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Political Shake-Up Threatens Federal Workforce

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Election-Year Upheaval Leaves Thousands in Limbo—PARWCC Experts Reveal the Game Plan for Career Survival.

ST PETERSBURG, Fla., Feb. 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — The looming election-year upheaval is putting thousands of federal workers on high alert, with talk of reclassifications, hiring freezes, and potential layoffs. Yet, members of the Professional Association of Résumé Writers and Career Coaches (PARWCC)—who recently convened for an Ask Me Anything” session—say there’s no need to panic. Instead, they see this as a pivotal moment for federal employees to translate their public-sector expertise into marketable skills for private-sector success.

“We’re hearing from people in panic mode,” said Diane Hudson,
Director of the Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC) program for
PARWCC. “But let’s not panic—get prepared. Keep your résumé
updated, know your skill sets, and see this transition as a real
opportunity.”

At a virtual panel, Hudson was joined by fellow PARWCC career experts who unpacked the risks and rewards of these uncertain times:

Michael Greco, who works in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and consults on federal résumés, noted:
“It’s a jarring wake-up call, but not the first time we’ve seen turmoil. I tell clients: always be looking, always be updating. The question isn’t if workforce changes happen, it’s when—and how prepared you are.”Kevin Bottino, a 25-year Air Force veteran turned PARWCC-certified coach, sees an uptick in clients needing quick pivots:
“Just last week, five or six clients reached out, worried about these looming layoffs. But for many, it’s also a spark—they suddenly realize how valuable their federal training and leadership skills are on the outside.”

The Election-Year Context

Historically, major political shifts can trigger reorganizations or closures of certain agencies. This year, with high-stakes budget battles and the possibility of significant reclassifications, federal workers may face abrupt transitions—or forced retirements. Panelists agreed that while policy details remain murky, job seekers should act now:

Audit and Adapt Résumés: Federal résumés can stretch for pages. PARWCC experts recommend concise, achievement-focused versions for private-sector hiring.Mine Transferable Skills: “Federal employees handle crisis management, compliance, and stakeholder engagement—skills prized by private employers,” said Hudson.Build a Network Beyond the Beltway: Panelists stressed LinkedIn engagement and tapping personal circles. “We see lots of success from small steps like emailing holiday card contacts,” Hudson added.Stay Calm, Get Coached: High-stress job transitions often bring confusion and grief. PARWCC coaches remind clients that professional support can mitigate impostor syndrome and other anxieties.

Bridging the Gap: From GS Grades to Corporate Confidence

During the session, PARWCC members emphasized the “cultural gap” between government and private industry. Many federal employees have never had to interview in dynamic, for-profit environments.

“Federal HR structures are highly regulated,” said Greco. “But corporate
settings often move fast, do multiple interviews, and weigh intangible
factors. That’s where coaching is invaluable—helping clients pivot
mindsets, not just résumés.”

Introducing the Federal to Civilian Career Transitions Master Series

In response to mounting concerns, PARWCC is also offering a Master Series: Federal to Civilian Career Transitions, led by résumé and job search strategist Sarah Moore—whose clients include organizations like NASA and the Department of Defense. This specialized training guides coaches and résumé writers on how to:*

Translate federal accomplishments into civilian-friendly language.*Understand unique cultural differences between public and private sectors.*Equip clients with job search strategies for maximizing success.*Expand their service offerings and confidently address the worries of transitioning federal employees.*

Designed to unlock fresh revenue streams for professionals and provide targeted career solutions for federal workers, the Master Series taps into PARWCC’s deep expertise in high-stakes transitions—without the typical hassle of a lengthy sales pitch.

“We’re not just dealing with new paperwork,” summed up Bottino.
“We’re dealing with people’s lives, families, and futures. Our role is to
 guide them safely through this storm.”

About PARWCC

Representing nearly 3,000 career service experts across 40+ countries, the Professional Association of Résumé Writers and Career Coaches (PARWCC) sets the gold standard for credentialing and professional development in career coaching and résumé writing. For federal employees facing the election-year fallout, PARWCC-certified coaches provide actionable guidance, from rewriting résumés to navigating hiring systems.

For more information on the Master Series: Federal to Civilian Career Transition program details can be found here.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/political-shake-up-threatens-federal-workforce-302382733.html

SOURCE Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches

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Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

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Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

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Air Products to Expand Industrial Gas Supply for Samsung Electronics’ Next-Generation Semiconductor Fab in South Korea

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New investment underscores the company’s long-term commitment to Korea and its leading role in the global semiconductor industry 

LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Air Products (NYSE:APD), a world-leading industrial gases company and serving Samsung globally, today announced it has been selected by Samsung to supply industrial gases for its new advanced semiconductor fab in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea.

Under the agreement, Air Products will build, own and operate multiple state-of-the-art production facilities and a bulk specialty gas supply system to supply nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and hydrogen for Samsung’s new semiconductor fab. The new facilities are expected to come onstream in multiple phases from 2028 through 2030.

Air Products has a long track record of executing multiple phase expansions in Pyeongtaek to support Samsung’s growing manufacturing needs. This latest project represents Air Products’ largest investment to date in the semiconductor industry and will establish Pyeongtaek as the company’s single largest operations site globally supporting the electronics industry. 

“Air Products is honored to be selected once again by Samsung and to have their continued confidence as a trusted partner supporting their strategic growth plans,” said SR Kim, President, Air Products Korea. “This significant investment reinforces Air Products’ role as a leading global supplier to the semiconductor industry and underscores our long-standing commitment to supporting our strategic customers with safety, reliability, efficiency and excellent service.”

Air Products has served the global electronics industry for more than 40 years, supplying industrial gases safely and reliably to many of the world’s leading technology companies. The company has operated in Korea for more than 50 years and has established a strong position in electronics and manufacturing sectors.

About Air Products

Air Products (NYSE: APD) is a world-leading industrial gases company in operation for over 85 years focused on serving energy, environmental, and emerging markets and generating a cleaner future. The Company supplies essential industrial gases, related equipment and applications expertise to customers in dozens of industries, including refining, chemicals, metals, electronics, manufacturing, medical and food. As the leading global supplier of hydrogen, Air Products also develops, engineers, builds, owns and operates some of the world’s largest clean hydrogen projects, supporting the transition to low- and zero-carbon energy in the industrial and heavy-duty transportation sectors. Through its sale of equipment businesses, the Company also provides turbomachinery, membrane systems and cryogenic containers globally.

Air Products had fiscal 2025 sales of $12 billion from operations in approximately 50 countries. For more information, visit airproducts.com or follow us on LinkedInXFacebook or Instagram.

This release contains “forward-looking statements” within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management’s expectations and assumptions as of the date of this release and are not guarantees of future performance. While forward-looking statements are made in good faith and based on assumptions, expectations and projections that management believes are reasonable based on currently available information, actual performance and financial results may differ materially from projections and estimates expressed in the forward-looking statements because of many factors, including the risk factors described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025 and other factors disclosed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we disclaim any obligation or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in the assumptions, beliefs or expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances upon which any such forward-looking statements are based.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/air-products-to-expand-industrial-gas-supply-for-samsung-electronics-next-generation-semiconductor-fab-in-south-korea-302757497.html

SOURCE Air Products

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