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Oil Surpasses $100 as the United States and Iran Conflict Raises Global Stakes

Cybersecurity Meets AI: Preparing the Next Generation for a New Kind of Digital Workforce

Cybersecurity and artificial intelligence are rapidly becoming interconnected – creating new opportunities, new vulnerabilities and a growing need for professionals who understand both. At Augusta University, a new $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation will help prepare the next generation of professionals to work at that intersection. The School of Computer and Cyber Sciences received the award through the NSF’s Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity Education Innovation and Scholarship for Service Program. The funding will support Augusta University Government-Ready Experts in Resilient CyberAI, or AUGER CyberAI. Michael Nowatkowski, PhD, professor and director of Augusta University’s Cyber Institute and head of Cyber Programs of Study, is the project’s principal investigator. The program reflects a fundamental shift in cybersecurity education. AI can be used as a tool to strengthen cybersecurity, but AI technologies themselves must also be secured. Augusta University is responding by integrating more AI into its cybersecurity curriculum, rather than treating the two disciplines as entirely separate fields. Participating undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students will take at least four cybersecurity courses and two artificial intelligence courses. Students can receive up to three years of funding covering tuition and fees, along with annual stipends of $27,000 for undergraduate students and $37,000 for graduate students. In return, graduates will put those skills to work in public service, with participants required to work for a federal executive branch agency for the same number of years they receive funding. If federal employment is unavailable, the obligation can be fulfilled through state or local government employment. “As cybersecurity and artificial intelligence become more interconnected, we have a responsibility to prepare students with the knowledge and experience needed to meet the evolving needs of the workforce.” – Alex Schwarzmann, PhD Schwarzmann, dean of Augusta University’s School of Computer and Cyber Sciences, says AUGER CyberAI will allow the university to invest in students while mentoring a new generation of professionals prepared to serve the nation. The first cohort will begin in fall 2026, with approximately seven students expected in the inaugural group and another seven anticipated in 2027. Experts on Cybersecurity, AI and the Workforce Michael Nowatkowski is a leading cybersecurity expert whose areas of expertise include defensive cyber operations, cyber operations education, control system security, medical device security and information assurance. He can provide insight into how AI is changing cybersecurity, the skills future cyber professionals will require and how universities can prepare students for an evolving threat environment. View his profile Alex Schwarzmann is a nationally recognized expert in computer science, cybersecurity and distributed systems. His research has been supported by numerous grants from the National Science Foundation and other agencies, and he can provide perspective on computer science education, the changing technology workforce and the growing intersection between AI and cybersecurity.  View his profile For journalists covering artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cyber threats, technology education, workforce development, government cybersecurity or the future of the technology workforce, Nowatkowski and Schwarzmann can provide expert analysis and perspective. If you’re interested in speaking with Michael Nowatkowski, PhD, or Alex Schwarzmann, PhD, about cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and preparing the next generation of cyber professionals, click on their profiles below.

Canada-U.S. Tariff Dispute Puts Trade Policy and Consumer Costs in Focus

Tariffs between the United States and Canada are again testing one of the world’s closest economic partnerships. New U.S. actions targeting select Canadian imports, along with Canada’s retaliatory measures on certain U.S. products, have moved the dispute beyond trade policy and into the everyday concerns of manufacturers, farmers, retailers and consumers on both sides of the border. The issue also arrives as the United States, Canada and Mexico assess the future of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, making trade negotiations a significant government and diplomatic priority. From a government perspective, tariffs are being used as leverage to address market access, domestic production and perceived unfair treatment of national industries. From an economic perspective, however, the costs can spread quickly through integrated supply chains—particularly in automotive manufacturing, steel and aluminum, agriculture, energy and consumer goods. Companies may face higher input costs and greater uncertainty, while households could see higher prices or fewer choices. The central question is whether tariff pressure will produce a negotiated resolution—or prolong a dispute that affects businesses and consumers in both countries. 

25 Years Later: How 9/11 Changed the World

On September 11, 2001, the world watched as nearly 3,000 people were killed in terrorist attacks that would become one of the defining moments of the 21st century. Twenty-five years later, 9/11 remains much more than a moment in history. Its consequences continue to shape the world we live in. The attacks transformed national security and intelligence, changed how people travel, reshaped airport and border security, and ushered in a new era of surveillance and counterterrorism. They also profoundly influenced American foreign policy, leading to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and decades of debate about security, military intervention and America's role in the world. The effects were cultural as well as political. September 11 changed how a generation viewed safety, terrorism and global conflict. It also sparked difficult conversations about civil liberties, immigration, religious tolerance and the balance between individual freedoms and collective security. For younger generations, 9/11 is increasingly an event learned about rather than remembered. For millions of others, memories of where they were and what they saw that day remain remarkably vivid. A quarter-century later, the anniversary offers an opportunity to remember those who were lost, recognize the first responders and countless others affected by the attacks, and examine how the decisions made in their aftermath continue to influence our world. Experts in history, political science, international relations, national security, terrorism, public policy and sociology can help provide perspective on September 11, its legacy and how the world has changed 25 years later. Connect with our experts today: View all of your experts here at www.expertfile.com

Cultivating justice and joy through critical AI use in the K-12 Classroom

Inspired by her middle school social studies teacher, University of Delaware Associate Professor Stephanie Smith Budhai has always believed that a classroom should be a space where students feel valued and nurtured. As a seasoned educator, she has helped teachers create spaces using technology to assist students to meet learning outcomes, develop their skills and grow their confidence. Now, Budhai is mentoring overwhelmed teachers to reclaim the classroom as a nurturing environment for all students. Her book, "Critical AI in K-12 Classrooms: A Practical Guide for Cultivating Justice and Joy" with co-author Marie Heath of Loyola University Maryland, supports teachers and students as they navigate the complicated interactions of AI, education and justice. Budhai answered pressing questions about the already popular book. How would you describe the central message or takeaway of this book? "I believe that classrooms should be joyous spaces where all students feel heard, valued, seen and loved. Dealing with powerful technologies that exacerbates the biases and harms of society such as AI can impact teachers’ ability to nurture such spaces. Thus, this book was written to provide a practical guide for teachers and students as they navigate the complicated interactions of AI, education and justice. It is our duty as educators not to dismiss the technology altogether, but to help teachers take a critical lens, as they use AI for teaching and learning." What inspired you to pursue this line of research? "Before writing this book, I had already published 8 books and over 80 practitioner articles around technology, equity, teacher education and leadership. There had been other books that were quickly published about AI, but none focused on the harms of AI, how teachers could come to understand how AI really works and use it in ways that do not harm students." What are some of the key ways that K-12 teachers can cultivate justice and joy through AI? "In the book, we have many examples of how to cultivate justice and joy. For example, in chapter 3, we provide strategies for teachers to build an equity-mindset while supporting students in developing a critical consciousness around AI technologies, which are inherently biased. In chapters 4 and 5, we provide framing for using culturally-sustaining, abolitionist and fugitive pedagogies in designing curricula and learning activities that include the just use of AI technologies. And, in chapter 6, we provide teachers with myriad personal, professional, pedagogical and participatory actions they can take when using AI for teaching and learning." How could this work impact schools, teacher education programs and the broader public? "This work was created to support K-12 teachers, and many teachers have already shared how it has impacted them. K-12 teachers can immediately put the strategies and learning activities that we suggest in the book to use. We also situate AI in longer histories of technology injustice and provide accessible content on understanding how AI works through a critical algorithmic literacy perspective. Teacher education programs can use this work as they prepare teachers to navigate the complicated intersections of teaching, AI and justice. For the broader public, we also include content on justice-centered community activities and projects that are focused on critical AI." About Stephanie Smith Budhai Stephanie Smith Budhai is an associate professor in UD’s College of Education and Human Development, specializing in educational technology. Her interdisciplinary research and practice lies at the intersections of technology, equity and civic engagement, across myriad K-16 settings. She has published 10 books on teaching and digital technologies. Among other professional appointments, she serves as the Chair of the Information Technology Council for the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education and is on the Board of Directors for the Civics of Technology. To speak with Smith further about AI in K-12 education, reach out to MediaRelations@udel.edu.

How Teachers Are Incorporating the 9/11 Anniversary in Their Classes

Alan Singer, professor emeritus of learning, teaching, and technology, appears in a Newsday article about how teachers are approaching the 25th anniversary of 9/11 in their classrooms. “For the generation that lived through 9/11, it was a day that will live in infamy,” he said. “But for [younger] people, it may not. So the question then becomes, what do we want kids to learn about 9/11?”

Peri-Retirement, Divorce Dust, and the Investment Hiding in Your Backyard

My friend from the gym has a recurring nightmare, not the usual one about showing up to spin class without pants. In hers, she is sixty-eight, broke, standing on her parents' porch with a suitcase, ringing the doorbell of the house she grew up in, hoping they still remember her. In the dream, her parents are somehow both alive and completely unbothered, as though this is a perfectly ordinary Tuesday. She wakes up in a sweat every time. She has told me about this dream more than once, usually mid-hill climb, which is not when I do my best financial counselling. For her, it is not a silly dream, it is the shape of her deepest fear, failure. Not being able to afford her own retirement feels like proof that she did something fundamentally wrong. Father Time does not send polite reminders. He taps his watch, and her subconscious taps back. A few months ago when she started making progress on the construction of the laneway house in her backyard, I expected her to feel lighter. Instead, she cornered me by the water fountain, looking as if she had personally lost a boxing match. "I should be in my accumulation years," she said, "and instead I am pouring every spare dollar into a construction site." She said the word construction the way other people say audit. Here is what I told her: she had this exactly backwards. This is peri-retirement, a phase I coined to describe the stretch that can hit anywhere between forty-five and sixty. It is the point when most of the accumulating happens, and savings should be well underway. The kids are at school. Retirement is coming whether you are ready or not, and peri-retirement is the stage when that fact finally gets your attention. It deserves its own post, coming soon. For today, back to my friend and her Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC). Spending feels like money disappearing. Investing is money that goes somewhere. When you spend money, it is gone in a way you can feel immediately: dinner is bought, eaten, and now there is only a receipt. When you invest money, the dollars leave your hand but do not vanish. They convert into something: a stock certificate, a retirement account, or, in my friend's case, a fully legal, income-producing rental unit thirty feet behind her kitchen. The trouble is that every invoice looks the same, whether you are buying a vacation or a foundation. Her brain filed the whole project under "money disappearing," no matter how many times I explained that a rental suite generates a cheque every month for the rest of her life. What made this harder to accept was her HELOC. She had spent years throwing every spare dollar at her mortgage so she could stand at her front door and say "paid" out loud to nobody in particular. Now she watched a home equity line of credit climb back up to pay for two-by-fours and a very opinionated contractor, as if undoing decades of discipline in one renovation season. But debt taken on to build an income-producing asset is a different animal from debt taken on to buy a car that loses value the moment you drive it off the lot. The couch is delivered, comfortable, and will never write you a cheque. An investment costs money up front and, if structured well, pays you back for years. A laneway suite is not a couch. It is a very slow, very stubborn vending machine that eventually hands you rent instead of snacks. Numbers make this less abstract. A laneway or garden suite in a city like Toronto typically costs three hundred and fifty thousand to six hundred thousand dollars plus to build.  The rent can range from two thousand to four thousand dollars a month. After property tax, insurance, and maintenance take their cut, most homeowners break even in ten to fifteen-ish years, still slow compared with a twenty-five-year mortgage, but faster than it sounds. After that, it is simply income, for as long as you own the property. What exactly is an ADU? An Accessory Dwelling Unit, or ADU, is a separate, fully equipped living space on the same lot as your main house, giving its occupant their own front door, kitchen, and, mercifully, their own bathroom. The basement apartment is the classic workhorse of the category and the more accessible option: no backyard or laneway access needed, and usually a smaller cheque, making it the realistic starting point for most homeowners before they ever consider the trendier laneway or garden suite. The rules vary by city. Vancouver has allowed laneway houses, once called coach houses, for years, with a permitting framework it has published. Toronto came later, introducing Laneway Suites in 2018 and Garden Suites in 2022, with its own permit process outlined here. My friend started her project after hearing some version of "build it and they will come," hoping to eventually have her mother move in or to have a space ready for her own child. A laneway suite can also become a studio for a retirement passion project, or even the retirement plan itself, with the homeowner moving into the smaller suite and renting out the main house, a modern spin on downsizing, as one Toronto homeowner described in a piece worth reading. Using rental income to fund retirement is not new. Landlords have long understood this math. What is new is that many homeowners in their fifties are realizing their house is their largest asset and possibly the centrepiece of their retirement plan. Now for the part nobody puts in the glossy brochure. Building an ADU is stressful in a way that is hard to explain to someone who has not lived through a renovation. Contractors have a nickname for the fine grey powder that coats every surface in a house under construction. They call it divorce dust. I did not make that up, and I did not need to ask why. My gym friend has had the full tour: Committee of Adjustment (COA) hearings, legal agreements between neighbours causing permit delays, a contractor who went MIA with her down payment, the other contractor who went MIA for 3 weeks and a neighbour, silent about the fence for eleven years, who suddenly developed passionate opinions about sightlines the moment scaffolding went up. Building one is still worth doing. It just means staying vigilant after the ribbon cutting, too. A rental unit does not run itself: there is vacancy to plan for, tenant relationships to manage, insurance to update, since a standard homeowner policy will not cover a rental suite, and rental income to declare at tax time. It is genuinely not for everyone. But with the resilience to weather the dust and the landlord duties that follow, the payoff is a long-term, appreciating asset that can steadily fund a big piece of your retirement. Governments have finally noticed. Different levels of government are working to make these suites easier to build, with mixed follow-through. In 2024, the federal government announced an expansion of the Canada Secondary Suite Loan Program, offering up to eighty thousand dollars at two percent interest over fifteen years, though it never launch. Some municipalities like County of Simcoe, have launched their own Secondary Suites Program. Other programs currently in place, Homeowners can refinance an insured mortgage to cover a secondary suite, up to ninety percent of the post-renovation value. A Multigenerational Home Renovation Tax Credit for a suite built for an elderly or disabled family member.  Recently there was a quiet launch of a GST and HST rebate eligibility for laneway and garden suites starting construction between April 1, 2026, and March 31, 2027. This is a step in the right direction, but needs more clarity and longer timeframe. It is estimated that Toronto alone has around twelve hundred active permits for these suites, with roughly five hundred completed (Source). If curiosity is winning out over fear, skip the contractor for now. Call your city's planning department to find out what your lot allows, then speak with a mortgage broker or accountant about how a HELOC or refinance fits your finances. Ten minutes on the phone beats an afternoon scrolling through laneway house photos. Back to the nightmare. My gym friend is going to be fine. Better than fine, actually. She already sees the win for her family: the parent who gets to stay close or the tenant who covers a meaningful chunk of her expenses. What she needed was permission to stop grading her HELOC statement like a report card and to start seeing it as the price of admission to a retirement plan that pays her back for decades. I keep thinking about that dream, the suitcase, the porch, and her bewildered parents opening the door. Here is the twist she has not clocked yet. In the upcoming year, when the suite is finished, occupied by her mom or rented, and quietly depositing a cheque into her account every month, she will have built the one thing that makes that nightmare impossible. She will not be the one showing up on a porch with a suitcase. She will be the one handing someone else the keys and locking her own front door behind her without a second thought. Don't Retire...ReWire! Sue My Book is Available for Pre-Order I hope you will consider pre-ordering a copy of Your Retirement Reset for yourself, a friend, or someone you love. It arrives September 29, 2026, published by ECW Press, and is already available through Indigo or Amazon. If you like supporting Canadian booksellers, check with your local independent bookstore too. Most can order it in without any trouble. Important: This article is general information and commentary only and does not constitute financial, mortgage, tax, legal, or investment advice. Before making decisions about your retirement or home equity, consult qualified, licensed professionals who can assess your personal circumstances.

A Silent Disease, a Surprising Discovery: Research Uncovers Chagas Risk in the U.S.

Chagas disease is often associated with Latin America, but new research from Augusta University is raising questions about how frequently the potentially serious infection may be going undiagnosed in the United States. Jose Vazquez, MD, division chief and professor of medicine in infectious diseases at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, and his team recently tested farmworkers for antibodies associated with Chagas disease as part of a seroprevalence study. Of 155 blood specimens collected, 15 tested positive, a positivity rate of nearly 10%. The finding was particularly notable because Vazquez points to a recent study from Columbia and Greenville, South Carolina, that found a positivity rate of 2% to 3%. Chagas disease is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi and is found predominantly in Latin America. An estimated 240,000 to 350,000 people are infected in the United States. The disease can be especially difficult to identify because approximately 70% of cases are asymptomatic. When complications do develop, they can include serious cardiac and gastrointestinal problems. Dr. Jose Vazquez studies and treats infectious diseases, including COVID-19, antibiotic-resistant superbugs and fungal infections. View his profile Vazquez's interest in the disease became personal after someone he knew, originally from El Salvador, suffered cardiac arrest and was subsequently diagnosed with Chagas disease and severe cardiomyopathy. That experience helped prompt Vazquez to look more closely at the disease and its potential prevalence among populations in the region. “The reason why I’m doing it is twofold: One is if they’re positive, so we can treat them and maybe prevent these complications.” Jose Vazquez, MD For journalists covering Chagas disease, infectious diseases, health disparities, migrant and farmworker health, disease screening or emerging public health concerns in the United States, Vazquez can provide expert insight into what these findings mean and why greater awareness and screening may be important. Simply click on his profile now to arrange an interview today.