Wagner boss openly defies Kremlin Ukraine 'Nazi' narrative

Joshua Askew
Fri, 24 March 2023 


The boss of the notorious Wagner mercenary force has openly contradicted key aspects of the Kremlin's narrative about the Ukraine war, according to the US-based Insitute for the Study of War (ISW).

Yevgeny Prigozhin denied claims Russia is fighting NATO and questioned whether there are actually Nazis in Ukraine.

The Kremlin has repeatedly justified its invasion of its neighbour as necessary to purge Kyiv of neo-Nazis, who threaten the peace and security of Russia, despite there being little evidence of this.

In parallel, it has increasingly pitched the war as an existential struggle against NATO, which they claim is butting up against Russia's borders.

Prigozhin said Moscow is fighting “exclusively with Ukrainians” equipped with NATO-provided equipment and some “Russophobic” mercenaries who voluntarily support Ukraine - but not NATO itself, said the ISW on Thursday.

He expressed doubt about “denazification” objectives in Ukraine, unsure “Nazis” were in the country, while "effectively rejecting" the long-standing Kremlin claims that Russia needs to defend itself against a NATO threat.

"It is ridiculous to think" that Russian officials did not know NATO would come to Kyiv's aid, the ISW quoted Prigozhin as saying.

Once a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin's, the paramilitary unit which includes former convicts in its ranks has become increasingly conspicuous on the battlefield in Ukraine, with Prigozhin appearing to challenge the conventional Russian army on several occasions.

Independent Russian outlets have speculated that Prigozhin might have political ambitions of his own in mind.

Wagner troops have been engaged in a gritty, tooth-and-claw struggle for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, which is believed to have depleted its ranks, recently filled with as many as 40,000 prisoners.

In its Thursday assessment, the ISW said Prigozhin had "softened his rhetoric towards the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) likely out [of] fear of completely losing his mercenary force in Bakhmut."

He raised concerns about a possible Ukrainian counter-offensive, claiming 200,000 reserves were massing on the eastern front.

The ISW said these "exaggerated statements... [were] likely an attempt to secure more supplies and reinforcements from the Russian MoD to save his forces in Bakhmut."

Between 20,000 and 30,000 Russian troops have been killed and wounded in the battle for the old salt mining town since it began last summer, Western officials say.

The seismic nature of the battle is out of all proportion to Bakhmut's strategic significance, they add.

However, the fight has become deeply symbolic, with Russia keen for clear battlefield victories after a series of setbacks and Ukraine wanting to prove its mettle to western backers.

In an implicit nod to divisions within the Kremlin, Prigozhin also called on the Russian military and media to stop underestimating Ukrainian forces and engaging in internal conflicts.

The killing of nine Chinese goldmine workers in the Central African Republic last Sunday has been reported to be tied to Wagner, and the fact that it coincided with a long-awaited meeting between Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping has further soured the relationship between the group and Moscow.

The Russian MoD has been trying to diminish and reduce the role of Wagner forces in Ukraine, with Bloomberg reporting it will not allow the mercenary leader to get the credit for Bakhmut on TV.

Some 90% of Bakhmut's pre-invasion population have fled since the fighting started.

UK

Revealed: stress of Ofsted inspections cited as factor in deaths of 10 teachers

Anna Fazackerley
Sat, 25 March 2023

Ofsted - GOV.UK 

Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills. We inspect services providing education and skills for learners of all ages ...

Stress caused by Ofsted inspections was cited in coroners’ reports on the deaths of 10 teachers over the past 25 years, the Observer can reveal.

The research, by charity the Hazards Campaign and the University of Leeds, will intensify what Ofsted has called the “outpouring of anger” in the sector over the death of Berkshire headteacher Ruth Perry, who killed herself in January. Her family have attributed her death to the inspectorate having downgraded her school. Education unions called last week for all inspections to be halted.

It comes as an Observer investigation has found that the pressure of school inspections has led to headteachers suffering heart attacks, strokes and nervous breakdowns, and as a helpline for heads reports that the vast majority of crisis calls it receives are now about Ofsted.

Andrew Morrish, a former head and co-founder of Headrest, a resource for stressed headteachers, said that after being told by inspectors that their schools were being downgraded or graded inadequate, heads had “left school in an ambulance”, suffering panic attacks, heart attacks or strokes brought on by stress.

Carol Woodward, the award-winning head of Woodford primary school near Plymouth, took her own life in 2015, shortly after Ofsted downgraded her school. According to the coroner’s report, she contacted her GP prior to her suicide and told him that the school had failed its inspection and let everyone down. The police reported that she experienced “a swift mental decline” after the inspection, and the coroner said: “She just felt she was under so much pressure.”

The inquest into her death heard that the inspection had coincided with disruptive building work to expand the school and that Woodward had been under intense pressure. Police investigating her death said the inspection had been “completed in a fair manner but the timing, without assigning culpability, was wrong”.

If you’re told it’s inadequate, that can be devastating. But you can’t tell your staff or your family

Andrew Morrish, helpline co-founder

Frances Carr, who was both a teacher and a parent at the school, told the Observer that Woodward had been a “brilliant” head, who created a “real family feeling in the school”. She recalled: “As parents, we decided to tell our children that Carol had died of a broken heart. It’s not the whole truth, but one my seven-year-old could accept.”

Commenting on the death by suicide of another headteacher the day before inspectors were due to visit his school, the coroner leading the inquest said: “We can’t exclude the proximity of the Ofsted inspection to the date of his death.” He concluded that the impending inspection had “triggered off the action he decided to take”.

A third coroner’s report shows that a teacher who took her life had been suffering from depression and that an Ofsted inspection placed her under increased pressure. The coroner said it was an “absolute tragedy” that inspections should cause such a degree of stress.

Health and safety expert Hilda Palmer, who has been researching work-based suicides for the Hazards Campaign, said: “These figures are absolutely disgusting. When there are lots of suicides relating to one factor or one organisation, that needs to be investigated urgently.”

Morrish, who is a former inspector himself, said many heads were terrified of inspections that could be “inconsistent and flawed”, and that “virtually every single call we get now is related to Ofsted”.

He added that when, at the end of the inspection, the lead inspector summons the head, the chair of governors and usually another senior leader to deliver their verdict, they insist on it being kept confidential. “If you’re told it’s inadequate, that can be devastating,” he said. “But you mustn’t tell your [junior] staff or your family. It can be two or three months until the report is finalised.”

He added: “Ruth Perry had to go through the whole of Christmas and New Year knowing her school was going to be inadequate and not able to talk to even her sister about it.”

Former inspectors told the Observer that Ofsted teams had limited time to reach their conclusions. A director of education at an academy trust who resigned as an inspector because he felt the system was so flawed, described walking around a school making factual notes on an electronic form. Speaking on condition of anonymity he said: “You then have a block of five minutes at the most to evaluate that evidence. It’s not enough time to say, with any security, that a school is good or inadequate.”

A second former inspector and headteacher, who also asked not to be named, said: “It is a completely subjective judgment, dressed up as an objective one.” She said the lead inspector would typically make up their mind in the first 10 minutes, “and everything else is about justifying that”.

She recalled taking part in inspections where the head was “devastated” after being told they would be downgraded. “As a head your name is on that report for ever,” she said.

Paul Garvey, a former inspector who now advises schools on how to navigate Ofsted, said: “Time and time again I’ve heard from heads who say the inspector has come in with a hostile agenda.”

Amanda Spielman, chief inspector for schools in England, said on Friday that she was “deeply sorry” about Perry’s tragic death. But she said “stopping or preventing inspections” would not be in children’s best interests.

She said the debate about reforming single-word grades on inspections was “legitimate”, but added: “They give parents a simple and accessible summary of a school’s strengths and weaknesses. They are also now used to guide government decisions about when to intervene in struggling schools.”

ECOCIDE PENDING

Super tanker anchored off Yemen coast is likely to sink or explode at any moment, UN says


Sky News
Fri, 24 March 2023 


A super tanker anchored off the coast of Yemen and containing more than a million barrels of oil is "likely to sink or explode at any moment", unleashing an environmental and humanitarian disaster, a United Nations official has told Sky News.

The FSO Safer was all but abandoned in 2015 as Yemen descended into civil war and now the ship is starting to fall apart.

UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen David Gressly said: "We don't want the Red Sea to become the Black Sea, that's what's going to happen.


"It's an ancient vessel, a 1976 super tanker from that era, and therefore is not only old but unmaintained and likely to sink or explode at any moment.

"Those who know the vessel, including the captain that used to command the vessel, tell me that it's a certainty.

"It's not a question of 'if', it is only a question of 'when', so it is important that we act as quickly as we can or it will eventually spill one million barrels of oil into the Red Sea.

"We really have no way out except to solve the problem."

According to recent modelling by the Nature Sustainability scientific journal, an oil spill would take two to three weeks to spread all the way up to Saudi Arabia, across to Eritrea and down to Djibouti.

Within days it would close Yemen's key Red Sea ports of Hudayah and Salif, abruptly ending food aid relied upon by nearly six million people.

Most fuel imports would stop too, which matters because eight million people in Yemen rely on fuel-powered pumps or trucks to get their fresh water.

Further up the coast of Yemen an estimated two million people rely on desalination plants for their water, but these plants would also be contaminated by the oil spill and have to close.

The environmental effects would be profound, destroying or damaging healthy coral reefs and protected coastal mangrove forests.

Nature Sustainability predicts that within three weeks an unabated oil spill could kill almost all of Yemen's Red Sea fishing stock, upending the lives of millions of people living in coastal communities who rely on the ocean for their food and livelihoods.

Dr Hisham Nagi, professor of environmental science at Yemen's Sana'a University, told Sky News: "The oil tanker is unfortunately located near a very, very healthy coral reef and clean habitat, and it has a lot of species of marine organisms.

"Biodiversity is high in that area, so if the oil spill finds its way to the water column, so many marine sensitive habitats are going to be damaged, damaged severely because of that."

Read more from Alex Crawford inside Yemen:

The victims of the forgotten war that shows no sign of stopping

Donated UN food aid for Yemen's most needy sold in markets

The UN is so desperate to stop the oil spilling that it has just crowdfunded the purchase of a rescue tanker to go on a salvage operation.

But despite the potential $20bn (£16bn) cost of a clean-up, the UN is still $34m (£28m) short of the $130m (£106m) in funding it needs to complete the job.

The US, UK, German and Dutch governments have all contributed alongside generous private donors, but it is not enough.

Mr Gressly said: "There are many complexities but for most member states, the difficulty - and it's ironic - is there is plenty of money available in different member state budgets for a response to an emergency.

"I know if there was an oil spill, there would be tens of millions of dollars pouring in to solve this spill.

"But nobody seems to have budget lines for avoiding a catastrophe."

AUSTRALIA

‘Back and ready’: Chris Minns leads Labor to power after 12 years in opposition at historic 2023 NSW election

Michael McGowan and Tamsin Rose

Guardian Australia
Sat, 25 March 2023


Labor is on track to form majority government in New South Wales after 12 years in opposition, with the party leader, 43-year-old former firefighter and political staffer Chris Minns, declaring the party is “back and ready to govern in this great state”.

As counting ended on Saturday night, Labor had picked up at least nine seats, enough to govern in majority and a better-than-expected result for the party after big swings in many previously safe Coalition seats.

The result means Minns will become the first Labor leader to win government from opposition in NSW for almost three decades and sees the Coalition relegated to the opposition benches in every parliament on mainland Australia.

The election had been fought by Labor on a few key issues including a promise to end the sale of public assets, removing the controversial public sector wages cap and for investments in health and education.

In a late-night speech delivered to a packed room of party faithful in a function room in the beachside suburb of Brighton-Le-Sands, in Minns’ seat of Kogarah in Sydney’s south, he said the election was “a decisive vote against privatisation”.

“We know the challenges are huge, the responsibilities are awesome but NSW Labor is back and ready to govern in this great state of NSW,” he said.

“We started effectively two years ago with a promise to the people of NSW that we would run an election campaign asking people to vote a positive vote for NSW Labor and not just a negative vote against the government.

“I’m proud to say today the people of NSW voted for the removal of the unfair wages cap. They voted for our nurses, our teachers … our paramedics and police.”

For the Coalition, the result marks a devastating blow. Dominic Perrottet had sought to reset the government after becoming premier in late 2021 after former premier Gladys Berejiklian’s resignation, and won plaudits for his push to reform poker machines in the state.

But the baggage of 12 years in government proved too much to overcome. Speaking on Saturday night, former Liberal prime minister John Howard paid tribute to Perrottet for running an “heroic” campaign.

“He put forward ideas. He was bold,” Howard said, saying the outgoing premier’s stance on problem gambling – something he called a “social evil” – was “admirable”.

In his concession speech, Perrottet announced he would stand down as the state’s Liberal party leader while hailing the three-term Coalition government’s record.

“It is a time to reflect. It is a time to rethink and ultimately to renew. To renew as leader of the parliamentary Liberal party, I take full responsibility for the loss this evening,” he said.

“But we as a party, we as a government should be very proud of what we have achieved together.

“Make no mistake, we’ve made history of being in government for the longest time since our party was formed. And our government has achieved so much in so many ways. We’ve kept NSW strong, free and fair.”

In their speeches, both leaders paid tribute to one another for a campaign which had largely avoided going negative.

Perrottet said he believed Minns would make a “fine 47th premier … because I believe that he will lead with the same decency and the same integrity that he has led with so far,” he said.

Labor had been keen to play the expectation management game earlier on Saturday, pointing out that despite polls favouring the party it had a narrow path to victory. It needed nine seats to form a majority, with only four on margins of less than 5%.

It had not held Goulburn – held on 3.1% – since 1965, and by the end of counting on Saturday night it remained too close to call.

But it didn’t matter. Labor gains in regional seats of South Coast and Monaro – both seats previously held by the Coalition on safe margins – as well as in Sydney’s west in Parramatta, Riverstone, Penrith, East Hills, Ryde and Camden – meant it was in a position to form government.

Labor also remained in the hunt for the seat of Balmain, held by the Greens since 2011.

The Liberal party also lost Wakehurst and Berejiklian’s former seat of Willoughby to independents Michael Regan and Larissa Penn.

It is only the third time Labor has won government from opposition in NSW – most recently in 1995, when Bob Carr won with a one-seat margin.

Labor’s path to victory relied on a narrow message focused on the Coalition’s record on privatisation, scrapping its controversial public sector wages cap and promises to lift spending on health and education infrastructure.

But the party was criticised for refusing to back Perrottet’s push on gambling reform, instead offering only a trial of the mandatory cashless gaming systems on 500 poker machines across the state.

Their victory will mark a blow for anti-gambling advocates, who had hailed Perrottet’s push on the issue as a generational reform in the pokies capital of Australia.

UK
Union leader urges TUC to unite in defying planned anti-strike law

Rowena Mason Whitehall editor
Sat, 25 March 2023 

Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

A leading trade union has called for a concerted campaign of defiance and civil disobedience against the government’s planned anti-strike laws.

Matt Wrack, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), urged a coordinated campaign among trade unions of “mass non-cooperation and non-compliance” against the minimum service levels bill.

The legislation would make it compulsory for some employees to continue attending work throughout industrial action in a number of sectors.


Ministers would have the power to set levels of “minimum service” in the health service, fire and rescue services, education, transport, nuclear decommissioning and border security. The police, army and some prison officers are already banned from striking.

The FBU said non-compliance with the bill would be one of the most significant attempts by unions to defy employment law since the 1984-85 miners’ strike.

Related: Anti-strike bill ‘fails to meet UK’s human rights obligations’, MPs and peers say

Wrack called for an emergency meeting of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to launch a joint strategy to resist the legislation, arguing that demonstrations and sustained mass mobilisations could defeat the bill.

He said the strategy of non-compliance was needed because there was “no obvious route to challenge this attack through the courts”, describing it as one of the “most draconian attacks on the rights of working people in decades”.

“It’s a pernicious piece of legislation that’s in keeping with authoritarian regimes around the world,” he said.

“The government is deliberately attempting to strengthen the position of employers and severely weaken the position of workers. They are doing this for one purpose – to drive down wages … A mass movement of non-compliance can defeat this attack on working people by making the legislation unworkable.

“The TUC can lead this movement of resistance, first by calling an emergency congress, followed by a national demonstration, and a sustained campaign of non-cooperation.”

Unions are campaigning against the bill but many have stopped short of saying they would openly defy the legislation by continuing to strike in defiance of a minimum service requirement.

Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, said: “The bill is unworkable and almost certainly in breach of international law. If this nasty legislation gets on to the statute book, the TUC will fight it all the way, including through the courts. And we won’t rest until this bill has been repealed.

“Government and employers should be clear. The TUC and our unions will not stand by and let any worker be sacked for exercising their fundamental right to strike and for defending their pay and conditions.”

Related: UK strike calendar – service stoppages planned for March and April

The legislation is being scrutinised in the House of Lords after passing through the House of Commons.

A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said: “The purpose of this legislation is to protect the lives and livelihoods of the public and ensure they can continue to access vital public services.

“We must maintain a reasonable balance between the ability of workers to strike and the rights of the public, who work hard and expect essential services to be there when they need them.”

A wave of strikes have taken place in recent months, with some unions moving closer to solving pay disputes but others still engaged in stoppages.

The Public and Commercial Services Union said on Friday that more than 3,000 civil servants in four government departments had announced a programme of continuous strikes from 11 April, affecting the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Forestry Commission, the Rural Payments Agency and the Marine Management Organisation.

Separately, midwife and maternity support worker members of the Royal College of Midwives in Northern Ireland said they would take strike action on the morning of 3 April.

UK
3,000 civil servants announce continuous industrial action in latest escalation of strikes

Lydia Chantler-Hicks
Sat, 25 March 2023

PCS members at a rally (PA Wire)

More than 3,000 civil servants in four government departments have announced a programme of continuous industrial action from April 11.

The action by members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) will hit the Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), Forestry Commission, Rural Payments Agency and Marine Management Organisation.

It marks another escalation of the union’s long-running dispute over pay, pensions, redundancy terms and job security.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “This action further ratchets up the pressure on ministers to settle our dispute.

“Our members are showing no sign of backing down.

“They are standing up for themselves because they are fed up with being taken for granted.

“They demand the Government holds meaningful talks with us and puts some money on the table to give them a decent pay rise.”

A spokesperson for Defra, the Forestry Commission and Rural Payments Agency said the government is making efforts to minimise disruption caused by the action.

“We value greatly the work of our people, and regret the decision to take action,” they said.

“We are doing everything possible to minimise the impacts and we will continue to protect the environment at all times.”

The Marine Management Organisation has been approached by the Standard for a response.

Forward thinking: why daylight savings is here to stay in UK

Martin Belam
Sat, 25 March 2023 

Photograph: Tim Goode/PA

The ritual of clock-changing is upon us once again as British summer time begins at 1am on Sunday 26 March, when clocks go forward to 2am. Much of the population gets to lose an hour’s sleep – excluding those who work nights, those who are having a big night out, and those with pets and small children that don’t pay any heed to the clock anyway.

Sometimes known as “daylight savings time”, the clock-change moves the UK to GMT+1, resulting in more daylight in the evenings but less in the mornings. That is great news if you want to go out and do things in the evenings, less so if you have a job where you have to start early.

The stolen hour is given back on Sunday 29 October, when British summer time ends and the clocks go back at 2am to 1am, giving everybody the once-a-year chance to relive an hour. At least in 2023 most electronic devices automatically adjust, although you will probably still be mystified as to how to change the clock on your oven.

The ritual owes its origins in the UK to the first world war. The annual changing of the clock by an hour was first established more than 100 years ago under the Summer Time Act 1916, with the thought that lighter evenings might preserve fuel for the war effort. Despite its arcane origins, there seems little appetite in the UK to change the practice, regardless of there being scant evidence that it particularly contributes to saving energy or boosting the economy

In 2010, a parliamentary report looking at the prospect of permanently shifting an hour ahead concluded that “although we might expect overall energy use to be reduced by extending British summer time, the effects are likely to be small in magnitude … [and] the evidence quantifying these effects is not strong enough to conclude either way what the impact on the overall [energy] demand would be”.

So even though some states in the US and some European countries have been considering ending the concept of daylight savings time, it looks like the clock-change is here to stay in the UK.

UK

Cost of living: Mortgage-holders face 'biggest falls in income'

Ross McGuinness
Fri, 24 March 2023

Homeowners with mortgages could be the worst hit financially in the next two years, an economist said. 

People with mortgages are set to face the biggest falls in income, an economist has said.

The Resolution Foundation think tank predicts that mortgagors - or homeowners with a mortgage - will see their income drop by 8% on average over the next two years because of rising interest rates.

This equates to an average drop in income of almost £3,000, the think tank said, as the cost of living crisis continues.

The warning comes a day after the Bank of England raised interest rates from 4% to 4.25% following an unexpected jump in inflation - the rate at which the prices of goods changed - which rose from 10.1% in January to 10.4% in February.

The bank has been raising interest rates for about 15 months, with Thursday’s decision the 11th time in a row that the rate has increased.

On Friday, Torsten Bell, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, said in a blog post headlined: A Living Standards Maelstrom For Mortgagors': "There’s another phase ahead of us, in which rising interest rates are doing a lot of the work of crushing living standards.

"That will mean quite different outlooks for those in different housing tenures. The big news is that mortgagors – the highest income group – are set for the biggest income falls: 8%, or £2,900, on average over this year and next.

"That’s a big turnaround from the living standards windfalls of falling interest rates in the 2010s."

Income for people with mortgages is forecast to dip. (Resolution Foundation)

The figures were compiled by the Resolution Foundation using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

In what it called a "surprise", the foundation predicted that renters' income would stay the same or even grow slightly over the same period.

Read more: How much do houses cost in Britain's 'best place to live'?

Bell said: "As we look ahead, the cost of living crisis is getting more complicated in its distribution, even if the big picture remains blindingly obvious: it’s a disaster for Britain."

Earlier this week, the Resolution Foundation has said UK workers are £11,000 worse off per year because of 15 years of wage stagnation.

It calculated that, had wages continued to grow at the pace seen before the 2008 financial crash, the average worker would make £11,000 more per year than they do now, taking rising prices into account.

The think tank also found typical UK household incomes have fallen further behind those in Germany - in 2008, the gap was more than £500 a year, now it is £4,000.

Homeowners with mortgages could see their income fall by 8% over the next two years, a think tank has warned. (Getty Images)

Last week, the OBR, the government's official forecaster, said the UK is on track to avoid a technical recession, or two consecutive quarters of decline.

However, it said people are still expected to face the biggest fall in living standards on record, with real households’ disposable income per person due to tumble 5.7% over 2022/23 and 2023/23.

On Wednesday, the ONS said annual house price growth has slowed but rental prices have increased at their fastest rate since records started in 2016.

Average UK house prices increased by 6.3% in the 12 months to January 2023, down from 9.3% in December 2022.

The average UK house price was £290,000 in January 2023, which was £17,000 higher than 12 months earlier.

But private rental prices paid by tenants in the UK increased by 4.7% in the 12 months to February 2023, according to the ONS.

This represented the largest annual percentage change since comparable UK records started in January 2016.

RIP
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, prophet of the rise of the PC, dies at 94


 Projection of Intel co-founder Gordon Moore

Fri, March 24, 2023 
By Noel Randewich

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Intel Corp co-founder Gordon Moore, a pioneer in the semiconductor industry whose "Moore's Law" predicted a steady rise in computing power for decades, died Friday at the age of 94, the company announced.

Intel and Moore's family philanthropic foundation said he died surrounded by family at his home in Hawaii.

Co-launching Intel in 1968, Moore was the rolled-up-sleeves engineer within a triumvirate of technology luminaries that eventually put "Intel Inside" processors in more than 80% of the world's personal computers.

In an article he wrote in 1965, Moore observed that, thanks to improvements in technology, the number of transistors on microchips had roughly doubled every year since integrated circuits were invented a few years before.

His prediction that the trend would continue became known as "Moore's Law" and, later amended to every two years, it helped push Intel and rival chipmakers to aggressively target their research and development resources to make sure that rule of thumb came true.

"Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers - or at least terminals connected to a central computer - automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment," Moore wrote in his paper, two decades before the PC revolution and more than 40 years before Apple launched the iPhone.

After Moore's article, chips became more efficient and less expensive at an exponential rate, helping drive much of the world's technological progress for half a century and allowing the advent of not just personal computers, but the internet and Silicon Valley giants like Apple, Facebook and Google.

"It sure is nice to be at the right place at the right time," Moore said in an interview around 2005. "I was very fortunate to get into the semiconductor industry in its infancy. And I had an opportunity to grow from the time where we couldn't make a single silicon transistor to the time where we put 1.7 billion of them on one chip! It's been a phenomenal ride."

In recent years, Intel rivals such as Nvidia Corp have contended that Moore's Law no longer holds as improvements in chip manufacturing have slowed down.

But despite manufacturing stumbles that have caused Intel to lose market share in recent years, current Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger has said he believes Moore's Law still holds as the company invests billions of dollars in a turnaround effort.

Morris Chang, the founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC), the world's largest contract chipmaker, said Moore was a great and respected friend for more than six decades.

"With Gordon gone, almost all of my first generation semiconductor colleagues are gone," Chang said in a statement released via TSMC.

'ACCIDENTAL ENTREPRENEUR'

Even though he predicted the PC movement, Moore told Forbes magazine that he did not buy a home computer himself until the late 1980s.

A San Francisco native, Moore earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics in 1954 at the California Institute of Technology.

He went to work at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory where he met future Intel cofounder Robert Noyce. Part of the "traitorous eight," they departed in 1957 to launch Fairchild Semiconductor. In 1968, Moore and Noyce left Fairchild to start the memory chip company soon to be named Intel, an abbreviation of Integrated Electronics.

Moore and Noyce's first hire was another Fairchild colleague, Andy Grove, who would lead Intel through much of its explosive growth in the 1980s and 1990s.

Moore described himself to Fortune magazine as an "accidental entrepreneur" who had no burning urge to start a company - but he, Noyce and Grove formed a powerhouse partnership.

While Noyce had theories about how to solve chip engineering problems, Moore was the person who rolled up his sleeves and spent countless hours tweaking transistors and refining Noyce's broad and sometimes ill-defined ideas, efforts that often paid off. Grove filled out the group as Intel's operations and management expert.

Moore's obvious talent inspired other engineers working for him, and, under his and Noyce's leadership, Intel invented the microprocessors that would open the way to the personal computer revolution.

He was executive president until 1975 although he and CEO Noyce considered themselves equals. From 1979 to 1987 Moore was chairman and CEO and he remained chairman until 1997.

In 2023 Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at $7.2 billion.

Moore was a longtime sport fisherman, pursuing his passion all over the world and in 2000 he and his wife, Betty, started a foundation that focused on environmental causes. The foundation, which took on projects such as protecting the Amazon River basin and salmon streams in the United States, Canada and Russia, was funded by Moore's donation of some $5 billion in Intel stock.

He also gave hundreds of millions to his alma mater, the California Institute of Technology, to keep it at the forefront of technology and science, and backed the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project known as SETI.

Moore received a Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, from President George W. Bush in 2002. He and his wife had two children.

(Reporting by Noel Randewich and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Bill Trott and Rosalba O'Brien)

Startup says the seaweed blobbing toward Florida has a silver lining



Harri Weber
Thu, March 23, 2023

A brown macroalgae native to the Atlantic's Sargasso Sea is increasingly a menace to coastal ecosystems and communities across the Gulf of Mexico, ever since mats of the normally beneficial seaweed (known as sargassum) exploded in numbers in 2011. This is the backdrop for Carbonwave, which recently raised $5 million to put the hulking algae blooms to good use.

Researchers say farm and sewage runoff is likely driving the now 5,000-mile-wide "Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt." Climate change may also be playing a role.

There's no need to run screaming from sargassum, despite the tone of some stories covering the Florida-bound blooms. Still, they pose a threat to coral reefs and tourism-dependent livelihoods alike. When the stuff piles up on beaches, it rots, emitting skunky hydrogen sulfide.

The recent sargassum surges are forcing folks to find creative ways to get rid of it, and already, possible applications run the gamut. Researchers and entrepreneurs aim to turn it into syrup, bricks and even jet fuel. As for Carbonwave, the Boston- and Puerto Rico–based startup is using it in fertilizer, cosmetics and even faux leather

Backed by ESG-themed investment firms Natixis and Viridios Capital, as well as ocean-focused VC Katapult, Carbonwave says the new cash will help it scale production of its seaweed-based emulsifier for cosmetics. The startup said in a statement that it "has already sold half a ton" of its emulsifier, which it created as an alternative to petroleum-based ingredients. The company also claimed that its sargassum fertilizer "reduces the need of" climate change-driving nitrogen fertilizer.

CEO Geoff Chapin said Carbonwave makes these products through a "proprietary extraction process," which involves pressing the seaweed and removing the arsenic. The process yields a liquid fertilizer, while the leftover pulp forms the basis for the emulsifier and fake leather. The way Chapin tells it, the company uses "almost every part of the seaweed to make these products."

Carbonwave is part of a wave of startups vying to turn algae into environmentally friendlier products. For starters, there's H&M-backed Algiknit (now Keel Labs), which creates textiles; a slew of bioplastics companies, including Loliware and ULUU; and a firm called Umaro, which makes sea-bacon. Seaweed startups often focus on commercializing kelp in one way or another, but a few (like Carbonwave and Seaweed Generation) focus on sargassum.

"We need to put it to good use before it creates more ecological and climate harm," Carbonwave told TechCrunch.

The startup added that it may up its $5 million Series A with additional funding later on. It has secured at least $12 million to date.