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Investment migration and wealth planning consultancy Globevisa Group announced today that the Honourable Dr. Roosevelt Skerrit, Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Dominica, will attend the 2026 Globevisa Global Citizen Conference (GGCC) in Hong Kong on October 26-27.

Under the theme "Global Mobility Trends," Prime Minister Skerrit will exchange insights with government programme representatives, family offices, and industry practitioners on the policy outlook, international compliance mandates, and macroeconomic impacts of the Dominica Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programme.

The Dominica CBI programme is administered and regulated by the nation’s Citizenship by Investment Unit (CBIU). Under government policy, foreign direct investment generated through the programme is primarily allocated to support national infrastructure and economic development. The programme mandates strict background due diligence for all applicants.

"Prime Minister Skerrit’s attendance will provide participants with direct information regarding the policies and compliance standards of the Dominica CBI programme," said Henry Fan, CEO of Globevisa Group. "This will assist industry practitioners and applicants in accurately understanding the latest evaluation criteria and future developmental directions of Caribbean investment migration policies."

Official Authorisation and Global Operational Data

According to official listings on the website of the Embassy of Dominica in China, Globevisa is an officially authorised agent for the Dominica CBI programme. On a global operational scale, Globevisa has served over 110,000 clients to date, with its consultancy portfolio covering over 150 cross-border residency and citizenship programmes across six continents.

Regarding application processing, Globevisa has established an internal compliance team to conduct preliminary reviews of materials prior to submission, evaluating their alignment with standard international anti-money laundering (AML) protocols. Furthermore, through its regional service network, the agency provides clients with follow-up administrative support, including local address procurement and tax registration, to assist applicants in establishing economic substance.

2026 GGCC Schedule

Following its previous edition in Singapore, the 2026 GGCC will be held in Hong Kong. The agenda is distinctly structured: October 26 is designated as an Industry Day for government representatives and professional institutions, while October 27 is a Client Day open to individual investors. The event is expected to draw representatives from over 40 countries and regions.

Event Details:

• Dates: October 26–27, 2026
• Venue: JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong
• Official website: GGCC 2026 Hong Kong | Globevisa Official

About Globevisa Group

Established in 2002, Globevisa Group (the organiser of GGCC) is an international consultancy specialising in cross-border asset allocation, residency, and citizenship planning, operating over 50 direct branches worldwide. Globevisa is committed to providing global high-net-worth clients with one-stop identity and asset structuring solutions that meet the highest international regulatory standards, working alongside global partners to shape the future of international mobility. For more information, visit www.globevisa.com.

Media Contact

Manxi Li
mancyli@globevisa.com

Nutraway Science, a Poland-based producer of functional mushroom extracts and adaptogenic ingredients, announced the international expansion of its lion’s mane mushroom extract (Hericium erinaceus) product line as global demand for cognitive wellness, brain health, and preventive wellness solutions continues to grow.

Over the past few years, lion’s mane mushroom extract has gained significant attention among consumers interested in focus, mental clarity, memory support, and healthy aging. As conversations around stress, burnout, digital fatigue, and long-term brain health become more common, interest in functional mushroom extracts and nootropic ingredients has expanded well beyond niche wellness communities.

Researchers continue studying naturally occurring compounds found in lion’s mane, including hericenones and erinacines, for their potential relationship with nerve growth factor (NGF), a protein involved in the maintenance and regeneration of neurons. Early studies have also explored the mushroom’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties in relation to oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and cognitive function.

While lion’s mane is not approved as a treatment or cure for neurological diseases, growing scientific interest and increasing consumer awareness have helped position Hericium erinaceus as one of the fastest-growing ingredients within the global functional mushroom extract category.

For Nutraway Science, the expansion reflects several years of gradual growth and relationship-building across Europe and international markets.

Founded four years ago as a small startup, the company has focused on building its reputation through transparency, quality control, and close collaboration with wellness brands, formulators, and research-oriented partners rather than pursuing large-scale mass production.

“We started Nutraway with a simple idea,” said Oliver Mathew, CEO of Nutraway Science. “There are many mushroom products on the market, but we felt there was still room for a company that combines scientific thinking with a more honest and holistic approach to wellness. We wanted to focus on quality first and grow naturally from there.”

The company produces EU organic-certified functional mushroom extracts using science-based extraction methods, including ultrasonic-assisted extraction technology designed to help preserve bioactive compounds while maintaining consistency between batches. Nutraway Science works with fruiting bodies only and places strong emphasis on analytical testing, traceability, and standardized production practices.

At the same time, the company says it does not view wellness purely through a laboratory lens.

“There’s a growing group of consumers who want more than marketing claims,” Mathew added. “People are paying attention to where ingredients come from, how they’re extracted, and whether companies actually understand the mushrooms they work with. We think the future of wellness will combine modern science with a broader, more balanced approach to long-term health, cognitive wellness, and prevention.”

Nutraway Science also confirmed that one of its international partners recently completed a clinical study evaluating cognitive function and mood-related outcomes using the company’s Hericium erinaceus extracts. Publication of the study is expected later this year.

Industry analysts continue to project strong long-term growth within the functional mushroom extract sector as consumers increasingly prioritize cognitive wellness, brain health, healthy aging, longevity-focused nutrition, and preventive wellness strategies.

The company is also continuing its international development through participation in the Go Global acceleration initiative. Nutraway sp. z o.o. is implementing the project “Participation in the Concordia Design Accelerator program as part of the Go Global track” under the project titled “Concordia Design Accelerator – We turn ideas into human profit,” within the European Funds for a Modern Economy program, Startup Booster Poland – Smart Up initiative. The project is intended to support Nutraway Science’s expansion into foreign markets. Funding value: €88,232.90.

About Nutraway Science

Nutraway Science is a Poland-based company specializing in functional mushroom extracts, adaptogens, and research-driven wellness ingredients for nutraceutical, food, beverage, cosmetic, and research applications. Founded as a young and rapidly growing startup, the company focuses on standardized mushroom extracts, EU organic-certified production, ultrasonic-assisted extraction technology, transparency, and science-oriented formulations designed to support cognitive wellness, brain health, healthy aging, and overall well-being. For more information, visit www.nutrawayscience.com.

Disclaimer

The statements made in this release regarding lion’s mane mushroom extract, cognitive wellness, brain health, healthy aging, and related functional mushroom ingredients have not been evaluated by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or other regulatory authorities unless otherwise stated. Nutraway Science products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Any references to scientific studies, bioactive compounds, or potential wellness benefits are for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as medical claims. Research involving Hericium erinaceus and related compounds is ongoing, and individual results may vary. Consumers should consult qualified healthcare professionals before using dietary supplements or wellness products, particularly if pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or managing a medical condition.

Media Contact

Oliver Mathew
Founder and CEO
hello@nutrawayscience.com

Lang Van, Inc. (Vietnamese: Làng Văn), a Vietnamese-American record label established in 1985, has filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States against Bihaco Communication Trading & Service Corporation (doing business as BH Media), a digital content company based in Hanoi, Vietnam.

The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (Case No. 8:26-cv-00921). The lawsuit alleges willful infringement involving approximately 5,252 copyrighted Vietnamese sound recordings and documents at least 8,068 separate instances of alleged infringement during the three-year statutory period.

According to the filed complaint, BH Media allegedly removed Lang Van’s International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) metadata from the sound recordings and substituted its own registered codes. The lawsuit alleges this practice was utilized to divert digital royalty payments from distribution platforms, including YouTube, Spotify, Meta, and Apple Music. The complaint further alleges that BH Media utilized a music label named "SOXO" to assign duplicate ISRC codes to the recordings and used Multi-Channel Networks to bypass automated copyright identification systems.

The litigation follows two recent international regulatory and legal developments. On April 30, 2026, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) designated Vietnam as a "Priority Foreign Country" due to intellectual property enforcement concerns under U.S. trade law. Subsequently, on May 15, 2026, authorities in Vietnam initiated criminal proceedings against BH Media Chief Executive Officer Nguyễn Hải Bình under Prime Ministerial Telegram 38/CĐ-TTg, which directed a national campaign regarding intellectual property compliance.

According to statements from Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security, Vietnamese authorities charged Nguyễn Hải Bình and other entertainment executives with alleged copyright violations related to the unauthorized recording, editing, and digital distribution of music. Public documentation from investigators in Vietnam initially estimated the revenue tied to the alleged domestic activity at approximately VND 6 billion ($235,000).

Lang Van's management stated that the U.S. federal litigation represents an independent effort to protect master recordings associated with several diaspora-era labels, including Nguoi Dep Binh Duong, Thuy Anh, Kim Ngan, Cao Dao, New Castle, Bien Tien, and Lang Van. The company noted that because these master recordings were created outside of Vietnam after 1975, they remain distinct from the domestic composition rights currently being scrutinized under Vietnamese criminal jurisdiction.

Court records indicate that the defendant has been subject to prior copyright litigation in the same federal jurisdiction, including a lawsuit filed in 2021 by another rights holder, as well as an active 2024 mass-infringement lawsuit filed by LTN Media and Thuy Nga. 

In the current U.S. federal matter, Lang Van is seeking permanent injunctive relief and statutory financial damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c). The plaintiff is represented by the law firm witkow | baskin.

Media Contact

Mimi Nguyen
mimi@langvan.com

LiveKit, the platform for building voice, video, and physical AI agents, today announced the appointment of Tom Davies as Chief Revenue Officer as the company expands its go-to-market leadership team to meet growing enterprise demand. More than 10% of the Fortune 500 already build on LiveKit today, and the expectation is that this accelerates with increased investment in both the go-to-market and platform.

Davies joins LiveKit from Grafana Labs, where he served as VP of Sales for the West. Prior to Grafana, he spent more than six years at Snowflake leading vertical sales organizations across Media, Telecom, and Entertainment accounts throughout the U.S. At LiveKit, Davies will lead the company’s global revenue organization as enterprises increasingly move AI agents from experimentation into production.

“AI agents are quickly becoming core infrastructure for the enterprise, whether customer-facing or operating behind the scenes across internal workflows and systems,” said Russ d’Sa, co-founder and CEO of LiveKit. “Tom has built and scaled enterprise revenue organizations at category-defining companies, and we’re excited to have him leading our next phase of growth as more enterprises deploy voice AI applications and digital workers at scale.”

LiveKit provides the software frameworks and cloud infrastructure for building AI agents that can see, hear, and speak in real time, used by companies including SAP, Tesla, OpenAI, Salesforce, SpaceXAI, Spotify, and thousands of others, collectively facilitating billions of interactions each year.

As businesses shift from chat-based interfaces to AI systems driven by voice, video, and computer vision, LiveKit is becoming a foundational infrastructure layer for teams building AI applications and digital workers. The company’s platform combines open-source Agent SDKs for building voice and video agents with the global infrastructure needed to deploy and scale low-latency, stateful AI workloads in production.

“Enterprises are moving beyond AI pilots and actively deploying production-ready AI systems,” said Tom Davies, Chief Revenue Officer at LiveKit. “LiveKit has become foundational infrastructure for real-time AI experiences, and the opportunity ahead is enormous. I’m excited to help scale the business and partner with customers building the next generation of AI-powered applications and digital workers.”

Alongside Davies’ appointment, LiveKit also announced the appointments of Megan Barros as Regional VP of Sales, Cameron Huang as VP of Finance, and Michelle Schroeder as VP of Marketing.

Barros brings more than seven years of sales leadership experience from Snowflake and most recently served as Regional Sales Director for West Acquisition at Grafana Labs. Huang joins from Lightning AI, where he served as VP of Finance, and previously held roles at Eppo, Chime, and Centerview Partners. Schroeder joins from PolyAI, where she served as Chief Marketing Officer, bringing more than 13 years of experience leading marketing organizations at B2B technology companies.

The appointments follow a period of strong momentum for LiveKit, including its $100 million Series C financing at a $1 billion valuation in January 2026.

As enterprise adoption of real-time AI accelerates, LiveKit plans to continue expanding its team across departments. View open roles at livekit.com/careers.

About LiveKit

LiveKit is an end-to-end platform that gives developers everything they need to build and scale voice, video, and physical AI agents. Based in San Francisco, California, LiveKit powers some of the most widely used AI applications in the world. For more information, visit livekit.com.

Media Contact

Kathleen Eagan
kathleen@sixeastern.com

Assembled, the workforce management (WFM) platform, today launched the Assembled MCP, a Model Context Protocol server that connects Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI tools to live customer support operations data. It is the first WFM platform in the contact center category to ship an MCP server, making real-time workforce data queryable and actionable directly from any conversational AI assistant.

Despite predictions that AI would gut the industry, contact centers are not shrinking. a16z notes that the Philippines, the call center capital of the world, grew its industry from 1.15 million workers in 2016 to 1.9 million in 2025 (with another 70,000 jobs projected for 2026), and U.S. customer service job postings have been outpacing the broader labor market since August 2025.

At the same time, AI use continues to grow among U.S. workers, and enterprise software is reorganizing around AI assistants. Increasingly, AI assistants are becoming the primary interface for enterprise software, a shift even Microsoft is leaning into by replacing some Power BI features with their AI Copilot. Gartner estimates that by 2028, a third of user experiences will shift from native applications to agentic front ends. For contact centers, those two trends collide: the work isn't going away, but how leaders manage it is changing.

"The future of WFM is agentic,” said Ryan Wang, co-founder and CEO of Assembled. "Instead of waiting hours for an analyst to pull a report from one tool and stitch in data from three others, leaders will just ask their AI assistant to pull the answer from all of their data connections in one conversation. Instead of scenario planning taking a week, leaders will run any 'what if' in a single conversation. The Assembled MCP is the first step toward that future.”

With the Assembled MCP, support leaders can ask questions and take action in plain language. Customers are using it for queries such as:

• Where did we miss SLA last week? Break it down by channel.
• Compare forecasted vs. actual contact volume for chat last week by hour.
• Pull MRR by customer segment from our BI tool. Which segments are driving the most contact volume, and are we staffed for them?
• Publish 2 hours of phone overtime tonight from 6–8 p.m. ET.

Unlike many WFM tools, Assembled has always been an open platform, with a developer-friendly API that customers use to shape the product to their operation. Power users build sophisticated custom agents, integrations and automated workflows on Assembled’s foundation. That flexibility matters because no two support operations look alike, and most run on a complex stack of tools (CRMs, contact platforms, telephony systems, HRIS, BI) that have to work together. The Assembled MCP unlocks that same extensibility to non-technical users, who can now build similar cross-tool systems without code, custom integrations, or API keys.

For support operations teams that currently block off hours each week to manually stitch together tools, manage their team, identify trends, and create custom reports, the time savings are significant. WFM teams have historically been stuck as a backward-looking function, explaining what happened last week or last month, long after the moment to act has passed. With routine reporting and real-time management handled by AI, support teams can finally do the strategic work: catching trends as they emerge, executing on the data, and acting as a forward-looking thought partner to the business instead of a backward-looking reporting function.

“What excites me about the Assembled MCP isn't just that I can move faster on analyses that used to take days — it's that it democratizes WFM data across the business. Leaders no longer need to wait for a dashboard or an analyst; they can ask the questions where they're already working, in a Claude window, and get an answer grounded in real operational context. That's what moves WFM from reactive to proactive at scale — and gives leaders the kind of real-time operational fluency that used to require a standing meeting,” said Christian Shrader, Senior Manager, Operations Tools and Systems at Checkr Inc.

Metrics are pre-aggregated by Assembled and incorporate your business logic to ensure accuracy. At launch, the Assembled MCP gives users read and write access across forecasting, scheduling, intraday operations, workforce composition, compliance, and performance analytics. All queries and actions are authenticated via OAuth and scoped strictly to individual accounts, with no cross-customer data access.

The Assembled MCP is available now. Visit the Assembled blog to learn more.

About Assembled

Assembled is the modern, unified platform for managing in-house support teams, BPOs, and AI agents. The company's comprehensive solution includes workforce management tools to forecast, schedule, and monitor blended workforces; an AI copilot to assist human agents, and AI agents for chat, voice, email, and SMS. Founded in 2018 by machine learning engineers from Stripe, Assembled serves hundreds of leading companies, including Stripe, Robinhood, Canva, and Intercom. The company has raised $71 million from NEA, Emergence Capital, and top angels, with employees across San Francisco, New York, London, and remote locations. Learn more at www.assembled.com.

Media Contact

Whitney Rose
whitney@assembledhq.com

Instant Financial today released its 2026 State of Hourly Restaurant Workers Study, a statistically representative survey of 750 hourly restaurant employees, revealing a workforce under intense financial pressure amidst the current affordability crisis.

Titled "Underserved: The Financial Reality of America’s Hourly Restaurant Workers," the research paints a stark and deeply human picture of economic instability across the restaurant workforce. Nearly two-thirds (61%) of hourly restaurant workers report skipping more than one meal per week in the past month because they could not afford food, despite working in the industry that serves it.

The financial pressure runs deep, with 75% of workers living paycheck to paycheck. Among non-management workers (n=566), that figure rises to 83%. Nearly all (97%) experience financial stress to some degree, with 63% reporting they are constantly or frequently stressed.

“This is a major wake-up call for the entire restaurant industry,” said Tal Clark, CEO of Instant Financial. “The people serving our meals every day are, in many cases, unable to afford meals themselves. That signals that something is fundamentally broken.”

The study reveals that the financial strain requires constant tradeoffs and short-term survival decisions. Workers are forced to make difficult decisions just to get by, delaying basic needs like food, healthcare, and utilities, while also struggling to maintain transportation and housing stability. When faced with unexpected expenses, workers are most likely to:

• Go without essential items until payday
• Borrow money from friends or family
• Delay paying bills and accept costly late fees
• Sell their personal belongings

One survey respondent shared, “I was running low on food and couldn’t drive to the store because I needed gas, so I walked two miles and just bought cheap basics like soup and ramen.”

In the past three months, 79% of hourly restaurant workers have used at least one financial workaround, including payday loans, overdrafts, or credit card advances. Many report paying significant fees, with payday loan users averaging $117 in fees and interest.

In addition to financial behaviors, the study also examined perceptions of workers about management, revealing a disconnect between company leadership. 53% of workers say their company leadership does not understand what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck, while 35% say their employer does not genuinely care about their financial well-being.

"If people are breaking their backs for your company and going home hungry or have no home to go to, it's a failure of leadership," said one worker.

The research does underscore ways for employers to alleviate financial stress, with 81% of workers indicating on-demand pay should be a standard employee benefit. Early access to earned wages and tips is considered a meaningful budgeting tool for employees and a way to improve retention for employers.

• 96% of workers believe having earned wage access would be valuable. 
• 85% say on-demand pay would help people who live paycheck to paycheck.
• 77% would be likely to stay at a job long term if they had on-demand pay, including 91% of servers or waitstaff. 
• 68% believe it would be a valuable tool to offset rising inflation.

“CGK has conducted many workforce studies. The findings from this study show a workforce under significant financial stress, and it is clearly affecting their daily lives,” said Jason Dorsey, founder and president of CGK. “It’s rare to see this consistently high intensity within workforce experiences. Restaurant employers should take note and realize their workers are in need of financial solutions that can improve their lives.”

The 2026 State of Hourly Restaurant Workers Study was conducted by The Center for Generational Kinetics (CGK) and surveyed 750 hourly restaurant workers across the United States between the ages of 16-65. The study was weighted to the 2020 U.S. Census for age, region, gender, and geography. The survey was fielded from March 3 to March 31, 2026 and represents a statistically significant sample across the national population of hourly restaurant industry workers (95% confidence level, with MoE of +/-3.58 points).

To download a copy of the full research, visit instant.co/2026-restaurant-study. 

About Instant Financial

Instant Financial is a fintech company modernizing payments and earned wage access for hourly workers and their employers. We provide earned wage access, digital tips, a tips calculator, and instant payments via banks, mobile wallets, or paycards, along with financial wellness services — giving frontline workers control over how and when they get paid. As the first company to offer earned wage access through a paycard, Instant has helped workers in restaurants, retail, hospitality, and beyond access over $8 billion in earnings and $5 billion in tips at no or low cost. Learn more at instant.co.

Disclaimer

Instant is a single-source payment solution provider, not a bank. The Instant Visa® Debit Card and Instant Virtual Card are issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. Visa is a registered trademark of Visa U.S.A. Inc. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.

Media Contact

Hela Sheth
hela@katalystcomms.com

Human Resources Mexico (HRM) stated that its Mexico EOR Specialist AI chatbot is increasingly becoming a primary resource for individuals and foreign companies seeking guidance related to employment, payroll, labor compliance, and workforce administration in Mexico.

According to HRM, the Mexico-focused AI initiative has already helped thousands of users navigate common questions involving severance obligations, statutory benefits, IMSS registration, overtime rules, remote work compliance, payroll practices, and employer of record (EOR) structures in Mexico.

The Mexico EOR Specialist AI was introduced as part of HRM’s broader effort to improve access to Mexico-specific employment information while supporting foreign companies navigating Mexico’s legal and operational employment framework.

Human Resources Mexico (HRM) stated that the initiative was developed in response to the increasing demand for reliable, Mexico-specific employment information, particularly because foreign companies often encounter outdated online content or generalized global guidance that does not fully reflect Mexico’s labor framework, employer obligations, and operational requirements.

Mexico’s employment system contains legal and compliance structures that differ significantly from co-employment and contractor models commonly promoted in other jurisdictions. The company noted that many global EOR platforms operate without a physical operational presence in Mexico, increasing the importance of localized expertise and direct understanding of Mexico’s labor, payroll, and social security regulations.

“As Mexico’s labor environment continues evolving, many companies and individuals struggle to find clear and accessible information regarding employment obligations in Mexico,” said Franklin Delano Frith II, General Manager / Principal of Human Resources Mexico (HRM). “The goal of the Mexico EOR Specialist AI is to improve access to reliable Mexico-specific guidance while maintaining the human support required for real employment administration.”

HRM emphasized that the Mexico EOR Specialist AI was designed to complement, not replace, direct human support and operational oversight. The company stated that employment administration in Mexico continues to require legal compliance management, workforce coordination, and employer responsibility under Mexican labor law.

The Mexico EOR Specialist AI was built by Phos AI Labs, an AI systems and implementation team from LowCode Agency, with Mexico-specific labor and compliance expertise provided by Human Resources Mexico (HRM). According to HRM, maintaining an AI system serving thousands of employment-related inquiries requires both continuously updated Mexico legal knowledge and reliable AI infrastructure.

“Technology should improve access to information and operational efficiency, but employment in Mexico still requires real human relationships and accountability,” Frith added. “Our focus remains on combining technology, Mexico-specific expertise, and direct support for both client companies and employees.”

HRM stated that the Mexico EOR Specialist AI will continue expanding its Mexico-specific employment guidance capabilities as demand grows among foreign companies and individuals seeking accessible information regarding labor compliance, payroll obligations, and workforce administration in Mexico.

About Human Resources Mexico (HRM)

HRM offers employer of record (EOR) services for foreign companies seeking to hire professional employees in Mexico. HRM has been the most trusted EOR in Mexico for over 17 years, with a physical office and a team of Mexican experts. HRM provides EOR services exclusively in Mexico, delivering expert, public-facing, red-carpet service to both client companies and their employees. For more information, visit www.payrollmexico.com.

Media Contact

Franklin Delano Frith II
General Manager / Principal, Human Resources Mexico (HRM)
franklin.frith@expandmexico.com
+52 664 748 0313

George J. Mavrookas is expanding Agape Behavioral Healthcare with the planned opening of a third South Florida facility, extending the company’s footprint and reinforcing its integration of hospitality principles into behavioral health treatment.

Over the course of his career, Mavrookas has focused on applying hospitality principles to care environments, shaping a model that emphasizes patient experience alongside clinical support. Recently recognized by Marquis Who’s Who, his work reflects a continued focus on developing care settings that balance operational structure with a more personalized, environment-driven approach to treatment.

Shifting Perspectives at Agape Behavioral Healthcare

More than seven years after founding Agape Behavioral Healthcare, Mavrookas has opened two operational locations and maintains a workforce of 85 employees. Within the next month, he plans to open a third location and increase his team to 100 employees, marking a significant expansion. With each improvement, he is changing how the industry approaches care.

Agape Behavioral Healthcare’s locations are not large hospital-style settings but rather smaller, more intimate facilities. Mavrookas envisions a more boutique-style approach to behavioral health care, utilizing environments that cater to the patient’s experience. His company’s latest expansion initiative adheres to this ideal, putting clients and professionals at the forefront of operations.

“We believe,” Mavrookas explained, “that we want to take care of our staff so our staff can, in turn, take care of the clients that are coming to our facilities… Whether they’re dealing with mental health issues or whether they’re battling substance abuse or alcoholism, there’s a multitude of things in behavioral health care.”

Dedicated to putting teams and clients first, Mavrookas has led Agape Behavioral Healthcare to success. Despite its relatively small size, the company has been recognized as one of the best places to work in South Florida for two consecutive years and among the top 10 companies for four years.

Looking Beyond the Third Facility

Agape Behavioral Healthcare’s latest expansion initiative brings the same approach to a new location in South Florida. Here, clients will be provided with a tranquil environment that prioritizes ample space and outdoor access, situated on the Intracoastal. One location features a fishing dock, while the other offers a beautiful waterfront setting focused on a relaxing, aesthetically pleasing atmosphere.

Mavrookas eagerly anticipates the inauguration of his third facility, to be completed very shortly. With this location, he plans to add inpatient care to Agape Behavioral Healthcare’s range of services, positioning his company as one of the few in Florida to offer a complete continuum of care for substance use and mental health.

About Agape Behavioral Healthcare

Agape Behavioral Healthcare is a South Florida-based provider of mental health and substance use treatment services. Founded by George J. Mavrookas, the company focuses on combining structured clinical care with hospitality-driven environments that prioritize patient experience. Through smaller, residential-style facilities, Agape Behavioral Healthcare offers personalized support designed to meet individuals at various stages of recovery. It continues to expand its services to support more comprehensive care while maintaining an emphasis on staff support, operational consistency and patient-centered treatment. For more information, visit agapebhc.com.

About Marquis Who's Who

Since 1899, when A. N. Marquis printed the First Edition of Who’s Who in America®, Marquis Who’s Who® has chronicled the lives of the most accomplished individuals and innovators from every significant field, including politics, business, medicine, law, education, art, religion and entertainment. Who’s Who in America® remains an essential biographical source for thousands of researchers, journalists, librarians and executive search firms worldwide. The suite of Marquis® publications can be viewed at the official Marquis Who’s Who® website, marquiswhoswho.com.

Disclaimer

This press release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The "hospitality-driven care model" and amenities described herein are intended to complement, not replace, licensed clinical and medical oversight. Individuals seeking behavioral health or substance abuse treatment should consult with a qualified healthcare professional. Furthermore, this text contains forward-looking statements — including timelines for new facility openings and service expansions — that are based on current management expectations and involve inherent risks and uncertainties; actual results may differ materially.

Old Bags Luncheon™, the luxury charitable event brand, is celebrating its 27th anniversary as founder Eileen Cornacchia explores acquisition opportunities aimed at expanding the organization’s international footprint and long-term institutional value. With a model built entirely on word of mouth and an international footprint spanning the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the business positions itself as a rare turnkey acquisition opportunity in the high-net-worth philanthropic event space.

Established in April 1999, the enterprise developed from a single Palm Beach charity event into a nationally and internationally recognized fundraising model. Every event is built around luxury handbag auctions, donor engagement, high-profile guests, and promoting active citizenship, while directing proceeds toward charitable organizations.

 “Our first profit was around $80,000. Now, some of the larger events are reporting profits close to a million dollars,” Cornacchia says. “We’ve never done any advertising; our growth has always been organic. Organizations and people heard about other luncheons and wanted to know how to create the same experience.”

Within five years of its launch, the Old Bags format had expanded its footprint across neighboring countries before growing across affluent seasonal markets, including Southampton and Saratoga Springs. She notes how Saratoga often draws high-net-worth attendees during the thoroughbred racing season, while Southampton sits at the heart of the Hamptons’ summer circuit. Both markets, Cornacchia adds, serve communities where influential people gather annually, where Old Bags events frequently sell out before invitations reach the mail.

Recognizable community figures, honorary chairpersons, and socially connected committees are all pivotal to the business model’s fundraising success. “When the invitations go out, and attendees see familiar names attached to the event, it impacts the overall participation,” she says. Past speakers, she notes, have included Priscilla Presley, Martha Stewart, Debbie Reynolds, Bobbi Brown, Joan Rivers, and Andy Cohen, alongside attendees like Audrey Gruss, Jamee Gregory, Lois Pope, Barbara Pendrill, and Sybil Yurman.

As the brand now looks for prospective buyers, Cornacchia is offering a structured one-year transition that she believes will substantially de-risk the acquisition. She has developed a comprehensive operational guidebook codifying every aspect of the business, from the event committee formation to speaker selection to auction logistics, allowing buyers to be well-equipped with the nuances of the business. She has committed to remaining available throughout the transition period. She says, “There’s definitely a learning curve. I would stay on for a year and continue doing the phone calls and mentoring, so a buyer doesn’t have to learn everything from the beginning. I think teaching the next generation of charities how to do these events properly is part of the value.”

According to Cornacchia, the organization’s trademarks have already been secured across multiple regions, with an additional trademark application currently progressing in Japan, which she identifies as one of the most lucrative luxury handbag markets. Cornacchia also indicated interest in expanding the Old Bags Luncheon™ model into markets including Great Britain and the UAE under future ownership.

Cornacchia highlights that maintaining the organization’s core philosophy remains essential during any ownership transition. Events are intentionally designed around social engagement and philanthropy instead of emotionally driven fundraising appeals. “I want people leaving the event happy and excited to come back next year. The charity wins, the attendees win, and the entire community benefits from the experience,” she says.

As Old Bags Luncheon enters its 28th year, Cornacchia believes the business remains positioned for continued growth through strategic ownership capable of expanding its international reach while preserving the framework that established its reputation across philanthropic and luxury fundraising circles.

Media Contact

Eileen Cornacchia
ectrump@gmail.com

Catalina Behavioral Health is expanding support for adults facing methamphetamine use and co-occurring mental health concerns, strengthening its commitment to provide structured, clinically informed care for individuals and families across Tucson and Southern Arizona.

Access to structured methamphetamine addiction treatment continues to be a critical need throughout Arizona, as individuals often face complex intersecting challenges like depression, anxiety, trauma, and psychosis."

For many adults, meth use is not an isolated concern. It may develop alongside untreated mental health symptoms, long-term stress, housing instability, relationship disruption, or repeated cycles of relapse and crisis.

Catalina Behavioral Health, with its treatment facilities based in Tucson, provides adult-focused treatment designed to address both substance use and mental health needs within a supportive care environment. The program emphasizes individualized planning, clinical assessment, therapeutic support, relapse prevention, and coordinated care for people whose recovery needs extend beyond substance use alone.

“Adults struggling with meth use often arrive carrying more than one burden,” said Shawna Beckman, Executive Director for Catalina Behavioral Health. “They may be dealing with anxiety, depression, trauma, sleep disruption, or intense emotional instability at the same time. Our goal is to help patients feel safe, supported, and understood while building a treatment plan that reflects the full picture of what they are facing.”

Methamphetamine can affect mood, sleep, cognition, impulse control, and emotional regulation, making treatment especially complex when mental health symptoms are also present. Catalina Behavioral Health’s approach is centered on helping adults stabilize, participate in therapy, develop healthier coping strategies, and identify the patterns that may contribute to continued use.

The expansion of support reflects a broader need for integrated behavioral health services in Southern Arizona. Families often seek help after witnessing significant changes in a loved one’s behavior, functioning, relationships, or ability to manage daily responsibilities. Catalina Behavioral Health works to provide a point of connection for adults who need more structured support than occasional outpatient counseling may provide.

The organization also recognizes that access to care is a critical part of recovery. Catalina Behavioral Health works with many major commercial insurance providers and offers admissions guidance to help adults and families better understand available treatment options, coverage considerations, and next steps.

For adults facing meth use, co-occurring mental health concerns, or repeated difficulty maintaining stability, Catalina Behavioral Health offers a place to begin the process of care with dignity, clarity, and support.

About Catalina Behavioral Health

Catalina Behavioral Health is a Joint Commission-accredited Arizona treatment center that provides addiction treatment, mental health treatment, and dual diagnosis treatment programs. Catalina is based in Tucson, Arizona, and our detox, residential inpatient rehab, PHP day program, and IOP outpatient rehab settings offer a complete continuum of care for recovery support. Our programs are evidence-based and trauma informed, and Catalina accepts many forms of commercial insurance in keeping with our mission to provide accessible care for clients across Arizona, the Southwest, and the United States. If you or a loved one is struggling with substances or mental health, or both conditions, please reach out confidentially for our assistance now. For more information, visit catalinabehavioralhealth.com or call (520) 999-2560.

Disclaimer

This press release is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment recommendations. Individuals experiencing substance use or mental health concerns should seek guidance from qualified healthcare professionals. Treatment outcomes vary by individual, and no specific results are guaranteed.

Media Contact

Shawna Beckman
contact@catalinabh.com
+1 520-999-2560

BlockBooster today announced the launch of BlockBooster Digital Venture Fund I, a $50 million growth-stage platform focused on four verticals: AI infrastructure, on-chain trading ecosystems, on-chain asset management, and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. The fund marks BlockBooster's formal entry as a full-stack alternative asset manager in the digital economy.

Fund I: Investment Strategy

BlockBooster Digital Venture Fund I targets growth-stage opportunities across its four core verticals, prioritizing projects where BlockBooster's domain expertise, ecosystem relationships, and operational capabilities create meaningful strategic value beyond capital. The fund focuses on projects and platforms building institutional-grade infrastructure and products for the digital economy, serving both institutional participants and a broader base of investors and users.

Building on a Proven Foundation

Founded in 2023 and backed by leading institutional investors including OKX Ventures, BlockBooster established its track record as a hands-on venture studio, deploying proprietary capital to co-build infrastructure and applications across leading blockchain networks. That operational experience, spanning product development, ecosystem growth, and institutional partnerships, forms the foundation on which the firm's asset management platform is now built.

"We have always believed that true incubation is the most active form of asset management," said Samuel Gu, founder and CEO of BlockBooster. "Our venture studio years were our proof of concept. With the launch of our inaugural fund, we are institutionalizing that capability into a full-stack alternative asset platform — one that doesn't just invest in the future, but actively incubates and manages it."

A Dual-Engine Platform

BlockBooster's strategy is structured around two interconnected engines.

The Incubation Engine engages at co-founder depth across digital-native projects, institutional-grade RWA tokenization, and foundational infrastructure. BlockBooster takes active roles in product design, team building, go-to-market execution, and ecosystem development, creating proprietary deal flow that conventional fund managers cannot access.

The Capital Management Engine captures and compounds the value generated by those incubated assets through dedicated fund vehicles. BlockBooster Digital Venture Fund I is the first such vehicle. As the digital asset market matures, BlockBooster plans to expand into adjacent strategies including private equity, buyout, and private credit.

The two engines are designed to reinforce each other: capital accelerates the growth of incubated assets, while the performance of those assets strengthens BlockBooster's track record and supports future capital formation.

Positioned for the Next Era

With an established presence across Asia and the Middle East, and institutional relationships across global financial centers, BlockBooster is building toward a future where its platform operates at the scale and rigor of the world's leading alternative asset managers.

The fund's inaugural portfolio investment will be announced in the coming weeks.

About BlockBooster

BlockBooster is an on-chain alternative asset management firm operating on a dual-engine business model: co-investing and incubating projects alongside leading public blockchain networks, while providing institutional-grade on-chain asset management services spanning yield strategies, private equity, private credit, and RWA tokenization. As a value co-builder, we are committed to unlocking the long-term potential of these assets and delivering exceptional value to our partners and investors in the digital economy. For more information, visit www.blockbooster.io.

Media Contact

Annie Shi
media@blockbooster.io

Dr. Martin Wächtler, a physician with Munich Clinic Schwabing, is drawing international attention following a recent presentation highlighting integrated health care models supporting migrant populations. The models are designed to improve infectious disease management among children and vulnerable populations. This work reflects a coordinated effort within the city of Munich's public health service to align clinical expertise with community-based care amid increased migration across Europe.

Dr. Wächtler has served in the city of Munich's public health system since 2020, where he applies his experience in internal medicine, infectious diseases, and hepatology. His latest contributions center on programs developed in response to the migration and Ukraine crises. These programs connect hospital resources with public health initiatives to address care access, disease monitoring, and early intervention.

Located in the center of Munich, the Munich Clinic Schwabing is a major, historic hospital that has been operating for over 100 years. Dr. Wächtler works as an internist and infectiologist at the hospital, where he is dedicated to providing top-notch patient care. 

Scalable Health Solutions Expand in Munich

The integrated care models presented by Dr. Wächtler aim to improve coordination between hospitals, public health offices, and social services. Health officials in Munich have placed increasing emphasis on scalable solutions that can respond to shifting population needs. Dr. Wächtler's work highlights how clinical frameworks can adapt to support children and families entering the health system under complex circumstances.

Dr. Wächtler’s presentations at national congresses and academic forums have focused on practical outcomes, including improved disease tracking and more consistent care delivery across institutions. The approach also reflects broader efforts within Germany to strengthen collaboration between the public health infrastructure and university-affiliated hospitals.

Contributions to Infectious Disease Research

Dr. Wächtler's recent work builds on a long history in infectious disease research and clinical care. He spent more than three decades at Munich Clinic Schwabing, where he worked from 1988 to 2020 across multiple departments, including hematology, oncology, immunology, palliative medicine, infectiology, and tropical medicine.

During this time, Dr. Wächtler also contributed to research at University Hospital Großhadern in Munich. As part of a dedicated working group within the Department of Gastroenterology, he supported hepatitis C research. “I helped discover the hepatitis C virus by providing many blood samples to our immunology team,” he says. His involvement spanned 23 years and included co-authorship on numerous publications in hepatology.

Dr. Wächtler played an active role during the AIDS crisis, contributing to HIV-related research and clinical work. “My focus has always been on opportunistic infections in HIV infection, as well as counseling colleagues and providing education on this topic,” he said. A milestone in his early career occurred when he encountered some of the first AIDS patients in Europe during his time in Frankfurt.

A Commitment to Migrant Health Issues 

Alongside his research and public health responsibilities, Dr. Wächtler has maintained a strong commitment to medical education. He has emphasized the importance of continuous learning and interdisciplinary communication throughout his career. His experience in both hospital and public health settings has informed his approach to teaching and mentoring.

Colleagues note that his work often reflects a balance between clinical care and broader system-level thinking. His recent focus on migrant health continues this pattern, bringing together experience from hospital practice, research and public service.

Coordinated Health Care Responses in European Cities

The increased movement of populations across Europe has placed new demands on health systems, particularly in urban centers such as Munich. Dr. Wächtler’s integrated care models are part of the growing effort to address these pressures through coordinated planning and shared resources.

Health authorities continue to evaluate how such models can be expanded or adapted in other regions. Dr. Wächtler's contributions provide a case study in how long-standing clinical expertise can inform current public health priorities while responding to evolving demographic realities.

About Dr. Martin Wächtler

Dr. Martin Wächtler is an internist and infectious disease specialist at Munich Clinic Schwabing and a physician in Munich’s public health system. He focuses on developing integrated care models to improve infectious disease management for migrant and vulnerable populations. With more than 30 years of experience, Dr. Wächtler has worked across multiple medical disciplines and contributed to research in hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS. His work bridges clinical care and public health to improve coordination, access and outcomes in complex healthcare settings.

About Marquis Who's Who

Since 1899, when A. N. Marquis printed the First Edition of Who’s Who in America®, Marquis Who’s Who® has chronicled the lives of the most accomplished individuals and innovators from every significant field, including politics, business, medicine, law, education, art, religion and entertainment. Who’s Who in America® remains an essential biographical source for thousands of researchers, journalists, librarians and executive search firms worldwide. The suite of Marquis® publications can be viewed at the official Marquis Who’s Who® website, marquiswhoswho.com.

Media Contact

Amanda Lauener
amanda@ascendagency.com

Texture, the grid software platform that provides utilities a single view of every device and data source on their network, today announced a $12.5 million Series A co-led by VoLo Earth Ventures and Equal Ventures, with participation from Lerer Hippeau and Abstract Ventures. The funding supports a platform already operational at utility cooperatives and energy companies, providing the coherent data infrastructure needed to operate the grid in real time.

Power utilities are operating a system that's drifted far from what it was originally built to handle. Grids built for one-way power flow are now expected to coordinate insatiable demand from data centers, manage increased congestion, integrate utility-scale renewables, manage local networks amid an influx of electric vehicles and distributed generation, and harden transmission assets against extreme weather, all at once. At the same time, they're being asked to ensure the wave of new technologies being deployed to modernize the grid — AI, sensors, grid-enhancing technologies, advanced metering — actually delivers on the investment.

Texture connects to any meter, device, or data source, giving operators a real-time picture of the system state. AMI systems, SCADA, batteries, EVs, solar, and smart thermostats all flow into a single layer where alerts surface when action is needed. The platform doesn't require rip-and-replace of existing systems or dedicated engineering teams to manage it.

Market Entry Through Co-ops

Texture's offering is gaining early traction at utility cooperatives, member-owned organizations serving 42 million Americans across distributed and rural territory, including 92% of the country's persistent-poverty counties. Co-ops manage coal plant retirements, data center load growth, and aging infrastructure with teams and budgets that are a fraction of those of investor-owned utilities. Enterprise grid software was built for utilities ten times their size. Texture provides the same capabilities without enterprise budgets or multi-year implementations.

"Co-ops kept telling me the same thing," said Sanjiv Sanghavi, Texture's co-founder and CEO. "They wanted to run modern grid programs but didn't have software built for their scale or budget. A co-op serving 15,000 members shouldn't have to build custom technology to launch a battery program or manage transformer load. We built Texture so they don't have to."

Unlike legacy vendors with multi-year implementation timelines, utilities using Texture are operational within days. The platform connects to existing systems, models the data into a coherent layer, and makes it available where operators need it.

Capital Deferral and Market Access

The platform's real-time monitoring alerts operators to transformer overload, voltage anomalies, and outage risk before failures occur. A home that adds an EV can double its energy draw overnight. Multiplied across a neighborhood, that kind of load shift puts real stress on distribution infrastructure that was never sized for it. Texture sees that signal at the meter level and traces its impact up through the feeder, giving operators a chance to act before a transformer fails. Transformer prices have risen as much as 95% since 2019, according to Wood Mackenzie, and lead times on large units now exceed two years. Preventing a single failure avoids not just replacement cost but months of operational exposure.

Vermont Electric Cooperative, one of the country's few carbon-neutral utilities and widely cited as among the most innovative co-ops in the northeast, uses Texture to monitor its grid and manage hundreds of batteries across its service territory.

"As a co-op, our job is to provide affordable, reliable energy to our members. The challenge is that we have so many systems, and the data is spread out. You can't afford to spend half the day just hunting down the right numbers. Texture helps us bring that visibility into one place, so we're not chasing information just to figure out what to do next," said Peter Rossi, COO of Vermont Electric Cooperative.

Through Texture, co-ops gain access to hardware integrations they couldn't secure on their own. Many of the biggest OEMs require minimum deployment thresholds before providing direct data access. Texture has already built those integrations, with first-party connections to 50+ OEMs, including Tesla, FranklinWH, Honeywell, Ecobee, and SolarEdge, with direct relationships and service-level agreements. Ann Arbor's Sustainable Energy Utility used that access to launch a community battery program with FranklinWH across 100 homes, operational as of March 2026.

Partnership and Deployments

Along with the funding, Texture is partnering with NRTC, whose network represents 850 utility co-ops across the country. Through the relationship, Texture will provide member co-ops with access to grid management infrastructure previously available only to larger utilities.

"Our members are under pressure to integrate new resources and manage a growing load, without adding headcount or relying on vendors whose products weren't built for co-ops. We've partnered with Texture to offer the NRTC DERMS powered by Texture, giving co-ops a practical way to coordinate batteries, thermostats, and other distributed resources in real time," said Milt Geiger, VP of Smart Grid Solutions, NRTC.

Kareem Dabbagh, Managing Partner at VoLo Earth Ventures, joined Texture's board as part of the financing. "Co-ops are managing the hardest grid transitions happening right now. Coal plant closures, battery deployments in rural communities, and data center load growth that wasn't in anyone's forecast five years ago. Texture is the infrastructure layer that makes those programs work. That's why VoLo and Equal came in together on this round and why I joined the board," said Dabbagh.

"Our initial thesis was that APIs and data connectivity would be enough. We were wrong in the best possible way. What Texture has evolved into is the operating layer the energy industry has been missing: the infrastructure that lets utilities and VPPs actually act on their data, not just collect it. The teams building this industry's future need a foundation they can trust. That's what Texture is becoming, and it's why we're doubling down," said Rick Zullo, co-founder and General Partner, Equal Ventures.

The Series A brings Texture's total funding to approximately $23 million. The capital will fund team growth and platform expansion. Texture has integrations with leading OEM and energy data companies, including Tesla, FranklinWH, Honeywell, Ecobee, SolarEdge, Leap Energy, and WattTime, and has completed its SOC 2 Type I and Type II security certifications.

About Texture

Texture is a grid software platform built for the decisions utility operators make under pressure. The platform connects to any meter, device, or data source and provides real-time monitoring, outage detection, transformer load tracking, and DER coordination. Co-ops, municipal utilities, and energy companies use Texture to prevent hardware failures, manage rising load, and coordinate distributed resources without enterprise budgets or multi-year implementations. Headquartered in New York City. Learn more at texturehq.com.

Media Contact

Fiana Tulip
Mahoney Communications Group
fiana@mahoneycommunications.com

Human Resources Mexico (HRM), a Mexico-based employer of record (EOR), marks 17 years of operations as Mexico continues evolving through major labor, compliance, and workplace reforms affecting foreign employers.

Founded in 2009, prior to the widespread emergence of global EOR platform models, Human Resources Mexico (HRM) has operated exclusively in Mexico with a physical office and dedicated Mexican team focused on employment administration, payroll, compliance, and workforce management within Mexico’s legal framework.

Over the past 17 years, Mexico’s employment environment has undergone substantial transformation, including labor outsourcing reforms, remote work regulations, strengthened workplace compliance standards, and constitutional-level equality reforms. According to Human Resources Mexico (HRM), these developments have reinforced the importance of localized compliance management and direct understanding of Mexico’s Federal Labor Law, Social Security Law, and constitutional employment protections.

“Employment in Mexico is not software,” said Franklin Delano Frith II, General Manager / Principal of Human Resources Mexico (HRM). “It involves legal responsibility, human relationships, compliance obligations, and understanding how Mexico’s labor framework evolves over time. Employers operating in Mexico must adapt as the legal and operational environment continues changing.”

Human Resources Mexico (HRM) stated that its operational model has remained focused on direct employer responsibility and long-term workforce administration within Mexico. The company emphasized that every employee in Mexico must have a single legal employer, a principle established under Mexican labor law and distinct from co-employment structures commonly referenced in the United States.

In recent years, Human Resources Mexico (HRM) also expanded its technology initiatives through the introduction of the Mexico EOR Specialist AI, developed to provide Mexico-specific guidance related to labor compliance, payroll administration, statutory benefits, severance obligations, and workforce management requirements. According to Human Resources Mexico (HRM), the initiative reflects the company’s continued effort to combine operational expertise, technology, and direct human support for foreign companies hiring employees in Mexico.

“Technology should improve access to accurate information, but employment in Mexico still requires real human responsibility and operational oversight,” Frith added. “Our focus has always been combining Mexico-specific expertise, compliance management, and direct support for both client companies and employees.”

After 17 years of operating exclusively in Mexico, Human Resources Mexico (HRM) stated that its core approach remains unchanged: combining Mexico-specific compliance expertise with direct human support and long-term employer responsibility.

About Human Resources Mexico (HRM)

HRM offers employer of record (EOR) services for foreign companies seeking to hire professional employees in Mexico. HRM has been the most trusted EOR in Mexico for over 17 years, with a physical office and a team of Mexican experts. HRM provides EOR services exclusively in Mexico, delivering expert, public-facing, red-carpet service to both client companies and their employees. For more information, visit www.payrollmexico.com.

Media Contact

Franklin Delano Frith II
General Manager / Principal, Human Resources Mexico (HRM)
franklin.frith@expandmexico.com
+52 664 748 0313

GamingGadgets.io is proud to mark its 14th anniversary, celebrating over a decade of independent gaming and gadget coverage in a market that has itself undergone a remarkable transformation. Since launching in February 2012, the platform has expanded from a niche gadget blog into a comprehensive editorial resource covering hardware reviews, game tests, industry news, guides, and online gaming — mirroring the explosive growth of the industry it covers.

The numbers behind Germany's gaming industry tell a compelling story. According to the German Games Industry Association, total revenue from games, hardware and online gaming services in Germany reached €9.4 billion in 2025, representing 4% growth on the previous year and a rise of more than 50% compared to 2019 levels. Germany remains the largest gaming market in Europe and the fifth largest in the world. GamingGadgets.io has been an active voice in this market for every one of those years of growth — informing the readers who drive it.

"We launched when the German gaming market looked very different," the editorial team reflects. "The way people buy, play, and talk about games has changed almost beyond recognition since 2012 — and we have changed with it, while staying true to what we have always been: a small team of genuine enthusiasts who just want to give honest, useful coverage."

Growing with the Market

When GamingGadgets.io first went live, the editorial focus was deliberately narrow: the cleverest and most unusual gadgets available, plus carefully chosen stories from the indie gaming scene. Over time, as the German gaming market matured and diversified, so did the platform. Today, GamingGadgets.io covers the full breadth of gaming culture — from in-depth hardware tests and game reviews to news, buying guides, and walkthroughs for players of all experience levels.

One of the most significant editorial expansions came in 2021, when Nico Arnold joined the team as a dedicated online casino expert. His arrival reflected a broader shift in the German entertainment landscape: online gaming services have been one of the fastest-growing segments of the market, more than doubling in revenue since 2019 to reach €965 million in 2024 alone. By bringing specialist iGaming expertise in-house, GamingGadgets.io positioned itself to serve readers navigating this fast-growing and increasingly regulated space with the same honesty and rigour applied to its hardware coverage.

The platform has also grown its presence at major industry events. GamingGadgets.io now attends Gamescom in Cologne annually — the world's largest gaming trade show, which drew 335,000 visitors in 2024 — reporting live from the show floor and bringing readers first-hand coverage of the announcements, hardware demos, and trends shaping the year ahead.

Hardware Boom Drives Reader Demand

The past year has been one of particular activity in the hardware space that sits at the core of GamingGadgets.io's editorial identity. In 2025, game console revenue in Germany rose 26% — driven in part by the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 — while accessories for gaming PCs grew 13% to reach €1.4 billion. For an outlet built on helping consumers navigate exactly these kinds of purchasing decisions, the timing could not be more relevant.

"When a new console launches or a major new peripheral category emerges, readers come to us to cut through the noise," the team notes. "That is what we have always done, and the demand for that kind of independent, expert coverage is stronger than ever."

Built on Independence, Funded by Transparency

Throughout 14 years of operation, GamingGadgets.io has maintained a clear and transparent business model: the site is financed through affiliate marketing and display advertising, with no commercial relationships influencing its editorial positions. Reviews and recommendations are based solely on the team's own hands-on analysis.

Looking Ahead

As GamingGadgets.io enters its 15th year, the editorial team remains anchored to the mission that has defined the platform since day one: to celebrate and explore gaming and gadgets in all their variety, with honesty, expertise, and genuine enthusiasm.

The German gaming market is forecast to continue growing, with the gaming PC segment alone projected to nearly double in value by 2030. GamingGadgets.io will be there to cover every step of that journey — just as it has been since February 2012.

About GamingGadgets.io

Since 2012, GamingGadgets.io has been the go-to destination for all gaming and gadget enthusiasts. Our passion for these topics is reflected in our informative and entertaining articles, reviews and news. We are committed to keeping our readers up to date, whether through in-depth game reviews, the introduction of innovative gadgets or coverage of the latest trends in the gaming world. Readers can explore the full archive, follow the latest reviews, and join the community at gaminggadgets.io.

Warp today announced major updates to Oz, its cloud agent orchestration platform, making it the first control plane that runs Claude Code, Codex, and Warp Agent side by side. The release adds cross-harness persistent memory, automatic multi-agent orchestration, and deeper enterprise controls, giving engineering teams the infrastructure to manage coding agents at scale without committing to a single harness or model.

Since launching Oz in February, Warp has heard consistent themes from business and engineering leaders: they want to deploy fleets of cloud agents this year, but in a controlled, governed way. They want the flexibility to choose different harnesses for different tasks and measure the effectiveness of each, and they want agents running on their own infrastructure, with full ownership of their data.

“Companies shouldn’t have to bet their future on a single model or harness,” said Zach Lloyd, founder and CEO of Warp. “Right now, there’s no real enterprise infrastructure for managing coding agents across models, tools, and environments. Oz is designed to be that control plane: a unified system to orchestrate and govern fleets of coding agents as the ecosystem rapidly evolves.”

This release includes four major updates:

• Multi-Harness Support. Oz now runs Claude Code and Codex alongside Warp Agent through a single control plane, with consistent access controls, governance policies, and audit logs across all harnesses. Teams can compare harnesses directly and assign the right one for each task. Multi-harness orchestration is available to all users while in beta.
• Automatic Multi-Agent Orchestration. Oz can now deploy and coordinate multiple subagents in parallel for complex, long-running tasks like feature builds, code migrations, and production deployments, with real-time tracking and steering across all active subagents.
• Cross-Harness Agent Memory (Research Preview). Agent Memory is a persistent cross-harness memory system that helps Claude Code, Codex, and the Warp agent remember how their team works across every session. Companies own their memory corpus, and agents build on organizational knowledge to continually improve.
• Enterprise Controls. Per-team billing, individual credit caps, and granular least-privilege permissions per agent. Oz runs self-hosted in Kubernetes, with Docker, or via direct execution.

These updates build on a new model of software development that Warp calls Open Agentic Development, making it more scalable and usable in practice. Warp's open source codebase is itself managed through Oz, with cloud agents handling contributions in response to community requests. Any Warp user can ask agents to fix bugs, build features, or improve the product without needing to understand the codebase or write code themselves. With this release, that workflow now extends beyond Warp Agent to Claude Code, Codex, and other third-party harnesses. The framework is available to any open source project that wants to try it.

Get started with Oz today at warp.dev.

About Warp

Warp is the open platform for agentic development. What began as a reimagined terminal is now an Agentic Development Environment (ADE) paired with Oz, a cloud platform for running and orchestrating coding agents at scale, with built-in visibility and control. Today, Warp is used by nearly one million developers at companies including Docker, Ramp, and Peloton, as well as leading AI labs, Big Tech, and over half of the Fortune 500. Warp was founded by Zach Lloyd, former principal engineer for Google Sheets and the Google Docs suite, and is backed by Sequoia Capital, GV, Sam Altman, Marc Benioff, and Dylan Field. The company is based in New York and can be found online at warp.dev.

Media Contact

Kathleen Eagan
press@warp.dev

Smartling, the AI-powered translation company, today announced its largest AI innovation release to date, introducing new capabilities designed to help enterprises scale multilingual content with greater speed, quality, and trust. The release expands Smartling's enterprise AI translation platform with advancements in translation quality intelligence and automation, helping enterprises scale multilingual content with confidence.

At the center of the announcement is LQA Agent, an automated translation evaluation system that uses the industry-standard Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM) framework to identify errors, assign quality scores, and monitor trends over time. Smartling also introduced Auto Select LLM, Style Rules for AI, Instant AI Translation, Language Adaptation, and a preview of AI Image Translation, extending translation quality intelligence and AI-powered automation across enterprise multilingual content operations. 

“This release represents a major step forward in how enterprises create and scale multilingual experiences with AI,” said Bryan Murphy, CEO of Smartling. “We’re focused on unlocking a new era of translation quality, speed, and trust by combining advanced AI innovation with the enterprise controls global organizations require. These innovations help customers move faster, preserve brand voice, and unlock greater business impact from every global customer interaction.”

LQA Agent: Automated Quality Assurance

Using the MQM framework, LQA Agent identifies errors, categorizes them by type and severity, and assigns a numeric score and pass/fail rating per language across all translation methods in Smartling, not just AI translation. Teams can run LQA Agent fully automatically without a human reviewer involved, or configure workflows to route content with detected issues to human review — all while allowing error-free content to publish automatically. In internal testing, LQA Agent achieved 90% agreement with human reviewers and 99% accuracy on severe errors.

Auto Select LLM

Auto Select LLM extends Smartling’s Auto Select technology to large language models, enabling teams to achieve higher-quality translations without additional configuration. Smartling handles model selection, prompt engineering, and continuous benchmarking behind the scenes, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) that references customers’ existing Translation Memory and glossaries. The result is higher-quality LLM output with no workflow changes required.

Style Rules for AI

Style Rules for AI applies punctuation, date formats, and regional language standards to AI translation outputs. Default rules cover more than 30 locales, while Smartling’s Language Services team can build custom rules tailored to an organization’s brand voice and translation preferences, helping enterprises maintain consistency and trust across multilingual customer experiences.

Instant AI Translation 

Instant AI Translation makes AI-powered translation available through a synchronous API, powering connector integrations across AEM, Drupal, WordPress, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign Plugin, and Figma. Brand-aware, quality-controlled translation is now accessible in real time.

Language Adaptation

Language Adaptation enables teams to adapt existing translations for regional variants, such as US English to UK English or Brazilian Portuguese to European Portuguese, without full retranslation. Powered by LLMs, the capability helps enterprises close a long-standing quality gap while accelerating multilingual content delivery.

AI Image Translation

AI Image Translation extracts text from images, translates it, and rebuilds the image with translated text in place. The same quality standards applied to written content can now extend to product photos, banners, and social assets, helping enterprises scale multilingual visual content with greater consistency and efficiency.

Smartling’s commitment to responsible AI underpins each of these innovations and is reinforced by its recent ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certification, the international standard for AI management systems. Combined with ISO 27001, HITRUST e1, SOC 2, and HIPAA compliance, Smartling maintains one of the localization industry’s most comprehensive AI trust, security, and compliance programs.

Availability

LQA Agent, Auto Select LLM, and Language Adaptation will be available starting May 20, 2026. AI Image Translation, Style Rules for AI, and Instant AI Translation will be available as a preview. For more information, visit Smartling.

The innovations will debut at Smartling’s Global Ready Conference on May 20, the company’s annual event focused on the future of AI translation and multilingual content operations. Attendees will hear from leaders at Spotify, IHG Hotels & Resorts, DocuSign, DoorDash, and SumUp and get first access to Smartling’s latest product launches and AI translation strategies. Register at Global Ready Conference.

About Smartling

Smartling is transforming how global enterprises create, manage, and scale multilingual content in the AI era. Its LanguageAI™ platform combines AI translation, workflow automation, and quality assurance infrastructure to help organizations automate multilingual content operations at enterprise scale. Trusted by leading global brands, Smartling enables companies to move faster globally while maintaining the quality, trust, and oversight required for enterprise AI translation. For more information, visit www.smartling.com.

Media Contact

Sarah Lehman
Smartling
sarah@sixeastern.com

The Institute Advancing Women’s Health (InAWH), a new global nonprofit focused on improving women’s health in midlife, today announced the appointment of Paula Schneider as its chief executive officer and introduced its founding medical advisory board.

Nearly 1.4 billion women worldwide are 45 and over, yet the gap between what is known about women’s midlife health — from perimenopause through postmenopause — and how care is delivered in practice fails to meet their needs. A Cleveland Clinic study released on May 7 found that more than half (52%) of U.S. women surveyed say menopause is not discussed enough.

InAWH will help close this gap by working with clinicians, researchers, and partners to make existing evidence more accessible and easier to apply.

“Too many women feel left to navigate midlife health on their own,” said Schneider. “Women deserve clearer information, a better understanding of their health risks, and more informed conversations with their doctors.”

Schneider previously served as president and CEO of Susan G. Komen, where she led the organization through significant transformation and expansion in research, advocacy, and patient support. She brings deep experience in women’s health, organizational leadership, and building partnerships at scale.

InAWH’s priorities will be guided by a medical advisory board of leading experts across a range of disciplines involved in midlife health, including endocrinology, cardiology, obstetrics and gynecology, epidemiology, and genomics, with representation from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa. The medical advisory board initially consists of:

• Barbara Gulanski, MD, MPH — Endocrinologist and Board-Certified Internist, Yale University School of Medicine
• Mary Jane Minkin, MD, FACOG — Clinical Professor, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Yale University School of Medicine
• Erica S. Spatz, MD, MHS — Associate Professor of Cardiology and Epidemiology, Yale University School of Medicine; Director, Preventive Cardiovascular Health Program
• John Eden, MB, BS, MD, RCOG, RANZCOG, CREI — Conjoint Professor, School of Women and Children’s Health, University of New South Wales; Head of the Menopause Unit, Royal Hospital for Women, Sydney
• Nicole Jaff, PhD, MSCP — Board of Trustees, International Menopause Society; Executive, South African Menopause Society; Honorary Lecturer, University of the Witwatersrand and University College London
• Prof. Cecilia M. Lindgren, PhD, FMedSci — Executive VP Applied AI & Robotics and Principal Scientist, Ellison Institute of Technology; Visiting Professor in Statistics, University of Oxford

“In the clinic, we see how often midlife women are trying to connect symptoms that don’t fit neatly into one category,” said Mary Jane Minkin, MD, FACOG, clinical professor, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Yale University School of Medicine. “Clinicians need clearer, more practical guidance that reflects how these issues actually show up in real patients.”

Those challenges are not limited to individual patient visits but extend to how knowledge is generated, shared, and applied across the field.

InAWH will also be governed by a board of directors with experience spanning global health, biotechnology, and philanthropy, providing strategic oversight and guiding its long-term direction:

• Connie Collingsworth, Chair — Former chief operating officer, Gates Foundation
• Dr. Annalisa Jenkins OBE — Former head of R&D at Merck Serono and CEO of Dimension Therapeutics
• Anna Samuelsson — Partner and managing director, Factory Capital

InAWH was founded by Factory Capital, an Australia-based investment firm specializing in women’s health. While navigating care for perimenopausal symptoms, which can begin when a woman is in her thirties, managing director Anna Samuelsson was told she was too young for treatment despite clear evidence to the contrary. This led her to identify a broader structural gap in women’s midlife health.

“The opportunity in women’s health is well understood; what’s been missing is the infrastructure required to turn that demand into investable businesses,” Samuelsson said. “We created InAWH to address that gap directly, by building the foundations that allow better care models, better data, and ultimately better companies to emerge.”

Today’s announcement represents the first step in a broader effort by InAWH to convene stakeholders, build partnerships, and define priority areas for action. The organization will host its first convening in October 2026, bringing together leaders across healthcare, research, and policy to shape the initial phase of work.

About Institute Advancing Women's Health

The Institute Advancing Women’s Health (InAWH) is a global nonprofit focused on closing the gap between what science knows about women’s midlife health and how care is delivered. By translating evidence into practical tools, care pathways, and training, InAWH works to make midlife care more integrated, accessible, and effective worldwide. For more information, visit www.inawh.org.

Media Contact

Bethany Hardy
bethany.hardy@newtonstreet.com
+1 202-277-3848

The Central Asia Justice Initiative (CAJI) today opened a confidential channel to receive information from current and former employees of the National Bank of Uzbekistan, and from any individual in possession of documented evidence of possible abuses, exceeding of official authority, conflicts of interest, improper use of regulatory and investigative mechanisms, pressure on business, concealment of material information, manipulation of internal procedures, breaches of good governance, and other actions that may constitute matters of public interest. The anticorruption hotline is available at nbu.caji.org

The organization is launching a preliminary independent review of information concerning the possible use of administrative resources, opaque decision-making, selective application of authority, interference in commercial disputes, pressure on market participants, mishandling of internal documentation, and other actions that may have caused harm to the legitimate interests of business, investors, and citizens. CAJI is interested exclusively in facts capable of verification and substantiation through documents, official correspondence, internal directives, financial records, or testimony from persons with direct knowledge of the circumstances.

CAJI urges potential informants to act responsibly and within the law. The organization seeks information of substantial public significance bearing on questions of governance integrity, the legality of officials’ conduct, and adherence to legal procedure. Particular attention will be paid to reports concerning possible abuse of regulatory powers, the use of criminal-law instruments in commercial conflicts, the granting of preferences to affiliated structures, the concealment of risk, improper influence on financial market participants, and other practices incompatible with the principles of transparent governance.

All submissions will undergo independent review. CAJI will take reasonable measures to protect the confidentiality of every communication to the extent permitted by applicable law and stands ready, where appropriate, to facilitate secure communication through attorneys and partner human rights organizations.

The organization emphasizes that it does not seek rumors, political statements, or unverified accusations. It seeks good-faith, verifiable information capable of supporting an investigation of genuine public significance.

Potential informants may contact CAJI through secure channels for a preliminary consultation regarding the procedure for submitting materials, applicable legal risks, and available measures to protect confidentiality. Decisions on further action with respect to each submission will follow verification of credibility and legal materiality.

Against the backdrop of the announced course of decisive anti-corruption action, civic responsibility and the alignment of society with state policy take on heightened importance. This is not about formal endorsement. It is about real participation: the readiness to record violations, transmit facts, and refuse to look away from abuses.

About Central Asia Justice Initiative (CAJI)

The Central Asia Justice Initiative (CAJI) is an independent organization dedicated to documenting and examining issues of governance integrity, rule of law, and the protection of investor and civil rights across the Central Asian region. CAJI conducts preliminary independent reviews of credible, documented evidence of institutional misconduct and works in coordination with attorneys and partner human rights organizations to ensure that submissions of public significance receive rigorous legal evaluation. For more information, visit caji.org.

Media Contact

Keith D. Silverstein, Esq.
Central Asia Justice Initiative
info@caji.org

Crescendo, the only AI-Native customer experience solution built to run CX as one unified system, today announced that it has been named a winner in the Newsweek AI Impact Awards 2026 in the category of AI Customer Service, Best Outcomes - Customer Satisfaction.

The Newsweek AI Impact Awards celebrate organizations that are setting a new standard for the practical and responsible application of AI. Winners are recognized for developing technologies and strategies that enhance operations, solve complex challenges, and create meaningful business and societal impact.

“Artificial intelligence is rapidly redefining the way organizations operate, innovate, and compete,” said Newsweek Editor-in-Chief Jennifer H. Cunningham. “Crescendo’s recognition through the Newsweek AI Impact Awards reflects its thoughtful application of AI in customer experience and its forward-looking approach to improving how organizations support and engage customers.”

Crescendo joins an impressive group of honorees that include AWS, Intuit, Salesforce, and Zoom. The recognition is driven by its industry-first Multimodal AI technology that unifies voice, chat, text and image sharing into a single, uninterrupted customer conversation, reducing friction for customers while giving both human and AI agents full situational awareness in real time.

“Being named a Newsweek AI Impact Award winner is a proud moment, and it belongs to our entire team,” said Matt Price, CEO and co-founder of Crescendo. “We’ve always believed that CX should be judged by outcomes, not promises. This award validates that belief, and every person at Crescendo who helped deliver faster resolutions, stronger satisfaction, and measurable revenue impact for our customers played a part in earning it. I’m proud to see our work recognized.”

For more information about the Newsweek AI Impact Awards 2026, visit their official announcement.

Crescendo will showcase the AI-native approach behind this recognition at Crescendo Live San Francisco 2026 on May 21, where CX leaders and operators will share an operator-led look at what’s working in AI for CX today. Please register for Crescendo Live San Francisco 2026 to secure your spot.

About Crescendo

Crescendo is the only AI-Native Customer Experience solution built to run CX as one unified system. By combining autonomous AI with embedded CX expertise, performance continues to improve after launch. Founded in San Francisco in 2023, Crescendo powers 500+ AI deployments worldwide across retail, financial services, healthcare, technology, and consumer services.For more information, visit crescendo.ai.

About Newsweek AI Impact Awards

The Newsweek AI Impact Awards recognize organizations applying artificial intelligence to drive innovation, improve operations, solve complex challenges, and create measurable business or societal impact. The program highlights companies demonstrating practical, responsible, and forward-looking uses of AI across industries.

About Newsweek

Newsweek is the global digital news organization built around the iconic 93-year-old American magazine. Newsweek reaches 100 million people monthly with its thought-provoking news, opinions, images, graphics, and video delivered across a dozen print and digital platforms. Headquartered in New York City, Newsweek also publishes international editions in EMEA and Asia.

Media Contact

Sylvie Tongco
Crescendo
sylvie.tongco@crescendo.ai

Launchsquad for Crescendo
crescendo@launchsquad.com