Big tech layoffs may further disrupt equity and diversity efforts

Thu, January 5, 2023 

By Doyinsola Oladipo

NEW YORK, Jan 5 (Reuters) - 2023 is shaping up as a challenging year to be a woman or minority working in the tech sector, or even a person with one too many years under their belt.

Surging firings by technology companies last year are disproportionately affecting women and mid-career talent which may make it more difficult to improve diversity in one of the most sought-after industries, according to data from a research firm.

In recent years, U.S. tech majors have stepped up hiring and made diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) a priority. But as the industry grapples with over-hiring since mid-2020, rising interest rates and changes in business and consumer behavior, tech companies have announced deep cuts, risking their diversity efforts.

Amazon.com Inc's layoffs will now include more than 18,000 roles as part of a workforce reduction it previously disclosed, its CEO said on Wednesday. That comes to about 6% of its corporate workforce. Salesforce Inc said on Wednesday it planned to eliminate about 10% of its staff.

The rare shakeup in big tech companies risks further disrupting diversity pledges that have already grown stagnant as companies de-emphasize DEI efforts.

Companies including Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com, Twitter Inc and Snap Inc have together cut over 97,000 jobs in 2022 to deal with the slowing economy and shareholder pressures, according to a report from employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. That is up 649% from 2021.

Women and Latino workers represent 46.64% and 11.49%, respectively, of the tech layoffs from September to December 2022, while those segments make up 39.09% and 9.96%, respectively, of the entire industry, according to data from Revelio Labs Inc, a startup that analyzed data from tech layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi and talent database Parachute List by Rocket.

Mid-career talent is also overrepresented in layoffs, said Reyhan Ayas, Revelio Labs senior economist.

Meta, for instance, committed in 2019 to doubling the number of Black and Hispanic employees in its U.S. workforce as well as doubling the number of women in its global workforce by 2024.

Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who studied U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity data for 2008-2016, found that about 7% of tech firms are actively trying to diversify their workforce.

Tomaskovic-Devey said if the same pattern holds, the current round of layoffs will lead to fewer women and non-Asian minorities in tech firms and further entrench the dominance of white and Asian males in the industry.

Twitter was hit with a lawsuit that claimed the social media company disproportionately targeted female employees in layoffs.

Snap and Twitter did not respond to requests for comment. Meta declined to comment.

DISRUPT DIVERSITY

Black and Asian talent has been less affected by the job cuts but the unexpected layoffs in tech may make it more difficult to attract diverse early-career talent to "the cool kid on the block" or well-known tech companies, said Morgan DeBaun, CEO of Blavity Inc, which hosts the largest annual Black tech conference, AfroTech.

This will disrupt diversity efforts even further, said Benjamin Juarez, a recruiting consultant and co-founder of Latinos in Tech. Underrepresented talent will face increased competition for entry-level roles as experienced workers settle for those jobs, he added.

Entry-level jobs often present the best option for diverse candidates to get a foothold in the tech industry.

"Someone looking to break in to tech for the first time should anticipate that it could be a long road," said Amanda Daering, co-founder of HR consulting firm Newance which builds finance and tech teams at startups.

Companies have made cuts to budgets allocated to make workplaces more diverse, said Nadiyah Johnson, CEO of Milky Way Tech Hub, which helps corporations source diverse candidates.

"There's been patterns of pushing back projects that at one point in time were a priority, especially the first year or two since the George Floyd murder," she said.

Still, some are hopeful.

Latinos in Tech's Juarez said he is hopeful that massive layoffs will give rise to minority led-startups, his preferred solution to the stagnant DEI efforts.

"We want to increase the amount of Latinos in the tech space but we're starting to see that some of these DEI efforts just don't work and we just need to essentially build our own path."

(Reporting by Doyinsola Oladipo in New York Editing by Denny Thomas and Matthew Lewis)

Syrians in rebel enclave protest Turkey-Syria contacts

Fri, January 6, 2023 

IDLIB, Syria (AP) — Thousands of Syrians held protests Friday in different parts of the rebel-held northwest against recent moves by the governments in Damascus and Ankara to improve ties.

The protests in villages and towns in Idlib and Aleppo provinces came a week after the Turkish, Syrian and Russian defense ministers held previously unannounced talks in Moscow in the first such meeting between rivals Turkey and Syria since the start of the Syrian conflict 11 years ago.

Turkey has been a main backer of insurgents fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces. . Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces presidential and parliamentary elections in June and is under intense pressure at home to send Syrian war refugees back to Syria.

Damascus and Ankara have been holding talks at the security level in recent months but last week’s meeting in Moscow raised alarms among opposition activists who fear they could pay a price for a Damascus-Ankara reconciliation.

“Listen Erdogan, the blood of the martyrs cannot be sold,” chanted a group of protesters.

Russia, a main backer of Assad, has long been pressing for the reconciliation. Syria’s civil war has killed hundreds of thousands and destroyed large parts of the country. It has also displaced half of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million.

Many of the displaced now live in tent settlements in the rebel-held northwestern Syria while Turkey is estimated to now host around 3.7 million Syrian war refugees.

The rebel-held northwest is also the base of the powerful al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Arabic for Levant Liberation Committee, which dominates the region’s rebel groups.

Earlier this week, the group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, said a deal between Turkey and Syria would be a “serious deviation” and called on his fighters to prepare for a long battle against Syrian government forces.

2,500-year-old pantry — still partly stocked — unearthed during construction in Germany

Aspen Pflughoeft
Fri, January 6, 2023 

A school district in Germany called in archaeologists to excavate the area where a new school would be built. For months, the excavations found nothing, then they had a breakthrough.

Archaeologists at the site in Gaukönigshofen uncovered the remains of a pantry, the Würzburg District Office said in a Dec. 15 news release. The 2,500-year-old storage pit held a number of artifacts buried in a cone shape.

Unearthed from the pantry, archaeologists found broken fragments of ceramic pots, simple stone tools, two bronze fragments and animal bones indicating either food or food waste, the release said, Photos show two of the potshards.

Potshards found in the storage pit.

These items are traces of the Hallstatt culture, from an early Celtic period between 800 B.C. and 600 B.C., the excavation manager Ulrich Müller said in the release.

The excavation uncovered more than 40 artifacts, Müller said. Some of these finds came from the early middle ages, a period from 700 A.D. to 900 A.D.

Researchers will remove the artifacts from the site before continuing to study and preserve them, the release said.

Gaukönigshofen is about 315 miles southwest of Berlin.

Chinese Researchers Claim They Cracked Encryption With Quantum Computers



Jason Nelson
Thu, January 5, 2023 at 6:59 PM MST·4 min read

While the world continues to reel from how far artificial intelligence has come with projects like ChatGPT, Chinese researchers recently claimed that they have been able to crack encryption using quantum computing—something scientists have assumed was years away from happening.

A group of Chinese researchers published a "scientific paper" last month that said they used quantum computers to break a standard RSA algorithm that many industries—including banking, mobile phones, and data storage—use for their encryption measures.

According to the Financial Times, the Chinese researchers said they had used their algorithm to factor a number with 48 bits on a quantum computer with ten qubits (quantum bits) and that they had not yet tried to scale it up to work on a much bigger system.

Researchers Suggest Quantum Computers Only a Decade From Cracking Bitcoin
- ADVERTISEMENT -


While the claim has raised some concern about the state of the art in security, many experts consider the breakthrough to be impossible—at least for now.

"A colleague of ours calls it the biggest hoax he has seen in about 25 years," Global Quantum Intelligence CEO & Co-Founder Andre Konig told Decrypt in an interview. "The paper itself doesn't announce anything really new."

Konig calls the paper's claims hype-driven and a spin on existing methodologies and approaches, lacking a proof of concept that would demonstrate the successful breaking of current encryption standards.

What is Encryption?

Encryption helps protect information from being accessed even when it's intercepted by hackers, malicious actors, or nation-states that might try to steal personal or financial data. This secure means of scrambling and unscrambling information is key to blockchains like the Bitcoin network and cryptocurrency in general, which stores things like transaction details on a decentralized ledger made widely accessible over the internet.

What is Quantum Computing?

Quantum computing uses quantum mechanics to perform operations on data at much greater speeds than modern computers. Many times more powerful than an average desktop PC, quantum computers are attractive in calculation-heavy cryptography, but are much more challenging to build, program, and use. Their speed and processing power, crypto enthusiast fear, may one day be able to break the encryption used to secure Bitcoin.

"Some people in our industry call it Y2Q," Konig said. "Y2Q," Konig noted, is the unknown moment in the future when quantum computing achieves a mainstream breakthrough—referenced the way "Y2K" was used in the late 1990s in the computer industry. At the time, the industry looked to midnight, December 31, 1999, as the day when computers worldwide would go down, causing a global meltdown.

Konig says that while researchers do not know when Y2Q will happen, the industry is exploring the possibility of the day when quantum computers come into their own. "I think it's going to take about ten years to happen," he said. "But if you're one of these providers with critical information, you need to worry about it today."

Bank of Canada Using Quantum Computing to Simulate Crypto Adoption Scenarios

What is the threat to Bitcoin?

Bitcoin has never been successfully hacked, but many see brute force attacks using quantum computers as the likely tool someone would use to take down Bitcoin.

According to the cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, a brute force attack uses trial-and-error to guess strings like login credentials and encryption keys, working through all possible combinations hoping to find a match. With current technology, these attacks can take years, even decades, to succeed.

Quantum computers could theoretically untangle complex encryption within hours or minutes.

"It would completely and utterly destroy the market," David Schwed, COO of the blockchain security firm, Halborn, told Decrypt. "But it's not just crypto; it's anything encrypted; whether you're breaking ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) or breaking RSA, you'll be able to break any encryption."

Could Quantum Computers Defeat Bitcoin? Not So Fast.

Schwed believes that if researchers were successful in developing quantum computing, the first target would not be cryptocurrency but massive stores of leaked and stolen encrypted data that nation-states have accumulated over the years.

"[They are] just waiting for the day that they can decrypt that data," he said. "That, to me, would be more concerning, not necessarily to crypto."

"The Chinese are not going to tell us that they can break encryption if they can break encryption," Schwed added. "They're just going to break encryption and do whatever they're gonna do with it."

Schwed and Konig agree that announcing the ability to break encryption would be odd for a country to do.

Who is Working on Quantum Computing?

While quantum computers may still be years away from posing a threat to encryption and cryptocurrency, several companies—including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin—have entered the race to bring quantum computing to the market.

"I think [it's] extremely urgent," Konig said. "Because no matter if it takes five years, ten, or even 15 years, patching your systems is going to take up considerable resources. So you really have to get started today."

Colombia government weakened by 'truce' mishap: analysts


Thu, 5 January 2023 

National Liberation Army (ELN) FLAG

In announcing a "bilateral" ceasefire before it existed, Colombian President Gustavo Petro may have weakened his government in ongoing peace talks with armed groups, experts say.

Petro's New Year's Eve declaration was hailed by the United Nations and others as a step towards the "total peace" Colombia's first-ever leftist president has vowed to bring to the country.

But the ELN guerrilla group poured cold water all over Petro's declaration just three days later, denying the group had entered into any such deal, and the government conceded that nothing was signed.

Whether a calculated ploy to pile pressure on the ELN or mere miscommunication, Petro's move was a "mistake" that harmed "the legitimacy of the peace negotiations," conflict expert Laura Barrios of Rosario University told AFP.

"The biggest challenge here will be how the government will regain the trust of the ELN," she said.

For analyst Felipe Botero of the University of The Andes in Bogota, the events "revealed inexperience and political clumsiness."

It was a "setback for the government," said Botero, but would not necessarily compromise the talks themselves.

- 'Renewed hope' -

On December 31, Petro announced that a ceasefire had been agreed with the country's five largest armed groups, including the National Liberation Army (ELN), from January 1 to June 30.

The government subsequently said the ceasefire would be monitored by the United Nations, Colombia's human rights ombudsman and the Catholic Church.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the supposed deal brought "renewed hope for comprehensive peace to the Colombian people as the New Year dawns."

But then on Tuesday, the ELN said it had "not discussed any bilateral ceasefire with the Gustavo Petro government, therefore no such agreement exists."

The group added that "a unilateral government decree cannot be accepted as an agreement."

This prompted the government to concede Tuesday that a proposed ceasefire decree had not been signed, and the following day to announce a suspension of a truce that never existed in the first place.

Petro, an active social media user, has been quiet in recent days.

- 'More expensive' -

Both the government and ELN have said the question of a ceasefire will be raised again in Mexico when talks resume later this month.

Negotiations between the government and the ELN, the country's last recognized rebel group, have been underway since November.

A first round of peace talks since Petro came to power in August concluded in Caracas, Venezuela on December 12 without a truce being agreed.

The ELN has already accused Petro of acting just like former "traditional governments" with which previous attempts at peace negotiations had failed.

Political commentator Andres Mejia Vergnaud said a ceasefire agreement has just become "more expensive."

"The government needs it a lot more, and the other side will get more in return," he said.

Petro's announcement had also included two dissident splinter factions of the disbanded FARC guerrilla group, the Gulf Clan narcotics outfit and the Self-Defense Forces of the Sierra Nevada, a right-wing paramilitary group.

The ELN, which has an estimated 3,500 members, is the only group to have refuted the existence of a truce, though the others will be watching closely what happens next.

"We can imagine a scenario in which these actors say 'look at what they've done with the ELN, we’d better take a break,'" in negotiations, said Barrios.
- 'Lies' -

Colombia's right-wing opposition, still reeling from electoral defeat last year, has meanwhile jumped on Petro's apparent misstep.

Petro's "lies put Colombians in danger," charged Senator Miguel Uribe of the Democratic Center party.

For his part, defeated conservative presidential candidate Federico "Fico" Gutierrez said Petro's announcement of something that was "not true" was a blow for security in a country in the grip of decades of violence.

"The most serious aspect of this is that the government has manacled the security forces and the civilian population is defenseless," tweeted Gutierrez. "This is delivering the country to criminal groups."

For Leon Valencia, director of the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation think tank, the apparent blunder has given the opposition a "huge" opening for hammering the executive.

"The opposition can say with reason that 'these people are very disorganized, they are not on the same page,' and that harms the image of the government," he said.

bur/mlr/mdl/tjj/mca

USDA approves vaccine for honeybees, biotech company says

Story by Simrin Singh • 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved a conditional license for a vaccine that protects honeybees against American Foulbrood disease, Dalan Animal Health, the biotech company behind the drug, announced Wednesday.


Honey bees fly to the hive© Wolfram Steinberg/picture alliance via Getty Images

The disease, which is caused by Paenibacillus larvae, infects the bee's larvae. Traditionally, when bees get sick with American Foulbrood disease, their hives, as well as any equipment in contact with the infected hives, must be incinerated, the statement said. This in turn, reduces the honeybee population, and in turn, affects the world's food supply.

This new vaccine is the first of its kind to prevent this from happening, the biotech company said.

The vaccine, which contains a dead cell of the virus, is administered to the bees through the queen feed that worker bees consume. The worker bees then transfer the vaccine into the royal jelly and feed it to the queen. As a result, the vaccine gets deposited into her ovaries, giving larvae immunity when they hatch.

The drug is non-GMO, Dalan Animal Health said, and can be utilized in organic farming.

Honeybees are an important part of agriculture as they pollinate crops needed to supply the world's food supply, Dalan Animal Health explained.

"This is an exciting step forward for beekeepers, as we rely on antibiotic treatment that has limited effectiveness and requires lots of time and energy to apply to our hives," said Trevor Tauzer, a board member of the California State Beekeepers Association, in the news release. "If we can prevent an infection in our hives, we can avoid costly treatments and focus our energy on other important elements of keeping our bees healthy."

Dalan Animal Health develops immune treatments for invertebrates to prevent harmful diseases from spreading amongst honeybees, shrimp, worms and other insects.

New Indonesia capital imperils ancient Eden with 'ecological disaster'


Marchio Gorbiano with Dessy Sagita in Jakarta
Thu, 5 January 2023 


The twisting road that leads to Indonesia's future capital is lined with dense rainforest and pockets of plantations, punctuated every so often with monkeys enjoying a laze out on the tarmac.

Located in eastern Borneo -- the world's third-largest island -- Nusantara is set to replace sinking and polluted Jakarta as Indonesia's political centre by late 2024.

But the two-hour drive from Balikpapan city to the sweeping green expanse of Nusantara's "Point Zero" reveals the scale of the new capital's potential impact on a biodiverse area that is home to thousands of animal and plant species.


With construction set to ramp up this year, environmentalists warn building a metropolis will speed up deforestation in one of the world's largest and oldest stretches of tropical rainforest, estimated to be more than 100 million years old.

"It's going to be a massive ecological disaster," Uli Arta Siagian, forest campaigner for environmental group Walhi, told AFP.

The island that Indonesians call the "lungs of the world" -- shared with Malaysia and Brunei -- is home to long-nosed monkeys, clouded leopards, pig-tailed macaques, flying fox-bats and the smallest rhinos on the planet.


But by 2045, the Indonesian government says Nusantara will host 1.9 million residents, more than twice Balikpapan's population, importing a wave of human and industrial activity into the heart of Borneo.

The relocation to the 2,560-square-kilometre (990-square-mile) area follows capital moves by Brazil to Brasilia -- considered an urban utopia failure -- and Myanmar to the ghost town of Naypyidaw.

Drastic changes to the land's topography and the man-made disasters that could follow "will be severe and far more difficult to mitigate compared to natural disasters", said Siagian.

Indonesia also has one of the world's highest rates of deforestation linked to mining, farming and logging, and is accused of allowing firms to operate in Borneo with little oversight.

The government, however, says it wants to spread economic development -- long centred on densely populated Java -- around the vast archipelago nation, and to move away from Jakarta before the city sinks due to excessive groundwater extraction.

- 'Working with nature' -

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has pitched a utopian vision of a "green" city four times the size of Jakarta where residents would commute on electric buses.

His city authority chief, Bambang Susantono, presented the initial plan to journalists in mid-December, pledging carbon neutrality by 2045 in what he dubbed the world's first-ever sustainable forest city.

Architect Sofian Sibarani is in charge of creating a master plan for the new city, outlining everything from road maps to a transit system. He insisted that his plan envisaged "minimum changes to the environment".

Sibarani spoke of a metropolis that appears out of the jungle, rather than replaces it.

"We are trying to create (a city that is) working with nature instead of working against it," he said.

Initial projects include a parliament, workers' homes, a dam, a grand mosque and a presidential palace shaped as the towering mythical bird Garuda.

Experts, including Sibarani, however have warned authorities against breakneck building.

"My concern is if you rush this, we may compromise," he said.

- 'Erased our traces' -

Nusantara could also displace generations-old Indigenous communities.

Sibukdin, a local Indigenous Balik tribe leader who goes by one name, sat in a wooden house on land marked for the city as he expressed fears the development will drive away his people.

Like other Indigenous groups in Borneo, thousands of Balik tribe members rely on the forest to meet their daily needs.

More than 90 percent of the forest the tribe uses for hunting and foraging has already been lost to commercial activity since the 1970s, Sibukdin said.

A nearby tribal cemetery was demolished because of the dam project, leaving him "heartbroken".

"It erased our traces," he said.

While officials have vowed to respect Indigenous rights and compensate those affected by Nusantara, provincial officials said they would verify all land claims and only accept ownership proof.

Sibukdin said not all Balik tribe areas had been formally recognised.

"When the new capital comes, where else can we go?" he asked.

- Threat to animals -

While Susantono said the first stage would be finished by next year, the city will not be completed for decades.

The project will cost 466 trillion rupiah ($30 billion), with taxpayer money expected to cover about 20 percent, according to a government estimate.

Jakarta has been wooing potential investors, including Saudi Arabia and China, with hefty tax breaks to cover the cost.

It has secured the backing of three property developers to fund housing worth 41 trillion rupiah ($2.6 billion), Nusantara authority secretary Achmad Adiwijaya told AFP.

But funding has proven elusive, with few commitments announced. Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank pulled its backing for the project in March without elaborating.

That left Indonesia with an uphill battle to swiftly relocate and find the money to open Nusantara's doors by the time Widodo leaves office, raising fears Jakarta could cut corners.


Eka Permanasari, urban design professor at Monash University Indonesia, warned that there was still a lot of "homework that needs to be done".

Life is already changing for the worse for some of the area's animal inhabitants.

At an orangutan sanctuary home to around 120 apes on land marked for Nusantara's future expansion, illegal encroachments have intensified since the capital's location was announced.

"Mines, land speculators, they encroach on our place," said Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) chief executive Jamartin Sihite.

Around 40 percent of the BOSF-run sanctuary's 1,800-hectare reforested area has been damaged in recent years, including by an illicit mine built there, Sihite said.

The rise in activity threatens all sorts of animals and vegetation in this ancient forest.

Agus Bei, who runs a mangrove reserve, warned cutting down these green stretches for profit would leave an indelible mark.

"The next generation will only be able to hear about their stories," he said, standing in the shade of the mangrove trees he protects.

mrc-jfx/aha/pbt

How Scotland is leading efforts to reduce whale fishing net deaths

Caroline Wilson
Thu, 5 January 2023

Commercial creel fishermen from all around the Scottish coast were interviewed for the study which aims to help reduce marine deaths (Image: SAMS)

At least 36 whales become trapped in fishing equipment in Scottish waters every year, putting them at risk of death or serious injury, new research has found.

Entanglement is the biggest identified cause of death due to human activity for minke and humpback whales, and the extent of the issue has not been well understood.

However, it is hoped a groundbreaking new study, involving Scots fishermen, could help reduce the death toll, after possible solutions were found.


Whales and other marine animals can become entangled in fishing equipment, including the ropes linking creels (also known as pots), which are set around Scotland’s coasts to catch prawns, crabs and lobsters.

READ MORE: Green MSP calls for Loch Leven to become Scotland's first wild swimming hotspot

If whales become caught, they often cannot escape, which can lead to injury and even death.

Not all entanglements are fatal, however even those which are not fatal can potentially pose a serious welfare problem.

There is now a legal obligation in Scotland for fishers to report entanglements.

READ MORE: Call for extra monitoring as beach pollution soars by 42%

A study involving the Scottish Entanglement Alliance (SEA), the Scottish Government, and academics, estimated that in Scottish waters, approximately six humpback whales and 30 minke whales become entangled in creel fishing ropes each year

HeraldScotland:

Other marine species such as basking sharks and dolphins were also recorded to have been entangled.

Commercial creel fishermen from all around the Scottish coast were interviewed and their contribution allowed the researchers to better understand the nature and extent of entanglements in Scotland’s waters.

The study showed that a high proportion of entangled whales had become caught in the groundline, the rope that links creels together on the seabed.

As groundline is usually made from rope which floats, it can form arches in the water between creels in which basking sharks or whales can get caught by their mouths, flippers or tails.

READ MORE: Scottish marine scientists on the hunt for 'alien' sound of elusive dolphins

Researchers said this key finding led to a possible way forward in addressing this problem.

If the groundline is made of rope which sinks rather than floats, it will lie on the seabed, and will not pose an entanglement risk.

This has shown the way for a new plan to trial sinking groundlines in the Scottish fishing industry.

Russell Leaper, from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, lead author on paper, said: “Our current understanding of the extent of entanglements in Scottish waters only became apparent through this study and the valuable contribution made by the fishermen who participated.

“There are many cases globally where the problem of marine animals becoming accidentally caught in fishing gear is very hard to solve. But here in Scotland, we can see a way forward, and the key to our success is working together with fishers.”

Susannah Calderan, a research fellow at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) in Oban and report co-author, said: “Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) have now received funding from the Scottish Government’s Nature Restoration Fund, managed by NatureScot, to facilitate trials of sinking groundline in Scottish creel fisheries, and understand how it might be implemented in a way that’s practical for fishers and beneficial for the marine environment.

“This wouldn’t be possible without different organisations including the creel fishing industry working together, and I’m optimistic that we can progress solutions in this fishery, which otherwise has a relatively low environmental impact.”

Bally Philp from the Scottish Creel Fisherman’s Federation (SCFF), a SEA partner, added: “It’s great to see Scotland’s fishermen are at the forefront of understanding and addressing the issue of marine animal entanglement.”

Capricorn ready to clash with NewMed critics

Kristy Dorsey
Thu, 5 January 2023 

Simon Thomson, chief executive of Capricorn Energy

Capricorn Energy is getting set for a showdown with one of its biggest shareholders over its proposed merger with Israel's NewMed Energy.

Edinburgh-based Capricorn has rejected plans by Pallister Capital to scrap the deal, which Pallister says undervalues the independent energy company. In an open letter to shareholders, Capricorn's board of directors said Pallister's financial analysis was based on "several outdated and incorrect facts and assumptions" that overstate the value of Capricorn on a stand-alone basis.

"We have real concerns that shareholders who rely on the plan [from Pallister], without understanding the material risks and errors in its analysis, will likely be voting for value destruction," Capricorn said.

READ MORE: Investor rebuffs Capricorn proposals

Pallister has a 6.6 per cent stake in Capricorn, making it the company's third-largest shareholder. Other investors have joined Pallister in opposing the deal with NewMed.

Pallister has called for a general meeting to vote on its proposals to remove seven Capricorn directors from their supervisory roles, including chief executive Simon Thomson. They would be replaced by six nominees from Pallister who would be expected to terminate the deal with NewMed.

Capricorn said it will issue a notice next week for that meeting to be held on February 1, with a vote on the NewMed deal to be "on or around" the same date.

READ MORE: Capricorn ditches Tullow merger for Israeli gas specialist NewMed

Detailing its version of the financial circumstances, Capricorn said the merger with NewMed would deliver up to $920 million in fair market value to shareholders versus $866m under Pallister's plans. Pallister rejected this claim, saying the board appeared intent on "talking down" Capricorn's prospects to justify the "flawed" NewMed deal.

Capricorn agreed the deal with NewMed at the end of September, scrapping a previously-proposed merger with Tullow Oil in the process.

Shell to be hit by £1.7bn in UK and EU windfall taxes

Fri, 6 January 2023 



Windfall tax payments are to hit Shell by around $2bn (£1.7bn), the oil and gas company has estimated.

The cost of the UK's energy profits levy and the EU's recently announced solidarity contribution will reach $2bn (£1.7bn) in tax liabilities in the final three months of its financial year, the firm said in a fourth quarter 2022 update.

As a result the company is expected to pay taxes in the UK for the first time since 2017.

It did not specify how much of the tax liability was due to the UK and EU policies, separately.

It told investors on Friday it will face a hit to earnings for the final quarter of 2022 due to the increased UK energy profits levy and additional EU taxes.

The UK windfall tax, announced under Rishi Sunak as chancellor, means oil and gas firms will pay a 25% levy on profits, which will be phased out when energy prices return to normal - but companies will get tax breaks worth 91p for every £1 invested.

Windfall taxes are one-off taxes imposed by government, targeting firms that have benefited from sky-high global energy costs.

Energy costs soared particularly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine as countries rushed to wean themselves off Russian gas.

Most recent figures for Shell show the company reported operating profits of $9.5bn (£8.19bn) in the third quarter of this year. The October numbers were lower than that of the three previous months, but still more than double the figures for the same period in 2021.

Bosses at the London-listed oil giant said at the time that they had not paid any UK windfall taxes due to heavy investment in the North Sea.

The former chief executive of Shell had previously called on the government to tax oil and gas companies in order to protect the poorest people in society from soaring energy costs.

Speaking at the Energy Intelligence Forum in London last year, Ben van Beurden said: "One way or another there needs to be government intervention that somehow results in protecting the poorest.

"That probably may then mean that governments need to tax people in this room to pay for it."

His comment was in reference to companies rather than individuals, a Shell spokesperson later said.

The UK's windfall tax payment is being paid in the final quarter of 2022 as the tax impact is deferred, Shell added.

There will be no impact on adjusted earning for the three months, it said, and will have limited cash impact in the quarter given the expected timing of payments.

The company also warned that prolonged outages at two liquefied natural gas plants in Australia had hit production.

As part of the November autumn statement, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the government was to introduce a new temporary 45% levy on electricity generators as part of an aim to raise £14bn in 2023.