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  1. Ministries Of Education Of Latin America And The Caribbean Commit To Increase Efforts To Recover And Transform Educational Systems Authorities, gathered in Chile for the Santiago 2024 Education Ministerial at the end of January, agreed to work to recover what was lost during the pandemic and to transform educational systems. They emphasized the importance of sustainable funding, innovative policies, and inclusive and resilient strategies to move from commitment to action. Read
  2. Canada Announces $123 Million in Funding to Improve Security in Haiti Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, participated in an international pledging event in support of Haiti, while in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. Read
  3. Millennium Challenge Corporation Advances Threshold Partnerships in Tanzania and Kenya Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Deputy CEO Chidi Blyden met with government officials in Tanzania and Kenya last week to advance threshold grant partnerships, which support poverty-reducing policy and institutional reforms. Read
  4. NTIA Solicits Comments on Open-Weight AI Models The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) launched a Request for Comment on the risks, benefits and potential policy related to advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models with widely available model weights – the core component of AI systems. Read
  5. Somalia Launches New Joint Climate and Economic Resilience Program The Federal Government of Somalia has recently launched the next iteration of the “Joint Resilience Program”, which aims to improve resilience to economic and climate related shocks among households and local communities in four districts in Puntland and Galmudug states. Read
  6. NASA Awards Spaceflight Development, Operations Contract NASA has selected Sierra Lobo Inc. of Fremont, Ohio, to support spaceflight hardware design, development, testing, and operations at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Read
  7. Little Groundwater Recharge In Ancient Mars Aquifer, According To New Models Mars was once a wet world. The geological record of the Red Planet shows evidence for water flowing on the surface – from river deltas to valleys carved by massive flash floods. But a new study shows that no matter how much rainfall fell on the surface of ancient Mars, very little of it seeped into an aquifer in the planet’s southern highlands. Read
  8. Medical Doctor Charged for $20.7M Health Care Fraud and Illegal Kickback Schemes A federal grand jury in New Jersey returned a superseding indictment yesterday charging a medical doctor with allegedly engaging in a health care fraud and illegal kickback scheme that involved the submission of over $20.7 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare for laboratory tests, including cancer genetic tests. Read
  9. Large U.S. Military Contracts Awarded on February 22, 2024 The U.S. Defense Department announced new major contracts awarded on February 22, 2024 Read
  10. Advanced Chip Tech Using Light Instead of Electricity Could Change Everything A new chip technology which performs calculations with light instead of electrons could perform a literal quantum leap in computational speeds. Read
  11. ADB to Boost Fintech in Gujarat, India The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $23 million loan to enhance access to quality fintech education, research, and innovation at the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) in India. Read
  12. FHWA Announces First Round of Applications for $250 Million to Reduce Traffic in Urban Areas The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration recently announced a new program that makes $250 million available, over five years, in competitive grants to advance innovative, multimodal solutions to reduce vehicular traffic in the most congested metropolitan areas of the United States. Read
  13. Texas Trying to Criminalize Compassion The State of Texas is trying to destroy a Catholic charity because it provides shelter to migrants. Read
  14. Diplomatic Sparks Fly Early as the 2024 G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting Begins in Brazil Brazil’s President Lula welcomed the foreign ministers from the G20 group of nations yesterday with much on the agenda and a demand to reform the UN. Read
  15. USDA Releases Another $770 Million for New Rural Infrastructure Projects U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack and White House Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden recently announced that USDA is funding 216 projects in 45 states, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands to bring high-speed internet, clean water, state-of-the-art infrastructure and economic growth to rural communities as part of President Biden's Investing in America agenda. Read
  16. PAHO Calls for Strengthened Measures Against Aedes Aegypti Mosquitoes to Combat Dengue In a new epidemiological alert, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reiterated its call to countries in the Americas to intensify efforts and actions to control the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the main vector that transmits dengue fever. Read
  17. No Time To Lose As UK Declares Violence Against Women A “national Threat”: UN Expert A UN expert on February 21 urged the UK Government to take urgent action to end all forms of violence against women and girls, as the country labelled it a “national threat”. Read
  18. World Bank Group Announces Next Phase of Support for People of Afghanistan The World Bank Board of Executive Directors recently endorsed an adjusted approach to support the people of Afghanistan. “Approach 3.0” will deploy funds from the International Development Association (IDA) through grants to United Nations agencies and other public international organizations. Read
  19. Updated Ukraine Recovery and Reconstruction Needs Assessment Released After almost two years of Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine, an updated joint Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA3)  released just recently by the Government of Ukraine, the World Bank Group, the European Commission, and the United Nations currently estimates that as of 31 December 2023 the total cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine is $486 billion (€452.8 billion) over the next decade, up from $411 billion (€383 billion) estimated one year ago. Read
  20. Air Pollution Linked To More Signs Of Alzheimer’s In Brain People with higher exposure to traffic-related air pollution were more likely to have high amounts of amyloid plaques in their brains associated with Alzheimer’s disease after death, according to a study published in the February 21, 2024, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Read
  21. Two Foreign Nationals Convicted of Multimillion-Dollar Scheme to Defraud Apple Inc. Out of 5,000 iPhones A federal jury in the District of Columbia convicted two Chinese nationals on February 20 for participating in a sophisticated scheme in which they submitted more than 5,000 inauthentic phones to Apple Inc., intending to cause a loss of more than $3 million to Apple. Read
  22. Malaysia: Government’s Journalism Code Of Ethics Should Be Regulated By Media, Say Industry Stakeholders Media organizations, unions, and press freedom groups have raised concerns at a revised Code of Ethics for Journalists, launched by Malaysian Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil on February 20, which could be used to extend government control over the functioning of the media and restrict press freedom. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) joins its affiliate, the National Union of Journalists Peninsular Malaysia (NUJM), in urging the Malaysian government to allow a free and independent media with a code of ethics developed and administered by the media industry. Read
  23. USDA Announces $500 Million to Confront the Wildfire Crisis The US Dept. of Agriculture says that it will spend nearly $500 million to expand work on the USDA Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy, but it may just be a cover for more deforestation and looting. Read
  24. Capital One to Merge with Discover and Create Largest Credit Card Company The fourth largest credit card lender in the U.S. by number of cards in circulation is about to combine forces with the fifth largest one, with combined lending of almost $750 billion in 2022. Read
  25. Department of Commerce Announces Preliminary Terms with GlobalFoundries to Strengthen Domestic Legacy Chip Supply The U.S. Department of Commerce and GlobalFoundries (GF) have signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms (PMT) to provide approximately $1.5 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS and Science Act to strengthen U.S. domestic supply chain resilience, bolster U.S. competitiveness in current-generation and mature-node (C&M) semiconductor production, and support economic and national security capabilities. Read