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Statement – Leaders’ call on a safer digital space for minors

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ÉVIAN, France, June 17, 2026 /CNW/ – “We, the Leaders of the G7, are committed to providing a safe digital space for our minors, which include children and youth under 18, for their development, for their education and for their well-being. Children and youth’s online experiences should be safe, enriching and development focused. Digital service providers have the important role and opportunity to provide digital platforms which are safe-by-design, secure, privacy-preserving, age-appropriate and protective of children and youth, including by default settings. Parents, guardians and carers should be empowered to guide minors’ online experience, including through parental control tools. Partners countries of the G7, Brazil, Egypt, India, Kenya, and the Republic of Korea also support this call.

Digital technology can play a positive role for our children and youth, societies and economies, through learning, expanding access to education and healthcare, fostering creativity and social connection. Parents, teachers and education systems should empower and equip them with the necessary skills and literacy to critically and responsibly engage with digital technologies, media and information. Digital education programs complement offline educational and social activities.

Despite these benefits, digital service can pose risks for children and youth. They can be exposed to illegal and age-inappropriate content and interactions damaging their mental health and well-being. The use of certain digital service that incorporate attention and engagement maximizing features that can lead to compulsive and habit-forming behaviours, as well as others risks have raised concerns.

Recommendation systems should, when used, be designed to elevate age-appropriate content and to reduce exposure to risks. Digital service should be designed to empower parents and minors with tools to be more in control of their experience and data through safety-by-design approaches, such as protective and by default settings, including parental control tools. Minors’ safety is ensured safeguarded by the implementation of risk management, assessment and mitigation.

We therefore call on all governments, digital service providers, public authorities where applicable and relevant stakeholders to prioritize the protection of children and youth’s physical and mental health, privacy and safety online.

We call on digital service providers to develop and apply technology and systems that ensure safe, secure and age-appropriate experiences including through effective and innovative age assurance mechanisms while preserving the privacy of users according to respective jurisdictions, national circumstances and applicable legal frameworks. We support comprehensive risk-based approaches, and empowering parents and guardians through meaningful and easy-to-use parental controls tools and information. We welcome the G7 Common Set of Principles adopted by our ministers, and call for further action. In this regard, we will work to ensure a safe, age-appropriate experience online for children and youth through all relevant tools.While conversational artificial intelligence tools offer important opportunities for innovation, education and development, we recognise risks associated with children and youth’s use of conversational artificial intelligence systems, undermining their well-being and safety and reinforcing the need to build their critical skills to engage responsibly in digital space. It is important for providers to develop and apply safety settings by default for children and youth, including parental control tools and age assurance solutions, to make conversational artificial intelligence tools safer for children and youth, in a timely manner.Given the importance of helping children and youth to seamlessly distinguish authentic from synthetic content and to identify content provenance, we support ongoing efforts by the industry to strengthen the reliability, interoperability when feasible, effectiveness and robustness of their technical means. Digital service providers have a critical role to play in enhancing transparency through enabling an understanding of content provenance, promoting digital literacy and awareness to engage with digital technologies, media and information. We encourage continuous dialogue between G7 members’ governments, public authorities and digital service providers, as approaches to content transparency continue to be explored.We remain strongly committed to prohibiting the generation, the manipulation and the distribution of child sexual abuse material and criminal activity related to non-consensual intimate imagery, including deepfakes particularly when they involve children and youth, in accordance with national circumstances and legal frameworks. To contribute to the necessary prevention of these criminal acts, digital service providers must implement effective detection and removal measures on their platforms. The prohibition of such content as well as online grooming, sexual exploitation and sexual extortion, remains a non-negotiable principle in the development and deployment of artificial intelligence systems and digital service. Some of these harms, including non-consensual intimate imagery and sexualized content, may disproportionately affect girls and young women, affect boys and young men, and encourage self-harm.We are committed to preventing and countering the exposure of children and youth to violent extremism and terrorism online. Digital service providers should adopt appropriate safeguards and work collaboratively with law enforcement to reduce the targeting of children and youth and the recruitment, especially into organized crime including for drug trafficking and violent extremism. To this end, parents, guardians and carers should also be empowered to prevent these phenomena.

We recognise the benefits of sharing best practices, to produce coordinated and effective efforts, gathering a broad range of actors, including researchers, educational systems and digital service providers, and to work on the opportunities and impacts of digital service and artificial intelligence on children and youth. We are committed to fostering a research and scientific ecosystem capable of studying those benefits and challenges. Advancing scientific knowledge and evidence-based policymaking benefits from sharing of data, impartial evaluations and common standards in assessments methodologies of artificial intelligence models and algorithmic systems, to objectively evaluate impact on minors’ safety. In order to support an evidence-based approach, transparency and accountability are essential. We will work together with relevant stakeholders to support this research and evaluations. We welcome the G7 Common Set of Principles defining a safer and more secure digital space for minors adopted by our ministers, and ask them to meet regularly and to assess the progress of this work at the latest by the end of this year.

This call reflects the outcome of the discussion between G7 members, benefiting from productive exchanges of views with partner countries, Brazil, Egypt, India, Kenya and the Republic of Korea.”

This document is also available at https://pm.gc.ca

SOURCE Prime Minister’s Office

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The World Is Taking Notice: TIME Recognition Fuels VinFast’s Global Journey

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On a rainy Tuesday morning in Paris, a driver waiting at a red light on Boulevard Haussmann might not immediately place the badge on the SUV beside them. Thousands of miles away, a driver in California might have a similar moment seeing the same badge on an American road. It is not German, nor one of the familiar Asian names that have become common across established automotive markets. It belongs to VinFast ,  a Vietnamese automotive brand that is steadily making its presence felt across Europe and North America, and whose global journey reflects a much larger story unfolding inside its parent group, Vingroup.

PARIS , Sept. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — That journey reached a new milestone this year. Vingroup has been ranked 340th in TIME’s World’s Best Companies 2026, produced jointly with the research firm Statista, placing it among the world’s top 350 businesses and marking a rise of nearly 500 places from the previous year. It is the only Vietnamese company to appear on the list for two consecutive years.

A Ranking Built on More Than Growth

TIME and Statista do not rank companies on size alone. Their methodology weighs three dimensions: revenue growth, employee satisfaction and sustainability transparency. Vingroup earned an overall score of 81 out of 100, rising from 817th to 340th worldwide.

The revenue figures behind that score are substantial. In the first half of 2026, Vingroup posted consolidated net revenue of VND 222.9 trillion, up 72 percent year on year, with profit after tax reaching VND 20.904 trillion, more than four and a half times the figure recorded over the same period in 2025. That growth was driven largely by the Group’s industrial manufacturing and real estate businesses, earning Vingroup an “Outstanding” rating on the revenue metric.

Employee satisfaction told a similar story of momentum. Vingroup climbed to 398th globally, up 496 places, in a workforce that now spans roughly 400,000 people across 12 countries.

On sustainability, the Group’s contribution came through a different kind of infrastructure – green transition projects, urban development, and long-term investment in the systems that sustain a livable city rather than a single quarter’s balance sheet. Vinhomes, the Group’s real estate arm, has extended this thinking through its ESG++ model, adding Regeneration and Resilience to the conventional three pillars of Environmental, Social and Governance work, applied across urban developments spanning thousands of hectares.

Two new business lines added to that picture in 2025: infrastructure, through VinSpeed’s high-speed rail projects connecting Ho Chi Minh City to Can Gio and Hanoi to Quang Ninh, and green energy, through VinEnergo’s projects across multiple provinces. Together, they represent an attempt to build not just individual businesses, but the connective tissue – rail, power and mobility – that a modern, low-carbon economy runs on.

Making the EV Transition More Accessible

Within that broader ecosystem, VinFast represents one of the clearest expressions of Vingroup’s global aspirations. The company’s expansion across Asia, North America and Europe is bringing the Group’s vision for a greener future to an increasingly international audience, while putting a Vietnamese automotive brand directly into competition in some of the world’s most established markets.

For customers considering a new automotive brand, however, global vision is only the starting point. The more important question is whether a new entrant can earn the trust required to become part of everyday life.

Research from the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility offers a useful, if counterintuitive, perspective. Surveying thousands of European car buyers, McKinsey found that Europeans open to considering an Asian market entrant show an overall 53 percent likelihood of switching to a new brand when they move to an electric vehicle – a figure that rises as high as 63 percent in the United Kingdom. Brand loyalty, in other words, is proving more fluid in the EV era than it was in the age of the internal combustion engine.

That shift creates an opening for new EV brands. But winning customers requires more than a competitive vehicle. It requires making electric mobility accessible while building the sales, service and ownership infrastructure that gives customers confidence throughout the ownership journey.

With an increasingly diverse and accessible product portfolio, VinFast remains committed to its mission of making electric vehicles more accessible to everyone and enabling customers to transition to green mobility with greater ease and confidence.

In Europe, the company is expanding its presence with products designed around local priorities of efficiency, design and accessibility, including the VF 6 and VF 8, while electric buses such as the EB 8 and the fully European-certified EB 12 further extend its contribution to the region’s transition toward greener transportation.

Across North America, the same vision is being supported by the expansion of VinFast’s sales and service network and the development of its Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) program. Together, these initiatives are designed to build a more comprehensive ecosystem around the customer, extending beyond the vehicle itself to the services and support that shape the ownership experience.

Vingroup was the first Vietnamese company to qualify for TIME’s World’s Best Companies list in 2025, while VinFast has earned recognition among TIME100 Most Influential Companies and Asia-Pacific’s Best Companies of 2025. These milestones reflect growing international recognition of Vingroup’s and VinFast’s aspirations, capabilities and expanding global reach.

The latest TIME recognition for Vingroup therefore arrives at a moment when that global reach is becoming increasingly visible. For VinFast, the challenge and opportunity now extend across multiple continents ,  from European cities where a new badge is gradually becoming familiar, to North American roads where the company is building its presence and customer ecosystem. 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/the-world-is-taking-notice-time-recognition-fuels-vinfasts-global-journey-302876595.html

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XLCS Partners advises CID Capital on its investment in Kaiser Garage Doors & Gates

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NASHVILLE, Tenn., Sept. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — XLCS Partners, Inc., a leading middle market investment bank, is pleased to announce it served as advisor to CID Capital on its investment in Kaiser Garage Doors & Gates, LLC (Kaiser).

Headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, Kaiser is a leading installer and servicer of residential and commercial overhead doors and gates serving the Phoenix, Tucson, and White Mountains markets. With over 30 years of proven operations, the company has established a strong regional footprint, a reputation for quality and reliability, and long-standing customer relationships.

Based in Indianapolis, Indiana, CID Capital is a private equity firm with decades of experience partnering with high-quality, lower middle market companies. CID makes control investments in companies with a proven track record of success and works alongside management teams to provide strategic guidance, resources, and capital for the next phase of growth, combining a focus on founder- and family-owned companies with a collaborative approach to building long-term value.

Kaiser is the third platform investment made from CID’s latest fund, CID Capital Opportunity Fund IV, L.P. In conjunction with the closing, industry veteran Eric Farley stepped in as CEO to lead the business under CID’s ownership, partnering with Dean Bennett, COO, and the existing Kaiser team.

XLCS acted as buyside advisor to CID Capital in connection with its investment in Kaiser, which was completed on August 14, 2026. The engagement was supported by Jay Cremer, Vice President, and David Silva, Senior Associate.

About XLCS Partners, Inc.
XLCS Partners is a leading global investment banking firm providing M&A advisory services. Visit www.xlcspartners.com for more information.

Media Contact: 
Kendra Span
kspan@xlcspartners.com
615-379-7783

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SOURCE XLCS Partners, Inc.

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PlanetiQ Selected for NOAA’s Space-Based Environmental Monitoring IDIQ

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Selection builds on PlanetiQ’s long-standing relationship with NOAA and adds thermospheric neutral density to its environmental data offerings

GOLDEN, Colo., Sept. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — PlanetiQ, a leading provider of commercial satellite-based environmental data, today announced that it has been selected as an industry partner under NOAA’s new Space-Based Environmental Monitoring (SBEM) Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract. Through the SBEM IDIQ, PlanetiQ will be eligible to compete for task orders to provide NOAA with two types of commercial environmental data: Global Navigation Satellite System-Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) observations for atmospheric profiling and ionospheric monitoring, and thermospheric neutral density data for satellite orbit prediction.

“This selection builds on our long-standing partnership with NOAA and expands the ways our data can support the agency, from high-resolution atmospheric and ionospheric observations to thermospheric neutral density for satellite orbit prediction,” said Ira Scharf, CEO of PlanetiQ.  

The SBEM IDIQ, established by NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) through its Commercial Data Program. The contract has a five-year base period followed by a five-year option and is effective from September 1, 2026, through August 31, 2036.

Under SBEM, PlanetiQ will provide data from its existing satellite constellation as well as additional satellites planned for launch later this year. The company’s GNSS-RO observations provide high-resolution atmospheric profiles for numerical weather prediction and measurements of the ionosphere, including Total Electron Content (TEC) and scintillation. PlanetiQ will also introduce thermospheric neutral density data as a new commercial data product for NOAA NESDIS, supporting improved satellite orbit prediction and space-weather applications.

“PlanetiQ has built its business around delivering high-quality GNSS-RO data with the precision needed to improve weather forecasting,” said Ira Scharf, CEO of PlanetiQ. “This selection builds on our long-standing partnership with NOAA and expands the ways our data can support the agency, from high-resolution atmospheric and ionospheric observations to thermospheric neutral density for satellite orbit prediction. We look forward to continuing to work with NOAA to advance weather forecasting and space weather applications.”

Per NOAA’s own press release, NOAA is expanding its procurement and use of new commercial environmental satellite data streams that will enhance weather forecasting and space weather monitoring. The SBEM IDIQ contract is a key part in the agency’s ongoing effort to boost U.S. weather forecasting capabilities.

PlanetiQ currently provides GNSS-RO data to NOAA NESDIS under the agency’s previous commercial data contract vehicle. The company’s most recent task order, announced in August, provides GNSS-RO and ionospheric data and bridges the transition to the new SBEM contract.

About PlanetiQ

PlanetiQ provides the highest-quality GNSS radio occultation (RO) data available from a commercial constellation of satellites, offering unmatched temporal and spatial resolution. The data drive accurate, high-impact weather and climate forecast models, helping improve Numerical Weather Prediction and AI forecasts, safeguard lives and property from severe weather. In 2025, PlanetiQ was awarded NOAA’s largest-ever contract for satellite weather data, valued at $24.3 million. PlanetiQ is a space-tech company that serves the most mission-critical government, defense, and industry leaders, including international weather agencies, enabling more resilient operations across sectors. Founded in 2015 and privately owned, PlanetiQ designs, builds, and operates the preeminent commercial constellation of GNSS-RO satellites, setting the standard for precision and reliability in atmospheric monitoring. For more information, contact info@planetiq.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/planetiq-selected-for-noaas-space-based-environmental-monitoring-idiq-302876567.html

SOURCE PlanetiQ

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