Latest news with #ecosystem
Zawya
13 hours ago
- Business
- Zawya
Red Hat boosts partner engagement with program updates and new Partner Demand Center
Building on our commitment to simplify, empower and grow with our partners, Red Hat is excited to announce the latest enhancements to our global partner engagement experience. These updates underscore our ongoing transformation efforts to provide greater simplicity, choice and flexibility for our valued partner ecosystem. The epoch-making shift in the technology landscape, fueled by breakthroughs in AI and the dynamic world of virtualization, is reshaping every industry. Red Hat's partner ecosystem is pivotal in helping customers navigate these seismic shifts and capitalize on emerging opportunities, which is why we are continuously refining Red Hat's global partner engagement experience with an ecosystem-driven approach to IT modernization. Our transformation is rooted in three business enablers: a globally unified partner program, streamlined partner incentives and an enhanced digital experience. Deepening expertise with Red Hat Specialized Partners Dr. Stefanie Chiras, Senior Vice President, Partner Ecosystem Success, Red Hat: 'We're excited to launch the Red Hat Specialized Partner Program, formerly piloted as Partner Practice Accelerator, to drive enhanced industry recognition for validated partners and provide clearer pathways for partners to develop and showcase skills in high-demand areas that are critical to customer success. The Red Hat Specialized Partner Program recognizes partners' deep technical expertise and proven service capabilities to support the full customer lifecycle, aligning with strategic technologies and streamlining go-to-market efforts for partners. With this evolution, Red Hat is extending the available partner specializations beyond Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Red Hat OpenShift to encompass additional products like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and RHEL AI. Furthermore, the existing specialization for Red Hat OpenShift will be divided into specific focus areas, including virtualization, containers and application development. Qualifying partners will be recognized as Red Hat Specialized Partners categorized by their associated technical skills, such as "Red Hat Specialized Partner - Mission Critical Automation" or "Red Hat Specialized Partner - AI Platform." We encourage partners to reach out to their Red Hat partner account managers to explore these new specialization opportunities and further differentiate themselves as leading service providers for Red Hat solutions. Introducing the Red Hat Partner Demand Center The new Red Hat Partner Demand Center, featuring the Red Hat Campaigns and Demand Generation platform, is designed to help partners more easily deliver impactful marketing campaigns, content and programs. This enables partners to autonomously launch ready-made marketing campaigns and create workshop and webinar registration pages, promoting joint Red Hat solutions to their customers and prospects. Key benefits of the platform include: Autonomous campaign execution: Partners can execute campaigns from start to finish with an intuitive, self-serve platform. Easily customizable content: Add your brand and message to turnkey activities to make the story yours. Comprehensive activity and lead tracking: Detailed dashboards provide insights into activities, performance, leads, and more. Extensive content library: The platform currently features over 16 campaigns available in nine core languages, spanning all major Red Hat products. This platform is designed to provide partners with assisted control over their marketing efforts, providing them with joint branding and messaging. Partners can request access to the new platform here. Transforming to deliver autonomous engagement The ongoing transformation of Red Hat's global partner engagement experience is a testament to our commitment to driving an ecosystem-first approach to deliver impactful, tailored solutions for customers. With this transformation, we are providing greater autonomy for partners to benefit from more choice, clearer growth opportunities and stronger collaboration with each other and Red Hat. Red Hat continues to enhance our rebate strategy by extending and adding new rebate opportunities, aiming to increase partner profitability and drive product growth, particularly with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Red Hat OpenShift. This is complemented by a simplification of digital tools to improve the partner user experience, including enhanced tooling designed to provide greater autonomy and visibility for partners. Learn more Partners can log into the Red Hat Partner Connect portal, reach out to their Red Hat partner account manager, or contact partner support for further information on these updates and to understand their current standing and eligibility requirements. Additionally, more details on updated rebates and incentives can be found in the Red Hat Content Center. Finally, if you are a partner and have not done so already, please complete the refreshed Red Hat Partner Engagement Experience Foundations course. This course outlines the critical elements of Red Hat's partner program. For further information, please contact: Orient Planet Group (OPG) Email: media@ Website:
Malay Mail
13 hours ago
- Business
- Malay Mail
X.me Foundation Empowers Global Expansion of the X.me Social Media Platform
SINGAPORE - Media OutReach Newswire - 23 July 2025 - ( is a social media platform where users can freely express themselves, share content, engage, and interact while earning rewards from the platform. More than just a social media platform, is an innovative ecosystem offering a secure, compliant, and open experience for global users. As of June 2025, the Foundation has established 100 million dollars dedicated fund with the mission of "building a borderless social ecosystem." The fund focuses on three key areas—market expansion, technological innovation, and compliance development—to drive rapid user growth for the platform in major global markets, particularly in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. According to global media reports, 'Gold Miner Treasure Hunt' campaign attracted over 1 million participants from more than 36 countries within just four hours of the launched. This initiative has injected significant momentum into rapid expansion, serving as a key driver for global strategy. Financial Support: Regional Market Incentive Programs The Foundation has tailored differentiated funding strategies to suit the unique characteristics of various regional markets. The Foundation has established an 'Ecosystem Innovation Fund' to launch localized support programs in markets such as Europe, the Americas, Japan, and South Korea. These programs focus on nurturing 'Genesis Ambassadors,' fostering a vibrant content ecosystem, and promoting global user growth and platform ecosystem development. Compliance and Regulatory Collaboration On the compliance front, the Foundation has assembled a dedicated team of 120 international lawyers to pursue service provider licenses in regions such as the United States and the European Union, striving to become one of the social media platforms compliant with multinational regulations. To address regional regulatory differences, the Foundation has developed 'Compliance Risk Control System.' For example, in South Korea, the system filters content related to virtual asset transactions, while in Southeast Asia, it integrates with local central banks' anti-money laundering mechanisms to ensure compliant operations globally. Hashtag: # The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. AI-powered Web3 media platform. Adress:21 WOODLANDS CLOSE #04-27 PRIMZ BIZHUB SINGAPORE (737854) Organization: XME TECH SERVICES PTE. LTD.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- General
- Telegraph
‘This was a beautiful place – now look at it': The river swallowed by plastic
When the rainy season comes, Madeline Vasquez knows the roar of white water through the Rio Las Vacas will bring with it a fresh deluge of plastic. Stood precariously on rocks sheathed in sodden plastic sheeting and food packaging, she gazes down at hundreds of swirling soft drink bottles caught in an eddy. Now 19 years old, Madeline was a baby when the people in her village began buying products in disposable plastic packaging – a life-changing innovation that they, like everyone else in the world beforehand, quickly got used to. The storage containers which they had always used were put away. Plastic in apparently infinite supply could just be discarded, directly into the river in which Madeline's family had always fished. Today, the chance of fish surviving in the Las Vacas seems unlikely. The river, into which much of the teeming population of Guatemala City hurls its refuse, is suffocated by plastic. In just one generation, plastic has swallowed up a whole river ecosystem. As I talk to Madeline, an unrelenting tide of household detritus surges in brown water frothing beneath the creaking bridge on which we speak. The Las Vacas is the most plastic-polluted river in the world. A tributary of the much broader Motagua, it is said to account for 2 per cent of the global total of river-derived plastic waste that enters the oceans. At current levels, 20,000 tonnes of plastic flows through the Rio Motagua into the Caribbean Sea every year. When it gets really bad, the pollution can be seen on satellite images. Madeline, coming home from her job at a nearby pharmacy, holds her hands up despairingly. 'What can I do?' she exclaims. 'It's not just us. People in the city throw their plastic into the valley, and it ends up clogging the river where I live. 'The river is so contaminated. It is just disgusting to look at. I never put my feet in it because I'm so worried about slipping on the plastic or picking up an infection from all of the dirt. 'My family can remember what it was like before. This had always been a beautiful place – now look at it.' The contrast between the verdant peaks towering above the Las Vacas ravine and the tidal wave of discarded plastic garbage in the river is jarring, encapsulating an overwhelming manmade crisis. Plastic waste worldwide has grown more than seven-fold since 1985, and more than doubled since 2000. By 2050, it is predicted to double again from current levels of nearly 400 million tonnes per year. Without urgent action, which campaigners hope will come at a UN conference in Geneva next month, the degradation of domestic products into microplastics which devastate marine wildlife will inevitably worsen. Although OECD figures released in 2022 estimated that 69 per cent of plastic waste is disposed of in landfill or incinerated, a significant proportion is tossed in rivers in countries like Guatemala. In a paper published in Science Advances four years ago, researchers calculated that just 1,000 rivers are accountable for 80 per cent of global annual riverine plastic emissions into the sea. Small urban rivers such as the Las Vacas, bordered by many informal dump sites in Guatemala City's outer slums, are the most polluting. Evidence of habitual fly-tipping quickly becomes apparent. In this part of Guatemala, as in so many plastic-choked cities around the world, it is as normal as chucking a bin bag into a driveway wheelie bin. From a tin-roofed lean-to wedged against the underside of a cliff on the other side of the road, a woman and two boys emerge. They carry wicker baskets and crates brimming with plastic trash. It is as though they've cleared out the loft. But rather than taking this assortment of unwanted clutter to the tip, they instead cross the road and enter a narrow path behind a religious shrine which descends steeply into the chasm. No one on the roadside bats an eyelid. This is an everyday occurrence. I follow them down the snaking gully to where they put down the crates. Around us, lush, bottle-green foliage that coats the sheer grey cliffs of the gorge makes for a breathtaking backdrop. This would be an ideal place for a picnic, I think. Today it is a dump site for a random assortment of household garbage. With a heave of her arms, Rosa, 36, jettisons her plastic load; the boys – her sons Enriquez, 11, and Victor, nine – follow suit. I ask her why. 'This is what we have always done,' she replies. 'Most of this stuff is ours, but we've gathered a few things from our neighbours as well. Throwing it into the river valley is the easiest thing. It's gone. We don't have to think about it.' With that Rosa marches back. Her sons follow behind, grinning and unperturbed at having despoiled what would otherwise be a remarkable beauty spot. Later, I see a woman walk out to a muddy embankment which drops down to the river. The slope is completely covered with waste, mostly plastic. She hurls the contents of an oil drum down the incline and then turns back having completed the chore. Plastic scraps tumble down towards the churning white water. In the nearby village of San Antonio Las Flores, 45-year-old Fidel Gonzalez upturns a wheelbarrow full of plastic into the Las Vacas. 'All of my neighbours give me their plastic,' Fidel says. 'I'm unemployed so I'm happy to do this for them. No one minds.' Madeline, in contrast, insists she and her five younger brothers dispose of their rubbish at a dump site. But, she claims, the gesture is pointless. It will just be taken from there and lobbed into the river. The pitiful condition of the Las Vacas has made it one of the first targets for the plastic pollution organisation Ocean Cleanup. Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat dreamed up Ocean Cleanup when he was just a teenager after scuba-diving in plastic-saturated waters while on holiday in Greece. In the 15 years since its creation, the organisation has taken a lead in eliminating plastic waste from the seas, with much of its attention focused on worst-offending rivers like the Las Vacas. Its ultimate ambition is to go out of business by 2040 by removing 90 per cent of floating ocean plastic. When Ocean Cleanup started work at the Las Vacas three years ago, they built a metal fence with wire mesh to absorb the debris just downstream from Madeline's village. But the sheer volume of rubbish prevented water flowing through, so the fence gave way. The current 'Interceptor Barricade' consists of around 20 heavy-duty floating plastic booms with netting beneath chained to concrete foundations on the riverbank. A back-up barricade further down is supposed to capture any plastic that evades the main barrier. During my visit, an avalanche of plastic mess is washed up behind the interceptor following several nights of torrential rain. I become transfixed by the passage of detergent bottles, pens, footballs, syringes, children's toys, insulation foam, polythene sheeting, jerrycans, sandals and even whole car bumpers. Everything human beings have created with plastic ends up here. The experience is strangely hypnotic. I am reminded of a fairground penny drop, anticipating the moment when the weight becomes too much and bursts through. Thankfully that never happens. The barrage has been cleverly designed. The serene majesty of the scenery on the bank behind is offset by the sight of vultures devouring the rotting corpse of a dead dog which has become snagged up in the plastic morass. In a roadside clearing behind the interceptor are several towering mounds of waste, one of which is what was scooped by diggers from the build-up the day before our arrival. Ocean Cleanup's operations manager at the Las Vacas site Guillermo Sosa tells me 33 truckloads of waste were offloaded in just a few hours, most of which was plastic, jumbled in with wool, metal, glass and other materials. The work here never stops, particularly during the rainy season when the lingering litter on the verges of the river is flushed down. A handful of workers remove plastic which can be recycled from the festering mess of unwanted junk. In the last two years, they have scooped up around three million kilogrammes of plastic from the interceptor, a phenomenal quantity of mostly superfluous plastic. 'Plastic pollution is a problem which affects all citizens here in Guatemala,' says Sosa. 'We have the solution for cleaning the river, but people need to have the willingness to stop plastic getting in there in the first place. There is a cultural problem. 'People just throw their trash in the river and expect someone else to change things. They are not really bothered.' One factor said to aggravate proper rubbish collections in this region north of Guatemala City is that villages adjoining the Las Vacas are dominated by gangs. Extortion against waste collection companies is allegedly widespread, so bin lorries no longer stop in many communities. Illegal sand-dredging from the riverbed is another issue plaguing the formerly tranquil mountainous region. Indigenous inhabitants sit behind banners at a protest stall by the roadside, but their quiet voices of consternation are drowned out by passing lorries. Edwin Castellanos, Guatemala's Vice Minister of Natural Resources and Climate Change, insists his government is striving to change the habits of people who throw garbage into the river. 'The population is not well educated at all in terms of waste management,' Castellanos concedes. 'So, for example, it's very common for many communities to see a ravine and think, 'Well, that's the proper place to dispose my garbage, because it disappears'. 'The last census showed that about half of the population burn the garbage near their homes too and they do that because they have no other option. It will be a challenge to really reach out to everybody and educate them on the best way to manage the garbage.' At a hydroelectric dam downstream from the interceptor, manager Jonatan Caceres points out large quantities of plastic trash which slipped through, but indicates this is far better than it was a few years ago. 'We have been dealing with trash here since 2005,' he says. 'When the amount of plastic building up gets really bad it creates mechanical problems.' For some, the accumulation of trash behind the interceptor has become a vital source of income. Among the opportunist scavengers who depend on the congested river are children. These waste pickers sift through the rotting soup of garbage for objects which might be sold on to scrap dealers. Tiny Maria, nine, and her brother Luis, 12, spend the whole morning filling sacks with discarded metal to trade with a man who waits on the shingle beach. Luis is bent-double as he scales the mound of plastic trash on the riverbank with a yoga ball-sized lump of crushed metal which he carries on his back. Maria follows behind carrying something even more cumbersome. Once the sacks are weighed and emptied, Maria and Luis return to their task. Both should be at school. Accompanied by their aunt, Rosemary, 20, they collectively receive about £2 for four hours' backbreaking labour in the sweltering heat. 'It would be a shame if they cleaned the river completely,' admits Rosemary contrarily, 'because then there would not be any rubbish to sell. During the rainy season we depend on the metal.' It takes around two weeks for Guatemala City's plastic to flow down the Motagua to the river mouth in the Caribbean. There, just outside the stilt-house village of El Quezalito, a much longer barrier designed to block plastic waste which has entered the river system further downstream is in position. One resident tells me the plastic tide could sometimes reach the roof of her single-storey home during the rainy season. She would stand in crocodile-infested waters pushing refuse away by hand. Now the village's dusty thoroughfares are clean. But the problem of removing the tonnes of legacy plastic which had already scarred miles of otherwise pristine sands either side of the estuary remains. We take a fishing boat through choppy waves to a stretch of beach where men are methodically clearing away plastic. Even though they have been at the task for weeks, unsightly detritus still dominates the shoreline. The sand is infested with it. This is the resting place of much of the rubbish which gets chucked in somewhere along the 302-mile course of the Motagua. Clearing it away is a Herculean effort in debilitating, humid heat. Cesar Dubon, a former fisherman, says concentration of plastic affected his catch so badly that he stopped taking his boat out. Plastic was smeared along a 34-mile stretch of coastline, over the border into Honduras. Turtles, crabs and fish would die after getting snagged up. 'I first came here when we were resettled after Hurricane Mitch destroyed our homes in 1998,' recalls Cesar, 54. 'Back then there wasn't that much plastic. It only got really bad over the last 20 years. 'This beach was just plastic; you could hardly see the sand. It was up to your knees. Nearly all of that had emerged from the river. 'Now we have managed to completely clean a stretch of beach on the other side of the river. We can actually go there with our families. Last year was the first time my children had been able to see it properly.' Cesar and his crew pile their sacks of unsorted plastic onto another wooden boat. One of them, 23-year-old José Ramirez, wears a motorcycle helmet he has just found among the leftovers. At a depot in El Quezalito, plastic that can be recycled is bagged up and trucked over the border into Honduras. There, at the sprawling Terra Polyester factory in the industrial city of Choloma, plastic from across Central America is cleaned and sorted on immense conveyer belts. All potential contaminants are removed by hand. The plant, which employs 400 people, transforms most of the retrieved hard plastic bottles into flakes and long filaments of polyester fibre to be used for household clothing, bedding, and cleaning materials. Inside the sweaty warehouse, a future in which plastic does not inevitably finish in the ocean seems tangible. Despite this successful transformation, however, Boyan Slat is fully realistic about the scale of the task facing his organisation as it ramps up operations around the world. Ocean Cleanup's short-term aim is to eliminate a third of all plastic flowing from the world's rivers before the end of the decade, focusing on 30 cities. Data acquired from weighing plastic taken out of rivers where it already operates, including the Las Vacas, suggests it currently extricates less than 3 per cent. 'The reason why we are in rivers is to stop more plastic from going into the oceans,' explains Slat. 'The fact that the rivers also benefit from it is essentially a positive side effect. 'We chose to expand the scope from oceans because to truly solve this problem we need to deal not only with the legacy pollution that's already out there but also with the inflow. The rivers are the arteries that carry the plastic to sea. Our data showed that rivers are the point of highest leverage.' 'River interception is not the ultimate solution,' Slat continues. 'Long term, of course, countries need to get their act together in terms of waste management and perhaps managing the consumption of plastic as well, but that's going to take decades. 'The way we position interceptors is really as a short-term fix. We hope that in, say, 30, 40, 50 years from now, those interceptors can be taken out of the river. Hopefully one day all these cities will be as pristine as Singapore or Tokyo. We want to help ourselves out of business.' The sticking point at the Geneva talks is expected to be around the production of plastics and specific chemicals used in manufacturing. Boyan Slat believes a compromise deal is most likely. Negotiations broke down at the previous round in South Korea last year because of objections from oil-producing countries with a vested interest in plastics production. Those involved diverge over the prospect of a breakthrough. For Castellanos, real progress requires the plastic production line to be slowed down, even if it is not completely switched off. 'When we talk to industry and private sector, they indicate that plastic is a necessity,' he adds. 'In many aspects and in many, in many ways, it is true. But the problem is that we have abused the use of plastic.' Rob Opsomer from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is advocating a model in which businesses that put plastic into the market pay a fee for the collection and recycling. 'When it comes to plastics, our vision is a circular economy where we eliminate all the plastics we don't need,' he explains. 'There are many we can eliminate which we don't need. We should innovate so all the ones we do need are kept in the economy and out of the environment. 'At the UN Oceans conference, 97 countries came together and reaffirmed their commitment. Then there is a group that looks at it as a waste management issue, saying we should be able to produce as much as we want if we just invest more in systems to collect it and manage it. We would very much argue that the only way to actually tackle the issue at scale is a comprehensive lifecycle approach.' Perhaps the talks would be better situated on a bridge over the Las Vacas than in a swept and tidied conference hall in ultra-clean Switzerland, the world's sixth best country for waste management according to the Environmental Performance Index.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Trump's 'Swamp Barbie' Brooke Rollins gets her hands dirty with jaw-dropping python capture
President Trump's cabinet members have looked to catch internet virality in the last few months, getting out of DC and into the field and in some cases, the marshlands. Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance have both worked out with members of the military, and Secretary Noem has ridden along on ICE raids. The latest addition to the administration seeking social media infamy is Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who shared a stunning photo Monday morning of her participation in a python hunt in the Florida Everglades. 'LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!' Rollins wrote quoting billionaire pop star Taylor Swift 's song of the same name, posted with a snake emoji. Rollins, 53, posted the set of pics from the Sunshine State from the hunt, which reportedly took place Sunday night. 'Last night I joined a python hunt in the Florida Everglades! Got hands-on with Florida's invasive species problem. Learned how to wrangle those slithery giants like a pro, joined a heart-pounding hunt under the swamp's moonlight, & saw up close how these pythons disrupt the ecosystem,' Rollins added in her post. 'Who's ready to join the hunt?, she also asked her followers, prompting them to engage with the post. X users obliged with comments and the response was decidedly mixed. One user who posts on X under the handle @starrygirl737 wrote, 'This sounds like an awesome experience!' Another user, @cFishFL, who appears to be a native Floridian wrote, 'Let us hunt year round for pythons in Everglades National Park!' Yet, another X user @galexy70 responded less favorably to the secretary, commenting 'Yay! More cosplay!' Rollins served as chief for domestic policy during Trump's first administration and was among the names mentioned in the running for chief of staff. Instead, she was confirmed overwhelmingly by the Senate to lead the Department of Agriculture in a 72-28 vote in February. Rollins is a conservative legal activist and public policy analyst who most recently served as president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank that developed policy and cultivated a network of personnel for the second Trump administration. By Monday afternoon, Rollins was back to posting more conventional political fare on her feed, announcing an allocation of $675 million in agricultural hurricane relief in Felda, Florida and touting the state's influential sugarcane industry.
The Independent
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
ICE Barbie' gets a challenger: AG Secretary Brooke Rollins takes to X to show off snake-hunting adventure
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has a challenger in Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who took to X to show off a snake-hunting adventure in true ICE Barbie fashion. Rollins shared photos from a python hunt in the Florida Everglades that she participated in on Sunday, with the caption, 'Look what you made me do!' an apparent reference to Taylor Swift 's Reputation album. 'Got hands-on with Florida's invasive species problem. Learned how to wrangle those slithery giants like a pro, joined a heart-pounding hunt under the swamp's moonlight, & saw up close how these pythons disrupt the Ecosystem,' Rollins wrote on X on Monday. In one of the photos, Rollins had a python draped around her neck as she held its head in one hand and its tail with the other. She donned a camo 'Make America Great Again' hat for the adventure. The photo-op is reminiscent of Noem's past social media posts. Noem obtained the nickname 'ICE Barbie' for posting photos of herself glammed up and decked out in tactical vests at immigration enforcement raids amid President Donald Trump 's mass deportation operation. The Homeland Security secretary has also had her fair share of hunting photo-ops. She posted photos with a dead bear in 2023 from a hunt in Saskatchewan, Canada, and a dead moose in 2024 from a hunt in Yukon, Canada, the Daily Beast reported, noting that neither animal is invasive to those regions. Noem has been criticized for her photo-ops, which some see as glamorizing a very serious job. In April, Noem shared a video of her wielding a gun incorrectly while she wore a tactical vest between two ICE officers. Conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly responded to the video on her show: 'Just stop trying to glamorize the mission and put yourself in the middle of it as you cosplay ICE agent, which you're not.' Meghan McCain also slammed the video, saying on her YouTube show, 'I don't think that it is productive to have a full face of hair and makeup and hair you're doing things like that.' She added: 'If I were giving her some advice, I would be like, 'How about pulling our hair back in a baseball cap and not doing a photo-op?''
