Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wife is facing an investigation over allegedly harassing political opponents and witnesses in the former's corruption trial. The Israeli Justice Ministry made the announcement in a terse message late Thursday, saying the investigation would focus on the findings of a recent report by the "Uvda” investigative program into Sara Netanyahu. The program uncovered a trove of WhatsApp messages in which Mrs. Netanyahu appears to instruct a former aid to organize protests against political opponents and to intimidate Hadas Klein, a key witness in the trial. The announcement did not mention Mrs. Netanyahu by name, and the Justice Ministry declined further comment. But in a video released earlier Thursday, Netanyahu listed what he said were the many kind and charitable acts by his wife and blasted the Uvda report as "lies.” It was the latest in a long line of legal troubles for the Netanyahus - highlighted by the prime minister's ongoing corruption trial. Netanyahu is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a series of cases alleging he exchanged favors with powerful media moguls and wealthy associates. Netanyahu denies the charges and says he is the victim of a "witch hunt” by overzealous prosecutors, police and the media.IMC Campus Convocation at BMICH
ANN ARBOR, Michigan (AP) — Michigan defensive lineman Kenneth Grant is skipping his final college season to enter the NFL draft. Grant, a key part of the Wolverines' 2023 national championship team, announced his decision Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter. Fellow Michigan interior lineman Mason Graham had already declared for the draft. Both are projected as likely first-round picks. The 6-foot-3, 339-pound Grant was a third-team Associated Press All-American. He had 32 tackles, 6 1/2 tackles for loss and a pair of fumble recoveries. Grant helped Michigan upset Ohio State in the Big Ten regular-season finale, making four tackles. Cornerback Will Johnson and tight end Colston Loveland have also declared for the draft leading up to Michigan's game against No. 11 Alabama in the ReliaQuest Bowl. ___ Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football The Associated PressA multibillion-dollar plan to create “clean” hydrogen from Australian brown coal and ship it to Japan is on the brink of collapse. Japanese media has reported Kawasaki Heavy Industries has withdrawn from the trial, blaming procurement delays. The controversial plan was billed as a lifeline for the Latrobe Valley’s ageing brown coal industry. Under the plan, hydrogen would be extracted from coal, creating the world’s first liquefied hydrogen supply chain. Kawasaki Heavy Industries has reportedly withdrawn from plan to create “clean” hydrogen from brown coal sourced from the Latrobe Valley. Credit: Eamon Gallagher Proponents said the joint venture, led by Japan’s largest industrial conglomerates, would use commercially unproven CO2 capture and storage technology to sequester carbon in the Bass Strait. It was also to send the super-cooled hydrogen extracted from coal in purpose-built bulk carriers out of Hastings to Kawasaki in the Asian nation’s industrial heartland. The Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain project (HESC) was a partnership between international fossil energy companies, including Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd (KHI), Royal Dutch Shell and AGL. It was supported by a $2.35 billion investment from the Japanese government, and a $50 million in start-up investment from the Victorian government in 2018. Japanese outlet Nikkei reported that Kawasaki Heavy Industries had abandoned its bid to establish an international supply chain to procure hydrogen from Australia because it had become “difficult to procure hydrogen in Australia within the deadline”. “With the completion of the demonstration test by fiscal year 2030, as originally scheduled, being an absolute requirement for ensuring competitiveness, the company has changed hydrogen procurement to domestic,” Nikkei reported. “It has also downsized its hydrogen carriers and is now steering toward a more ‘realistic’ solution.” ‘This disastrous project has never stacked up ... Now the wheels are well and truly falling off’ Ellen Sandell, Victorian Greens leader Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio raised doubts about the project last year at an Australian Financial Review Energy and Climate Summit, saying it was not clear that the proponents would be able to adequately capture the carbon from the coal and safely sequester it. “That is a question that is yet to be answered,” she said. The AFR reported that Kawasaki Heavy Industries’ chairman Yoshinori Kanehana told a separate event last year that his business had been focused on winning “social license” from Victorian communities and hoped to avoid “ideological divides”. Friends of the Earth gas campaigner Freja Leonard said Kawasaki Heavy Industries’ decision to withdraw indicated the project wasn’t financially or practically feasible. “It’s just an absolute nonsense to use brown coal in a climate crisis to produce hydrogen,” she said. “Hydrogen is notoriously difficult to contain. It’s incredibly expensive to produce, and any project that expects to successfully ship hydrogen from one country to another without significant leakage is doomed to failure.” Loading A commercial-in-confidence report on the proposal compiled by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources in 2022 and released under freedom of information laws argued the plan was broadly supported in the Latrobe Valley. “There are a limited number of groups within the Latrobe Valley that do not support the use of fossil fuels and are against CCS [carbon capture and storage],” it stated. “However, the predominant sentiment in the Valley is one that supports the HESC [Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain].” Identifying challenges getting stakeholders like the local council on board, the report noted that the HESC had “revised [its] messaging”, “highlighting the carbon neutrality” the project could achieve by combining biomass with coal. This, it said, “softens the image of HESC as a coal-driven project”. Under the plan, the cooled hydrogen would have been piped more than 150 kilometres from Gippsland to the Port of Hastings and shipped to Japan. In January 2022, according to the confidential report, hydrogen was successfully generated under trial from brown coal and biomass. However, it reported cost overruns and lengthy delays to the trial. Victorian Greens leader Ellen Sandell said it was time for the project to be scrapped altogether. “This disastrous coal project has never stacked up environmentally or economically, and I cannot believe Labor ever gave it money and support. Now the wheels are well and truly falling off.” Comment has been sought from Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s office. Get to the heart of what’s happening with climate change and the environment. Sign up for our fortnightly Environment newsletter. Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. License this article Hydrogen Paris Agreement Climate policy Bianca Hall is The Age's environment and climate reporter, and has worked in a range of roles including as a senior writer, city editor, and in the federal politics bureau in Canberra. Connect via Twitter , Facebook or email . Most Viewed in Environment Loading
Plan to Remove Controversial Southeast San Diego Zoning Footnote Moves to CouncilA panel of authorities on the data center industry told Northwest energy planners Wednesday that the tech sector will take all the electricity it can get its hands on, warning of severe consequences if the region doesn’t respond in time. “We’re going to need to build more transmission faster than any time we have in the last 70 years as a region,” said Robert Cromwell, who consults with Northwest power utilities. He said the region is already flirting with rolling blackouts because peak energy demand is already near the region’s capacity to provide electricity. Data center demand is soaring because of artificial intelligence, which uses massive amounts of electricity for advanced computation. These powerful machines already consume more than 10% of all of Oregon’s power and forecasters say data center power use will be at least double that by 2030 — and perhaps some multiple higher. If the Northwest fails to add enough generation and transmission to meet the growing energy needs, Cromwell said periodic blackouts are inevitable at times power demand is at its greatest. He used an industry term, “rotating load shedding,” to describe rolling blackouts, which briefly cut off power to homes, businesses and even hospitals that need electricity to provide life-saving care. “Nothing will change policy faster than elected officials going to constituent funerals, and it won’t be for the better because it’ll be reactionary and less than fully thought through,” Cromwell told Wednesday’s meeting of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. Oregon has one of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing data center industries, owing in large part to some of the most generous tax breaks anywhere in the world . Data centers don’t employ many people, but the wealthy tech companies that run them enjoy Oregon tax giveaways worth more than $225 million annually. Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta operate enormous data centers in central and eastern Oregon. Several other companies, including Oracle, LinkedIn and the social network X, have huge installations in Hillsboro. Earlier this year, the power council issued a forecast suggesting a range of possibilities for data center power demand through the end of the decade. In the middle case, the council said Northwest data centers would need 4,000 average megawatts of additional electricity in 2030. That’s an enormous jump in demand, equivalent to the power use of 3 million homes. And yet on Wednesday, Cromwell said the council’s median forecast is too low. “Your medium case is not high enough and your high case is probably pretty close to spot on,” he said. The high forecast predicts that data centers will actually need an additional 6,500 average megawatts in the next few years — equivalent to the power needs of nearly 5 million homes. “There’s no question in my mind that the demand for computation and AI, and the demand to plug in (computer processors), exceeds the available power that we have by 2030,” said Brian Janous, a former Microsoft vice president now consulting for industrial electricity users. There’s little prospect of blunting that growth by shifting demand to other data centers during peak times or through the invention of more efficient computers, Janous and others told the council on Wednesday. He said the demand for artificial intelligence is so high that data center operators will use all the electricity they can get and will operate all their facilities around the clock. When power demand exceeds supply, during winter storms or heatwaves for example, utilities and governments must make wrenching decisions about who loses power and for how long. Turning off power to data centers could preserve power for homes and hospitals but would have its own negative consequences. Think about the faulty CrowdStrike software update last summer, said panelist Sarah Smith, with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. That took down banks, hospitals, factories, news sites and many others as online systems went awry. “Air travel was disrupted for days,” Smith said. “There was a lot of really wide-ranging impacts you could imagine.” The Northwest Power and Conservation Council is a regional organization that works with utilities and governments in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington to balance future power needs and environmental protections. It convened Wednesday’s panel on data centers to help plan a new forecast the council will issue next year. Big tech companies generally accept the scientific consensus that carbon emissions are causing climate change. Until recently, most tech companies expressed public commitments to find renewable power for their data centers. Recently, though, Janous said they’ve become “willing to compromise, in the short run” on their clean power goals because they’re desperate for any source of electricity. Despite the data centers’ voracious appetite for power, the panelists expressed some hope that the region will be able to meet the challenge and, in time, push data center operators to return to their clean energy aspirations. They suggested a Northwest regional transmission authority, long under discussion, could help streamline the construction of new power lines and collaboration among western states. Data centers’ power needs are triggering expensive upgrades to the Northwest’s power lines and prompting construction of new power plants. There is growing concern among ratepayer advocates, regulators and politicians that households will end up bearing much of the cost of data center growth through higher residential power bills. On Wednesday, panelists said data center operators are highly motivated. They said tech companies probably be willing to bear the cost of additional power themselves, provided they have a pathway to get that energy quickly. “The companies that are asking for this infrastructure are extraordinarily deep-pocketed and there’s a huge willingness to pay,” Janous said, “because the returns they earn on the back end are massive.” -- Mike Rogoway covers Oregon technology and the state economy. Reach him at mrogoway@oregonian.com . Our journalism needs your support. Please become a subscriber today at OregonLive.com/subscribe
OSAKA, Japan and MONTREAL , Dec. 5, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Osaka, Japan ; President: Toichi Takino; "Ono") announced that it has entered into a drug discovery collaboration agreement with Congruence Therapeutics (Headquarters: Montreal, Quebec, Canada ; CEO: Clarissa Desjardins; "Congruence") to generate novel small molecule correctors against multiple protein targets in the oncology area by leveraging Congruence's proprietary drug discovery platform, RevenirTM. Under the terms of the agreement, Congruence will generate small molecule correctors by leveraging Congruence's proprietary drug discovery engine called, RevenirTM. Ono will obtain an exclusive option right to develop, manufacture and commercialize the identified small molecule correctors worldwide. Congruence will be eligible to receive an upfront payment, research expenses, milestone payments based on research and development progress and sales, as well as tiered royalties based on net sales. "We believe that this collaboration with Congruence may help generating novel small molecule correctors for validated targets in the oncology area by leveraging their own technologies in protein dynamics and computational biology, leading to our development pipeline," said Seishi Katsumata , Corporate Officer / Executive Director, Discovery & Research of Ono. "We will be committed to delivering innovative new drugs to cancer patients as soon as possible." "Congruence is thrilled to partner with Ono, which has established itself as a global leader in drug development, particularly in the oncology space. We believe that our RevenirTM platform and capabilities in protein dynamics will accelerate the discovery of novel therapies for compelling targets of interest to both companies," said Sharath Hegde PhD, Chief Scientific Officer of Congruence. About RevenirTM Drug Discovery Platform RevenirTM, Congruence's proprietary computational drug discovery platform, captures the dynamic biophysical changes caused by mutations in proteins, offering unique insights into protein defects and their correction. By examining surface features and a spectrum of biophysical descriptors across an ensemble of protein conformers, RevenirTM predicts small molecule induced correction of the underlying defect. About Congruence Therapeutics Congruence is a computationally-driven biotechnology company building a unique pipeline of transformative small molecule correctors rationally designed to rescue aberrant protein function. Congruence's proprietary scalable platform, RevenirTM, captures the biophysical features of proteins across their conformational ensembles, in order to identify novel allosteric and cryptic pockets which are virtually screened to generate novel chemical matter. For more information, please visit www.congruencetx.com . View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ono-enters-into-drug-discovery-collaboration-agreement-with-congruence-therapeutics-to-generate-novel-small-molecule-correctors-in-the-oncology-area-302324452.html SOURCE Ono Pharmaceutical co., ltd.Voters in Ireland were more than usually busy in 2024, casting their ballot in five different polls – for two referenda in March, local and European ballots in June and a general election in November. The country’s political comings and goings were further punctuated by an emotional announcement in March from former premier Leo Varadkar that he was resigning as taoiseach and Fine Gael leader. He was succeeded the following month in both roles by Simon Harris. But the year had so much more to offer than just politics, and PA news agency photographers were on hand to capture some of the highlights. Hundreds of people took part in the annual New Year’s Day charity swim on Bray seafront in Co Wicklow (Brian Lawless/PA) Former taoiseach John Bruton died aged 76 following a long illness in February (Damien Storan/PA) Leo Varadkar made a visit to the US for St Patrick’s Day in the same month he announced he was stepping down as taoiseach and resigning as leader of Fine Gael (Niall Carson/PA) Thousands of people gathered for the Bealtaine Fire Festival at the Hill of Uisneach in Co Westmeath in May (Niall Carson/PA) Natasha O’Brien, who was assaulted by a serving Irish soldier, told a rally in Dublin in June that she would keep up pressure on politicians to tackle violence against women (Gareth Chaney/PA) A mural of athlete Rhasidat Adeleke was created in Waterford after she made history becoming the first Irish woman to run in an Olympic sprint final during the Paris Olympics (Brian Lawless/PA) Actor Colin Farrell ran the Irish Life Dublin Marathon in October to raise money for people living with Epidermolysis Bullosa, a rare genetic skin condition (Damien Storan/PA) A woman cast her vote at Deaf Village Ireland in Dublin as voters went to the polls in the General Election on November 29 (Niall Carson/PA)Telcos investment recovery in limbo as tariff hike backfires, price war with satcom services likely in 2025