NewzIntel.com

Category: Transport

  • MIL-OSI USA: Reps. García, Davis, Tlaib Demand Answers from HHS on Chaotic and Sudden Closure of Head Start Offices

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Jesús Chuy García (IL-04)

    These closures will impact children, families, and providers.

    CHICAGO — Representatives Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04), Danny Davis (IL-07), and Rashida Tlaib (MI-12) led 22 Members of Congress in sending a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. demanding answers about the abrupt decision to close all Head Start offices in Region 5. The move was announced without prior notice or implementation guidance, prompting widespread confusion among families, providers, and staff.

     Region 5 spans Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin—states with over 2,600 Head Start centers serving nearly 125,000 children, including thousands from military families. In Illinois alone, 33,908 children are supported by these critical early childhood education programs. 

     “In Chicago and throughout the Midwest, Head Start programs provide culturally responsive, high-quality early childhood education and help working-class families bridge gaps in care and opportunity,” said the Members of Congress in the letter, which has been endorsed by Illinois Head Start Association.

    The members also cite the ongoing strain caused by a previous federal funding disruption in January 2025, which forced temporary closures and furloughs. They express concern that this latest decision may further erode trust and stability in early childhood education systems across the region. 

     The abrupt elimination of these offices “without a transparent transition plan threatens program integrity, delays essential funding, and risks destabilizing the early learning workforce,” the letter continues. “We have already heard from grantees who are unsure how to access their funds and services. Without clear answers, some are now considering staff layoffs or program closures – consequences our communities cannot afford.”

     The letter demands urgent clarification from HHS, including:

    • Which regional offices will now manage Region 5 grantees;
    • How and when grantees and congressional staff will be notified;
    • What support will be available to grantees facing increased burdens;
    • Whether HHS conducted an equity impact assessment or community consultation, and;
    • How displaced federal staff will be reassigned or supported. 

     “We urge you to halt any further action on the Region 5 closure until meaningful consultation with stakeholders has occurred and a concrete transition plan has been publicly shared,” concludes the letter.

     Congressional co-signers: Nikki Budzinski (IL-13), Jonathan Jackson (IL-01), Jan Schakowsky (IL-09), Andre Carson (IN-07), Frank Mrvan (IN-01), Kristen McDonald Riven (MI-08), Betty McCollum (MN-04), Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Joyce Beatty (OH-03), Gwen Moore (WI-04), Bill Foster (IL-11), Robin Kelly (IL-02), Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL-08), Mike Quigley (IL-05), Delia Ramirez (IL-03), Brad Schneider (IL-10), Eric Sorensen (IL-17), Hillary Scholten (MI-03), Angie Craig (MN-02), Shontel Brown (OH-11), Emilia Sykes (OH-13), and Mark Pocan (WI-02). 

     The letter can be found here. 

     

    # # #

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Poplar woman sentenced to prison for making false statements

    Source: United States Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF)

    GREAT FALLS – A Poplar woman who provided false statements to federal law enforcement was sentenced today to 9 months in prison to be followed by 2 years of supervised release, U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme said.

    Annie Lee Kirn, 27, pleaded guilty in January 2025 to one count of making a false statement.

    Chief U.S. District Judge Brian M. Morris presided.

    The government alleged in court documents that on the evening of November 21, 2023, Kirn returned with her elderly friend to his residence on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. Shortly thereafter, two men broke into the home. Armed with an assault rifle, the men assaulted the homeowner and another man and demanded money and access to a wall safe.

    During an interview with federal law enforcement officers, Kirn said she saw the would-be robbers outside before the robbery and one of them kept trying to grab her, she then saw the gun and freaked out. She also told law enforcement the armed man told her to run, that she ran, and then he fired three or four times.

    Law enforcement recovered and reviewed surveillance video from the home that showed a car with five people following Kirn’s truck into the yard. Two men, one of whom was armed with a rifle, approached the house while Kirn was getting out of the truck. After the homeowner went into the house, Kirn returned to the yard and visited with the two men. During that time, they discussed her relationship with the homeowner, Kirn offered to share a joint with the man armed with the rifle, they whispered about cash, and talked about the location of a safe. At one point, Kirn asked about the rifle, the armed man handed it to her, and she held it at the ready position before handing it back to the man. While they were outside, the man fired seven rounds from the rifle, primarily into the air.

    In an interview in September 2024, law enforcement followed up with Kirn about the night of the robbery. When asked directly if she ever handled the firearm, Kirn said “hell no.” When asked if she had any conversations with the robbers, she said, “No…I didn’t talk with them at all.”

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Kalah Paisley prosecuted the case. The investigation was conducted by the FBI, ATF, and Fort Peck Tribes Department of Law and Justice.

    This case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and gun violence, and to make our neighborhoods safer for everyone. On May 26, 2021, the Department launched a violent crime reduction strategy strengthening PSN based on these core principles: fostering trust and legitimacy in our communities, supporting community-based organizations that help prevent violence from occurring in the first place, setting focused and strategic enforcement priorities, and measuring the results. For more information about Project Safe Neighborhoods, please visit Justice.gov/PSN.

    XXX

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why Kissinger would have been a Fortnite champ − and other foreign policy lessons from the gaming world

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Michael A. Allen, Professor of Political Science, Boise State University

    Charlemagne, the medieval King of the Franks, has taken control of modern-day America and is looking to expand his borders by invading your neighboring country.

    Now, I’m not a historian. But the above example makes perfect sense to me as both a gamer and a professor of international relations.

    It is a possible outcome in the recently released video game Civilization VII, or Civ 7, in which different historical figures can govern people far removed – both in time and geography – from their actual historical role. In this case, Charlemagne has become displeased with the little empire you control due to friction along a shared border and is likely to invade soon.

    I have been an avid player of games like Civ 7 my entire life. I tend to play strategic games, be they video, card, board or role-playing games. And I’m not alone. An estimated 190.6 million people in the U.S. regularly play video games in some form.

    While my primary reason for playing may be enjoyment, they also inform the discipline I teach. In fact, I just published a book, “The Gamer’s Guide to International Relations,” that explains how some of the most popular games around include lessons for people seeking to understand how diplomacy works and how different nations interact.

    A visitor walks past the booth of Civilization VII at the Gamescom video games trade fair in Cologne, Germany, on Aug. 21, 2024.
    Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images

    While Civ 7 may seek to emulate this world of conflict and cooperation, other games with no apparent connection to geopolitics can also provide lessons. In particular, Fortnite, League of Legends and Minecraft invite gamers to interact with the world in a way that models how leaders, governments and countries behave.

    Here are three ways in which games create worlds that model key concepts from international relations:

    1. Fortnite as realpolitik

    Fortnite, a video game focused on crafting weapons and survival that launched in 2017, can be used as an introduction to the concept of realpolitik.

    The core part of Fortnite is its battle-royale, third-person shooting game. In a battle royale, you are fighting against 99 other players to be the last person standing.

    The “everyone for themselves” ethos can be chaotic and challenging, with death and defeat lurking in every shrub.

    It brings to mind the thinking behind the international relations theory of realism. Realists see the world as anarchic, with no overarching moral or physical authority telling states what to do – in other words, one with no world government.

    It is a self-help system where states survive, thrive or die based on accruing power, finding security and using force to resolve disputes.

    The theory of realism hearkens back to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who famously noted that the “strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

    That phrase has become a central tenet of foreign policy realists. Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under U.S. President Richard Nixon, saw foreign policy as a strategic enterprise based on power, while largely ignoring other imperatives such as human rights and justice.

    Even in international anarchy, however, cooperation can be attractive to a realist. Kissinger, for example, sought positive relations with China and foresaw that by working with China the U.S. could exploit a growing division between the Soviet Union and China.

    From Kissinger’s perspective, it mattered less that China was communist and more that it was powerful and distrustful of the Soviet Union.

    How does this apply to Fortnite? Well, in the game, you may come across two players fighting. When this happens, a player must quickly decide to either retreat or join the fray. If you enter the fight, you could either team up with the weaker player and eliminate a stronger foe or join the strong and remove the weak.

    In Fortnite, and occasionally in international politics, whomever you choose as your temporary ally will become your rival immediately after – so you have to choose wisely. The enemy of your enemy is not going to stay your friend forever.

    LoL and enduring allies

    League of Legends, known as LoL or League to fans, is a game that offers a deceptively simple idea: A team of five players battles another to destroy their base.

    Mastering the game is far from simple. Along the way, you can pick up valuable international relation lessons on the importance of forging lasting alliances.

    Fans watch the final of an esports competition to determine the winner of South Korea’s largest online game.
    Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

    Players remain anonymous and can be pretty toxic toward each other – tending to blame a team’s failings on anyone but themselves.

    If you join as a solo player, you will join four other people you do not know and spend the next 30 minutes either winning or losing a game.

    You’ll build a rapport with some teammates and want to keep playing with them. Other times, you find someone who complements your skills, and you can join a ranked competition as a pair and work together toward victory.

    In this, LoL is more akin to the international relations theory of liberalism. Liberalism, which should not be confused with the political identity in U.S. politics, holds realism’s view of the world to be limited. Instead, it teaches that cooperation can endure beyond pure power politics.

    Instead of a temporary alliance that falls apart immediately after you achieve your goal, liberalism suggests that alliances can mutually benefit two countries in the long run.

    Take for example the United States and the United Kingdom. The two countries allied during the crises of two worlds wars. By the end of World War II, they had established a long-term partnership, resulting in the establishment of international institutions that have endured for 80 years.

    Liberalism argues that countries can find solutions where both sides benefit without one side being disadvantaged. This contrasts with realism’s views of the world as zero-sum – where one side benefits at the other’s expense.

    Under both liberalism and League of Legends, interactions can create positive-sum outcomes for both parties.

    Minecraft and constructing the world

    Turning to Minecraft, one of the most popular games in the world, we find valuable lessons on a third international relations concept: constructivism.

    Constructivism argues that the world is socially constructed. That is, the rules of international politics are something that humans and countries have created, chosen to abide by and are willing to enforce.

    And this works well with Minecraft. People of all ages can enjoy it – but it is up to players to choose how to play. You can build houses or castles, or you can choose to find and defeat the Ender Dragon. Or you can turn on creative mode and decide to make art or large engineering projects.

    Constructing a love for all things foreign policy.
    Georg Wendt/picture alliance via Getty Images

    The point is that it’s up to you and your friends to determine joint goals or collectively decide to pursue your own interests – and that concept is at the heart of constructivism. States can decide to create a more liberal world by jointly signing treaties or joining international organizations that alter what nations can and cannot do. Alternatively, states may see such ventures as facades and decide that the most important things are power and security. Both realist and liberal states can exist in the same world.

    Like players in Minecraft, states may view the world as one where everyone is a threat, in line with realism. Or they may view the world as one where institutions and cooperation provide a better experience for everyone.

    In Minecraft as in international politics, the goals, rules and punishments for those who deviate are determined collectively.

    Digging deeper

    Games such as Minecraft, League of Legends and Fortnite may seem to many as a pastime rather than a learning experience. But they can help people connect with concepts that attempt to explain a vast and confusing world. Being able to grasp the arcane and complicated world of international relations can make the world slightly more manageable.

    Michael A. Allen 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. Why Kissinger would have been a Fortnite champ − and other foreign policy lessons from the gaming world – https://theconversation.com/why-kissinger-would-have-been-a-fortnite-champ-and-other-foreign-policy-lessons-from-the-gaming-world-253594

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Awards ceremony celebrates Plymouth’s best care workers

    Source: City of Plymouth

    More than 40 of Plymouth’s best and most dedicated care workers and teams were honoured at an awards ceremony last weekend.

    Winners at the Celebrating Excellence in Care Awards

    The Celebrating Excellence in Care Awards is run by Plymouth City Council’s Commissioning Team and aims to shine a light on the incredible work taking place every day within the adult social care sector.

    A range of award categories recognise people working in all areas of the sector, including those based in care homes, supported living provision, day centres and domiciliary care (supporting people to remain living in their own homes).

    Councillor Mary Aspinall, Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Social Care, said: “I’d like to congratulate every single one of our winners and say a big well done to everyone who was nominated. The work you do is so important and often underappreciated.

    “These awards are a fantastic opportunity for us to shine a light on all the hard work that takes place every single day across the city to make sure adults with care needs are supported, looked after and helped to live fulfilling, healthy lives.”

    Nominations for the awards opened earlier this year and more than 400 were received from employers, colleagues, adult social care clients and their families. The nominations were then reviewed by an independent panel of judges who chose the winners.

    The full list of award winners is:

    • Deputy of the Year (Domiciliary Care): Tendai Madume, Indiana Healthcare Services
      • Highly Commended: Kimberly Tucker, Your Choice Care and support
    • Manager of the Year (Domiciliary Care): Rebecca Pannell, @PlymouthCare
      • Highly Commended: Emma Bonney, Prestige Healthcare
    • Nurse of the Year (Domiciliary Care): Vanessa Schaben, Prestige Nursing and Care
    • Team of the Year (Domiciliary Care): Tamar Care
      • Highly Commended: @PlymouthCare
    • Care Worker of the Year (Domiciliary Care): Rafie Sodiq, Indiana Healthcare Services
      • Highly Commended: Arron Marley, @PlymouthCare
    • Care Worker of the Year (Day Services): Fiona James, Tamar Homecare
      • Highly Commended: Holly Ewings, Alpha Care
    • Care Worker of the Year (Supported Living): Katie Bartlett, Achieve Together
    • Care Worker of the Year (Care Home): Deepak Barnes, Greenacres Care Centre
      • Highly Commended: Aleisha Smith, Chatsworth Home  
    • Deputy of the Year (Care Home): Sarah McCaffrey, Butterfly Lodge Dementia Home
      • Highly Commended: Hayley Cook, Astor Hall Care Home
    • Manager of the Year (Care Home): Jamie Graham, Abbeyfield Tamar House
      • Highly Commended: Marie Claire, Seymour Court Nursing Home  
    • Nurse of the Year (Care Home): Ursula Sheriff, Darbyshire Care – Hamilton House
      • Highly Commended: Jennifer Curtis, Meadowside and St Francis Care Centre  
    • Team of the Year (Care Home): Greenacres Care Home, Mannamead Care
      • Highly Commended: Alpha Care SW
    • Care Home Activity Coordinator: James Gooding, Devonshire House and Lodge
      • Highly Commended: Catherine Britton, Merafield View Nursing Home
    • Culinary Care Team: Phil Jane, Brunel House
      • Highly Commended: Lottie Fisher, Merafield View Nursing Home
    • Ancillary Worker of the Year: Kim Crook, Merafield View Nursing Home
      • Highly Commended: Kristen Bradbury, Butterfly Lodge  
    • Commitment to Workforce Development: Gemma Parnell and Katie Spring, Alpha Care SW
      • Highly Commended: Merafield View Nursing Home
    • Contribution to Care: Kelly Hawkins, Prestige Nursing and Care
      • Highly Commended: Lisa Willis, Merafield View Nursing Home
    • Excellence in Dementia Care: Butterfly Lodge Dementia Home
    • Excellence in Learning Disability Care: Allison Nicholls, Jan Ltd
      • Highly Commended: Mark Peard, IOTA Care
    • Excellence in End-of-life Care: Seymour Court Nursing Home
    • Innovation in Technology: Leon Bulbin, Support’ed
    • Innovative Partnership Working: Gillian Fordham, Seymour Court
    • Promoting Independence Champion: Maggie Overill, Astor Hall
    • Rising Star: Theresa Benjamin, Achieve Together
      • Highly Commended: Lexie Witcher, Tamar House Abbeyfield
    • Service User Involvement: Prestige Nursing & Care
    • Service User Story: Ian Bullen, Prestige Nursing & Care
    • Volunteer of the Year: Nicola Daniels, Jan Ltd
    • People’s Choice Award – Care Home: Teresa Warren at Butterfly Lodge and Sally Hutchings, District Nurse team for care homes
    • People’s Choice Award – Day Services: Plymouth Highbury Trust
    • People’s Choice Award – Domiciliary Care: District Healthcare
    • People’s Choice Award – Supported Living: John Knight, Highbury Trust.

    The awards support the work of Caring Plymouth, a city-wide health and social care partnership, which works to address recruitment and retention challenges in adult social care. The partnership not only wants to encourage more people to work in the sector, but support and celebrate those already doing so.

    If you’re interested in working in adult social care, find out more at www.plymouth.gov.uk/workincare.

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Major improvements completed on key city route

    Source: City of Derby

    Road users in Derby will see significant improvements following the completion of a major upgrade scheme along Derby Road and Nottingham Road through Spondon and Chaddesden.

    Part of the Transforming Cities programme, these works have delivered enhanced sustainable transport infrastructure and a full road resurfacing.

    Both roads have been given a makeover, while new infrastructure has been added to make active travel, such as walking and cycling easier. This includes new cycle lanes and improved pedestrian crossings.

    Cyclists will enjoy a safer and more convenient journey thanks to new shared use and segregated cycle lanes between the Spondon Island and the Chaddesden Park Road junction.

    Pedestrians will find it easier to move along the route thanks to new pedestrian crossings installed at Spondon Island and the entrance to Asda. These crossings are also synchronised to allow more efficient journeys and provide priority to buses, meaning less congestion and improved air quality.

    These works, delivered by Balfour Beatty, are part of Nottingham and Derby’s Transforming Cities programme to create more sustainable, better-connected cities.

    Working in partnership, the two authorities secured £161 million to invest in local transport infrastructure that will improve sustainable transport, support growth, and encourage more low carbon journeys.

    Councillor Carmel Swan, Cabinet Member for Climate Change, Transport and Sustainability, said: 

    It’s great to see this scheme come to an end and our Transforming Cities Programme edge closer to completion. With these upgrades, we have made travel along this route easier and greener for all road users.

    I also want to express my thanks to the Chaddesden ward councillors for their support of this scheme. It’s important that we deliver the best services for the people of Derby and that means listening to those at the heart of our communities.

    David Hough, Project Manager at Balfour Beatty said: 

    We are proud to see the completion of these key improvements, which will make sustainable travel safer and more accessible for the travelling public.

    By enhancing infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians while improving overall transport efficiency, we are helping to build a more sustainable future for the communities we serve.

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Congressman Cleaver Awarded 2025 Shirley Chisholm Award for Housing by National Urban League

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II (5th District Missouri)

    Rep. Cleaver, Ranking Member of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance, accepted the award after decades of work to expand access to safe, decent, and affordable housing

    (Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Representative Emanuel Cleaver has been awarded the 2025 Shirley Chisholm Award for Housing by the National Urban League, given to a lawmaker whose commitment and work has expanded access to fair and affordable housing in the United States. In a ceremony this month, Cleaver accepted the prestigious award from National Urban League President and CEO Marc Morial at the organization’s 2025 Empowerment Summit in Washington, DC. The National Urban League is the nation’s largest historic civil rights and urban advocacy organization.  

    “Since my first days on the City Council in Kansas City, my strongest passion and highest priority has been the work to expand housing opportunity for everyday families,” said Congressman Cleaver. “I understand what it means to live in a shack with no electricity or running water, and I know firsthand the challenges that come with America’s underinvestment in housing that is truly accessible and affordable, which is why I’ve spent my career working to protect and strengthen housing programs that serve low- and middle-income families of all backgrounds. To receive this award, named in honor of the great civil rights champion Shirley Chisholm, is extraordinarily meaningful to me. Just as her work helped pave the way for families like mine to rise out of poverty, I hope the work I’ve done in Kansas City and Washington will continue to change the trajectory of families who are every bit as deserving of the American dream.”

    Since coming to Washington, Congressman Cleaver has fought tirelessly to bring housing investments to Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District and passed multiple bipartisan overhauls of America’s federal housing programs. 

    The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 destroyed trillions in home equity and over half the wealth of the African American households in the United States. As a new member on the House Financial Services Committee, Congressman Cleaver was instrumental in national recovery efforts through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, including the creation of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which helped stabilize the housing market in Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District, and the Green Impact Zone, which targeted more than $125 million of federal investment into the urban core in Kansas City, MO. 

    Following the crisis, Congressman Cleaver worked on the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which included, but was not limited to, the creation of the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau (CFPB), tasked with protecting consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive financial practices, including predatory mortgage lending.     

    In the 115th Congress, Cleaver was elected by his colleagues to serve as the head Democrat on the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance. As Ranking Member, Cleaver teamed up with then-Chairman Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) to co-author the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act (HOTMA), which introduced a massive set of changes and reforms to federal housing programs. The most sweeping housing bill in 20 years, HOTMA was passed with unanimous support by Congress and was signed into law by President Obama. 

    The following Congress, Rep. Cleaver introduced the Housing Choice Voucher Mobility Demonstration Act with Congressman Sean Duffy (R-WI) to help low-income families who rely on housing vouchers to move out of poverty and into neighborhoods with better opportunities. The legislation was passed with bipartisan support by Congress and signed into law by President Trump. 

    In the 117th Congress, Cleaver was elected by his colleagues to serve as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development, and Insurance during the COVID-19 eviction and foreclosure crisis. In that capacity, Chairman Cleaver helped lead the effort to pass legislation providing federal funds to address housing and homelessness including the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which represented the largest single-year investment in preventing and ending homelessness in U.S. history. Through ARPA and other appropriations, Cleaver helped secure more than $46.6 billion in emergency rental assistance and more than $10 billion for the Homeowner Assistance Fund to ensure that families could remain safely housed. Cleaver also helped secure more than $5 billion in homelessness funds through ARPA which included, for the first time in the nation’s history, Emergency Housing Vouchers for families experiencing or at risk of homelessness. Cleaver’s Stabilizing Rural Homeowners During COVID Act, which provided desperately needed assistance to families living in US Department of Agriculture-supported housing was also signed into law. 

    Cleaver also worked with the Biden Administration on key initiatives of the Administration to expand access to fair and affordable housing. In April 2021, Cleaver introduced the Real Estate Valuation Fairness and Improvement Act to address bias in home valuations. Cleaver’s legislation served as the framework for the Biden Administration’s Interagency Task Force on Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity (PAVE Task Force), the first-ever interagency effort to combat discrimination in the home appraisal process. In 2022, the Task Force released the PAVE Action Plan, and the Biden Administration announced the most wide-ranging actions ever taken to advance equity in the home appraisal process. 

    Cleaver also invited several members of the Biden Administration to Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District to discuss housing and other federal investments, including discussions related to Parade Park Homes. Since 2022, Cleaver has worked with US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Fudge, HUD Acting Secretary Todman, HUD officials, and local officials to stabilize the property and chart a path forward to ensure the health of residents and the community. Earlier this year, Congressman Cleaver successfully secured $15.5 million in federal grant funding to support the rehabilitation of Parade Park Home, the oldest Black-owned housing cooperative in the nation, with more than 500 affordable housing units in the heart of the 18th & Vine Jazz District.

    Last Congress, Cleaver invited Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Sandra Thompson to Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District for a convening between the FHFA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, tenant advocates, and community leaders for in-depth discussions on issues impacting tenants in federally backed properties. Following the convening, the FHFA accepted Cleaver’s call to adopt the first-ever tenant protections for renters in multifamily properties with Enterprise-backed mortgages. Participants also heard reports of unacceptable living conditions at Independence Towers and shortly thereafter, Cleaver secured $1,350,000 from Fannie Mae to address desperately needed repairs at the apartment complex.

    Cleaver has received several awards for his work on housing, including reception of the inaugural Terwilliger Bipartisanship in Housing Award from the Bipartisan Policy Center last year. The award recognized Cleaver’s long-standing leadership and bipartisan work on housing, including on bipartisan legislation such as the Choice in Affordable Housing Act and the Rural Housing Service Reform Act. The 2025 Shirley Chisholm Award for Housing is further recognition of Cleaver’s commitment and longstanding work. 

    “In my view, access to affordable housing has the potential to open doors and unlock opportunities that allow entire families to climb the economic ladder—just like it did for mine,” said Congressman Cleaver. “I’m proud of the work I’ve done on this issue since my first days on the City Council, and I look forward to continuing this work on behalf of Missouri families in the years to come.”

    Emanuel Cleaver, II is the U.S. Representative for Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes Kansas City, Independence, Lee’s Summit, Raytown, Grandview, Sugar Creek, Greenwood, Blue Springs, North Kansas City, Gladstone, and Claycomo. He is a member of the exclusive House Financial Services Committee and Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Reps. Kustoff and Cohen, Senators Blackburn and Duckworth Introduce Legislation to Improve Roadways Around Airports

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative David Kustoff (TN-08)

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Reps. David Kustoff (R-TN) and Steve Cohen (D-TN), along with Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) introduced the Don’t Miss Your Flight Act. This bipartisan, bicameral legislation would use existing federal funding to create an incentive for surface transportation projects at and within five miles of an airport. This will help improve access and reduce congestion around our busiest airports. 

    “Memphis International Airport is the second busiest cargo airport in the world. It is imperative that shipments can get in and out of Memphis quickly and effectively,” said Congressman Kustoff. “The Don’t Miss Your Flight Act is critical legislation that will ensure federal funding is used to modify surface transportation around our nation’s busiest airports and help carry us further into the 21st century.”

    “Improving access and reducing congestion to our nation’s airports through our next surface transportation reauthorization bill makes good economic sense,” Congressman Cohen said. “Our Memphis International Airport, the nation’s busiest cargo airport, is at the confluence of river, rail and highway circuits we call ‘America’s Distribution Center.’ Updates to the ground infrastructure in Memphis and around the country through grants authorized under the Don’t Miss Your Flight Act will modernize and improve the air traveler’s experience.”

    “Our nation’s airports are working overtime to meet growing passenger demand, and our airports in Tennessee are no exception,” said Senator Blackburn. “The Don’t Miss Your Flight Act would use existing federal funding to boost infrastructure projects at and near airports to reduce congestion and make it easier for Americans to catch their flights.”

    “We’ve all been there—you’re rushing to the airport but then get stuck in traffic outside while worrying that your flight is going to take off without you,” Senator Duckworth said. “Airports like Chicago O’Hare and so many others are building to keep up with the growing passenger demand, but our surface transportation leading into and out of our airports needs to keep pace. That’s one reason why I’m proud to introduce the Don’t Miss Your Flight Act to help make it easier, faster and more reliable for traveling Americans to get into and out of our airports.”

    Background:
    The Don’t Miss Your Flight Act would create a discretionary grant program using existing Highway Trust funds for road, bridge, tunnel, passenger rail or transit projects that make improvements at and within 5 miles of a public airport that reduce congestion, expand capacity, expand access or rehabilitate surface transportation infrastructure. The Highway Trust Fund is an existing federal account under the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration.
     
    This legislation is endorsed by the Air Line Pilots Association, Airports Council International, American Association of Airport Executives, Allied Pilots Association, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, Association of Professional Flight Attendants and Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.
     

    Click here for the full text of the bill. 

     

    ###

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Congressman Williams Introduces Resolution to Designate July as ‘American Patriotism Month’

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Roger Williams (25th District of Texas)

    Washington, D.C. – Today, Congressman Roger Williams (TX-25) introduced a resolution expressing support for the designation of July as ‘American Patriotism Month.’ This resolution seeks to celebrate patriotic pride and supports efforts to teach and display patriotism by highlighting heroic acts made by brave men and women throughout American history. 

    “Throughout American history, patriots have stepped up to protect and defend the American people and uphold the values that make our country the greatest in the history of the world,” said Congressman Williams. “We have created holidays for many groups but fail to adequately celebrate the patriots who made our freedoms possible. American Patriotism Month is an opportunity to reflect on the history of our great country and honor the men and women who carried out the heroic acts that shaped the land we love and call home.”

    Read the bill text here. 

    Original Cosponsors: Reps. Donalds, McCormick, McDowell, McGuire, Bice, Luna, Norman, and Fleischmann.

    ### 

    Congressman Roger Williams is the Chairman of the House Small Business Committee and member of the House Financial Services Committee. He proudly represents the 25th Congressional District of Texas.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: ‘Big Ugly’ Reconciliation Bill Will Devastate New York Families

    Source: US State of New York

    overnor Kathy Hochul today issued a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune outlining the potentially disastrous impact that the House’s proposed budget would have on New Yorkers. If enacted, the bill would gut New York’s healthcare system, strip families of crucial nutrition benefits, trigger billions in economic losses through the removal of clean energy tax credits and continue to unfairly tax hard-working New Yorkers by failing to fully repeal the SALT cap.

    The House bill slashes $13.5 billion in funding for our healthcare economy through cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act marketplace, putting nearly 1.5 million New Yorkers at risk of losing their health insurance. Safety net hospitals in rural and low-income areas could be forced to shutter their doors permanently and doctors and health care providers would face financial jeopardy. The bill also significantly shrinks federal support for SNAP nutrition and food benefits, making it more difficult for the nearly three million New Yorkers who rely on SNAP to put food on the table for their families.

    In addition, the House bill would put the safety and reliability of our power grid at risk by repealing tax credits that support major renewable and energy storage projects with an estimated loss of $25 billion in clean energy investments. The bill would also curtail efforts to reduce housing energy costs and improve resilience by eliminating the Green and Resilient Retrofit Program, an important resource to retrofit affordable housing stock. Other proposed measures include gutting student loan programs, levying outrageous taxes on nonprofits and universities, eliminating the popular direct-file program to simplify the tax process, and prohibiting state AI regulation.

    The proposed budget would inflict all of these harms while still failing to deliver on a key promise made by New York Republicans in Congress to their constituents: a full repeal of the SALT cap. Congressional Republicans’ decision to impose a new, permanent SALT cap upholds a double-tax on New York taxpayers and unfairly burdens middle-class households.

    The full text of the letter is below:

    Dear Majority Leader Thune and Minority Leader Schumer:

    As Governor of New York, I am writing to you ahead of the Senate’s consideration of the House reconciliation legislative package to underscore the detrimental impact this bill would have on my state. If enacted, the proposed bill would gut New York’s healthcare system, strip families of crucial nutrition benefits, trigger billions in economic losses through the removal of clean energy tax credits, stagnate growth in education and critical technology sectors, and continue to unfairly tax hard-working New Yorkers by failing to fully repeal the SALT cap. Passage of this legislation would worsen the affordability crisis and inject further instability into an already fragile economy.

    Restricting Access to Healthcare: The House bill slashes $13.5 billion in funding for our healthcare economy through cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace. Make no mistake: if the Senate passes this legislation and it is signed into law, nearly 1.5 million people in New York will lose their health insurance. Over $3 billion will be lost to our hospitals, with safety net hospitals in rural and low-income areas at significant risk of shuttering their doors permanently. These closures will harm all New Yorkers, regardless of their insurance coverage.

    Reducing Food Security: The bill also significantly shrinks federal support for SNAP nutrition and food benefits, making it more difficult for the nearly three million New Yorkers who rely on SNAP to put food on the table for their families. The bill places significant administrative burdens on our state and counties and will create headaches for eligible families in receiving their benefits. States have always played a key role in SNAP; this bill decimates the longstanding federal-state partnership by penalizing states with recurring annual costs. We expect the House-passed bill to cost New York State alone over $2.1 billion annually.

    Undermining Energy Modernization and Resilience: The House reconciliation package would put the safety and reliability of our power grid at risk by repealing tax credits that support major renewable and energy storage projects. The financial impact to New York from the loss of the investment tax credit alone would be $25 billion to the state’s current portfolio of large-scale clean energy investments and would further make new projects more expensive for businesses and threaten good-paying union jobs. Added fees on electric vehicles, canceled IRA transportation funding, and the rollback of EV and home energy credits would also drive-up costs statewide. The bill would also curtail efforts to reduce housing energy costs and improve resilience by eliminating the Green and Resilient Retrofit Program (GRRP), an important resource to retrofit our nation’s affordable housing stock.

    Education Undermined, Disparities Widened: The House bill threatens to dismantle essential supports for low-income and nontraditional students by imposing restrictive eligibility changes for working, part-time learners; establishing harsh institutional penalties; and eliminating key federal loan programs. In New York, where nearly half of community college students attend part-time and rely heavily on Pell Grants, these changes could force thousands to drop out or incur deeper debt. Additionally, the bill eliminates some subsidized student loans and forces loan risk onto education institutions. Taken together, these provisions represent a regressive shift that threatens to widen educational disparities, destabilize community colleges and minority-serving institutions and undermine national efforts to promote affordable higher education.

    Artificial Intelligence (AI) Moratorium: The House legislation also includes a highly-problematic and broad prohibition on state AI regulation for a decade. States like New York have passed laws to both invest in the incredible potential of AI and thoughtfully address potential AI harms in the face of federal inaction. Under my leadership, New York has enacted several first-in-the-nation AI safety measures, including the Safe for Kids Act to curb the addictive nature of social media for kids, and safeguards for AI Companion chatbots to reduce harmful interactions. If this federal prohibition remains in reconciliation, the impact is not merely a bureaucratic moratorium; it undermines the states’ fundamental right and responsibility to protect the safety, health, privacy, and economic vitality of its citizens.

    Unfair Tax Burdens: Not only does this bill guarantee higher costs, it also fails to deliver on a key promise made by New Yorkers in your caucus to their constituents: a full repeal of the SALT cap. House Republicans’ decision to impose a new, permanent SALT cap upholds a double-tax on New York taxpayers and unfairly burdens households. The bill also levies outrageous taxes on nonprofits including universities, and eliminates the popular direct-file program that simplifies the tax filing process – all in an effort to cut taxes for the richest Americans.

    These are just some of the more egregious harms this bill would inflict on my constituents. If New York Republicans in the House refuse to advocate for the best interests of their state, I will. As Governor, I must stand up for middle-class New Yorkers who cannot afford the consequences of this budget. I urge you to reject the House proposal and instead work with Leader Schumer on a bipartisan reconciliation package that delivers for working families, invests in the future, and reflects the real needs of the people we serve.

    Sincerely,

    Governor Kathy Hochul

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Europe: VATICAN – Foreign debt, a burden that oppresses the poorest Countries

    Source: Agenzia Fides – MIL OSI

    Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – There are 48 States that spend more on interest payments than on education or healthcare. This is according to the report “A World of Debt” by the UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Debt service, i.e., the payment of interest on loans received, thus has a major impact on the lives of the poorest countries, as the funds allocated to education, healthcare, and subsidies for the purchase of basic goods and fuel are cut. The protests that took place in Nigeria and Kenya in 2024, primarily among young people, are closely linked to this debt mechanism. In order to pay the interest and reduce their countries’ overall debt, the Kenyan and Nigerian governments had presented financial laws that provided for tax increases and subsidy cuts. During his audience with participants in the conference “Debt Crisis in the Global South” organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on June 5, 2024, Pope Francis said: “In the wake of mismanaged globalization, and in wake of the pandemic and wars, we find ourselves faced with a debt crisis that mainly affects the countries of the global South, causing misery and distress, and depriving millions of people of the possibility of a dignified future.” The Pope expressed hope that the Holy Year 2025 will pave the way for “a bold and creative new international financial architecture.” The UNCTAD report agrees with Pope Francis when he states: “The global financial architecture is no longer able to meet the needs of the world in the 21st century. This is a major challenge for sustainable development.” Therefore, creativity and courage are needed to overcome a financial structure that further widens the gap between rich and poor. According to the UNCTAD report, “Developing countries struggle with an international financial architecture whose deeply entrenched asymmetries exacerbate the impact of successive crises on sustainable development. This system exacerbates their debt burden by limiting their access to finance for sustainable development and forcing them to borrow from more costly external sources.” Recent events have exacerbated this challenge. Rising global interest rates since 2022 have further strained developing countries’ public finances. High interest payments outpace growth in basic public spending such as health, education, and climate change mitigation. In developing countries, home to 3.3 billion people, one in three countries spends more on interest payments than on these key areas of human development. “Debt service for public external debt totaled USD 365 billion in 2022, corresponding to 6.3% of export earnings. By comparison, the 1953 London Agreement on German war debt limited the share of export earnings that could be spent on servicing external debt (public and private) to 5% to avoid undermining the recovery,” states the UNCTAD report, highlighting the different treatment of poorer countries today. It notes, in particular, that 61% of developing countries’ debt is held by private creditors who are subject to little political constraint when demanding interest payments. For this reason, the call Pope Francis made on December 16, 2024, during a meeting with representatives of the banking sector, resonates strongly: “The imminent Jubilee reminds us of the need to forgive debts. It is the condition for fostering hope and future in the life of many people, especially the poor. I encourage you to sow hope. Do not tire of accompanying and keeping the level of social justice high.” (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides, 6/6/2025)
    Share:

    MIL OSI Europe News –

  • MIL-OSI Europe: AMERICA/PERU – State and Church united to respond to the educational emergency in the Apostolic Vicariate of San Ramón

    Source: Agenzia Fides – MIL OSI

    Oventeni (Agenzia Fides) – Approximately 120 students between the ages of 12 and 18 from the 48 indigenous Ashéninka communities in Gran Pajonal are hosted during the school year at the Oventeni student residence, in the province of Atalaya, within the Apostolic Vicariate of San Ramón. “We have two pavillons for girls and two for boys. The state pays for the cooks, the maintenance staff, and the educational assistants who spend most of their time with the children, as well as two psychologists,” says Father Luis Alfonso Tapia Ibáñez, parish priest and coordinator of the ‘Keshiki’ student residence in the parish of San Pascual Bailón.The teachers are appointed by the Apostolic Vicariate of San Ramón and employed by the state. “We form a big family. This is their second home,” the priest affirms. The residence provides adolescents with the opportunity to continue their studies and overcome extreme poverty, both material and educational. Gran Pajonal, located in the central Peruvian jungle, has approximately 38 primary schools. However, the long distances—between 4 and 10 hours on foot over difficult roads—prevent many students from accessing secondary education. Therefore, at the request of parents, a bilingual secondary school was created to promote the students’ cultural identity. During the week, the adolescents reside there and return to their families at weekends.””A large part of the Vicariate is inhabited by native communities made up mostly of children,” emphasizes Gerardo Antón Zerdin, OFM, Bishop of San Ramón, in the latest bulletin of the Pontifical Society of Missionary Childhood, which supports this initiative. “Childcare is a priority due to the poverty and enormous educational deficiencies faced by these remote communities in the Amazon,” he adds. “The Vicariate directly administers five educational centers (preschool, primary, and secondary), and another fifteen schools are under the responsibility of religious congregations present in the Vicariate area.” These schools are the result of a joint effort between the State and the Church and offer free education. Regular subjects are taught there and the activities of the Pontifical Society of Missionary Childhood are promoted. However, students face serious risks, such as family instability, criminal gangs, drug use, and various forms of abuse, both within and outside the family environment. “The residence is a great opportunity for young people to get to know God, little by little, and become friends with Jesus at their own pace,” explains Father Tapia Ibáñez, “it is a wonderful opportunity to hear about God, to get to know him little by little, and to become friends of Jesus, each in his own time. The first step is friendship and the example of life. As always, we approach the children and their parents to awaken in them an interest in the Church and the Gospel. Last year, 21 students requested baptism and prepared to receive it.” (EG) (Agenzia Fides, 6/6/2025)
    Share:

    MIL OSI Europe News –

  • MIL-OSI: iPower Launches New Joint Venture, United Package NV LLC

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif., June 06, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — iPower Inc. (Nasdaq: IPW) (“iPower” or the “Company”), a tech and data-driven ecommerce services provider and online retailer, today announced the formation of United Package NV LLC (“United Package”), a new joint venture (“JV”) that marks the first full-scale implementation of its “Made in USA” module within the Company’s proprietary SuperSuite Supply Chain Platform.

    This milestone represents iPower’s commitment to building a resilient, localized manufacturing infrastructure in the United States. United Package will focus on the domestic production of packaging materials to serve the rapidly growing demands of U.S. businesses seeking reliable, sustainable, and cost-effective supply chain solutions without reliance on offshore manufacturing.

    “The launch of United Package is a significant step toward reshoring critical manufacturing capabilities and building a more robust, diversified supply chain infrastructure,” said Lawrence Tan, CEO of iPower. “This JV reinforces our long-term strategy to empower brands with faster lead times, lower logistics risk, and higher operational agility, right here in the U.S. We look forward to continue building out our ‘Made in USA’ module as we add further depth to our domestic production footprint, strengthen supplier partnerships, and expand our value-added service offerings to meet the evolving needs of our partners and customers.”

    By integrating United Package into the SuperSuite ecosystem, iPower aims to provide customers with:

    • Faster turnaround times from production to delivery
    • Reduced exposure to global shipping volatility
    • Enhanced sustainability with lower carbon footprints
    • Transparent vendor collaboration via the SuperSuite digital dashboard
    • Improved inventory responsiveness and demand forecasting

    The “Made in USA” module of SuperSuite is designed to provide end-to-end support to manufacturing initiatives across the country — offering legal and regulatory guidance, facility planning, local workforce development, and immediate access to iPower’s nationwide distribution and e-commerce infrastructure.

    United Package is only the beginning. iPower plans to expand its “Made in USA” initiative by forming additional strategic ventures and supporting a new wave of domestic manufacturers across various categories.

    About iPower Inc. 

    iPower Inc. is a tech and data-driven online retailer, as well as a provider of value-added ecommerce services for third-party products and brands. iPower’s capabilities include a full spectrum of online channels, robust fulfillment capacity, a nationwide network of warehouses, competitive last mile delivery partners and a differentiated business intelligence platform. iPower believes that these capabilities will enable it to efficiently move a diverse catalog of SKUs from its supply chain partners to end consumers every day, providing the best value to customers in the U.S. and other countries. For more information, please visit iPower’s website at www.meetipower.com.

    Forward-Looking Statements

    All statements other than statements of historical fact in this press release are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on current expectations and projections about future events and financial trends that iPower believes may affect its financial condition, results of operations, business strategy, and financial needs. Investors can identify these forward-looking statements by words or phrases such as “may,” “will,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “aim,” “estimate,” “intend,” “plan,” “believe,” “potential,” “continue,” “is/are likely to” or other similar expressions. iPower undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances, or changes in its expectations, except as may be required by law. Although iPower believes that the expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot assure you that such expectations will turn out to be correct, and iPower cautions investors that actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results and encourages investors to review other factors that may affect its future results and performance in iPower’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, as filed with the SEC on September 20, 2024, its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, as filed with the SEC on November 14, 2024, February 14, 2025 and May 15, 2025, and in its other SEC filings.

    Media Contact

    Media Team
    Ipw.media@meetipower.com

    Investor Relations Contact

    Sean Mansouri, CFA or Aaron D’Souza
    Elevate IR
    (720) 330-2829
    IPW@elevate-ir.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Turtle Beach Corporation to Participate in Oppenheimer 25th Annual Consumer Growth and E-Commerce Conference

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    SAN DIEGO, June 06, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Turtle Beach Corporation (Nasdaq: TBCH), a leading gaming accessories brand, today announced that Cris Keirn, Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Weinswig, Chief Financial Officer, will virtually participate in the Oppenheimer 25th Annual Consumer Growth and E-Commerce Conference, on June 9-11.

    Chief Executive Officer Cris Keirn will host a fireside chat on Tuesday, June 10 at 11:15a.m. ET, and management will also be available for meetings during the conference.

    A live webcast of the event will be available through the “Events & Presentations” section of TBCH’s website at corp.turtlebeach.com. A replay of the webcast will be available on the investor relations website for 90 days.

    About Turtle Beach Corporation
    Turtle Beach Corporation (the “Company”) (corp.turtlebeach.com) is one of the world’s leading gaming accessory providers. The Company’s namesake Turtle Beach brand (www.turtlebeach.com) is known for designing best-selling gaming headsets, top-rated game controllers, award-winning PC gaming peripherals, and groundbreaking gaming simulation accessories. Innovation, first-to-market features, a broad range of products for all types of gamers, and top-rated customer support have made Turtle Beach a fan-favorite brand and the market leader in console gaming audio for over a decade. Turtle Beach Corporation acquired Performance Designed Products LLC (www.pdp.com) in 2024. Turtle Beach’s shares are traded on the Nasdaq Exchange under the symbol: TBCH.

    Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements
    This press release includes forward-looking information and statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Except for historical information contained in this release, statements in this release may constitute forward-looking statements regarding assumptions, projections, expectations, targets, intentions, or beliefs about future events. Statements containing the words “may”, “could”, “would”, “should”, “believe”, “expect”, “anticipate”, “plan”, “estimate”, “target”, “goal”, “project”, “intend” and similar expressions, or the negatives thereof, constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are only predictions and are not guarantees of performance. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. The inclusion of such information should not be regarded as a representation by the Company, or any person, that the objectives of the Company will be achieved. Forward-looking statements are based on management’s current beliefs and expectations, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, management.

    While the Company believes that its expectations are based upon reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurances that its goals and strategy will be realized. Numerous factors, including risks and uncertainties, may affect actual results and may cause results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements made by the Company or on its behalf. Some of these factors include, but are not limited to, risks related to trade policies, including the imposition of tariffs on imported goods and other trade restrictions, the release and availability of successful game titles, macroeconomic conditions affecting the demand for our products, logistic and supply chain challenges and costs, dependence on the success and availability of third-parties to manufacture and manage the logistics of transporting and distributing our products, the substantial uncertainties inherent in the acceptance of existing and future products, the difficulty of commercializing and protecting new technology, the impact of competitive products and pricing, general business and economic conditions, risks associated with the expansion of our business including the integration of any businesses we acquire and the integration of such businesses within our internal control over financial reporting and operations, our indebtedness, liquidity, and other factors discussed in our public filings, including the risk factors included in the Company’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and the Company’s other periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by applicable law, including the securities laws of the United States and the rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Company is under no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement after the date of this release whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.

    CONTACTS

    Investors:
    tbch@icrinc.com

    Public Relations & Media:
    MacLean Marshall
    Sr. Director, Global Communications
    Turtle Beach Corporation
    (858) 914-5093
    maclean.marshall@turtlebeach.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Cyabra Report Reveals Disinformation Campaign Against Target’s DEI Initiatives, Featured in USA Today

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    New York, NY, June 06, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) —  Cyabra Strategy Ltd. (“Cyabra”), a leading AI platform for real-time disinformation detection, has released a groundbreaking new report exposing a sophisticated campaign to artificially inflate online backlash against Target’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

    The investigation analyzed thousands of social media conversations between January to June, 2025, and uncovered how bot networks manufactured outrage to spark a boycott movement. The report reveals how misinformation targeting Target’s DEI programs was deliberately amplified by bad actors to manipulate public perception and damage brand reputation.

    Cyabra’s report was prominently featured in USA Today’s June 4 article, “What fueled the Target DEI boycott? The answer may surprise you.” The coverage highlights Cyabra’s key findings, including that 27% of the social media accounts analyzed were fake and played a significant role in amplifying the viral backlash. The report also revealed a 764% surge in inauthentic sentiment following Target’s announcement that it was scaling back its diversity initiatives.

    While not solely responsible, the presence of fake accounts amplifying negativity from both sides – whether promoting or opposing the boycott – helped shape a toxic narrative that ultimately eroded overall brand perception, coinciding with a $12 billion drop in Target’s market value by late February 2025. The full report can be viewed here.

    The report underscores Cyabra’s ability to detect weaponized disinformation targeting brands. In today’s volatile digital environment, brands face growing risks from coordinated campaigns designed to manufacture outrage, damage trust and brand reputation, and trigger real-world consequences like boycotts and stock volatility. These attacks often appear organic but are driven by fake profiles and bot networks. Cyabra’s real-time intelligence platform helps executives distinguish authentic sentiment from manipulation, enabling faster, smarter decisions that protect brand reputation, guide crisis response, and maintain stakeholder confidence.

    “The Cyabra report uncovered a strategic operation designed to look like a viral movement,” said Dan Brahmy, CEO & Co-founder of Cyabra. “Disinformation, namely fake accounts and false narratives, are being weaponized against brands. We are proud that our disinformation detection tools are able to shine a light on how bad actors manipulate online sentiment to attack corporate values.”

    Cyabra has entered into a business combination agreement with Trailblazer Merger Corporation I (NASDAQ: $TBMC), a blank-check special-purpose acquisition company.

    About Cyabra
    Cyabra is a real-time AI-powered platform that uncovers and analyzes online disinformation and misinformation by uncovering fake profiles, harmful narratives, and GenAI content across social media and digital news channels. Cyabra’s AI solutions protect corporations and governments against brand reputation risks, election manipulation, foreign interference, and other online threats. Cyabra’s platform leverages proprietary algorithms and NLP solutions, gathering and analyzing publicly available data to provide clear, actionable insights and real-time alerts that inform critical decision-making. Cyabra uncovers the good, bad, and fake online.

    For more information, visit www.cyabra.com.

    Media Contact:
    Jill Burkes
    Jill@cyabra.com
    Signal Contact: Jillabra.24

    Investor Relations Contact:
    Miri Segal
    MS-IR
    msegal@ms-ir.com

    About Trailblazer
    Trailblazer is a blank check company formed for the purpose of entering into a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, recapitalization, reorganization, or other similar business combination with one or more businesses or entities. For more information, visit: www.trailblazermergercorp.com

    Forward-Looking Statements
    This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws with respect to certain products and services that are the subject of a proposed transaction (the “Business Combination”) between Trailblazer and Cyabra. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this press release, including statements regarding Cyabra’s business strategy, products and services, research and development costs, plans and objectives of management for future operations, and future results of current and anticipated product offerings, are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words “believe,” “project,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “intend,” “strategy,” “future,” “opportunity,” “plan,” “may,” “should,” “will,” “would,” “will be,” “will continue,” “will likely result,” and similar expressions. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including, but not limited to, the following risks relating to the proposed transaction: the ability to complete the Business Combination or, if Trailblazer does not consummate such Business Combination, any other initial business combination; expectations regarding Cyabra’s strategies and future financial performance, including its future business plans or objectives, prospective performance and opportunities and competitors, revenues, products and services, pricing, operating expenses, market trends, liquidity, cash flows and uses of cash, capital expenditures, and Cyabra’s ability to invest in growth initiatives and pursue acquisition opportunities; the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstances that could give rise to the termination of the Business Combination Agreement; the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against Trailblazer or Cyabra following announcement of the Business Combination Agreement and the transactions contemplated therein; the inability to complete the proposed Business Combination due to, among other things, the failure to obtain Trailblazer stockholder approval; the risk that the announcement and consummation of the proposed Business Combination disrupts Cyabra’s current operations and future plans; the ability to recognize the anticipated benefits of the proposed Business Combination; unexpected costs related to the proposed Business Combination; the amount of any redemptions by existing holders of Trailblazer’s common stock being greater than expected; limited liquidity and trading of Trailblazer’s securities; geopolitical risk and changes in applicable laws or regulations; the size of the addressable markets for Cyabra’s products and services; the possibility that Trailblazer and/or Cyabra may be adversely affected by other economic, business, and/or competitive factors; the ability to obtain and/or maintain the listing of the combined company’s common stock on Nasdaq following the Business Combination; operational risk; and the risks that the consummation of the proposed Business Combination is substantially delayed or does not occur.

    Important Information for Investors and Stockholders
    In connection with the Business Combination, Trailblazer Holdings, Inc., a subsidiary of Trailblazer (“Holdings”) has filed a registration statement on Form S-4 (the “Registration Statement”) with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), which includes a preliminary proxy statement/prospectus, and certain other related documents, which will be both the proxy statement to be distributed to holders of shares of Trailblazer’s common stock in connection with its solicitation of proxies for the vote by its stockholders with respect to the Business Combination and other matters as may be described in the Registration Statement, as well as the prospectus of Holdings relating to the offer and sale of its securities to be issued in the Business Combination. . After the Registration Statement is declared effective, the proxy statement/prospectus will be sent to all Trailblazer stockholders so that they may vote on the Business Combination.

    INVESTORS AND STOCKHOLDERS OF TRAILBLAZER ARE URGED TO READ CAREFULLY THE REGISTRATION STATEMENT, PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS, AND OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS FILED OR TO BE FILED WITH THE SEC WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE, AS THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE BUSINESS COMBINATION AND THE PARTIES INVOLVED.

    Trailblazer stockholders are currently able to obtain copies of the preliminary proxy

    statement/prospectus and other documents filed with the SEC that are incorporated by reference therein, and will be able to obtain the definitive proxy statement/prospectus and other documents filed with the SEC that will be incorporated by reference therein, once available, in all cases without charge, at the SEC’s web site at www.sec.gov, or by directing a request to: Trailblazer at 510 Madison Avenue, Suite 1401, New York, NY 10022, Telephone: 646-747-9618.

    Participants in the Solicitation
    Cyabra, Trailblazer, and their respective directors and executive officers may be deemed participants in the solicitation of proxies from Trailblazer stockholders regarding the proposed Business Combination. Information about Trailblazer’s directors and executive officers and their ownership of Trailblazer’s securities is set forth in the proxy statement/prospectus pertaining to the proposed Business Combination.

    No Offer or Solicitation
    This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, or a solicitation of any vote or approval. No sale of securities shall occur in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful before registration or qualification under applicable laws.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Heidelberg Pharma to Present at the Life Sciences Virtual Investor Forum June 12th

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    LADENBURG, Germany, June 06, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Heidelberg Pharma AG (XETRA: HPHA), a clinical-stage biotech company developing innovative Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs), today announced that Andreas Pahl, CEO of Heidelberg Pharma, will present live at the Life Sciences Virtual Investor Forum hosted by VirtualInvestorConferences.com, on June 12th, 2025.

    Heidelberg Pharma’s lead candidate, HDP-101, a BCMA-targeting ADC with the novel payload Amanitin, is being evaluated in a Phase I/IIa clinical trial for the treatment of relapsed or refractory Multiple Myeloma. HDP-101 is showing promising results, including a prolonged complete response in a patient who had undergone extensive prior treatment. The patient has received continuous treatment with HDP-101 alone for over 19 months, showing excellent tolerability of the drug.

    In addition, promising biological activity and objective improvements were observed in several patients, underscoring the potential of HDP-101 as a treatment option for Multiple Myeloma. Dose escalation is continuing, and the study is advancing in cohort 8.

    Furthermore, the second candidate, HDP-102, a CD-37-targeting ADC with the novel payload Amanitin, has recently entered clinical development and the first patient has been dosed in a Phase I study for the treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

    DATE: June 12th
    TIME: 10:00 AM ET
    LINK: REGISTER HERE
    Available for 1×1 meetings: June 12th and 13th

    This will be a live, interactive online event where investors are invited to ask the company questions in real-time. If attendees are not able to join the event live on the day of the conference, an archived webcast will also be made available after the event.

    It is recommended that online investors pre-register and run the online system check to expedite participation and receive event updates.

    Learn more about the event at www.virtualinvestorconferences.com.

    Recent Company Highlights

    About Heidelberg Pharma

    Heidelberg Pharma is a biopharmaceutical company working on a new treatment approach in oncology and developing novel drugs based on its ADC technologies for the targeted and highly effective treatment of cancer. ADCs are antibody-drug conjugates that combine the specificity of antibodies with the efficacy of toxins to fight cancer. Selected antibodies are loaded with cytotoxic compounds, the so-called payloads, that are transported into diseased cells. Inside the cells, the toxins then unleash their effect and kill the diseased cells.

    Heidelberg Pharma uses several compounds and has built up an ADC toolbox that overcomes tumor resistance via numerous pathways and addresses different types of cancer using various antibodies. The goal is to develop targeted and highly effective ADCs for the treatment of a variety of malignant hematologic and solid tumors.

    Heidelberg Pharma is the first company to use the compound Amanitin from the green death cap mushroom in cancer therapy. The biological mechanism of action of the toxin represents a new therapeutic modality and is used as a compound in the Amanitin-based ADC technology, the so-called ATAC technology.

    The company is based in Ladenburg, Germany, and is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange: ISIN DE000A11QVV0 / WKN A11QVV / Symbol HPHA. More information is available at www.heidelberg-pharma.com.

    ATAC® is a registered trademark of Heidelberg Pharma Research GmbH. ITAC™, ETAC™ are pending trademark applications of Heidelberg Pharma Research GmbH.

    About Virtual Investor Conferences®
    Virtual Investor Conferences (VIC) is the leading proprietary investor conference series that provides an interactive forum for publicly traded companies to seamlessly present directly to investors.

    Providing a real-time investor engagement solution, VIC is specifically designed to offer companies more efficient investor access.  Replicating the components of an on-site investor conference, VIC offers companies enhanced capabilities to connect with investors, schedule targeted one-on-one meetings and enhance their presentations with dynamic video content. Accelerating the next level of investor engagement, Virtual Investor Conferences delivers leading investor communications to a global network of retail and institutional investors.

    CONTACTS:
    Heidelberg Pharma AG
    Sylvia Wimmer
    Director Corporate Communications
    Tel.: +49 89 41 31 38-29
    E-mail: investors@hdpharma.com 
    Gregor-Mendel-Str. 22, 68526 Ladenburg

    Virtual Investor Conferences
    John M. Viglotti
    SVP Corporate Services, Investor Access
    OTC Markets Group
    (212) 220-2221
    johnv@otcmarkets.com 

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Global: ‘The Eternal Queen of Asian Pop’ sings one last encore from beyond the grave

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Xianda Huang, PhD student in Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Los Angeles

    Teresa Teng, who died in 1995, still has legions of fans around the world. Nora Tam/South China Morning Post via Getty Images

    Several years ago, an employee at Universal Music came across a cassette tape in a Tokyo warehouse while sorting through archival materials. On it was a recording by the late Taiwanese pop star Teresa Teng that had never been released; the pop ballad, likely recorded in the mid-1980s while Teng was living and performing in Japan, was a collaboration between composer Takashi Miki and lyricist Toyohisa Araki.

    Now, to the delight of her millions of fans, the track titled “Love Songs Are Best in the Foggy Night” will appear on an album set to be released on June 25, 2025.

    Teng died 30 years ago. Most Americans know little about her life and her body of work. Yet the ballads of Teng, who could sing in Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese and Indonesian, continue to echo through karaoke rooms, on Spotify playlists, at tribute concerts and at family gatherings across Asia and beyond.

    I study how pop music has served as a tool of soft power, and I’ve spent the past several years researching Teng’s music and its legacy. I’ve found that Teng’s influence endures not just because of her voice, but also because her music transcends Asia’s political fault lines.

    From local star to Asian icon

    Born in 1953 in Yunlin, Taiwan, Teresa Teng grew up in one of the many villages that were built to house soldiers and their families who had fled mainland China in 1949 after the communists claimed victory in the Chinese civil war. Her early exposure to traditional Chinese music and opera laid the foundation for her singing career. By age 6, she was taking voice lessons. She soon began winning local singing competitions.

    “It wasn’t adults who wanted me to sing,” Teng wrote in her memoir. “I wanted to sing. As long as I could sing, I was happy.”

    At 14, Teng dropped out of high school to focus entirely on music, signing with the local label Yeu Jow Records. Soon thereafter, she released her first album, “Fengyang Flower Drum.” In the 1970s, she toured and recorded across Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Southeast Asia, becoming one of Asia’s first truly transnational pop stars.

    Teng’s career flourished in the late 1970s and 1980s. She released some of her most iconic tracks, such as her covers of Chinese singer Zhou Xuan’s 1937 hit “When Will You Return?” and Taiwanese singer Chen Fen-lan’s “The Moon Represents My Heart,” and toured widely across Asia, sparking what came to be known as “Teresa Teng Fever.”

    In the early 1990s, Teng was forced to stop performing for health reasons. She died suddenly of an asthma attack on May 8, 1995, while on vacation in Chiang Mai, Thailand, at the age of 42.

    China catches Teng Fever

    Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Teng’s story is that Teng Fever peaked in China.

    Teng was ethnically Chinese, with ancestral roots in China’s Shandong province. But the political divide between China and Taiwan following the Chinese civil war had led to decades of hostility, with each side refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the other.

    Teng speaks at a press conference in Hong Kong in 1980.
    P.Y. Tang/South China Morning Post via Getty Images

    During the late 1970s and 1980s, however, China began to relax its political control under Deng Xiaoping’s Reform and Opening Up policy. This sweeping initiative shifted China toward a market-oriented economy, encouraged foreign trade and investment, and cautiously reintroduced global cultural influences after decades of isolation.

    Pop music from other parts of the world began trickling in, including Teng’s tender ballads. Her songs could be heard in coastal provinces such as Guangdong and Shanghai, inland cities such as Beijing and Tianjin, and even remote regions such as Tibet. Shanghai’s propaganda department wrote an internal memo in 1980 noting that her music had spread to the city’s public parks, restaurants, nursing homes and wedding halls.

    Teng’s immense popularity in China was no accident; it reflected a time in the country’s history when its people were particularly eager for emotionally resonant art after decades of cultural propaganda and censorship.

    For a society that had been awash in rote, revolutionary songs like “The East is Red” and “Union is Strength,” Teng’s music offered something entirely different. It was personal, tender and deeply human. Her gentle, approachable style – often described as “angelic” or like that of “a girl next door” – provided solace and a sense of intimacy that had long been absent from public life.

    Teng performs ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ in Taipei in 1984.

    Teng’s music was also admired for her ability to bridge eras. Her 1983 album “Light Exquisite Feeling” fused classical Chinese poetry with contemporary Western pop melodies, showcasing her gift for blending the traditional and the modern. It cemented her reputation not just as a pop star but as a cultural innovator.

    It’s no secret why audiences across China and Asia were so deeply drawn to her and her music. She was fluent in multiple languages; she was elegant but humble, polite and relatable; she was involved in various charities; and she spoke out in support of democratic values.

    A sound of home in distant lands

    Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the Chinese immigrant population in the United States grew to over 1.1 million. Teng’s music has also deeply embedded itself within Chinese diasporic communities across the country. In cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, Chinese immigrants played her music at family gatherings, during holidays and at community events. Walk through any Chinatown during Lunar New Year and you’re bound to hear her voice wafting through the streets.

    Teng visits New York City’s Chinatown during her 1980 concert tour in the U.S.
    Wikimedia Commons

    For younger Chinese Americans and even non-Chinese audiences, Teng’s music has become a window into Chinese culture.

    When I was studying in the U.S., I often met Asian American students who belted out her songs at karaoke nights or during cultural festivals. Many had grown up hearing her music through their parents’ playlists or local community celebrations.

    The release of her recently discovered song is a reminder that some voices do not fade – they evolve, migrate and live on in the hearts of people scattered across the world.

    Teresa Teng’s music is still celebrated in Chinatowns across the U.S.

    In an age when global politics drive different cultures apart, Teng’s enduring appeal reminds us of something quieter yet more lasting: the power of voice to transmit emotion across time and space, the way a melody can build a bridge between continents and generations.

    I recently rewatched the YouTube video for Teng’s iconic 1977 ballad “The Moon Represents My Heart.” As I read the comments section, one perfectly encapsulated what I had discovered about Teresa Teng in my own research: “Teng’s music opened a window to a culture I never knew I needed.”

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

    – ref. ‘The Eternal Queen of Asian Pop’ sings one last encore from beyond the grave – https://theconversation.com/the-eternal-queen-of-asian-pop-sings-one-last-encore-from-beyond-the-grave-255560

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: AmeriCorps is on the chopping block – despite research showing that the national service agency is making a difference in local communities

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Pamela Paxton, Professor of Sociology, The University of Texas at Austin

    Many AmeriCorps crews, like this one seen at work in Maine in 2011, restore and renovate public parks. John Patriquin/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

    Hundreds of thousands of U.S. nonprofits provide vital services, such as running food banks and youth programs, supporting public health initiatives and helping unemployed people find new jobs. Although this work helps sustain local communities, obtaining the money and staff they require is a constant struggle for many of these groups.

    That’s where AmeriCorps often comes in. The independent federal agency for national service and volunteerism has facilitated the work of approximately 200,000 people a year, placing them through partnerships with thousands of nonprofits that provide tutoring, disaster relief and many other important services.

    But Americorps’ fate is now uncertain. In April 2025, the Trump administration canceled more than 1,000 grants, suddenly ending the stipends that were supporting more than 32,000 AmeriCorps volunteers. On June 5, a judge ordered that these grants be restored in Washington D.C. and 24 states in response to a lawsuit they had filed. The judge also ordered that all volunteers who had been deployed in those places be reinstated “if they are willing and able to return.”

    The Trump administration has also put most of AmeriCorps administrative staff on leave and indicated that it wants to eliminate the independent agency, along with its US$1.2 billion annual budget. AmeriCorps doesn’t appear in a detailed 2026 budget request the administration released on May 30.

    I’m a sociology and public affairs professor who has studied nonprofits and volunteering for decades. My research suggests that dismantling AmeriCorps would harm the organizations that rely on national service members and take a toll on the communities that benefit from their work.

    AmeriCorps explains what the independent national service agency does.

    What AmeriCorps does

    AmeriCorps traces its roots to the mid-1960s, when Volunteers in Service to America, known as VISTA, was founded as a domestic counterpart to the Peace Corps. Several earlier service programs were consolidated when Congress passed the National and Community Service Trust Act in 1993. AmeriCorps was officially launched in 1994 – and VISTA became one of its programs.

    Since then, AmeriCorps members have built housing and infrastructure, delivered disaster relief, tutored in low-income schools, provided health care and helped older adults age with dignity in both urban and rural communities across the nation.

    AmeriCorps includes a variety of programs, each designed to address specific public needs. Some AmeriCorps volunteers provide direct services, such as tutoring, food delivery and in disaster response efforts. Others focus on building the long-term capacity of local nonprofits through volunteer recruitment, fundraising strategy and community outreach.

    AmeriCorps volunteers, whom the agency calls “members,” are placed in thousands of nonprofits, schools and local agencies. Many of them are recent college graduates or early-career professionals. Some programs specifically ask people over 55 to serve. Those “senior” volunteers support children through the Foster Grandparents program, volunteer for organizations or assist other older people through the Senior Companions program.

    Many AmeriCorps volunteers are paid a modest allowance for this work that runs about $500 per week. AmeriCorps senior volunteers receive smaller sums in hourly stipends to offset the costs of volunteering.

    Fox40 News in Sacramento, Calif., covers the Trump administration’s reduction of AmeriCorps’ ranks in April 2025.

    Helping nonprofits gain traction

    AmeriCorps has long funded research that assesses its impact.

    One such study found that every dollar invested in national service generates $11.80 in benefits for society, such as higher earnings, better mental and physical health, and economic growth. Additionally, every federal dollar spent on national service produces $17.30 in savings across other government programs through reductions in public assistance, health and criminal justice spending.

    As part of AmeriCorps’ research grants program, I have received funding to study civic engagement and AmeriCorps programming.

    In one of those studies, which I conducted with two former colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin in 2021, we found that VISTA volunteers were able to help nonprofits gain volunteers. After two years, an organization with that support had 71% more volunteers than those that didn’t participate in the VISTA program.

    We also found that the longer a nonprofit had a staffer supported by the VISTA program, the more its overall pool of volunteers increased.

    Nonprofits with VISTA volunteers also had three times as many donations two years later, compared with nonprofits without VISTA service members. But the total value of donations the nonprofit obtained didn’t always rise. That is, we found that VISTA builds people power, but not necessarily fundraising revenue.

    Findings like these indicate that AmeriCorps hasn’t just helped the people it serves or the people who volunteer through the program. It also strengthens nonprofits and increases engagement within local communities, reinforcing the civic fabric that knits communities together.

    As members of Congress and the White House decide whether to preserve AmeriCorps, I hope they consider the evidence that demonstrates this worthwhile program’s positive impact.

    Pamela Paxton has received funding from the Office of Research and Evaluation at AmeriCorps.

    – ref. AmeriCorps is on the chopping block – despite research showing that the national service agency is making a difference in local communities – https://theconversation.com/americorps-is-on-the-chopping-block-despite-research-showing-that-the-national-service-agency-is-making-a-difference-in-local-communities-257430

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: US health care is rife with high costs and deep inequities, and that’s no accident – a public health historian explains how the system was shaped to serve profit and politicians

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Zachary W. Schulz, Senior Lecturer of History, Auburn University

    Concessions to the private sector are one reason why health care is so costly. FS Productions/Tetra images via Getty Images

    A few years ago, a student in my history of public health course asked why her mother couldn’t afford insulin without insurance, despite having a full-time job. I told her what I’ve come to believe: The U.S. health care system was deliberately built this way.

    People often hear that health care in America is dysfunctional – too expensive, too complex and too inequitable. But dysfunction implies failure. What if the real problem is that the system is functioning exactly as it was designed to? Understanding this legacy is key to explaining not only why reform has failed repeatedly, but why change remains so difficult.

    I am a historian of public health with experience researching oral health access and health care disparities in the Deep South. My work focuses on how historical policy choices continue to shape the systems we rely on today.

    By tracing the roots of today’s system and all its problems, it’s easier to understand why American health care looks the way it does and what it will take to reform it into a system that provides high-quality, affordable care for all. Only by confronting how profit, politics and prejudice have shaped the current system can Americans imagine and demand something different.

    Decades of compromise

    My research and that of many others show that today’s high costs, deep inequities and fragmented care are predictable features developed from decades of policy choices that prioritized profit over people, entrenched racial and regional hierarchies, and treated health care as a commodity rather than a public good.

    Over the past century, U.S. health care developed not from a shared vision of universal care, but from compromises that prioritized private markets, protected racial hierarchies and elevated individual responsibility over collective well-being.

    Employer-based insurance emerged in the 1940s, not from a commitment to worker health but from a tax policy workaround during wartime wage freezes. The federal government allowed employers to offer health benefits tax-free, incentivizing coverage while sidestepping nationalized care. This decision bound health access to employment status, a structure that is still dominant today. In contrast, many other countries with employer-provided insurance pair it with robust public options, ensuring that access is not tied solely to a job.

    In 1965, Medicare and Medicaid programs greatly expanded public health infrastructure. Unfortunately, they also reinforced and deepened existing inequalities. Medicare, a federally administered program for people over 64, primarily benefited wealthier Americans who had access to stable, formal employment and employer-based insurance during their working years. Medicaid, designed by Congress as a joint federal-state program, is aimed at the poor, including many people with disabilities. The combination of federal and state oversight resulted in 50 different programs with widely variable eligibility, coverage and quality.

    Southern lawmakers, in particular, fought for this decentralization. Fearing federal oversight of public health spending and civil rights enforcement, they sought to maintain control over who received benefits. Historians have shown that these efforts were primarily designed to restrict access to health care benefits along racial lines during the Jim Crow period of time.

    Bloated bureaucracies, ‘creeping socialism’

    Today, that legacy is painfully visible.

    States that chose not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act are overwhelmingly located in the South and include several with large Black populations. Nearly 1 in 4 uninsured Black adults are uninsured because they fall into the coverage gap – unable to access affordable health insurance – they earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to receive subsidies through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace.

    The system’s architecture also discourages care aimed at prevention. Because Medicaid’s scope is limited and inconsistent, preventive care screenings, dental cleanings and chronic disease management often fall through the cracks. That leads to costlier, later-stage care that further burdens hospitals and patients alike.

    Meanwhile, cultural attitudes around concepts like “rugged individualism” and “freedom of choice” have long been deployed to resist public solutions. In the postwar decades, while European nations built national health care systems, the U.S. reinforced a market-driven approach.

    Publicly funded systems were increasingly portrayed by American politicians and industry leaders as threats to individual freedom – often dismissed as “socialized medicine” or signs of creeping socialism. In 1961, for example, Ronald Reagan recorded a 10-minute LP titled “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine,” which was distributed by the American Medical Association as part of a national effort to block Medicare.

    The health care system’s administrative complexity ballooned beginning in the 1960s, driven by the rise of state-run Medicaid programs, private insurers and increasingly fragmented billing systems. Patients were expected to navigate opaque billing codes, networks and formularies, all while trying to treat, manage and prevent illness. In my view, and that of other scholars, this isn’t accidental but rather a form of profitable confusion built into the system to benefit insurers and intermediaries.

    President Donald Trump’s proposed cuts would reduce Medicaid spending by about US$700 billion.

    Coverage gaps, chronic disinvestment

    Even well-meaning reforms have been built atop this structure. The Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, expanded access to health insurance but preserved many of the system’s underlying inequities. And by subsidizing private insurers rather than creating a public option, the law reinforced the central role of private companies in the health care system.

    The public option – a government-run insurance plan intended to compete with private insurers and expand coverage – was ultimately stripped from the Affordable Care Act during negotiations due to political opposition from both Republicans and moderate Democrats.

    When the U.S. Supreme Court made it optional in 2012 for states to offer expanded Medicaid coverage to low-income adults earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level, it amplified the very inequalities that the ACA sought to reduce.

    These decisions have consequences. In states like Alabama, an estimated 220,000 adults remain uninsured due to the Medicaid coverage gap – the most recent year for which reliable data is available – highlighting the ongoing impact of the state’s refusal to expand Medicaid.

    In addition, rural hospitals have closed, patients forgo care, and entire counties lack practicing OB/GYNs or dentists. And when people do get care – especially in states where many remain uninsured – they can amass medical debt that can upend their lives.

    All of this is compounded by chronic disinvestment in public health. Federal funding for emergency preparedness has declined for years, and local health departments are underfunded and understaffed.

    The COVID-19 pandemic revealed just how brittle the infrastructure is – especially in low-income and rural communities, where overwhelmed clinics, delayed testing, limited hospital capacity, and higher mortality rates exposed the deadly consequences of neglect.

    A system by design

    Change is hard not because reformers haven’t tried before, but because the system serves the very interests it was designed to serve. Insurers profit from obscurity – networks that shift, formularies that confuse, billing codes that few can decipher. Providers profit from a fee-for-service model that rewards quantity over quality, procedure over prevention. Politicians reap campaign contributions and avoid blame through delegation, diffusion and plausible deniability.

    This is not an accidental web of dysfunction. It is a system that transforms complexity into capital, bureaucracy into barriers.

    Patients – especially the uninsured and underinsured – are left to make impossible choices: delay treatment or take on debt, ration medication or skip checkups, trust the health care system or go without. Meanwhile, I believe the rhetoric of choice and freedom disguises how constrained most people’s options really are.

    Other countries show us that alternatives are possible. Systems in Germany, France and Canada vary widely in structure, but all prioritize universal access and transparency.

    Understanding what the U.S. health care system is designed to do – rather than assuming it is failing unintentionally – is a necessary first step toward considering meaningful change.

    Zachary W. Schulz 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. US health care is rife with high costs and deep inequities, and that’s no accident – a public health historian explains how the system was shaped to serve profit and politicians – https://theconversation.com/us-health-care-is-rife-with-high-costs-and-deep-inequities-and-thats-no-accident-a-public-health-historian-explains-how-the-system-was-shaped-to-serve-profit-and-politicians-256393

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Early visions of Mars: Meet the 19th-century astronomer who used science fiction to imagine the red planet

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Matthew Shindell, Curator, Planetary Science and Exploration, Smithsonian Institution

    Camille Flammarion’s work imagined what might exist beyond Earth in the universe. Three Lions/Hulton Archive via Getty Images

    Living in today’s age of ambitious robotic exploration of Mars, with an eventual human mission to the red planet likely to happen one day, it is hard to imagine a time when Mars was a mysterious and unreachable world. And yet, before the invention of the rocket, astronomers who wanted to explore Mars beyond what they could see through their telescopes had to use their imaginations.

    As a space historian and author of the book “For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet,” I’ve worked to understand how people in different times and places imagined Mars.

    The second half of the 19th century was a particularly interesting time to imagine Mars. This was a period during which the red planet seemed to be ready to give up some of its mystery. Astronomers were learning more about Mars, but they still didn’t have enough information to know whether it hosted life, and if so, what kind.

    With more powerful telescopes and new printing technologies, astronomers began applying the cartographic tools of geographers to create the first detailed maps of the planet’s surface, filling it in with continents and seas, and in some cases features that could have been produced by life. Because it was still difficult to see the actual surface features of Mars, these maps varied considerably.

    During this period, one prominent scientist and popularizer brought together science and imagination to explore the possibilities that life on another world could hold.

    Camille Flammarion

    The 19th-century astronomer and writer Camille Flammarion.
    Av Ukjent/The New York Public Library Digital Collections

    One imaginative thinker whose attention was drawn to Mars during this period was the Parisian astronomer Camille Flammarion. In 1892, Flammarion published “The Planet Mars,” which remains to this day a definitive history of Mars observation up through the 19th century. It summarized all the published literature about Mars since the time of Galileo in the 17th century. This work, he reported, required him to review 572 drawings of Mars.

    Like many of his contemporaries, Flammarion concluded that Mars, an older world that had gone through the same evolutionary stages as Earth, must be a living world. Unlike his contemporaries, he insisted that Mars, while it might be the most Earth-like planet in our solar system, was distinctly its own world.

    It was the differences that made Mars interesting to Flammarion, not the similarities. Any life found there would be evolutionarily adapted to its particular conditions – an idea that appealed to the author H.G. Wells when he imagined invading Martians in “The War of the Worlds.”

    An illustrated plate from ‘Astronomie Populaire – Description Generale du Ciel’ by Camille Flammarion. This map of Mars shows continents and oceans. In this, his best-selling epic work, Flammarion speculated that Mars was ‘an earth almost similar to ours [with] water, air, showers, brooks and fountains. This is certainly a place little different from that which we inhabit.’
    Science & Society Picture Library via Getty Images

    But Flammarion also admitted that it was difficult to pin down these differences, as “the distance is too great, our atmosphere is too dense, and our instruments are not perfect enough.” None of the maps he reviewed could be taken literally, he lamented, because everyone had seen and drawn Mars differently.

    Given this uncertainty about what had actually been seen on Mars’ surface, Flammarion took an agnostic stance in “The Planet Mars” as to the specific nature of life on Mars.

    He did, however, consider that if intelligent life did exist on Mars, it would be more ancient than human life on Earth. Logically, that life would be more perfect — akin to the peaceful, unified and technologically advanced civilization he predicted would come into being on Earth in the coming century.

    “We can however hope,” he wrote, “that since the world of Mars is older than our own, its inhabitants may be wiser and more advanced than we are. Undoubtedly it is the spirit of peace which has animated this neighboring world.”

    A plate from ‘Les Terres du Ciel’ (The Worlds of the Sky) written by Camille Flammarion. The plate is an artist’s impression of how canals on Mars might have looked.
    Science & Society Picture Library via Getty Images

    But as Flammarion informed his readers, “the Known is a tiny island in the midst of the ocean of the Unknown,” a point he often underscored in the more than 70 books he published in his lifetime. It was the “Unknown” that he found particularly tantalizing.

    Historians often describe Flammarion more as a popularizer than a serious scientist, but this should not diminish his accomplishments. For Flammarion, science wasn’t a method or a body of established knowledge. It was the nascent core of a new philosophy waiting to be born. He took his popular writing very seriously and hoped it could turn people’s minds toward the heavens.

    Imaginative novels

    Without resolving the planet’s surface or somehow communicating with its inhabitants, it was premature to speculate about what forms of life might exist on Mars. And yet, Flammarion did speculate — not so much in his scientific work, but in a series of novels he wrote over the course of his career.

    In these imaginative works, he was able to visit Mars and see its surface for himself. Unlike his contemporary, the science fiction author Jules Verne, who imagined a technologically facilitated journey to the Moon, Flammarion preferred a type of spiritual journey.

    Camille Flammarion looking through the telescope at the Observatory at Juvisy-sur-Orge.
    duncan1890/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    Based on his belief that human souls after death can travel through space in a way that the living body cannot, Flammarion’s novels include dream journeys as well as the accounts of deceased friends or fictional characters.

    In his novel “Urania” (1889), Flammarion’s soul visits Mars in a dream. Upon arrival, he encounters a deceased friend, George Spero, who has been reincarnated as a winged, luminous, six-limbed being.

    “Organisms can no more be earthly on Mars than they could be aerial at the bottom of the sea,” Flammarion writes.

    Later in the same novel, Spero’s soul visits Flammarion on Earth. He reveals that Martian civilization and science have progressed well beyond Earth, not only because Mars is an older world, but because the atmosphere is thinner and more suitable for astronomy.

    Flammarion imagined that practicing and popularizing astronomy, along with the other sciences, had helped advance Martian society.

    Flammarion’s imagined Martians lived intellectual lives untroubled by war, hunger and other earthly concerns. This was the life Flammarion wanted for his fellow Parisians, who had lived through the devastation of the Franco-Prussian war and suffered starvation and deprivation during the Siege of Paris and its aftermath.

    Today, Flammarion’s Mars is a reminder that imagining a future on Mars is as much about understanding ourselves and our societal aspirations as it is about developing the technologies to take us there.

    Flammarion’s popularization of science was his means of helping his fellow Earth-bound humans understand their place in the universe. They could one day join his imagined Martians, which weren’t meant to be taken any more literally than the maps of Mars he analyzed for “The Planet Mars.” His world was an example of what life could become under the right conditions.

    Matthew Shindell 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. Early visions of Mars: Meet the 19th-century astronomer who used science fiction to imagine the red planet – https://theconversation.com/early-visions-of-mars-meet-the-19th-century-astronomer-who-used-science-fiction-to-imagine-the-red-planet-254005

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Golden Dome dangers: An arms control expert explains how Trump’s missile defense threatens to make the US less safe

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Matthew Bunn, Professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security, and Foreign Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

    President Donald Trump has grandiose plans for Golden Dome. AP Photo/Alex Brandon

    President Donald Trump’s idea of a “Golden Dome” missile defense system carries a range of potential strategic dangers for the United States.

    Golden Dome is meant to protect the U.S. from ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles, and missiles launched from space. Trump has called for the missile defense to be fully operational before the end of his term in three years.

    Trump’s goals for Golden Dome are likely beyond reach. A wide range of studies makes clear that even defenses far more limited than what Trump envisions would be far more expensive and less effective than Trump expects, especially against enemy missiles equipped with modern countermeasures. Countermeasures include multiple warheads per missile, decoy warheads and warheads that can maneuver or are difficult to track, among others.

    Regardless of Golden Dome’s feasibility, there is a long history of scholarship about strategic missile defenses, and the weight of evidence points to the defenses making their host country less safe from nuclear attack.

    I’m a national security and foreign policy professor at Harvard University, where I lead “Managing the Atom,” the university’s main research group on nuclear weapons and nuclear energy policies. For decades, I’ve been participating in dialogues with Russian and Chinese nuclear experts – and their fears about U.S. missile defenses have been a consistent theme throughout.

    Russian President Vladmir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have already warned that Golden Dome is destabilizing. Along with U.S. offensive capabilities, Golden Dome poses a threat of “directly undermining global strategic stability, spurring an arms race and increasing conflict potential both among nuclear-weapon states and in the international arena as a whole,” a joint statement from China and Russia said. While that is a propaganda statement, it reflects real concerns broadly held in both countries.

    Golden Dome explained.

    History lessons

    Experience going back half a century makes clear that if the administration pursues Golden Dome, it is likely to provoke even larger arms buildups, derail already-dim prospects for any negotiated nuclear arms restraint, and perhaps even increase the chances of nuclear war.

    My first book, 35 years ago, made the case that it would be in the U.S. national security interest to remain within the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which strictly limited U.S. and Soviet – and later Russian – missile defenses. The United States and the Soviet Union negotiated the ABM Treaty as part of SALT I, the first agreements limiting the nuclear arms race. It was approved in the Senate 98-2.

    The ABM Treaty experience is instructive for the implications of Golden Dome today.

    Why did the two countries agree to limit defenses? First and foremost, because they understood that unless each side’s defenses were limited, they would not be able to stop an offensive nuclear arms race. If each side wants to maintain the ability to retaliate if the other attacks – “don’t nuke me, or I’ll nuke you” – then an obvious answer to one side building up more defenses is for the other to build up more nuclear warheads.

    For example, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviets installed 100 interceptors to defend Moscow – so the United States targeted still more warheads on Moscow to overwhelm the defense. Had it ever come to a nuclear war, Moscow would have been even more thoroughly obliterated than if there had been no defense at all. Both sides came to realize that unlimited missile defenses would just mean more offense on both sides, leaving both less secure than before.

    In addition, nations viewed an adversary’s shield as going hand in hand with a nuclear sword. A nuclear first strike might destroy a major part of a country’s nuclear forces. Missile defenses would inevitably be more effective against the reduced, disorganized retaliation that they knew would be coming than they would be against a massive, well-planned surprise attack. That potential advantage to whoever struck first could make nuclear crises even more dangerous.

    Post-ABM Treaty world

    Unfortunately, President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the ABM Treaty in 2002, seeking to free U.S. development of defenses against potential missile attacks from small states such as North Korea. But even now, decades later, the U.S. has fewer missile interceptors deployed (44) than the treaty permitted (100).

    The U.S. pullout did not lead to an immediate arms buildup or the end of nuclear arms control. But Putin has complained bitterly about U.S. missile defenses and the U.S. refusal to accept any limitation at all on them. He views the U.S. stance as an effort to achieve military superiority by negating Russia’s nuclear deterrent.

    Russia is investing heavily in new types of strategic nuclear weapons intended to avoid U.S. missile defenses, from an intercontinental nuclear torpedo to a missile that can go around the world and attack from the south, while U.S. defenses are mainly pointed north toward Russia.

    Russia maintains a large force of nuclear weapons like this mobile intercontinental ballistic missile.
    Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via APPEAR

    Similarly, much of China’s nuclear buildup appears to be driven by wanting a reliable nuclear deterrent in the face of the United States’ capability to strike its nuclear forces and use missile defenses to mop up the remainder. Indeed, China was so angered by South Korea’s deployment of U.S.-provided regional defenses – which they saw as aiding the U.S. ability to intercept their missiles – that they imposed stiff sanctions on South Korea.

    Fuel to the fire

    Now, Trump wants to go much further, with a defense “forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland,” with a success rate “very close to 100%.” I believe that this effort is highly likely to lead to still larger nuclear buildups in Russia and China. The Putin-Xi joint statement pledges to “counter” defenses “aimed at achieving military superiority.”

    Given the ease of developing countermeasures that are extraordinarily difficult for defenses to overcome, odds are the resulting offense-defense competition will leave the United States worse off than before – and a good bit poorer.

    Putin and Xi made clear that they are particularly concerned about the thousands of space-based interceptors Trump envisions. These interceptors are designed to hit missiles while their rockets are still burning during launch.

    Most countries are likely to oppose the idea of deploying huge numbers of weapons in space – and these interceptors would be both expensive and vulnerable. China and Russia could focus on further developing anti-satellite weapons to blow a hole in the defense, increasing the risk of space war.

    Already, there is a real danger that the whole effort of negotiated limits to temper nuclear arms racing may be coming to an end. The last remaining treaty limiting U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, the New START Treaty, expires in February 2026. China’s rapid nuclear buildup is making many defense officials and experts in Washington call for a U.S. buildup in response.

    Intense hostility all around means that for now, neither Russia nor China is even willing to sit down to discuss nuclear restraints, in treaty form or otherwise.

    A way forward

    In my view, adding Golden Dome to this combustible mix would likely end any prospect of avoiding a future of unrestrained and unpredictable nuclear arms competition. But paths away from these dangers are available.

    It would be quite plausible to design defenses that would provide some protection against attacks from a handful of missiles from North Korea or others that would not seriously threaten Russian or Chinese deterrent forces – and design restraints that would allow all parties to plan their offensive forces knowing what missile defenses they would be facing in the years to come.

    I believe that Trump should temper his Golden Dome ambitions to achieve his other dream – of negotiating a deal to reduce nuclear dangers.

    Matthew Bunn is a member of the National Academies Committee on International Security and Arms Control and a board member of the Arms Control Association. He is a member of the Academic Alliance of the United States Strategic Command and a consultant to Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

    – ref. Golden Dome dangers: An arms control expert explains how Trump’s missile defense threatens to make the US less safe – https://theconversation.com/golden-dome-dangers-an-arms-control-expert-explains-how-trumps-missile-defense-threatens-to-make-the-us-less-safe-258048

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Hong Kong: New charges against Joshua Wong designed to prolong his stay behind bars – Amnesty International

    Source: Amnesty International

    Responding to jailed Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong being newly charged with “conspiring to collude with foreign forces” under the city’s National Security Law, Amnesty International’s China Director Sarah Brooks said:

    “Hong Kong’s National Security Law may be turning five years old at the end of the month, and these new charges against Joshua Wong show that its capacity to be used by the Hong Kong authorities to threaten human rights in the city is as potent and present as ever.

    “Once again, the vague and sweeping offence of ‘collusion with foreign forces’ is being weaponized to justify an attack on the freedoms of expression and association.

    “Wong, already jailed for his participation in informal primaries, would have been released in a year and a half. But if this case goes forward, he could face as much as a life sentence.

    “This latest charge against him underscores the authorities’ fear of prominent dissidents and shows the lengths they will go to keep them behind bars for as long as possible – in so doing, continuing a chilling effect on civic activism in the city. The Hong Kong government must drop these charges and cease enforcing the National Security Law immediately, as called for by UN bodies. All people jailed simply for exercising their human rights must be set free.”

    Background

    Joshua Wong was on Friday charged with conspiring to collude with foreign forces under Hong Kong’s Beijing-imposed National Security Law.

    The prominent activist, who was one of 45 opposition figures jailed under the National Security Law last year over their participation in unofficial “primaries”in 2020, faced the new national security offence in court on Friday.

    Under the new charge, Wong is reportedly accused of conspiring with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and “other persons unknown” between July 2020 and November 2020 to request foreign countries or organizations to impose sanctions, blockades or engage in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China. The new charge carries a potential life sentence.

    Wong was previously sentenced to four years and eight months for “conspiracy to commit subversion” in Hong Kong’s largest prosecution under the National Security Law.

    Hong Kong’s human rights situation has deteriorated dramatically since 2020, with more than 300 people arrested for violating the Beijing-imposed National Security Law or a colonial-era “sedition” law. In addition, the so-called Article 23 legislation introduced last year by the territorial/local authorities has further deepened repression and silenced opposition voices in the city.

    MIL OSI – Submitted News –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Energy Sector – Equinor’s Energy Perspectives 2025

    Source: Equinor

    06 JUNE 2025 – Energy Perspectives 2025 presents four scenarios for the future world economy, international energy markets and energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.

    Long-term forecasts of the development in global energy markets are normally very difficult. As this year’s Energy Perspectives report is published, the task is even more complex, as global markets and geopolitics are undergoing massive shifts with unpredictable consequences in both the shorter and longer term. Political priorities affecting global energy markets are shifting further away from decarbonisation towards energy affordability and security of energy supply. On top of this, it is nearly impossible to gauge the short-term impact of trade conflicts and new rules in the geopolitics game.

    “The geopolitical landscape and trade conflicts clearly illustrate that the global cooperation needed for a Paris-aligned energy transition is not present”, says SVP and Chief economist Eirik Wærness.

    A global energy transition roughly in line with the ambitions of the Paris Agreement has become severely delayed and more fragmented, and global greenhouse emissions continued to increase last year. Despite numerous positive developments, the macroeconomic, political and geopolitical realities are characterised by lack of trust, cooperation and burden-sharing, that are slowing down the pace of change foreseen in the Paris Agreement. A reversal of this development will take time, and its success is by no means guaranteed. With short-termism and local and regional priorities dominating policy making, the necessary global changes in the direction of truly sustainable development, balancing the different concerns in the energy trilemma, will be further delayed.

    Energy Perspectives 2025 presents four scenarios for the future world economy, international energy markets and energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. The scenarios are built to show how divergent drivers in the energy trilemma (energy security, affordability and decarbonisation) affect long-term developments. The scenarios are not predictions, but possible contrasting pathways, providing a platform for debate, strategic planning and decision making.

    “The insights and analysis provided by Energy Perspectives help us navigate short-term uncertainties without losing sight of long-term tr

    MIL OSI – Submitted News –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: Dmitry Grigorenko: Agreement on the Elimination of Violations – a New Instrument in Control Activities

    Translation. Region: Russian Federal

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

    Document

    Resolution of May 31, 2025 No. 829

    Commercial and government organizations may enter into agreements with regulatory authorities on the proper elimination of identified violations. From the moment the agreement is concluded, the order to eliminate the identified violation is suspended. The corresponding resolution was signed by the Government. This instrument is aimed at reducing the administrative burden on business as part of improving control and supervisory activities under the leadership of Deputy Prime Minister – Head of the Government Staff Dmitry Grigorenko.

    The organizations that may apply for the conclusion of an agreement include government agencies, local government bodies, state and municipal institutions, as well as city-forming and strategic enterprises, defense industry organizations, enterprises in the housing and utilities sector, energy, communications, transport, agriculture, and pharmaceutical production.

    Applications from organizations will be considered only for those types of supervision where the controlled entities are primarily organizations of strategic or high socio-economic importance. The effect of the resolution extends to eight types of control:

    — federal state supervision in the field of industrial safety,

    — Federal State Energy Supervision,

    — federal state supervision in the field of safety of hydraulic structures,

    — Federal State Mining Supervision,

    — federal state environmental control (supervision),

    — federal state geological control (supervision),

    — federal state land control (supervision);

    — federal state licensing control of activities related to the production of medicines.

    “The mechanism of agreements will prevent situations when administrative liability for a detected violation may lead to a halt in production, staff reductions, or a reduction in the output of socially significant products. Control authorities must accommodate organizations and build partnerships with them. Especially if eliminating violations requires significant financial and time costs, or the allocation of additional budget funds,” commented Deputy Prime Minister and Head of the Government Staff Dmitry Grigorenko.

    To conclude an agreement, organizations develop a draft program for eliminating the identified violations and provide documents confirming that significant time, material costs and capital investments are needed to eliminate the violations. This must be done within 10 working days from the date of receipt of the order.

    The signed agreement is being coordinated with the prosecutor’s office.

    If an agreement is concluded and comes into force, the order regarding the identified violations of mandatory requirements is suspended; after their elimination, the controlled person is not subject to administrative liability.

    Applications can be submitted for violations identified since June 1, 2025. Applications will be denied for those that pose a direct threat to human life and health. For example, if we are talking about corrosion or partial destruction of power line supports, which can lead to collapse, line breakage and, as a result, mass power outages.

    This resolution was developed by the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia and adopted in pursuance of the amendments to the Federal Law “On State Control (Supervision) and Municipal Control in the Russian Federation” that came into force in 2025.

    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.

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: Financial news: On the 100th anniversary of the All-Russian Society of the Blind (06.06.2025)

    Translation. Region: Russian Federal

    Source: Central Bank of Russia –

    The All-Russian Society of the Blind (VOS) today unites more than 185 thousand people and helps them overcome difficulties, protect their rights and live interesting, fulfilling lives.

    On June 9, 2025, the Bank of Russia will issue into circulation a commemorative silver coin of 3 rubles denomination “100th Anniversary of the All-Russian Society of the Blind” from the “Historical Events” series (catalog No. 5111-0520).

    The silver coin with a face value of 3 rubles (pure precious metal weight – 31.1 g, alloy fineness – 925) has the shape of a circle with a diameter of 39.0 mm.

    There is a raised edge around the circumference of both the front and back sides of the coin.

    On the obverse of the coin there is a relief image of the State Emblem of the Russian Federation, the inscriptions “RUSSIAN FEDERATION”, “BANK OF RUSSIA”, the coin denomination “3 RUBLES”, the date “2025”, the designation of the metal according to the Periodic Table of Elements of D.I. Mendeleyev, the alloy fineness, the trademark of the St. Petersburg Mint and the pure mass of the precious metal.

    On the reverse side of the coin there is a colored relief logo of the All-Russian Society of the Blind; a relief inscription “100 years” in Braille; at the bottom there is a relief inscription in two lines “100 YEARS”. Above the VOS logo there is a QR code made using the laser matting technique. When you point the smartphone camera at it, the official VOS website opens, where you can get information about the coin using audio description.

    The side surface of the coin is ribbed.

    The coin is made in proof quality.

    The mintage of the coin is 5.0 thousand pieces.

    The issued coin is a legal tender in the territory of the Russian Federation and must be accepted at face value for all types of payments without restrictions.

    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: //vv. KBR.ru/Press/PR/? File = 638847412789745027KOins.HTM

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why the Musk and Trump relationship is breaking down – a psychologist explains

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Geoff Beattie, Professor of Psychology, Edge Hill University

    It is not a good break-up. These were always two big beasts used to getting their own way. Two alpha males, if you like the evolutionary metaphor, trying to get along. And now the Donald Trump and Elon Musk relationship is in meltdown.

    Who could forget that iconic image from just a few short weeks back? Elon Musk standing behind the seated the US president, Donald Trump, in the Oval Office, towering over him. Trump, his hands clasped, having to turn awkwardly to look up at him. That silent language of the body. Musk accompanied by his four-year old, a charming and informal image, or that great evolutionary signal of mating potential and dominance, depending on your point of view.

    These were also clearly two massive narcissistic egos out in their gleaming open-top speedster. Musk was appointed special advisor to Trump, heading the Department of Government Efficiency, cutting excess and waste. The backseat driver for a while.

    There were a lot of bureaucratic casualties already, road kill at the side of the highway as the sports car roared on with frightening speed. But things were always going to be difficult if they hit a bump in the road. And they did. Perhaps, more quickly than many had imagined.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    There were differing views on what caused the crash. Many pointed to the dramatic fall in the sales of Tesla, a 71% fall in profits in one quarter, and the inevitable impact on Musk’s reputation. And yesterday Tesla shares were falling even faster, as investors panicked. The attacks on Tesla showrooms couldn’t have helped either.

    Others pointed to Trump’s proposed removal of the tax credit for owners of electric vehicles, or the political backlash in Washington over Space X’s potential involvement in Trump’s proposed “golden dome” anti-missile defense system.

    However, according to former White House strategist Steve Bannon, what really caused the crash was when the president refused to show Musk the Pentagon’s attack plans for any possible war with China. There’s only so far being the president’s best buddy can get you. Bannon is reported as saying: “You could feel it. Everything changed.” That, according to Bannon, was the beginning of the end.



    Read more:
    Trump sees himself as more like a king than president. Here’s why

    Elon Musk has criticised Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’.

    So now we watch Trump and Musk stumbling away from the crash scene. One minute Trump is putting on a show for the cameras. He’s beaming away and introducing the “big, beautiful bill”, a budget reconciliation bill that rolls together hundreds of controversial proposals. Next, he is accusing Musk of “going crazy” and talking about withdrawing government contracts from the Musk empire.

    Musk is unhappy too. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” he wrote on X. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong.”

    Rejection and repositioning

    He says he’s disgusted by the bill. Disgust is one of the most primitive of all the emotions. A survival mechanism – you must avoid what disgusts you. He’s social signalling here, alerting others, warning them that there’s something disgusting in the camp.

    Musk is highly attuned to public perception, perhaps even more so than Trump (which is saying something). With his acquisition of X (formerly Twitter), Musk was able to direct (and add to) online discourse, shaping public conversations.

    Psychologically, Musk’s rejection of Trump is an attempt to simultaneously elevate himself and diminish the man behind the bill. He can call out the president’s action like nobody else. He is positioning himself anew as that free thinker, that risk taker, innovative, courageous, unfettered by any ties. That is his personality, his brand – and he’s reasserting it.

    Trump on Musk’s criticism of the ‘big beautiful bill’

    But it’s also a vengeful act. And it’s perhaps reminiscent of another political insider (and geek), former Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings, who was sacked by the then UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, in 2020. Cummings was accused of masterminding leaks about the social gatherings in Downing Street.

    He went on to criticise Johnson as lacking the necessary discipline and focus for a prime minister as well as questioning his competence and decision-making abilities. The revenge of a self-proclaimed genius.

    And revenge is sweet. In a 2004 study, researchers scanned participants’ brains using positron emission tomography (PET) – a medical imaging technique that is used to study brain function (among other things) – while the participants played an economic game based on trust. When trust was violated, participants wanted revenge, and this was reflected in increased activity in the reward-related regions of the brain, the dorsal striatum.

    Revenge, in other words, is primarily about making yourself feel better rather than righting any wrongs. Your act may make you appear moral but it may be more selfish.

    But revenge for what here? That’s where these big narcissistic egos come into play.

    Psychologically, narcissists are highly sensitive to perceived slights – real or imagined. Musk may have felt Trump was attempting to diminish his achievements for political gain, violating this pact of mutual respect. This kind of sensitivity can quickly transmogrify admiration into contempt.

    Contempt, coincidentally, is the single best predictor of a breakdown in very close relationships.

    Disgust and contempt are powerful emotions, evolving to protect us – disgust from physical contamination (spoiled food, disease), and contempt from social or moral contamination (betrayal, incompetence). Both involve rejection – disgust rejects something physically; contempt rejects something socially or morally. Musk may be giving it to Trump with both barrels here.

    Break-ups are always hard, they get much harder when emotions like these get intertwined with the process.

    But how will the most powerful man in the world respond to this sort of rejection from the richest man in the world? And where will it end?

    Geoff Beattie 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. Why the Musk and Trump relationship is breaking down – a psychologist explains – https://theconversation.com/why-the-musk-and-trump-relationship-is-breaking-down-a-psychologist-explains-258213

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: US state passes law allowing experimental drugs to be prescribed – a model for the future?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dipa Kamdar, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, Kingston University

    fizkes/Shutterstock.com

    The US state of Montana has become the first in the country to let patients try experimental drugs – even if they are not terminally ill.

    The new law allows doctors to refer patients to licensed “experimental treatment centres”, where they can access drugs that have only passed phase 1 clinical trials – the earliest stage of testing in humans.

    This goes far beyond existing federal law, which only allows terminally ill patients to access such drugs under the Right to Try Act, passed in 2017.

    Montana already had a fairly permissive right to try law, which was originally designed to let terminally ill patients access treatments that hadn’t yet received full approval by the drug regulator.

    In 2023, that law was expanded to include patients with any medical condition. The latest law goes even further, creating a formal system for clinics to offer these experimental treatments.

    According to an article in MIT Technology Review, the new law was shaped and promoted by a group of longevity advocates – a mix of scientists and influencers who are focused on extending human life.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    Before new medicines reach the market, they usually go through several stages of testing. A phase 1 trial is the first step in human studies and is designed to find a safe dose and spot early side-effects. It typically involves a small group – between 20 and 100 people – and does not prove the drug works.

    Only around 12% of drugs that enter phase 1 trials go on to gain full approval. Many fail due to safety issues or lack of effectiveness.

    Montana’s new law allows access to these early-stage treatments with a doctor’s recommendation – even for patients who are not terminally ill. Clinics must be licensed as experimental treatment centres, and 2% of their profits must be used to help low-income patients access these therapies.

    Supporters say it gives people more control over their own health and could help boost innovation in areas like cancer, neurodegenerative disease and age-related decline. There is also hope it could turn Montana into a destination for medical tourism, attracting biotech investment.

    But critics warn that the move could put vulnerable patients at risk.

    Drugs in phase 1 trials may be safe enough to test – but their long-term effects are still unknown, and they may not work. There are also concerns over whether insurers will cover complications, since the drugs are not approved. Legal protections for both patients and doctors remain unclear.

    Longevity advocates could use the new law to try experimental anti-ageing drugs.
    Hyejin Kang/Shutterstock.com

    The situation in other countries

    Elsewhere in the world, access to experimental drugs is more tightly controlled.

    In the UK, experimental drugs are usually only available through formal clinical trials or special “compassionate use” requests – all subject to strict oversight by regulators like the Medicines and Healthcare products
    Regulatory Agency     and the Health Research Authority.

    The same applies across the EU, where compassionate use is typically limited to drugs in later stages of testing.

    Japan has a similar system, called “expanded access clinical trials”, which also limits use to drugs already in phase 2 or beyond.

    And in South America, some countries allow patients to keep receiving experimental drugs after trials end – but not to start them outside of a trial.

    Montana’s decision marks a bold new approach in the continuing debate over patient rights. It raises big questions about safety, ethics, regulation and the role of government in balancing innovation with public health. It could end up being a model for other states – or a cautionary tale.

    Dipa Kamdar 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. US state passes law allowing experimental drugs to be prescribed – a model for the future? – https://theconversation.com/us-state-passes-law-allowing-experimental-drugs-to-be-prescribed-a-model-for-the-future-256991

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Six TV moments that changed British LGBTQ+ history – and what we can learn from them

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kate McNicholas Smith, Lecturer in Television Theory, University of Westminster

    The past two decades have seen a notable rise in LGBTQ+ representation on TV. Recent shifts, however, seem to threaten that progress. LGBTQ+ characters continue to meet tragic ends on screen – while off-screen, queer shows are being cancelled, media companies in the US have joined others in rolling back DEI initiatives and anti-LGBTQ+ violence is on the rise.

    At this critical moment, it feels apt to take a look back at some of the moments that made British LGBTQ+ TV history, exploring why they mattered and what we can learn from them.

    Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

    1. Man Alive (1967)

    In June 1967, the BBC documentary and current affairs series Man Alive focused two episodes on homosexuality. These episodes featured interviews with gay men and lesbian women about their lives and experiences, and how society treats them.

    The episode on “the women” featured an interview set in The Gateways club, a long-running lesbian nightclub on the Kings Road in west London (it closed in 1985). The Gateways also appeared in 1968 film, The Killing of Sister George, one of the first mainstream film representations of lesbian characters.

    ‘The Women’ episode of Man Alive.

    The month after the Man Alive documentaries aired, the Sexual Offences Act legalised homosexual acts between men over the age of 21 in England and Wales, so long as they took place consensually and in private.

    Documentaries such as these took an outside-looking-in approach to the subject matter, but nonetheless addressed the significant (albeit limited) shifts seen in this period.

    2. Girl (1974)

    In 1974, an episode of BBC Birmingham’s anthology series Second City Firsts featured the first kiss between two women on British television. The post-watershed television play portrayed a past relationship between Myra Francis’ army corporal, Chrissie, and Alison Steadman’s recruit Jackie. While this is no happily-ever-after romance, happier flashbacks do show the two women in bed together – a brief, but radical for its time, representation of queer intimacy.

    The broadcast was, unsurprisingly, controversial and was preceded by a special announcement from the controller of BBC. The rights of LGBTQ+ people in the military later became a major campaign, with the ban on openly gay and lesbian people serving lifted in the UK in 2000.

    Notably, fights for LGBTQ+ rights in the military demand equality, but also raise questions around the kinds of inclusions LGBTQ+ people are fighting for. As many activists and writers have argued, LGBTQ+ rights can be co-opted in ways that include some but exclude others, or justify other oppressive forces (for example in what is often referred to as pinkwashing).

    3. Lesbian activists protest Section 28 on the six o’clock news (1988)

    In May 1988, Margeret Thatcher’s Conservative government brought in Section 28: legislation that prohibited local authorities and schools from “promoting” homosexuality, reflecting the powerful anti-LGBTQ+ prejudice of the period.

    The lesbian protestors remember the moment they stormed the studio.

    The evening before the legislation was passed in parliament, a group of lesbian activists interrupted the live broadcast of the six o’clock news. As one of the protesters, Booan Temple, reflected: “By getting on the news, we would be the news.”

    The bill still passed, and Section 28 remained in place until 2000 in Scotland, and 2003 in England and Wales, but the power of LGBTQ+ resistance was palpable. Looking back today, there are worrying echoes of the moral panics of the 1980s to be found in the current climate.

    4. The Brookside kiss (1994)

    In 1985, Gordan Collins (Mark Burgess) came out on Channel 4’s popular soap opera, Brookside – making him the first openly gay character on a British television series. Five years later the soap featured the first pre-watershed kiss between two women, when Beth Jordache (Anna Friel) kissed Margaret Clemence (Nicola Stephenson).

    Anna Friel looks back on her lesbian kiss scene from Brookside.

    The kiss was so culturally significant that it later featured in Danny Boyle’s 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony. Just one year after the episode, however, Beth died off screen in prison, an example of the “bury your gays” trope (where LGBTQ+ characters are frequently killed off in TV and film).

    Meanwhile, 1994 also saw Eastenders introduce Della Alexander (Michelle Joseph), the soap’s first lesbian and one of the first Black LGBTQ+ characters on British television. Della and girlfriend Binnie departed the soap a year later.

    Bisexual actor Pam St Clement, who played Eastenders matriarch Pat Butcher reflected: “Having given themselves that brief, they didn’t know what the fuck to do with it.”

    5. Coronation Street’s Hayley Cropper (1998)

    In 1998 it was Coronation Street’s turn to make LGBTQ+ TV history, when the ITV soap introduced Hayley Cropper (Julie Hesmondhalgh), a transgender woman initially intended for a comic “bad date” storyline.

    Julie Hesmondhalgh reflecting on Hayley Cropper’s ‘coming out’ scene many years later.

    Following criticism from trans activists, ITV recruited trans actress Annie Wallace as a research assistant to work with Hesmondhalgh on the role. In 2015, Wallace joined Hollyoaks, becoming the first transgender person to play a regular transgender character on a British soap opera.

    Hayley went on to exceed her problematic origins and win the hearts of audiences, educating them, as she did so, on the prejudices and legal barriers trans people faced. Hesmondhalgh, a trans ally and supporter of the charity Trans Media Watch, has, however, reflected that, as a cis actor, she “definitely wouldn’t take it” if the role was offered to her today.

    6. Queer as Folk (1999)

    Back on Channel 4, 1999 saw the broadcast of another groundbreaking show: Queer as Folk, written by Russell T Davies. Based around Manchester’s gay village, Queer as Folk broke boundaries with an unapologetic portrayal of the lives, loves and lusts of a group of queer characters.

    From explicit sex scenes to queer family making, the series’ represented LGBTQ+ lives in previously unseen ways. This radical visibility was, however, largely limited to white gay male characters – reflecting longstanding inequalities in media representation.

    The trailer for Queer as Folk.

    In later work, Davies has represented a more diverse spectrum of LGBTQ+ experience. Returning to Manchester’s queer scene again in 2015, anthology series Banana (2015) began with the story of Dean, a young Black gay man portrayed by British Nigerian actor Fisayo Akinade, and featured Bethany Black as the first trans actor to play a trans role in a British series (a few months before Annie Wallace joined Hollyoaks).

    The following years have seen more, and more diverse, examples of LGBTQ+ representation on TV. But tired tropes and exclusions continue, and the power of representation to shape possibilities, protections and prejudices is more pressing than ever.

    Kate McNicholas Smith 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. Six TV moments that changed British LGBTQ+ history – and what we can learn from them – https://theconversation.com/six-tv-moments-that-changed-british-lgbtq-history-and-what-we-can-learn-from-them-258126

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Enjoy music, activities and the joy of nature at Smestow Valley Midsummer Festival

    Source: City of Wolverhampton

    The Smestow Valley Midsummer Festival takes place on Saturday 21 June, and has been organised by Wildside Activity Centre, in partnership with City of Wolverhampton Council and Friends of Smestow Valley.

    Entertainment will include live music from local band Just in Time, guided walks from Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust, scavenger and bug hunts around the valley site, a mindfulness yoga experience, children’s craft activities and refreshments at the reserve’s Cupcake Lane café.

    There will also be a range of stalls with representatives from the Black Country Geopark, Friends of Smestow Valley, local businesses Nature Makers and Peace of Mindfulness, Wightwick Manor, Canal & River Trust and Wildside Activity Centre.

    The day will run from 10am to 3pm and will take place along the track by the Cupcake Lane café.

    Residents are welcome to come along and enjoy the festival as well as find out more about the work currently being done at the site under the ongoing project to Explore, Enhance, Protect and Promote Smestow Valley.

    Last year, City of Wolverhampton Council, together with partner Canal & River Trust and Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust, secured funding of £217,000 from The Heritage Lottery Fund to develop plans for a full application of around £2 million to be submitted in 2026.

    If the application for this delivery phase is successful, renovation of the much loved Meccano bridge is planned, along with other structures linked to the disused railway line which forms the main path through Smestow Valley.

    During the initial development phase, the council has worked with partners Canal & River Trust and Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust as well as the Wildside Activity Centre, Friends of Smestow Valley and Waterside Care.

    This partnership approach has seen a wide range of activity at the site, including improvements to the canal towpath, planting wildflower meadows, restoring historic ponds and hedges and planting native flowers including bluebells and wild garlic.

    These activities, which were funded by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, helped develop a range of volunteering opportunities as well as an approach to volunteering for the future.

    Over time, the whole project at Smestow Valley aims to increase engagement through school visits, heritage focused volunteering opportunities, biodiversity enhancements, community events, artwork and interpretation as well as online information.

    Councillor Bhupinder Gakhal, cabinet member for resident services at City of Wolverhampton Council, said: “The Midsummer Festival promises to be a lot of fun for the whole family with a wide range of activities, attractions and stalls on offer.

    “Smestow Valley is a real hidden gem in the city, and we’re delighted to be working with such a wide range of committed partners and local people under the Explore, Enhance, Protect and Promote project to create a green space that we can all be proud of.

    “I’d encourage everyone to come and find out more about the site and enjoy a day with family and friends in beautiful surroundings. We want to welcome our residents along to the Smestow Valley Midsummer Festival – come and make the most of the longest day of the year!”

    Parking is limited, so visitors are welcome to come by foot, bike, bus or, as the valley is by the canal, by boat.

    To find out about the latest activities at the valley and how to get involved visit the Facebook page or sign up to the newsletter.

    To request a guided tour of the site, contact Enquiries.Parks@wolverhampton.gov.uk

    Smestow Valley and rail network is a 4.5km long site, which forms part of the Black Country UNESCO Global Geopark and has a rich history dating back to Anglo-Saxon times. It provides visitors with opportunities for healthy activities including walking, cycling and boating.

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Leeds is on the right road as new minibuses provide vital support service

    Source: City of Leeds

    Leeds City Council has underlined its commitment to fairness and opportunity for all by making some impressive new additions to its fleet of accessible minibuses.

    The council has taken delivery of 22 Treka Mobility+ vehicles, which are now being used on a daily basis to transport people with special educational needs and disabilities to and from learning, day care and other community settings.

    The minibuses are designed to offer maximum flexibility and comfort, with features requested by the council – including glider doors, detachable seating and lift access for wheelchairs – ensuring they fully meet a whole range of individual requirements and provide an enjoyable journey experience.

    The investment aligns with the council’s Best City Ambition, which aims to make sure that Leeds is a place where people – whatever their background or personal circumstances – can lead happy, healthy and fulfilling lives.

    The community-focused modernisation of this part of the local authority’s passenger transport fleet will also, it is anticipated, bring long-term financial benefits by reducing ad-hoc maintenance costs and delivering more efficient levels of fuel consumption.

    The council has worked closely with Treka for a number of years, with the reliability and quality of the Yorkshire-based vehicle manufacturer’s aftercare service and support playing a key role in the enduring success of the relationship between the two.

    Councillor Debra Coupar, Leeds City Council’s deputy leader and executive member for resources, said:

    “The accessibility, flexibility and comfort offered by these minibuses will mean easier and more enjoyable journeys for everyone who uses them. 

    “In challenging financial times I’m pleased and proud that we have been able to fund this investment to provide high-quality transport for our residents which will make a really positive difference to their lives.

    “I’d like to thank our drivers and the many other council staff who keep our vital passenger transport services on the road day in, day out, they really are helping to change people’s lives.”

    Treka secured the contract to supply the minibuses following an open and transparent tender process conducted through the council’s approved third party framework for vehicle purchases.

    More details about the range of support provided by the council’s passenger transport service can be found here. The addition of the minibuses means the service now has 219 full-sized welfare vehicles at its disposal.

    Click here for further information about the Best City Ambition – the council’s vision for the future of Leeds – and how it aims to improve local people’s lives up to 2030 and beyond.

    ENDS

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Save Loch Lomond: 50,000 people write to Planning Minister

    Source: Scottish Greens

    06 Jun 2025 Nature Save Loch Lomond

    There is still time for a Government U-turn to save Loch Lomond.

    More in Nature

    Scottish Green MSP and Save Loch Lomond campaigner Ross Greer has called on the Scottish Government’s Planning Minister to “listen to the Scottish public, not a millionaire theme park operator”. This comes as over 50,000 people write to Ivan McKee in just two weeks, demanding that the Scottish Government withdraw its approval for Flamingo Land’s Loch Lomond mega-resort application.

    Using a portal on the Scottish Greens website, over 50,000 people have now called on the Planning Minister to stop the controversial Flamingo Land proposals to build a mega-resort on the banks of Loch Lomond, including a waterpark, two hotels, over 100 woodland lodges, 370 parking spaces, a monorail and more.

    The planning application is the most opposed in Scottish planning history, with over 155,000 individuals lodging objections ahead of a public hearing last September, alongside organisations such as the National Trust for Scotland, the Woodland Trust, the Ramblers, and Scottish Government environment watchdog, SEPA.

    Despite the National Park’s board rejecting the application unanimously, a Scottish Government official overturned that decision on appeal. 

    Both the Planning Minister and First Minister have refused to use their powers to recall and reject the application, effectively giving Flamingo Land a clear path to proceed with their destructive plans. However, SNP Ministers have just used their powers to block the development of a horse racing track on the site of the battle of Bannockburn due to its historical significance.

    Mr Greer said: 

    “The Scottish Government has got this badly wrong. They are about to allow a greedy developer to trash the gateway to our National Park. It is not too late for a u-turn though. They can still save Loch Lomond.

    “In just two weeks the Planning Minister has heard directly from over 50,000 people calling on him to block these proposals. Public opinion couldn’t be clearer and it is backed up by experts including the Government’s own environment watchdog.

    “I have campaigned side by side with local residents in Balloch for nearly ten years now to stop Flamingo Land. At every stage we have won on the basis of the overwhelming evidence against their plans, but that has all now been overturned by the Scottish Government.

    “I do not understand why the Scottish Government are determined to cosy up to greedy theme park operators rather than protect Scotland’s world famous natural heritage.

    “It’s time for Government Ministers to actually listen to the people of Scotland and save Loch Lomond.”

    Mr Greer added:

    “Thank you to everyone who has yet again taken the time to object to this destructive mega-resort. Together we can stop Flamingo Land. Please continue to share greens.scot/LochLomond with friends and family to ensure the Scottish Government hears how much the public expect them to u-turn and reject these destructive plans.”

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –