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SEATTLE — Up until his recent messy divorce, Bill Gates enjoyed something of a free pass in corporate media. Generally presented as a kindly nerd who wants to save the world, the Microsoft co-founder was even unironically christened “Saint Bill” by The Guardian.
While other billionaires’ media empires are relatively well known, the extent to which Gates’s cash underwrites the modern media landscape is not. After sorting through over 30,000 individual grants, MintPress can reveal that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has made over $300 million worth of donations to fund media projects.
Recipients of this cash include many of America’s most important news outlets, including CNN, NBC, NPR, PBS and The Atlantic. Gates also sponsors a myriad of influential foreign organizations, including the BBC, The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom; prominent European newspapers such as Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany) and El País (Spain); as well as big global broadcasters like Al-Jazeera.
The Gates Foundation money going towards media programs has been split up into a number of sections, presented in descending numerical order, and includes a link to the relevant grant on the organization’s website…read more.
A new study published in Nature Communications describes a proof of principle for engineering a bacterium, Gluconobacter oxydans, that takes a first step towards meeting skyrocketing rare earth element demand in a way that matches the cost and efficiency of traditional thermochemical extraction and refinement methods and is clean enough to meet US environmental standards.
“We’re trying to come up with an environmentally friendly, low-temperature, low-pressure method for getting rare earth elements out of a rock,” Buz Barstow, the paper’s senior author and an assistant professor at Cornell University, said in a media statement.
To meet US annual needs for rare earth elements, roughly 71.5 million tonnes of raw ore would be required to extract 10,000 kilograms of elements.
Current methods rely on dissolving rock with hot sulphuric acid, followed by using organic solvents to separate very similar individual elements from each other in a solution.
“We want to figure out a way to make a bug that does that job better,” Barstow said…read more.
As the perceived legitimacy of blockchain technology increases, politicians in the United States have shown a growing interest in turning this non-partisan technology into a topic of political divisiveness.
Speaking via video to an audience of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore on Friday, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said while cryptocurrencies were an “interesting” technology, they also had the power to undermine the U.S. dollar and destabilize nations — “perhaps starting with small ones but going much larger.” While no longer the leader of the Democratic Party, Clinton’s sentiment on crypto resembles that of top Democrat and senator Elizabeth Warren, who has often criticized the crypto market during committee hearings.
Clinton’s comments came while discussing Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom she accused of being behind a disinformation and cyberwarfare campaign — seemingly also referring to ransomware attacks and some of the crypto payments associated with them. While the former presidential candidate’s intentions are unknown, a prominent Democratic voice like Clinton’s further connecting Russia to a seemingly apolitical financial tool like crypto may have the potential to do damage among U.S. lawmakers trying to enact policy on both sides of the aisle…read more.
Fear not, pancake lovers. The OPEC of maple syrup plans to dip into its sticky stockpile to cover a shortfall of the breakfast staple.The organization, Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, said it is draining nearly 50 million pounds of syrup from barrels in its strategic reserve, about half its stockpile and the most since 2008.
The amount being released is equal to more than a third of this year’s harvest in the French-speaking province, the world’s top supplier. Output plunged 24% this year following a warmer and shorter spring harvest as overseas demand soared, according to the group.
“We need to produce more maple syrup,” spokeswoman Helene Normandin said in a phone interview. “The reserve is there to make sure that we are always able to sell and offer this product.”
Quebec accounts for more than 70% of world maple syrup production and its supply is governed by a kind of government-sanctioned cartel. Quebec Maple Syrup Producers sets bulk prices, caps production and sends unsold output to a warehouse in Laurierville, Quebec, allowing the agency a level of market control rivaling the grip the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has on oil markets. “The pandemic helped in our case because we’re seeing people cook more at home and use more local products,’’ Normandin said. “It’s not just in Quebec the demand is increasing.’’ Export sales rose to 113.5 million pounds between January and September, a 21% jump from a year earlier. Next year, the group plans to allow Quebec producers to add 7 million syrup taps in response to the rising demand…read more.
Grocers and governments are vowing that B.C.’s food supply chain will stay strong, in the wake of landslides and highway collapses that have strained the province’s supply chain.
Canada’s Minister of Transport Omar Alghabra told media at an afternoon news conference that the federal and provincial governments have a plan to ensure food security.
“It is a priority for us to ensure that Canadians who are currently stuck, or in the middle of this affected region, don’t have [food] shortages,” Alghabra said.
Highway 7 is partly cleared. That route has so far been open westbound for essential travel, and to assist people stranded in Hope to get to the Lower Mainland. Highway 1, between Hope and Boston Bar, is also open for emergency access. Travel north of Boston Bar remains closed.
Crews are working to remove debris on Highway 3, with that corridor expected to open at some point this weekend, for essential travel only.
Highway 99, between Pemberton and Lillooet, remains closed.
Significant damage has closed Highway 5 – better known as the Coquihalla Highway – and there is no official estimate for when that route could reopen.
Alghabra said that he hopes highways, and rail lines, reopen soon…read more.
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