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H2 Clipper Will Resurrect Hydrogen Airships to Haul Green Fuel Across the Planet

By Edd Gent
-Jan 03, 2022

Airships might seem like a technology from a bygone era, but a startup says their new design could become a crucial cog in the green hydrogen supply chain.

While transitioning away from fossil fuels will prove crucial in our efforts to combat climate change, it’s easier said than done for some industries. While road and rail transport are rapidly electrifying, in aviation, batteries are a long way from being able to provide the weight-to-power ratio required for aviation. And even the largest batteries are still not big enough to power a container ship on long-distance crossings.

Hydrogen is increasingly being seen as a promising alternative for these hard to decarbonize sectors. It has a higher energy density than natural gas and can either be burned in internal combustion engines or combined with oxygen in a fuel cell to create electricity.

While much of today’s hydrogen is derived from natural gas and therefore not much better than fossil fuels, in theory you can also make it by using renewable electricity to power electrolyzers that split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Producing green hydrogen economically is still a huge challenge, but there are hopes that it could help wean hard to electrify sectors off polluting fossil fuels.

But transporting hydrogen remains a sticking point: Areas that are abundant in renewable energy such as sun and wind are not always close to where the hydrogen is needed. Shipping large amounts of the gas around the world will clearly be a major logistical challenge, but a start-up called H2 Clipper has an ingenious workaround.

The California company plans to build airships that simultaneously transport hydrogen and use it as a lighter-than-air gas to provide the aircraft with lift. On top of that, its airships will also use hydrogen fuel cells to power their engines.

While the project is still at the concept stage, the company says that thanks to modern aeronautical design, stronger and lighter-weight materials, and modern fabrication techniques, their airship will be faster, safer, and more efficient than its predecessors. And the company was recently selected for inclusion in an accelerator run by software major Dassault Systems.

While it won’t be as fast as a plane, the H2 Clipper will be able to cruise at about 175 mph, which would allow it to ferry cargo 7 to 10 times faster than a boat. It also has a cargo volume of 265,000 cubic feet—8 to 10 times more than most airfreighters—and can carry up to 340,000 pounds of payload 6,000 miles at its standard cruising speed.

Between distances of 1,000 to 6,000 miles, the airship could carry a ton of cargo for as little as $0.177 to $0.247 per mile—a quarter of the cost of airfreight. And because it can take off and land vertically, it can carry goods straight to where they’re needed rather than having to transfer them onto trucks at an airport.

One potential stumbling block, noted by New Atlas, is the fact that US law currently bans the use of hydrogen as a lift gas in airships. That’s perhaps not surprising, seeing as the era of the airship came to an abrupt end nearly a century ago after the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg went up in flames.

H2 Clipper deals with this issue in their FAQs, pointing out that hydrogen storage technology has undergone rigorous testing in the automotive industry thanks to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, with no recorded explosion to date. The company says this is because hydrogen’s very fast expansion rate means that it typically disperses too quickly for an explosion to happen. Whether regulators will be convinced remains to be seen though.

The company isn’t the only one that thinks airships are due for a reboot. Earlier this year British company Hybrid Air Vehicles unveiled concept images of its forthcoming Airlander 10 aircraft, which it believes could provide a greener and more comfortable alternative to short-haul flights.

There are still many hurdles for both companies to overcome before their visions become a reality, but don’t be too surprised if you see Zeppelins passing overhead in the not-too-distant future.

Image Credit: H2 Clipper

Where are all the places Canadians would feel most comfortable living? New poll answers Kenney's question

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New national survey suggests British Columbia and Atlantic

Canada top the list

Brooks DeCillia · CBC News · Posted: Jan 03, 2022 5:00 AM MT | Last Updated: 14 minutes ago

Premier Jason Kenney spoke to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce on Dec. 8, 2021, for the first time since the start of the pandemic. He criticized a survey that suggested half of Canadians say they'd feel comfortable living in Alberta.  (CBC)

A new national poll answers the question Alberta Premier Jason Kenney asked last month while criticizing a survey of 1,512 Canadians that suggested half of Canadians say they'd feel comfortable living in Alberta. 

Calling it "a drive-by smear on Alberta," the premier took aim at the Maru Public Opinion and Janet Brown Opinion Research poll done in collaboration with CBC News during a Calgary Chamber of Commerce event on Dec. 8, 2021, wondering why the research didn't ask "Albertans on how many of them would move to Ontario and Quebec."

Kenney blasted CBC News, suggesting the public broadcaster's reporting about the poll diminished national unity, using "Alberta as a convenient sort of punching bag." 

• ANALYSIS
  Alberta bound? Only half of Canadians say they'd feel comfortable making the move

• Kenney touts 'Alberta is back' in first speech to Calgary Chamber since 2019

"Based on the reaction that we had from Alberta and from the premier … we wanted to ask some other questions … and we wanted to explore what that looked like across the country," said John Wright, executive vice-president of Maru Public Opinion, in an interview with CBC News. 

The new representative survey of 1,510 Canadians in mid-December suggests British Columbia (65 per cent) and Atlantic Canada (63 per cent) top the list of places Canadians would feel comfortable living.

Where people "feel comfortable" is, "purely subjective," stresses Maru Public Opinion's news release about the polling data. A host of factors can influence people's comfort levels, including "being able to speak the local language, what you might know of the terrain, or even be based solely on what you've seen, read, or heard about the people, the economy, or how welcoming they can be to newcomers," emphasizes the news release.  

The new polling data puts the earlier survey about Alberta in context — and echoes what the initial poll suggested about Canadians' comfort with living in Alberta. 

Living comfortably in other parts of Canada

Like the earlier poll, the new poll, asking the same question, found that nearly half of Canadians (49 per cent) say they would feel comfortable living in Alberta. The same number of Canadians indicate they'd feel comfortable living in Ontario. 

Nearly four in ten (38 per cent) of Canadians would feel comfortable living in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Less than a quarter (24 per cent) of Canadians would feel comfortable in Quebec.

The similarity between the two national poll results on the question of comfort with living in Alberta stood out for Calgary-based pollster Janet Brown, who collaborated with Maru Public Opinion on the earlier survey. 

"The fact that it ended up being identical, just speaks to the validity of the methodology in my mind," said Brown in an interview with CBC News.

Living Comfortably Elsewhere

Maru Public Opinion asked survey respondents where in Canada they would feel comfortable living. The results in this table combine the strongly agree with the somewhat agree responses to the survey question.

British Columbia

65%

Atlantic Canada

63%

Alberta

49%

Ontario

49%

Saskatchewan

38%

Manitoba

38%

Quebec

24%

Source: Maru Public Opinion  Created with Datawrapper

Wright was also pleased to see the similar results between the two polls, adding that the new poll ranks Alberta in the top third of places Canadians say they'd feel content living.  

"Some people will look at it and say that it's 50 per cent full and [others] will look at it and say it's 50 per cent empty," said Wright.  "But at the end of the day, you're still left with a half a glass of really fine Alberta whisky."

While Canadians who say they would feel comfortable living in Alberta come from all across Canada, the largest proportion comes from Western Canada. 

People from the neighbouring prairie province of Saskatchewan (72 per cent) were mostly likely to say they'd feel comfortable living in Alberta, followed by those living in Manitoba (52 per cent), Ontario (52 per cent), B.C. (46 per cent), Quebec (44 per cent) and Atlantic Canada (37 per cent).

Living comfortably in Alberta?

The pollsters can only guess as to why Canadians feel most comfortable living in British Columbia or Atlantic Canada.

Brown says she suspects high numbers in the coastal regions might be driven by weather and scenery in those areas.

"We talk about [Alberta] being landlocked all the time," said Brown.

"We usually talk about it in the sense of oil and getting our products to market, but the only other parts of the country that did better than we did in terms of being perceived as comfortable places to live were places … that were close to oceans," she added. 

A surfer is silhouetted while entering the Atlantic Ocean as the sun sets in Lawrencetown, N.S. in this file photo from 2017. Brown says she suspects the high number of people saying they would be comfortable living in Atlantic Canada and B.C. might be driven by the weather and scenery of the coasts. (Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press)

Brown also highlighted that while B.C. and Atlantic drew similar numbers of comfort among Canadians, the two places attracted that satisfaction from different parts of Canada.

Almost three-quarters (73 per cent) of Albertans say they'd feel comfortable living next door in B.C., followed by those living in Ontario (67 per cent), Quebec (64 per cent), Manitoba (63 per cent), Saskatchewan (59 per cent) and Atlantic Canada (53 per cent). 

Atlantic Canada, on the other hand, is most popular with people from Ontario (69 per cent). Six in ten people from neighbouring Quebec would feel comfortable living in Atlantic Canada, followed by people from Manitoba (59 per cent), British Columbia (58 per cent), Saskatchewan (57 per cent) and Alberta (54 per cent). 

"People are attracted to different places," said Wright. "Sometimes it's of their own making, and sometimes it's of the place they want to move to."

Quebec viewed as least comfortable place to live

Less than a quarter (24 per cent) of Canadians say they'd feel comfortable living in Quebec.

Neighbouring Ontarians (29 per cent) are the most likely to say they'd enjoy living in the predominantly French-speaking province, followed by those living in British Columbia (22 per cent), Saskatchewan (21 per cent), Manitoba (20 percent), Alberta (17 per cent) and Atlantic Canada (16 per cent).

Wright wonders if language might be a barrier. 

"How many people would feel comfortable in a province that speaks another language or has different customs than yours?" asked Wright. "I think that's a barrier of entry right from the beginning."

He stressed again that survey respondents had a "very subjective response" to "a very objective question."

---

Methodology

This survey was undertaken on December 13, 2021, by Maru Public Opinion. The survey sampled 1,510 Canadians, using Maru Voice Canada online panelists who were randomly selected. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size has an estimated margin of error (which measures sampling variability) of +/- 2.5%, 19 times out of 20. Subsets of the sample (provincial proportions) will have a larger margin of error. The results have been weighted by education, age, gender and region (and in Quebec, language) to match the population according to census data, which ensures the sample is representative of the entire adult population of Canada. Discrepancies in or between totals when compared with the data tables are due to rounding.

CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices|About CBC News

|Corrections and Clarifications

US could be under rightwing dictator by 2030, Canadian professor warns

Canadian political scientist warns in op ed of Trumpist threat to American democracy and possible effect on northern neighbor

The Steal: stethoscope for a democracy near cardiac arrest

Donald Trump speaks in Greenville, North Carolina, last June. 

Photograph: Jonathan Drake/Reuters

Richard Luscombe
THE GUARDIAN

Mon 3 Jan 2022 

The US could be under a rightwing dictatorship by 2030, a Canadian political science professor has warned, urging his country to protect itself against the “collapse of American democracy”.


America is now in fascism’s legal phase

“We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine,” Thomas Homer-Dixon, founding director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University in British Columbia, wrote in the Globe and Mail.

“In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.”

Homer-Dixon’s message was blunt: “By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a rightwing dictatorship.”

The author cited eventualities centered on a Trump return to the White House in 2024, possibly including Republican-held state legislatures refusing to accept a Democratic win.

Trump, he warned, “will have only two objectives, vindication and vengeance” of the lie that his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud.

A “scholar of violent conflict” for more than four decades, Homer-Dixon said Canada must take heed of the “unfolding crisis”.

“A terrible storm is coming from the south, and Canada is woefully unprepared. Over the past year we’ve turned our attention inward, distracted by the challenges of Covid-19, reconciliation and the accelerating effects of climate change.

“But now we must focus on the urgent problem of what to do about the likely unraveling of democracy in the United States. We need to start by fully recognising the magnitude of the danger. If Mr Trump is re-elected, even under the more optimistic scenarios the economic and political risks to our country will be innumerable.”

Homer-Dixon said he even saw a scenario in which a new Trump administration, having effectively nullified internal opposition, deliberately damaged its northern neighbor.

“Under the less-optimistic scenarios, the risks to our country in their cumulative effect could easily be existential, far greater than any in our federation’s history. What happens, for instance, if high-profile political refugees fleeing persecution arrive in our country and the US regime demands them back. Do we comply?”


One in three Americans say violence against government justified – poll

Trump, he said, “and a host of acolytes and wannabes such as Fox [News]’s Tucker Carlson and Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene”, had transformed the Republican party “into a near-fascist personality cult that’s a perfect instrument for wrecking democracy”.

Worse, he said, Trump “may be just a warm-up act”.

“Returning to office, he’ll be the wrecking ball that demolishes democracy but the process will produce a political and social shambles,” Homer-Dixon said.

“Still, through targeted harassment and dismissal, he’ll be able to thin the ranks of his movement’s opponents within the state, the bureaucrats, officials and technocrats who oversee the non-partisan functioning of core institutions and abide by the rule of law.

“Then the stage will be set for a more managerially competent ruler, after Mr Trump, to bring order to the chaos he’s created.”

One Free Press Coalition's '10 Most Urgent' list, January 2022


Yahoo News Staff
Mon, January 3, 2022

Ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the “10 Most Urgent” list for January 2022 focuses on the dire state of press freedom in China. Media outlets worldwide unite as the One Free Press Coalition to publish this list and draw attention to the most pressing cases of threats against journalists.

This past year, China continued to imprison and detain journalists without consequence, as well as weaponize surveillance and physically threaten journalists to censor them. According to CPJ’s 2021 census, China remains the world’s worst jailer of journalists for the third year in a row, with 50 behind bars. This year also marked a new concerning trend for the country, with the list including journalists held in Hong Kong for the first time since CPJ started collecting data in 1992.

1. Jimmy Lai Chee-ying

Police officers take away Next Media chairman Jimmy Lai Chee-ying in 2014. (K. Y. Cheng/South China Morning Post via Getty Images)


Hong Kong media entrepreneur and democracy advocate Jimmy Lai Chee-ying is serving a 20-month prison sentence and awaiting trial on national security and fraud charges. If convicted, he could face a potential life sentence. Lai founded Next Digital Limited, a media company that published the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily and Next Magazine, which were both forced to close this year due to pressure and ongoing threats from authorities.

2. Zhang Zhan

Zhang Zhan. (Amnesty International)

It has been over a year since the independent journalist was sentenced to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after publishing videos critical of the government’s COVID-19 response. She has been on an ongoing hunger strike behind bars and is now in critically ill health.

3. Ilham Tohti

Ilham Tohti, an outspoken scholar of China’s Turkic Uyghur ethnic minority, at his home in Beijing in 2013. (Andy Wong/AP)

Uyghur writer, blogger and scholar Ilham Tohti is serving a life sentence on charges of separatism. He is the founder of the Uyghur news website Uighurbiz, which was published in Chinese and Uyghur and focused on Uyghur rights and social issues, and has been denied freedom since 2014.

4. Huang Qi

Veteran rights activist Huang Qi at his home in Chengdu in southwestern China’s Sichuan province in 2012. (Gillian Wong/AP)

Huang Qi, publisher of the human rights news website 64 Tianwang, is serving a 12-year sentence on accusations of “deliberately leaking state secrets” and “illegally providing state secrets to foreign countries.” He is critically ill and has been denied medical treatment, as well as denied visits and communication with his mother, who is dying of cancer.

5. Wan Yiu-sing

Wan Yiu-sing. (RFA.org)

Wan Yiu-sing, an internet radio host and commentator who covers political issues in mainland China and Hong Kong for the independent internet radio channel D100, was arrested by Hong Kong police in February. Wan’s arrest came amid authorities’ crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. He is being held in detention while on trial for alleged sedition and money laundering and was hospitalized in February due to undisclosed health issues.

6. Sophia Huang Xueqin

Sophia Huang Xueqin, a freelance journalist who wants to raise people's awareness of sexual harassment in China, in 2017. (Thomas Yau/South China Morning Post via Getty Images)

Chinese freelance journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin disappeared on Sept. 19, along with labor activist Wang Jianbin, one day before she was scheduled to board a plane to the United Kingdom to study abroad. On Sept. 27, it was reported that both had been detained for allegedly “inciting subversion of state power” and are being held under “residential surveillance at a designated location,” a form of extrajudicial detention.

7. Haze Fan

Haze Fan. (International Federation of Journalists)

Haze Fan is a reporter and producer covering breaking business news in China for Bloomberg News, and despite no charges being brought against her, she continues to be held in pretrial detention for allegedly endangering national security.

8. Zhou Weilin

Zhou Weilin. (RFA.org)

A reporter for Chinese-language human rights news website Weiquanwang, Zhou Weilin has published news and commentary on social media about labor issues and disability rights. Zhou is currently serving a sentence of three years and six months on charges of picking quarrels and provoking trouble, and he plans to appeal.

9. Gulmire Imin

Gulmire Imin. (USCIRF)

Uyghur journalist Gulmire Imin is serving a 19-year, 8-month prison sentence on charges of separatism, leaking state secrets and organizing an illegal demonstration. In 2009, police arrested Imin, who wrote articles critical of the government that year, and she was one of several administrators of Uyghur-language web forums who were arrested after the 2009 riots in Ürümqi, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

10. Gulchehra Hoja

Gulchehra Hoja at the Women in the World Summit in New York in 2019. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

After joining Radio Free Asia in the U.S. in 2001, journalist Gulchehra Hoja was sent a “red notice” from China, banning her from returning home. Today, members of her family have been deliberately targeted with constant government surveillance and harassment and have endured numerous detentions in retaliation for her journalism and her work at Radio Free Europe, according to Gulchehra and the International Women’s Media Foundation. Following Gulchehra’s interviews with escapees, prison guards and other officials, she testified in May 2019 before the U.S. House of Representatives committee on the dangers of reporting on human rights.

Jailed Egyptian-Palestinian freed after more than 2 years in prison

AFP -

Egypt's prosecution ordered the release of Egyptian-Palestinian activist Ramy Shaath on Monday after almost two and a half years in detention, a judiciary source told AFP.

The source said that Shaath, the son of veteran Palestinian politician Nabil Shaath, "has been released by the prosecution". There were no further details.

His wife, French national Celine Lebrun, told AFP: "I heard about the decision but according to what I know he is not yet out."

She added that she would release a statement once he is confirmed to be free.

Lebrun was deported from Egypt shortly after her husband's arrest.

Earlier on Monday, prominent MP Mohamed Anwar Sadat had announced "an imminent decision to release" Shaath and deport him.

Shaath, 50, was a figure of the 2011 uprising in Egypt and the coordinator of the Egyptian chapter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.

He was arrested in July 2019 and faced charges of aiding a terrorist organisation.

In April 2020, he was placed on Egypt's terror list alongside 12 other people.

In December, five human rights groups called on French President Emmanuel Macron to pressure Egypt to release Shaath.

Macron had previously addressed his detention in a news conference in Paris with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in December 2020.

Egypt's space for dissent has been severely restricted since Sisi took office in 2014.

Rights groups say Egypt is holding some 60,000 political prisoners, many facing brutal conditions and overcrowded cells.

Egypt ranks in the lowest group on the Global Public Policy Institute's Academic Freedom Index.

The decision to release Shaath comes almost a month after an Egyptian court freed researcher Patrick Zaki whose detention in 2020 sparked international condemnation.

Zaki was freed on December 7 but still faced charges of "spreading false news", "harming national security" and "incitement to overthrow the state", among others.

He had been referred to trial in September before an exceptional state security court for an article containing excerpts from his personal diary recounting the discrimination faced by the country's Coptic Christian minority.

Amnesty International previously said Zaki had allegedly been tortured while being interrogated by national security officers, including using electric shocks and beating.

Zaki's detention also strained ties with Italy where he had been studying.

In a 2019 interview with the show 60 Minutes on US broadcaster CBS, Sisi said there were no political prisoners in Egypt.

The former army chief became president in 2014 after leading the military ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi a year earlier.

bam/jsa/hkb

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Elizabeth Holmes found guilty on 4 counts of defrauding Theranos investors

Alexis Keenan

·Reporter

Mon, January 3, 2022

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted on three counts of criminal wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud Monday, with a jury unanimously finding her guilty of illegally fleecing investors out of millions of dollars through her startup blood diagnostics company. 

The jury deadlocked on three counts of wire fraud, and she was found not guilty on four counts of defrauding patients.

Holmes, 37, turned toward the judge and jurors as the judge's deputy read the verdict to the packed courtroom in San Jose’s federal district court. The former media darling, dressed in a gray skirt suit sat upright and poised flanked by two of her defense attorneys.

On eleven separate felony counts, each carrying a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, the jury found Holmes guilty on 3 of 9 counts of wire fraud and 1 of 2 counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Holmes’ sentence will be handed down by presiding federal judge Edward Davila at a later date. Under California law, felony convictions must be scheduled for sentencing within 20 days of a guilty verdict, though exceptions to that rule can apply.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her family leave the federal courthouse after attending her fraud trial in San Jose, California, U.S. January 3, 2022. REUTERS/Brittany Hosea-Small

Holmes was free to leave the courthouse following the verdict.

The landmark case, one of the most closely watched in Silicon Valley history, establishes a new bar for the extent to which startup ventures and their founders who overhype the capabilities of their products and services can steer clear of the U.S. Justice Department’s scrutiny.

Representations made by startup founders like Holmes have not always attracted significant pressure from federal prosecutors, partially due to the typical agreements that multi-millionaire and billionaire investors attest to before they make their investments, attesting to their understanding of the highly speculative nature of such wagers.

However, Holmes was also accused of defrauding customers who paid for her company’s commercialized blood-testing service through its partnership with Walgreens. According to prosecutors, customers who spent money on the service, only to receive erroneous results, were also duped because Theranos’ tests were never reliable.

Six of the wire fraud charges (counts 3 -8) in the indictment against Holmes were based on multi-million dollar investments in Theranos made between 2013 and 2014. Two wire fraud charges (counts 10 & 11) were based upon payments made by Theranos customers in exchange for blood services, while an additional charge (count 12) pointed to a money transfer tied to Theranos’ advertisements of its services.

Each of two conspiracy charges separately alleged that between approximately 2010 and approximately 2015, Holmes conspired with her former boyfriend and Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani to defraud investors and patients. Balwani is facing a separate trial, scheduled to begin next year

Ag her time running Theranos from 2006 until it imploded in 2018 under legal and regulatory pressure. The charges however singled out particular investments totaling approximately $154 million made during the two years when Theranos was preparing for and rolling out its serviceA s in Walgreens stores.

The jury’s decision was based on testimony from more than 30 witnesses — including Holmes’ herself, who took the stand in her own defense — as well as arguments from each party's lawyers, and more than 900 exhibits introduced over the trial’s 15 weeks.

“Elizabeth Holmes was building a business and not a criminal enterprise,” Holmes’ attorney Kevin Downey told the jury in closing arguments.

In rebuttal, U.S. Assistant Attorney John Bostic painted a starkly different picture, telling jurors, “The disease that plagued Theranos was not a lack of effort, it was a lack of honesty.”

Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on Twitter @alexiskweed.

Elizabeth Holmes: Silicon Valley's fallen star

Elizabeth Holmes's Silicon Valley star came crashing down under the pressure of fraud allegations 

Issued on: 04/01/2022

an Francisco (AFP) – Elizabeth Holmes's startup Theranos made her a multi-billionaire hailed as the next US tech visionary by age 30, but it all evaporated in a flash of lawsuits, ignominy and, finally, criminal charges.

The rise and fall of Holmes, who on Monday was convicted of defrauding investors of her biotech startup, is a heavily-chronicled saga that prompted a hard look at her methods but also the unseemly aspects of startup life.

In many ways Holmes fit the image of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, from her dark-colored turtleneck sweaters that evoked tech legend and Apple founder Steve Jobs to her dropping out of California’s elite Stanford University.

But much like in her trial, the fundamental question has been whether she was a true visionary who simply failed, as she claimed on the stand, or a skilled self-promoter who took advantage of a credulous context to commit fraud.

Her story begins in the US capital Washington, with her birth to a Congressional staffer mother and a father whose online biography says he was once an executive at Enron -- an energy company that collapsed in a massive fraud scandal.

She won admission to Stanford, and there began work on cutting-edge biomedical initiatives, founding in 2003 what would become Theranos when she was just 19.

Part of Holmes's ability to convince her backers was her apparent deep personal commitment -- she applied for her first patent while still in college and after dropping out, convinced her parents to let her use her tuition savings to build the company.

'Youngest woman self-made billionaire'

By the end of 2010 she had raised a whopping $92 million in venture capital for Theranos, which she pledged was developing machines that could run a gamut of diagnostic tests on a few drops of blood.

Over the next couple years she assembled what one news report called the "most illustrious board in US corporate history", including former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz as well ex-Pentagon chief Jim Mattis.

"Sharp, articulate, committed. I was impressed by her. That didn't take the place of having the device prove itself," said Mattis in a surprise appearance on the stand.

Theranos hype kicked up another gear in 2014 and in the span of just over a year, a turtleneck-wearing Holmes appeared on the covers of Fortune, Forbes, Inc. and T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

Forbes gave her a $4.5 billion net worth in 2014, which was based on her half ownership of Theranos, and noted: "Youngest woman on Forbes 400; Youngest woman self-made billionaire."

This glowing coverage had an impact on Theranos investors like venture capitalist Chris Lucas who told Holmes's trial the Fortune article made him "proud we were involved, very proud of Elizabeth."

But there were some things that didn't end up in those glowing reports that gushed with statements like "Steve Jobs had massive ambition, but Holmes's is arguably larger."

Silicon Valley sexism?

For one, she personally put the logos of pharma giants Pfizer and Schering-Plough onto Theranos reports hailing its own blood-testing technology, which were then shared with investors.

That was done without the companies' permission and was a key piece of the prosecution's argument that she deliberately tried to inflate Theranos's credibility in order to win over backers.

She also kept secret the machines' failings and the fact that once Theranos began to do diagnostics on real patients, some of the tests were done using the same equipment sold to standard labs.

Ultimately though, it was a series of Wall Street Journal reports starting in 2015 — which Holmes tried to kill by appealing to the paper's owner and Theranos investor Rupert Murdoch — that set the company's collapse in motion.

Holmes's case also raised questions about why she was prosecuted, but not other tech CEOs who engaged in the "fake it until you make it" Silicon Valley method or other bad behavior.

Ellen Pao, the former CEO of Reddit and critic of tech industry discrimination, argued in a New York Times opinion piece that sexism bears some blame.

She noted that WeWork's Adam Neumann and Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick raised billions with hype, while there have been allegations of racism and sexism at Tesla and misleading claims about vaping from Juul's leaders.

Holmes "should be held accountable for her actions as chief executive of Theranos," Pao wrote.

But "it can be sexist to hold her accountable for alleged serious wrongdoing and not hold an array of men accountable for reports of wrongdoing or bad judgement," she added.

© 2022 AFP

PRIVATE FOR PROFIT

CEO who built new model for senior care resigns amid regulatory scrutiny

Eleanor Laise - 

The CEO who played a significant role in the dramatic expansion of government-funded home and community-based care for frail seniors has stepped down from the company she built as regulatory concerns continue to mount.

Maureen Hewitt resigned as chief executive of InnovAge Holding effective January 1, the Denver-based company announced Monday. InnovAge is the largest provider in the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), a Medicare- and Medicaid-funded service designed to meet all the healthcare needs of frail seniors while keeping them out of nursing homes.

The leadership shakeup comes amid regulatory setbacks that threaten to curtail InnovAge’s rapid growth. Federal and state regulators in late December suspended enrollment of new Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries at the company’s Colorado locations, saying InnovAge had failed to provide medically necessary services to PACE participants in the state. In Colorado, InnovAge failed to schedule or delayed scheduling services for patients and failed to follow up on specialists’ diagnoses and recommendations, among other issues, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in a December letter to Hewitt. After the enrollment freeze, InnovAge withdrew its fiscal year 2022 guidance, and the company’s stock has since dropped roughly 40%.

The regulators’ findings in Colorado echo concerns raised by former InnovAge employees and patient advocates and reported by MarketWatch in November. InnovAge participants, which include some of the most fragile and medically complex seniors, often face long waits for medical appointments, difficulty accessing specialist care, and prescription delivery problems, former employees and others familiar with the company told MarketWatch.

The day after the MarketWatch article was published, InnovAge announced the appointment of Patrick Blair, a former home health company executive, as president. Blair has now succeeded Hewitt, becoming CEO and president, the company announced Monday. Hewitt is also stepping off of InnovAge’s board.

Regulatory issues come as industry groups push to expand home-based services.

Hewitt, who became InnovAge’s CEO in 2006, played a pivotal role in transforming InnovAge from a humble nonprofit organization into a for-profit corporation that had a Wall Street growth story. With private equity backing, InnovAge has rapidly increased its enrollment in recent years and has a high-profile board of directors that includes two former top Medicare officials.

But the company’s March 2021 initial public offering was quickly followed by regulatory issues, including a September enrollment suspension at InnovAge’s Sacramento location, based on problems similar to those cited by regulators in Colorado. Because Medicare and Medicaid pay PACE providers fixed monthly rates to cover participants’ healthcare needs, providers can profit by skimping on patient care, critics of for-profit PACE say. InnovAge says its approach improves care quality while reducing overuse of high-cost care settings.

InnovAge’s regulatory troubles come as some lawmakers and industry groups are pushing to further expand home and community-based services such as PACE that can help keep seniors out of nursing homes. More than 144,000 nursing home residents and staff members have died of COVID-19.

InnovAge is working with CMS and the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing to respond to the enrollment suspension and is evaluating options regarding its right to appeal the sanctions, the company said in late December.

“COVID has presented unique challenges to all providers, including PACE,” Blair said in a statement. “Still, it is a great care model. I know we can address the issues presented and return to a very constructive partnership with the California and Colorado programs.”

“I am very proud of what we accomplished at InnovAge,” Hewitt said in a statement. “I believe PACE is the best way to care for low-income seniors, and I know we have done a tremendous job for many thousands of participants and their families in the 15 years I have been privileged to lead the company.”

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

Indian Authorities Crack Down on Six Crypto Exchanges on Suspicion of Tax Evasion
Tanvir Zafar
Mon, January 3, 2022

Up to six cryptocurrency exchanges have come under the spotlight of India’s Directorate General of Goods and Services Tax Intelligence (DGGI) on the suspicion of tax evasion.

According to sources privy to the investigations, the DGGI is looking into the operations of some of the country’s biggest crypto service providers, including BTC and ETH trading exchanges like Coinswitch Kuber, BuyUCoin, CoinDCX, and UnoCoin.

The sources also revealed that the crackdown on the crypto traders has so far uncovered tax evasion to the tune of about Rs 70 crore, which is equivalent to $6.2 million.

WazirX First to be Investigated

Late last year, the Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) Mumbai Zone, revealed in a tweet that its officers had detected massive Goods and Services Tax (GST) evasion perpetrated by one of India’s premier crypto service providers, WazirX.

In the tweet, CGST revealed that it had recovered Rs 49.2 crore, which is about $4.3 million, in cash, as GST, interest, and penalties, from Zanmai Labs, the parent company of WazirX

Authorities also stated that WazirX, which records almost $43B in trading volume annually, had also launched its own digital currency, the WRX, which can be used alongside the Rupee to carry out transactions on the platform but had failed to pay any GST on it.

WazirX collects commissions on every crypto transaction on its platform from both the buyer and the seller. Transactions using WRX, attract a commission of 0.1%, while transactions carried out using the rupee attract a commission of 0.2%.

However, DGGI investigators claim that the platform only paid out GST on commissions earned from rupee transactions but not from WRX transactions. Both the rupee and WRX transactions attract a GST of 18%.

But reacting to the raid on their offices, a representative of Zanmai Labs blamed India’s ambiguous tax regime for the ensuing confusion.

In a press release, the crypto exchange said:

We voluntarily paid additional GST in order to be cooperative and compliant. There was and is no intention to evade tax. That being said, we strongly believe that regulatory clarity is the need of the hour for the Indian crypto industry.
DGGI Warns of Further Action Against Crypto Service Providers

Chainanalysis’ Global Crypto Adoption Index puts India second in a list of 154 countries where crypto use is most prevalent, and the DGGI has hinted that it is not done with investigations into India’s booming crypto space, alluding that more raids were in the offing. Officials say that future crackdowns will include Non-Fungible Token (NFT) platforms and coin launches.

Speaking to the ANI news agency, a DGGI official said:

They are providing facilitation intermediary services for buying and selling of crypto coins. These services attract a GST rate of duty of 18% which all of them have been evading.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

Event-Betting Platform Polymarket to Pay $1.4 Million U.S. Fine

Ben Bain
Mon, January 3, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- Polymarket, an online platform for betting on politics, economic indicators and other real-world events, will pay $1.4 million to settle U.S. regulators’ allegations it offered illegal trading and must “wind down” contracts people use to wager.

The firm, whose popularity surged during the pandemic, has been running an unregistered platform that lets people bet on the outcome of events since around June 2020, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in a statement Monday. Polymarket didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing in the settlement.

“All derivatives markets must operate within the bounds of the law regardless of the technology used, and particularly including those in the so-called decentralized finance or ‘DeFi’ space,” Vincent McGonagle, the CFTC’s acting director of enforcement, said in the statement. The commission said that Polymarket received a “reduced” penalty for cooperating with the investigation.

Polymarket, operated by New York-based Blockratize Inc., said in a statement that in the wake of the settlement it will prematurely wind down three betting markets set to expire after Jan. 14 and refund people’s money. The company didn’t say how it planned to change its business to ensure it was complying with CFTC rules.

“An announcement on the future of Polymarket will be released in the coming days,” the firm said. “We are thrilled to put this settlement behind us, and are prepared and excited for the next chapter.”

For its part, the CFTC also didn’t specify the process for Polymarket listing new contracts that comply with its rules. Getting approval for binary options like the ones that the regulator says the firm was offering can be a lengthy and complicated process.

Instead of U.S. dollars, customers who want to make trades on Polymarket have to use USD Coin, a stablecoin backed by Coinbase Global Inc. The platform doesn’t take custody of money or digital tokens, and just displays existing markets live on the Ethereum blockchain.

According to the order settling the allegations, Polymarket must certify to the CFTC by no later than Jan. 24 that it has wound down all of its non-compliant contracts, and must make funds available for redemption by those who had bet in the market.

#HANDSOFFVENEZUELA

Venezuela Doubles Crude Oil Exports Defying U.S. Sanctions

Lucia Kassai
Mon, January 3, 2022


(Bloomberg) -- Oil exports from Venezuela doubled in December from a year earlier as the country raises production of revenue-generating hydrocarbons in defiance of U.S. sanctions.

Shipments averaged 619,000 barrels a day in December. The OPEC-founding member increased exports for a third straight month with the support of ally Iran, which boosted the supply of a key ingredient that aids production.

Output touched the crucial mark of 1 million barrels on a single day in December, state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA said. Production averaged 625,000 barrels a day during the entire month of November.

Exports are rising after benchmark Brent oil rose 50% last year, the largest gain since 2016, as global demand bounces back from the pandemic. The increase also comes at at time when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies may boost supplies amid a tighter first-quarter surplus than initially expected.

Still, it’s unclear if the spike in shipments is sustainable because China, the biggest buyer of Venezuelan oil, continues to crack down on the energy sector. Private fuelmakers in the Asian nation are at the center of allegations of tax violations and non-compliance with environmental rules. There are already signs of problems. Supertankers laden with Venezuelan oil that have sailed to Asia end up floating off the coasts of Singapore and Malaysia for months waiting for Chinese buyers.

The U.S. amped up sanctions against the regime of President Nicolas Maduro in 2017, cutting off the South American nation’s access to U.S. refiners. Crippled by the move and with buyers in India and Spain also shunning its oil, Venezuela resorted to unorthodox tactics. It has been disguising and rebranding the oil in order to hide its origins and circumvent sanctions.

INSIDER TRADING

Chris Rokos and Partners Were Paid $1.2 Billion Before Hedge Fund Slid

Nishant Kumar
Mon, January 3, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Chris Rokos and his partners paid themselves 914 million pounds ($1.2 billion) just before their investors suffered a record year of losses.

Roughly 509.4 million pounds of that total went to Rokos himself for the year ending March 2021, the most since he started trading for his hedge fund firm, a filing with U.K.’s Companies House shows. A spokesman for Rokos Capital Management declined to comment.

The payout followed the 44% return that the macro trader generated in 2020, which helped lift his firm’s revenue by nearly four times to more than 1 billion pounds for the period, according to the filing. The $12 billion firm was on track to post a record loss last year, having slumped 25% through November.

Bond-market volatility in 2021 triggered by growing speculation that central banks would raise rates faster than expected to contain inflation hurt a group of high-profile macro traders including Rokos.

For all of 2020 through November of last year, Rokos investors made just about 8%, compared with a 19% gain for hedge funds on average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The S&P 500, although not the best comparison, rose 46%.

The 2020 results, however, show the outsized compensation hedge fund managers stand to reap in a good year. Yet even as the industry mints billionaires at a heady pace thanks to stellar returns, investors who stick around hoping the performance will repeat often end up with mediocre gains -- if not losses.

Rokos, who co-founded Brevan Howard, earned $4 billion at that firm from 2004 to 2012. He has an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.