of the ICIG to protect confidential whistleblower information,” the lawmakers stated. “Our understanding is that your decision to terminate the Acting Counsel was made 48 hours after she made inquiries regarding the legal basis for the appointment of the Senior Advisor.”

“Your recent actions undermine this independence and are contrary to commitments you made during your confirmation process,” the lawmakers wrote.

The lawmakers called on Director Gabbard to immediately cease “illegal interference into the ICIG’s operations” and to provide a detailed accounting of the personnel actions and communications that led to these decisions.

The letter concludes with a clear warning: “The ICIG must remain independent of political influence, and we will continue to oppose any attempt to interfere with its work, or silence its conclusions.”

A copy of letter is available here and text is below.

Director Gabbard:

We are writing to express our grave concern with your decision to terminate the Acting Counsel to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) and to appoint a “Senior Advisor” within the Office of the ICIG without the approval of the Acting ICIG.

The Office of the ICIG was established by the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 with a stated purpose of creating “an objective and effective office, appropriately accountable to Congress, to initiate and conduct independent investigations, inspections, audits, and reviews on programs and activities within the responsibility and authority of the Director of National Intelligence.” To protect the independence of the Office, the law provides that the ICIG has “final approval of . . . personnel decisions concerning personnel permanently assigned to the Office of the Inspector General” and “shall . . . appoint a Counsel to the Inspector General who shall report to the Inspector General.”

Your actions violate both the letter and the spirit of the law. Despite your obligation to keep the congressional oversight committees fully and currently informed, our committees were notified of your decision to terminate the Acting Counsel, not by your office, but by the Acting ICIG. Her letter also disclosed that you have appointed a “Senior Advisor” within the Office of the ICIG who reports to you but works in the ICIG’s office spaces, which presents significant concerns not only for the independence of the ICIG but also the ability of the ICIG to protect confidential whistleblower information. Our understanding is that your decision to terminate the Acting Counsel was made 48 hours after she made inquiries regarding the legal basis for the appointment of the Senior Advisor.

The Acting ICIG disputes your assertion that she “agreed” to terminate the Acting Counsel and described your actions as “contrary to law” and “never sufficiently explained.” As you testified at your confirmation hearing, the ICIG’s independence is “essential to ensure oversight and accountability.” Your recent actions undermine this independence and are contrary to commitments you made during your confirmation process. Therefore, we ask that you immediately provide our committees with the following information:

The justification for your decision to terminate the Acting Counsel to the ICIG.

The justification and legal basis for your decision to appoint a “Senior Advisor” within the Office of the ICIG who reports to you but works in the ICIG’s office spaces.

The identity of the “Senior Advisor” described in the Acting ICIG’s letter.

The names and positions of all ODNI personnel who participated in meetings regarding the decision to terminate the Acting Counsel to the ICIG or appoint a “Senior Advisor” to work within the Office of the ICIG.

All correspondence you have had with the Office of the ICIG since February 12, 2025.

A description of, along with the justification and legal basis for any other personnel actions you have taken with regard to the Office of the ICIG.

The ICIG must remain independent of political influence, and we will continue to oppose any attempt to interfere with its work, or silence its conclusions.

We request that you immediately cease your illegal interference into the ICIG’s operations, and look forward to your prompt reply to the information we are requesting.

Sincerely,

MIL OSI USA News –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Africa: Youth Fund empowers Eastern Cape youth

Source: South Africa News Agency

The Eastern Cape Provincial Government has made strides in empowering young entrepreneurs, through the Isiqalo Youth Fund, an initiative that is aimed to support legally registered, youth-owned businesses across the province.

The fund is part of a broader strategy to foster youth development, promote entrepreneurship, and create sustainable employment opportunities in the province.

Launched in June 2019, the fund forms part of a broader provincial strategy aimed at fostering youth development, promoting entrepreneurship, and creating sustainable employment opportunities.

The fund provides both financial and non-financial support to businesses that are still in the early stages of growth.

To ensure accessibility, the Office of the Premier opens an annual application window, allowing young entrepreneurs to submit their proposals via a dedicated online portal. The call for applications is widely publicised through official websites, social media platforms, and municipal public notice boards across the province.

According to the provincial government, the initiative has already yielded tangible impact, with a total of 82 youth-owned businesses having been approved for support through the Entrepreneurship and Empowerment Programme during the previous term.

Of these, 22 enterprises have received funding, with over R12 million disbursed. The remaining 60 entrepreneurs have been identified in the programme pipeline and are scheduled to receive financial support during the current financial year.

“In addition to financial support, the initiative will offer business development training, mentorship, and market linkage facilitation to help improve the sustainability and growth potential of the supported enterprises,” the provincial government said.

Efforts are also underway to strengthen monitoring and evaluation mechanism to better track the impact of the fund and enhance accountability.

Eastern Cape Premier Lubabalo Oscar Mabuyane, highlighted the province’s commitment to expand the reach and impact of the programme through deeper collaboration with financial institutions and private sector partners.

He added that public awareness campaigns will be intensified to ensure that more young people are informed about the fund and can benefit from the initiative.

“Isiqalo Youth Fund is not just about disbursing money, it is about building a new generation of confident, capable entrepreneurs who can transform their communities.

“Young business owners across the Eastern Cape are urged to stay informed about future application windows, by following updates on official government platforms,” Mabuyane said. – SAnews.gov.za

MIL OSI Africa –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Africa: Presidential Youth Initiative continues to empower SA’s most excluded youth

Source: South Africa News Agency

The Basic Education Employment Initiative (BEEI) is not only curbing youth unemployment but reshaping labour market access for South Africa’s most excluded youth, with government now working to elevate the programme to new heights.

President Cyril Ramaphosa witnessed the impact of the programme on Tuesday when he visited the Sefako Makgatho Primary School in Saulsville, Tshwane, to interact directly with beneficiaries, educators and learners.

“I’m glad to be here and to see you all. When I made the announcement a little while ago that we will be having up to 200 000 of you in all our schools, I did expect that you would all be coming through, and now I can see that you are real people, that you exist.

“We are so delighted to have you as our teacher assistants, you are assisting in our schools [and] a very important area of our nation’s lives, education. You are the ones who are going to be preparing these young people for the future of our country that we all desire,” the President told the young teacher assistants.

The President acknowledged the difficult socio-economic challenges young people face and highlighted government’s efforts to expand opportunities.

“I’m delighted that it is through you, young people, that we are doing this. Yes, I know that your own situation is not the most ideal. We are working very hard to create more permanent positions for you in many, many ways in the economy.

“When government is dealing with these problems, it also initiates programmes like this one. We have up to now brought in almost two million of you as young people into this type of programme.

“I am proud to be working with Ministers and Deputy Ministers in departments, who have taken this whole process of creating job opportunities very seriously,” the President said.

He told the teacher assistants that what they are doing is very important to the country and government continues to invest money in youth initiatives meant to benefit young South Africans.

“We devote a lot of money and effort to education, and you are the products of that. We now need to take you to the next level, and we will work very hard to take you to the next level, where you will get more permanent jobs and better livelihoods, so you can support your own families,” the President said.

He lauded the BEEI as a phenomenal programme, which has been able to employ more than two million young people since its inception. It is an overarching programme that covers over 25 000 schools across the country.

According to President Ramaphosa, the initiative also develops discipline, management, and interpersonal skills among participants. These skills are essential for success in future employment.

“That, to me, is hugely empowering for these young people, and we’ve had more than two million of them, and of course, we would want it to be much longer than what it is now. It’s a question of not having sufficient resources to be able to extend it beyond [that].

“But those who participate are then empowered and beyond this, they are then able to get other jobs, get other opportunities. They are now job ready, as it were, and that is a great benefit of what we are doing here.

The President added that the programme is becoming a world-renowned programme.

“Many other countries are looking at what we are doing here and some of them are going to copycat what we are doing… So, we are trailblazers in many ways,” he said.

President Ramaphosa praised the integrity of the programme, saying it has been “flawlessly executed” with the dedicated leadership within the Presidency and Departments of Basic Education and Employment and Labour.

Two young teacher assistants, who are currently benefiting from the programme, shared the same sentiments with the President, confirming that the initiative has made a huge difference in their lives.

Joshua Given Machete told SAnews that he was grateful for the opportunity to become part of the labour market through the Basic Education Employment Initiative.

“I have benefited by getting employed as a curriculum assistant and I really appreciate the opportunity by our President, as well and the Department of Basic Education for initiating this.

“I work in the classroom, doing basic classroom management while the teachers focus on teaching.

“This programme contributes to human dignity in a sense that you are now able to look after yourself and buy the things you need. Economically, it has made a difference in my life and I’m going to use some of the stipend to further my studies.

“I encourage unemployed young people not to lose hope and keep on applying for programmes such as these. The President has promised that there will be more opportunities,” he said.

Valria Ndleve told SAnews that she is employed as an education assistant at WF Nkomo, helping teachers and learners.

“My job is to assist the teachers and learners in the classroom. This initiative is going to assist me personally and professionally. I am now financially stable and gaining experience at the same time,” she said.

The BEEI is a flagship programme of the Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES), designed to address the dual challenges of youth unemployment and support, for the basic education system by placing young people in roles within public schools as education and general school assistant.

The programme is implemented by the Department of Basic Education and administrated by the Industrial Development Corporation.

This visit is part of President Ramaphosa’s programme to engage with youth beneficiaries of the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention (PYEI) and Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES) flagship programmes in Pretoria.

He began the visit at the Sefako Makgatho Primary School in Saulsville. He then proceeded to South African Creative Industries Incubator (SACCI) in Eersterust and ended at the Foundation for Professional Development (FPD) in Pretoria East. – SAnews.gov.za

MIL OSI Africa –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Ranking Member Coons statement on deployment of Marines in Los Angeles

US Senate News:

Source: United States Senator for Delaware Christopher Coons
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, issued the following statement after the Department of Defense announced that approximately 700 Marines with the 2nd Battalion will be deployed to the Los Angeles area over the objections of state and local leaders:
“Our warfighters are not political tools meant to patrol the streets of our own cities or to suppress the political views of their fellow Americans. Men and women put on the uniform of the United States to defend Americans and American values. Today, they’re being called on to police American citizens on American soil.
“I trust local law enforcement, Mayor Bass, and Governor Newsom when they say that violence won’t be tolerated and that they are able to handle these protests without the military. What President Trump is doing is not only unneeded, it has made the situation much worse.
“President Trump is working to change the subject from his unpopular tax bill which will take away healthcare and food assistance from millions of American families while exploding the deficit. His attempt to do so, however, is an unconstitutional power grab that is putting American civilians and servicemembers in danger. Secretary Hegseth is scheduled to testify before our subcommittee tomorrow, and I expect him to have answers for the American people about this weaponization of our troops.”

MIL OSI USA News –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Warren Releases New Data: Republican Budget Bill Would Kick Over 300,000 Massachusetts Residents Off Health Care

US Senate News:

Source: United States Senator for Massachusetts – Elizabeth Warren
June 10, 2025
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released new data estimating over 300,000 total Massachusetts residents could lose access to their health care as a result of President Trump and Congressional Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.
“Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans want to rip health care away from millions of Americans and raise costs for families — all to fund giant tax handouts for billionaires. Here in Massachusetts, that means hundreds of thousands of people would lose their care and our community hospitals and health centers could be forced to shut down,” said Senator Warren. “The “Big Beautiful Bill” is a lose-lose for Massachusetts families, and I’ll keep fighting to stop it.”
The new data follows an updated analysis by the independent, nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirming that the bill would kick 16 million Americans off of their health insurance in order to fund trillions in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) took the data a step further and broke down the disastrous impact of the proposed cuts by state.

State

Estimated # of People LosingAffordable Care ActCoverage

Estimated # of PeopleLosing MedicaidCoverage

Estimated Total # ofPeople Losing HealthInsurance

Massachusetts

136,700

168,911

305,611

Senator Warren has led the resistance to these unprecedented cuts to Americans’ health care, pressing nominees to justify the cuts, mobilizing the public to fight back, and sharing stories of constituents set to be impacted by the cuts. The Senate is set to consider the budget bill this month.

MIL OSI USA News –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: China welcomes more foreign companies to achieve win-win: MFA

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –

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

BEIJING, June 10 (Xinhua) — China welcomes more foreign enterprises to take root in China and go global, and work together to achieve common goals and win-win outcomes amid China’s development of new productive forces, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Tuesday.

The diplomat made the remarks at a regular briefing for journalists, commenting on the consistent investment in China by foreign enterprises in recent times.

“The fact that more and more foreign companies are betting on China shows that foreign public circles attach great importance to the stability of China’s high-quality development and the certainty of its high-level opening up to the outside world,” Lin Jian said, noting that this also clearly demonstrates the powerful impetus provided by China’s new-quality productive forces and scientific and technological innovation ecosystem.

In order to accelerate its institutional opening-up, China has put forward an action plan to stabilize foreign investment in 2025 and revised and expanded the list of industries encouraged for foreign investment, he said.

“These new stimulus measures cover sectors such as high-tech manufacturing, the digital economy and other advanced industries. In the first five months of this year, more than 73,000 foreign-invested enterprises imported and exported to China, a five-year high,” the official said.

“At the same time, China is continuously achieving innovative breakthroughs and there is huge market demand for new industries and business formats, which is complemented by the country’s unique advantages such as a comprehensive industrial and supply chain system, rich human resources and a mature innovation ecosystem,” Lin Jian said, noting that all this encourages foreign businesses to invest in new-quality productive forces at an accelerated rate and integrate into China’s innovation chain.

In addition, as the official representative noted, an increasing number of foreign companies prefer to carry out scientific research and development in China and export products from there to the world market, thereby creating a favorable circulation of markets, enterprises and resource factors.

China’s development from a manufacturing outpost to an innovation engine will always be an opportunity for the world, Lin Jian said, adding that China will continue to steadily improve its business environment and provide foreign-invested companies with more policy benefits. -0-

MIL OSI Russia News –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Simpler and clearer – by 2026 the Ministry of Digital Development will change the procedure for processing tax deductions

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: Mainfin Bank –

What will change in the procedure for receiving a tax deduction by 2026?

The registration of a deduction for personal income tax allows Russians to return part of the tax paid when buying a home, paying for medical, sports and educational services, and also to reduce the tax base when selling real estate and transport. You can take advantage of the benefit through State Services – by 2026, the Ministry of Digital Development promises to change the procedure:

The Federal Tax Service will independently calculate the amount of tax to be deducted; taxpayers will not have to fill out a declaration when selling apartments and cars; an automatic notification service will appear – citizens will receive a mailing about the status of 3-NDFL inspections, which will allow them to track what stage the declaration is at.

“The innovations are intended to simplify and make the process of processing deductions more transparent – the procedure will become more convenient for taxpayers,” the Ministry of Digital Development stated.

Let us recall that persons paying personal income tax (most often, hired workers) can return 13% of certain types of expenses in Russia. Individual entrepreneurs and persons operating on the basis of a civil-law contract are also entitled to certain benefits.

What other changes in the area of tax deductions await Russians?

Simplifying the procedure for processing tax deductions is not the only change planned for the near future. The authorities are also discussing other innovations:

introduction of a tax deduction for individuals who pass the GTO and undergo regular medical examinations – Vladimir Putin made the proposal; the limit for the personal income tax deduction for the purchase of housing may be increased to 6 million rubles – the Ministry of Construction supported the initiative; work on the launch of a multifunctional service that will allow for the automation of deductions will be completed by the end of the year.

At the same time, the indicated changes regarding the introduction of new types of benefits and increasing limits have not yet been adopted at the legislative level – currently, discussions are underway on amendments that may be adjusted during the review process.

15:00 10.06.2025

Source:

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

Please Note; This Information is Raw Content Directly from the Information Source. It is access to What the Source Is Stating and Does Not Reflect

HTTPS: //Mainfin.ru/novosti/ Obrase- and-in-Knight-K-2026-Minzifry-Menit-Procedure-Registration-Nailural-Provisions

MIL OSI Russia News –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Canada: Statement from Minister Lightbound in Response to the Auditor General’s Report on its Performance Audit of Professional Services Contracts
Source: Government of Canada News

June 10, 2025 – Gatineau, Quebec

Today, the Auditor General of Canada released her report on the Performance Audit of Professional Services Contracts, which included all professional services contracts awarded, and payments made by federal organizations to GC Strategies and other companies incorporated by its co-founders.

I welcome the findings of the Auditor General, and the Government of Canada remains committed to maintaining fairness, openness and transparency in federal procurement.

In March 2024, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) suspended the security status of GC Strategies Inc., which precluded it from participating in all federal procurements with security requirements. In addition, PSPC also suspended the company from all professional services contracts and contract vehicles administered by the department. Last week, GC Strategies was determined to be ineligible from entering into contracts or real property agreements with the Government of Canada for 7 years under the Ineligibility and Suspension Policy.

The results of this report are in line with previous internal and external audits and reviews relating to professional services contracts and other procurements. While the report did not make any new recommendations, the Government of Canada has taken significant actions on past recommendations and continues to take strong steps to improve oversight and management of federal procurement.

PSPC is transforming and modernizing how the department procures professional services by simplifying existing mandatory procurement tools, while addressing the audits and reviews completed between 2023 and 2025. This includes measures to mitigate procurement risks, improve contract management practices and encourage the use of business approaches that focus on comprehensive solutions to achieve best value from the private sector.

To date, the department has taken the following actions on previous recommendations from the Auditor General, including:
- improving evaluation requirements to ensure resources are appropriately qualified
- requiring increased transparency from suppliers around their pricing and use of subcontractors
- improving documentation when awarding contracts and issuing task authorizations
- clarifying work requirements and activities, and specifying which initiatives and projects are being worked on by contractors
Our new government remains committed to strengthening federal procurement practices. We also expect public servants and departments to operate with the highest standards of integrity when procuring professional services to support their program delivery.

MIL OSI Canada News –
June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Canada: New sheriffs begin service to uphold safety in B.C. courthouses

Source: Government of Canada regional news

A graduating class of 33 sheriffs is preparing to start their careers, helping keep people safe as they access court services throughout B.C.

Niki Sharma, Attorney General, welcomed the graduates from the Justice Institute of British Columbia’s spring class at a ceremony on Monday, June 9, 2025. They will be assigned to work in provincial courthouses, including Fort St. John, Nelson, Terrace and the Lower Mainland.

“Sheriffs play a critical role in our justice system, ensuring access to justice is preserved and keeping the people who use our courts safe and protected,” said Niki Sharma, Attorney General. “We recognize and appreciate the dedication shown by each graduate. The sheriff-recruit training program is challenging and rigorous, and we celebrate their achievements and commitment to serving and protecting our communities.”

Sheriffs maintain a safe environment for everyone, delivering justice services in 90 Provincial Court locations. They are highly trained peace officers who provide protective services for the judiciary, the Crown, defence, court staff, the public and all participants in the justice system. Sheriffs also protect court users, transport accused and convicted people to and from correctional institutions, and perform other duties. Without sheriffs, court matters cannot proceed.

The spring class will continue training until July 8, 2025. Their first day on duty will be July 9, 2025. The next sheriff-recruit training class will start training on July 14, 2025.

“We are proud to welcome 33 new deputy sheriffs to the BC Sheriff Service,” said Roger Phillips, acting chief sheriff, and executive director, BC Sheriff Service. “I know they will contribute to the safety of B.C.’s justice system by applying the skills and knowledge gained during the rigorous recruit training.”

The BC Sheriff Service (BCSS) is recognized as an international leader in providing protective and enforcement services for the justice system. The BCSS is the oldest law-enforcement agency in B.C.

The Province is collaborating with BCSS to enhance recruitment, retention and training. BCSS is focusing on deployment and growth opportunities, and implementing a more competitive pay and benefits framework for sheriffs.

The Province is highlighting key investments this week that strengthen B.C.’s court system and improve access to timely justice. From appointing new judges to training and graduating more sheriffs and opening new court services, these efforts ensure B.C.’s courts are safer, more efficient and better equipped to serve people in the province.

Learn More:

To watch a video about working as a B.C. sheriff, visit: https://youtu.be/rdhf8trOoSM

To explore career opportunities with the B.C. Sheriff Service, visit: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/careers-myhr/job-seekers/featured-careers/deputy-sheriff

MIL OSI Canada News –

June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Canada: Health authority review expands to ensure support for front-line services
Source: Government of Canada regional news

Government is expanding its health authority review to include regional health authorities as it focuses on minimizing unnecessary administrative spending and ensuring resources support front-line patient care.

“I would like to thank the thousands of front-line workers who have already brought forward valuable feedback and ideas as we work through the health authority review,” said Josie Osborne, Minister of Health. “Next we are expanding more broadly to engage a wider range of stakeholders, partners and people working at regional health authorities to ensure we are focusing resources on patient care as much as possible.”

The regional health authority review will be led by Cynthia Johansen, deputy minister of health, and follows the March 31 launch of the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) review led by Dr. Penny Ballem, interim president and CEO, PHSA.

As part of the PHSA review, more than 6,200 staff attended a series of town halls and large group meetings and submitted more than 1,000 questions and comments. More than 3,900 PHSA staff have also shared ideas for efficiencies through a digital engagement process. Engagements with staff at the regional health authorities will occur throughout the summer of 2025.

The reviews will aim to find efficiencies and cost savings by examining and considering changes in four main areas:
- consolidating administrative and corporate functions through a shared-services model;
- optimizing existing shared services, such as procurement and IT services;
- reducing duplicative processes identified through the review; and
- improving and streamlining governance structures.
Interim expenditure management measures are in place to control administrative costs while the review is underway, including a hiring freeze on managerial and non-union positions unrelated to delivering critical patient services.

While findings from the review will shape recommendations and changes throughout the health system, the regional health authority model is essential to health-care delivery that is connected and responsive to the needs and priorities of local communities and the populations receiving services. Collapsing or merging the regional health authorities is not under consideration as part of the review.

According to the Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI), B.C.’s health-care system has among the lowest levels of administrative spending in Canada and its corporate services expense ratio has remained relatively stable in the past five years, at around 3.5%. This is the second lowest in Canada and below the national average of 4.4%.

The health authority review aims to further lower B.C.’s corporate services expense ratio, because every 0.1% reduction in administrative costs represents approximately $35 million more funding available for front-line patient care.

The Province anticipates that the health authority review, both for the PHSA and the regional health authorities, will continue into the fall of 2025 and be complete in early 2026. Its findings and recommended changes will be released publicly.

Learn More:

To learn more about the health authority review, visit: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2025HLTH0024-000279
MIL OSI Canada News –
June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Canada: Celebrating National Indigenous History Month at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum
Source: Government of Canada regional news

Released on June 10, 2025

To celebrate National Indigenous History Month and National Indigenous Peoples Day, the Royal Saskatchewan Museum (RSM) is featuring several events to recognize the unique cultures and contributions of the Indigenous people of Saskatchewan.

“National Indigenous History Month is an important opportunity to learn about, share in and appreciate Indigenous culture, traditions and experiences,” Parks, Culture and Sport Minister Alana Ross said. “The Royal Saskatchewan Museum will celebrate with special programming and events in addition to their world-class exhibits and dynamic and culturally appropriate programing for visitors of all ages.”

National Indigenous Peoples Day Celebration – Friday, June 20 (1 to 4 p.m.)

Visitors can pick up a scavenger hunt and take a self-guided tour through the First Nations Gallery. There will be additional drop-in activity stations in and around the Museum, including:
- Beading and adornment station, where visitors can make a friendship bracelet.
- Bison hunting activity, including atlatl throwing.
- Touch table exploring bison artifacts in the Learning Lab.
Several partner organizations will also take part, including:
- The Saskatchewan Archaeological Society will have a Flint knapping demonstration showing how stone tools were made and will have their ArchaeoCaravan onsite.
- Tourism Saskatchewan will provide a guide to Indigenous landmarks and Indigenous led tourism activities.
The RSM Curator of Indigenous Cultural Heritage will hold drop-in sessions in the afternoon to learn more about the museum collections, shared stewardship and more.

Visitors can also check out the Indigenous Cultural Heritage Collection website.

Traditional Knowledge Keepers Workshops

Colour Stories from the Land – Saturday, June 14 (10 a.m. to 3 p.m.)

Join artist and visual storyteller Melanie Monique Rose for an introduction to make a one-of-a-kind wearable artwork. Participants will learn bundle dye and eco-printing techniques to create their own bandana or scarf.

No experience necessary, open to ages (13+). Beginner to intermediate participants welcome. Registration is $32 per person.

Floral Dot Art Acrylic Painting – Saturday, June 28 (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.)

Join Sadi-Rose Vaxvick for this workshop on acrylic on canvas painting of Néhiyaw (Cree) and Métis florals and dot-art.

Explore the process of creating florals with a short presentation and a tour of the Indigenous Gallery with the RSM’s Indigenous Program Specialist Jadav Cyr.

No experience necessary, open to ages (13+). Beginner to intermediate participants welcome. Materials will be provided. Registration is $25 per person.

Note: both workshops are limited to 12 participants. Visit: the RSM website to register.

These workshops are part of the Friends of the RSM Traditional Knowledge Keepers Program sponsored by Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation.

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MIL OSI Canada News –
June 11, 2025
MIL-OSI Banking: IMCA Publishes New Guidance for ROV Simulator Approval

Source: International Marine Contractors Association – IMCA

Headline: IMCA Publishes New Guidance for ROV Simulator Approval

A suite of guidance documents, primarily for those owning and operating ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) and ROV simulators, has been published by the International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA).

One is a revision of an existing document, retitled to – IMCA R006 ‘ROV System Inspection’; the other two are newly developed guidance documents ‘Requirements for IMCA-Approved Class A ROV Simulator Accreditation’ – IMCA R028, and supporting governance document ‘Interim scheme for IMCA approval of simulator systems used for work and skills’ – IMCA G014.

“All are aimed at advancing safety consistency and competency in the offshore industry and were requested by members and their clients” explained Roger Moore, IMCA Technical Adviser.

“The governance document sets out requirements for the approval of simulator systems (in general) with the technical requirements for an ROV Simulator approval detailed in R028.

“The content of R006 has been reviewed and revised to ensure our offering remains a robust and effective auditing process and also allows for future integration with the IMCA eCMID system. Developed in collaboration with committee workgroups and industry experts and aligned with best practice, the documents will support IMCA members and training providers in delivering robust, approved programmes that meet modern operational needs, and reflet IMCA’s commitment to promoting technical excellence and competence across the marine contracting sector.”

Summaries of the three publications

IMCA R006 – ROV Audit (Revision 2.0)
This document provides guidance aimed at offshore contractors, detailing the audit process for ROV systems, which includes equipment checks and compliance with operational standards. It replaces previous versions from 2001 and 2020, reflecting current industry practices and requirements. The document emphasises the importance of maintaining equipment inventories and following manufacturers’ instructions to ensure compliance with operational procedures. In the imminent future, a feature for ROV audits will be integrated into the eCMID platform, accessible via the eCMID application, allowing ROV Audits to be undertaken digitally. This feature will complement the R006 ROV Audit document.

IMCA R028 – Requirements for IMCA-Approved Class A ROV Simulator Accreditation
This new document establishes the criteria for the accreditation of Class A ROV simulators, which are defined as high-fidelity, fully immersive training systems. The document sets out the minimum capabilities, performance benchmarks, and evaluation procedures for simulators to qualify as Class A. The goal is to ensure these simulators offer realistic, effective training that mirrors offshore operational conditions. Accreditation helps assure industry confidence in simulator-based learning and supports the continued development of skilled, competent ROV personnel.

IMCA G014 – Interim scheme for IMCA approval of simulator systems used for work and skills
This is a guidance document for the approval of simulator systems (in general). The scheme enables members to verify their simulators meet IMCA guidelines. The document outlines the scheme and provides detail on Eligibility for Approval, Fees Structure and Application Process. This document has been written so that future iterations can include any simulator system (e.g. DP), however the only type of simulator that can be approved at the moment, is an ROV simulator. The document was written to support document R028.

MIL OSI Global Banks –

June 11, 2025

Category: Transport

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