Actively Exploited Zero-Day, Critical RCEs Lead Microsoft Patch Tuesday
Liquid Wind, the leading Swedish eFuel facility developer has raised €44 million in Series C financing led by Uniper, HYCAP Fund I SCSp (“HYCAP”) and Samsung Ventures. The financing will support the development of 10 eFuel facilities by 2027 as part of the company’s vision of reaching 500 facilities globally by 2050. The raise represents one of the largest European funding rounds in the eFuel sector this year. The global shipping sector is facing an urgent challenge: by 2050, all ship transport must be sustainable, and over 100,000 operational ships will need to transition to non-fossil fuel energy sources. Consequently, Liquid Wind is seeing strong demand from shipping companies and their clients for green shipping solutions to help decarbonise supply chains and meet essential targets. The majority of global trade is transported by sea, accounting for 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions according to the UNCTAD1. This is driven by 98 percent of the world’s operational transport fleet running on conventional fossil fuels. The shipping industry must now decarbonise to meet the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) 2050 net zero targets. Liquid Wind is developing the production facilities needed to meet the demand and replace carbon intensive maritime fossil fuels with low-carbon eFuel, facilitating the decarbonisation of global shipping. Claes Fredriksson, CEO and Founder of Liquid Wind, commented: “Global shipping has realised the urgency of low-carbon eFuels as a commercial necessity to meet sustainability targets and new regulations. The demand for low-carbon maritime fuels is undeniable, and we are seeing major shipping companies launching eFuel-powered vessels. Our shareholders recognise this, and we are pleased to welcome Samsung as a new investor, alongside continued support from Uniper and Hycap. This backing strengthens our capacity to accelerate production and advance our vision to reduce the world’s dependency on fossil fuel. The investment, the largest in our company history, reflects their confidence in Liquid Wind’s potential to scale eFuel production in the years to come.” Jan Taschenberger, COO New Green Power and Gas of Uniper, said: “We believe that only through a partnership approach can the visionary projects needed for the energy transition be truly successful. Joint projects such as NorthStarH2, which aims to produce 100,000 tons of eMethanol for use in shipping and the chemical industry, can lead the way. Our ongoing partnership with Liquid Wind has proven to be very fruitful and we look forward to achieving further milestones together and actively shaping the future of the energy industry. This continued collaboration fits perfectly with Uniper’s commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040.” A spokesperson from Samsung Ventures said: “It’s exciting to find a company that has the potential to disrupt multiple industries and simultaneously make carbon-free energy a reality. Liquid Wind is moving forward quickly into a market that is well set for a combination of growth and revenue potential.” James Munce, CEO of HYCAP, said: “We are pleased to strengthen our backing for Liquid Wind and its innovative eFuel facilities. Their standardised approach to scaling low-carbon fuel production is exactly what the maritime sector needs to meet its decarbonisation targets. Since our initial investment, Claes and the team have demonstrated a laser focus on delivering the underlying projects and accelerating energy transition in the maritime sector.” Liquid Wind develops scalable eFuel facilities to convert biogenic CO2 and renewable electricity into eMethanol, a fossil-free alternative fuel. Liquid Wind’s standardised and modularised approach enables efficient replication of these facilities, addressing common barriers such as high costs and limited scalability in eFuel adoption. Central to the strategy is the use of the proprietary Digital Twin technology which allows the company to rapidly replicate, construct and implement eFuel production facilities with reduced cost and risk. On an annual basis, each standardised Liquid Wind facility will produce up to 100,000 tons of eFuel while upcycling 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide, generating 94 percent lower emissions compared to fossil fuels on a ’Well-to-Wake’ basis (the entire process from fuel production to use). In collaboration with leading decarbonisation companies Alfa Laval, Carbon Clean, Siemens Energy and Topsoe, Liquid Wind has established a joint eFuel Design and Performance Centre in Hørsholm, Denmark dedicated to innovating and accelerating the deployment of eFuel plants. Additionally, Liquid Wind has partnered with Sundsvall Energi, Umeå Energi, NordFuel and Puhuri, to develop three projects in Sweden and in Finland. As part of these initiatives, and alongside the development of the company’s own eFuel facilities, Uniper has selected Liquid Wind to lead the development of the NorthStarH2 project in Östersund, Sweden. Each plant is projected to save approximately 200,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to the yearly emissions output of about 43,500 cars. Morgan Stanley & Co. International plc acted as financial advisor to Liquid Wind on the capital raise. Source: Liquid Wind
This screenshot from Donald Trump Truth Social account shows an image of President-elect Donald Trump and first lady Jill Biden attending the ceremony in Notre Dame Cathedral as France’s iconic cathedral is formally reopening its doors for the first time since a devastating fire nearly destroyed the 861-year-old landmark in 2019, Dec .7, 2024 in Paris. Trump’s recent summit with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and visit to Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral were not just exercises in negotiating trade policy and diplomacy. For Trump, they’ve also become fodder for trolling. (Truth Social via AP) This screenshot from Donald Trump’s Truth Social account shows am image of President-elect Donald Trump standing beside a Canadian flag. Trump’s recent summit with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and visit to Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral were not just exercises in negotiating trade policy and diplomacy. For Trump, they’ve also become fodder for trolling. (Truth Social via AP) This screenshot from Donald Trump Truth Social account shows an image of President-elect Donald Trump and first lady Jill Biden attending the ceremony in Notre Dame Cathedral as France’s iconic cathedral is formally reopening its doors for the first time since a devastating fire nearly destroyed the 861-year-old landmark in 2019, Dec .7, 2024 in Paris. Trump’s recent summit with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and visit to Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral were not just exercises in negotiating trade policy and diplomacy. For Trump, they’ve also become fodder for trolling. ( Truth Social via AP) This screenshot from Donald Trump Truth Social account shows an image of President-elect Donald Trump and first lady Jill Biden attending the ceremony in Notre Dame Cathedral as France’s iconic cathedral is formally reopening its doors for the first time since a devastating fire nearly destroyed the 861-year-old landmark in 2019, Dec .7, 2024 in Paris. Trump’s recent summit with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and visit to Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral were not just exercises in negotiating trade policy and diplomacy. For Trump, they’ve also become fodder for trolling. (Truth Social via AP) By MICHELLE L. PRICE and ROB GILLIES NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump’s recent dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his visit to Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral were not just exercises in policy and diplomacy. They were also prime trolling opportunities for Trump. Related Articles National Politics | Biden issues veto threat on bill expanding federal judiciary as partisan split emerges National Politics | Trump lawyers and aide hit with 10 additional felony charges in Wisconsin over 2020 fake electors National Politics | After withdrawing as attorney general nominee, Matt Gaetz lands a talk show on OANN television National Politics | What will happen to Social Security under Trump’s tax plan? National Politics | Republican-led states are rolling out plans that could aid Trump’s mass deportation effort Throughout his first term in the White House and during his campaign to return, Trump has spun out countless provocative, antagonizing and mocking statements. There were his belittling nicknames for political opponents, his impressions of other political figures and the plentiful memes he shared on social media. Now that’s he’s preparing to return to the Oval Office, Trump is back at it, and his trolling is attracting more attention — and eyerolls. On Sunday, Trump turned a photo of himself seated near a smiling first lady Jill Biden at the Notre Dame ceremony into a social media promo for his new perfume and cologne line, with the tag line, “A fragrance your enemies can’t resist!” The first lady’s office declined to comment. When Trudeau hastily flew to Florida to meet with Trump last month over the president-elect’s threat to impose a 25% tax on all Canadian products entering the U.S., the Republican tossed out the idea that Canada become the 51st U.S. state. The Canadians passed off the comment as a joke, but Trump has continued to play up the dig, including in a post Tuesday morning on his social media network referring to the prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.” After decades as an entertainer and tabloid fixture, Trump has a flair for the provocative that is aimed at attracting attention and, in his most recent incarnation as a politician, mobilizing fans. He has long relished poking at his opponents, both to demean and minimize them and to delight supporters who share his irreverent comments and posts widely online and cheer for them in person. Trump, to the joy of his fans, first publicly needled Canada on his social media network a week ago when he posted an AI-generated image that showed him standing on a mountain with a Canadian flag next to him and the caption “Oh Canada!” After his latest post, Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Tuesday: “It sounds like we’re living in a episode of South Park.” Trudeau said earlier this week that when it comes to Trump, “his approach will often be to challenge people, to destabilize a negotiating partner, to offer uncertainty and even sometimes a bit of chaos into the well established hallways of democracies and institutions and one of the most important things for us to do is not to freak out, not to panic.” Even Thanksgiving dinner isn’t a trolling-free zone for Trump’s adversaries. On Thanksgiving Day, Trump posted a movie clip from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” with President Joe Biden and other Democrats’ faces superimposed on the characters in a spoof of the turkey-carving scene. The video shows Trump appearing to explode out of the turkey in a swirl of purple sparks, with the former president stiffly dancing to one of his favorite songs, Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” In his most recent presidential campaign, Trump mocked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, refusing to call his GOP primary opponent by his real name and instead dubbing him “Ron DeSanctimonious.” He added, for good measure, in a post on his Truth Social network: “I will never call Ron DeSanctimonious ‘Meatball’ Ron, as the Fake News is insisting I will.” As he campaigned against Biden, Trump taunted him in online posts and with comments and impressions at his rallies, deriding the president over his intellect, his walk, his golf game and even his beach body. After Vice President Kamala Harris took over Biden’s spot as the Democratic nominee, Trump repeatedly suggested she never worked at McDonalds while in college. Trump, true to form, turned his mocking into a spectacle by appearing at a Pennsylvania McDonalds in October, when he manned the fries station and held an impromptu news conference from the restaurant drive-thru. Trump’s team thinks people should get a sense of humor. “President Trump is a master at messaging and he’s always relatable to the average person, whereas many media members take themselves too seriously and have no concept of anything else other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” said Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director. “President Trump will Make America Great Again and we are getting back to a sense of optimism after a tumultuous four years.” Though both the Biden and Harris campaigns created and shared memes and launched other stunts to respond to Trump’s taunts, so far America’s neighbors to the north are not taking the bait. “I don’t think we should necessarily look on Truth Social for public policy,” Miller said. Gerald Butts, a former top adviser to Trudeau and a close friend, said Trump brought up the 51st state line to Trudeau repeatedly during Trump’s first term in office. “Oh God,” Butts said Tuesday, “At least a half dozen times.” “This is who he is and what he does. He’s trying to destabilize everybody and make people anxious,” Butts said. “He’s trying to get people on the defensive and anxious and therefore willing to do things they wouldn’t otherwise entertain if they had their wits about them. I don’t know why anybody is surprised by it.” Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.KABUL: When Zainab Ferozi saw Afghan women struggling to feed their families after Taleban authorities took power, she took matters into her own hands and poured her savings into starting a business. Two-and-a-half years after putting 20,000 Afghanis ($300) earned from teaching sewing classes into a carpet weaving enterprise, she now employs around a dozen women who lost their jobs or who had to abandon their education due to Taleban government rules. Through her business in the western province of Herat, the 39-year-old also “covers all the household expenses” of her family of six, she told AFP from her office where samples of brightly colored and exquisitely woven rugs and bags are displayed. Her husband, a laborer, cannot find work in one of the poorest countries in the world. Ferozi is one of many women who have launched small businesses in the past three years to meet their own needs and support other Afghan women, whose employment sharply declined after the Taleban took power in 2021. Before the Taleban takeover, women made up 26 percent of public sector workers, a figure that “has effectively decreased to zero”, according to UN Women. Girls and women have also been banned from secondary schools and universities under restrictions the UN has described as “gender apartheid”. Touba Zahid, a 28-year-old mother-of-one, started making jams and pickles in the small basement of her home in the capital Kabul after she was forced to stop her university education. “I came into the world of business... to create job opportunities for women so they can have an income that at least covers their immediate needs,” Zahid said. Half a dozen of her employees, wearing long white coats, were busy jarring jams and pickles labeled “Mom’s delicious homecooking”. While women may be making the stock, running the shops in Afghanistan remains mostly a man’s job. Saleswomen like Zahid “cannot go to the bazaar to promote and sell their products” themselves, said Fariba Noori, chairwoman of the Afghanistan Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AWCCI). Another issue for Afghan businesswomen is the need for a “mahram” - a male family member chaperone - to accompany them to other cities or provinces to purchase raw materials, said Noori. After 40 years of successive conflicts, many Afghan women have been widowed and lost many male relatives. Despite these challenges, the number of businesses registered with AWCCI has increased since the Taleban takeover, according to Noori. The number went “from 600 big companies to 10,000” mainly small, home-based businesses and a few bigger companies, said Noori, herself a businesswoman for 12 years. Khadija Mohammadi, who launched her eponymous brand in 2022 after she lost her private school teaching job, now employs more than 200 women sewing dresses and weaving carpets. “I am proud of every woman who is giving a hand to another woman to help her become independent,” said the 26-year-old. Though businesses like Mohammadi’s are a lifeline, the salaries ranging from 5,000 to 13,000 Afghanis, cannot cover all costs and many women are still stalked by economic hardship. Qamar Qasimi, who lost her job as a beautician after the Taleban authorities banned beauty salons in 2023, said that even with her salary she and her husband struggle to pay rent and feed their family of eight. “When I worked in the beauty salon, we could earn 3,000-7,000 Afghanis for styling one bride, but here we get 5,000 per month,” said the 24-year-old. “It’s not comparable but I have no other choice,” she added, the room around her full of women chatting as they worked at 30 looms. Women-only spaces The closure of beauty salons was not only a financial blow, but also removed key spaces for women to socialize. Zohra Gonish decided to open a restaurant to create a women-only space in northeastern Badakhshan province. “Women can come here and relax,” said the 20-year-old entrepreneur. “We wanted the staff to be women so that the women customers can feel comfortable here.” But starting her business in 2022, aged 18 was not easy in a country where the labor force participation for women is 10 times lower than the world average, according to the World Bank. It took Gonish a week to convince her father to support her. Aside from helping their families and having space to socialize, some women said work has given them a sense of purpose. Sumaya Ahmadi, 15, joined Ferozi’s carpet company to help her parents after she had to leave school and became “very depressed”. “(Now) I’m very happy and I no longer have any mental health problems. I’m happier and I feel better.” The work has also given her a new goal: to help her two brothers build their futures. “Because schools’ doors are closed to girls, I work instead of my brothers so they can study and do something with their lives.”- AFP
TORONTO — Bruce Brown intercepted a pass and streaked down the court, driving past some token defence from Atlanta Hawks forward Jalen Johnson for a one-handed slam dunk. Brown's Toronto Raptors teammates burst off the home team's bench, cheering for the veteran forward. "It's just because they didn't think I can jump, because I haven't jumped really, or they haven't seen it, and then they didn't see it the last year," Brown said, adding he knew he would dunk as soon as he crossed half-court. "I told them I could do it and I was like, ‘if I get the chance to, I'mma dunk it.'" It was Brown's first dunk in eight months as he scored 12 points and had three rebounds off the bench in his season debut on Sunday as Toronto lost to Atlanta 136-107. He'd missed the first 31 games of the Raptors season as he recovered from arthroscopic knee surgery on Sept. 20, a process that took longer than he expected. "I thought I was gonna be out like six to eight weeks but some things didn't go my way," said Brown. "There was a lot of swelling in there for a while. "Things happened, and then I was supposed to come back, like, three, four weeks ago, but there was still swelling there, so they told me to take my time." Brown averaged 9.6 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 0.7 steals and 0.3 blocks over 34 games with the Raptors last season. He was traded from the Indiana Pacers to Toronto on Jan. 18 as part of a package for all-star forward Pascal Siakam. He's averaged 8.9 points, 4.2 rebounds and 2.5 assists over his career in 416 games with the Detroit Pistons, Brooklyn Nets, Denver Nuggets, Indiana and Toronto. Brown's return doesn't just add depth to the Raptors' lineup, but brings some much-needed energy to a struggling team that has lost 10 in a row. "You see him get out there and put his body on the line after being out for so long," said Scottie Barnes, who led Toronto with 19 points, eight rebounds, and five assists but eight turnovers in the loss. "He's making himself so tired out there just guarding, pushing himself. That's what the team needs. "We've all got to match that energy every single night. That's the effort we're going to need in order to win games." Head coach Darko Rajakovic said that fatigue is a major factor in the NBA's longest active losing skid. He said that a lack of focus played a role in Toronto's season-high 31 turnovers on Sunday. "We hit a wall. We look tired. We look drained," said Rajakovic. "Guys are not in a rhythm. That's the reality that we're in right now. We've got to find a way to get out of it." It was the third consecutive game where the Raptors had given up over 130 points, and second 29-point blowout in a row. "Getting beat by 30, man, at home — that's unacceptable," said Barnes. "We can't be doing that. We got to go out there and play harder, be smarter. "We had a lot of turnovers today. We can't allow this to happen." Brown was more optimistic. "We just need some rest, and we'll push through it," he said, noting that a stomach flu had spread through Toronto's locker room. "I mean, all teams have this at some point, even championship teams, so we'll push through it. We'll be fine." This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 29, 2024. John Chidley-Hill, The Canadian Press
President-elect Donald Trump shared a surprisingly sentimental tribute to former President Jimmy Carter after his passing Sunday at 100, writing that “we all owe him a debt of gratitude.” Taking to , Trump wrote: “I just heard of the news about the passing of President Jimmy Carter. Those of us who have been fortunate to have served as President understand this is a very exclusive club, and only we can relate to the enormous responsibility of leading the Greatest Nation in History. “The challenges Jimmy faced as President came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude,” he continued. “Melania and I are thinking warmly of the Carter Family and their loved ones during this difficult time. We urge everyone to keep them in their hearts and prayers.” Carter’s son, Chip, confirmed to the that his father died in his home in Plains, Georgia at 3:45 pm after having entered hospice care in February 2023. Trump’s stance on Carter has notoriously been fickle, with the president-elect on his 100th birthday in October while campaigning in Waunakee, Wisconsin. At the time, Trump called President Joe Biden the “worst” president in U.S. history and said that “Jimmy Carter is the happiest man because Jimmy Carter is considered a brilliant president in comparison.” During the campaign, Carter made his support for Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, abundantly clear, repeatedly reiterating that he intended to vote for her throughout her campaign. “He’s plugged in,” Chip told in October. “I asked him two months ago if he was trying to live to be 100, and he said, ‘No, I’m trying to live to vote for Kamala Harris.’”