21st November 2022
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Today's stories
Climate summit agrees historic fund
Former Silicon Valley darling sentenced for fraud
ENVIRONMENTClimate summit agrees historic fund
What happened?Yesterday the UN’s annual climate conference, COP27, closed with the agreement to set up a fund to compensate poorer countries for the so-called ‘loss and damage’ suffered from climate change for the first time.How did we get here?COP27 kicked off two weeks ago in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh with 200 nations gathering to negotiate how best to tackle the issue of climate change.The hot topic was whether richer nations should be financially responsible for environmental disasters incurred by developing nations that scientists have linked to climate change. It can often be an emotive topic at climate talks because there is debate over what should count and who should pay. One of the concerns among wealthier countries was that accepting it opens the doors to billions of pounds in what many call “reparations.”This year, thousands of people died and millions lost their homes in devastating floods in Nigeria, Bangladesh, Sudan and Pakistan. Scientists say this is an example of when poorer nations who often suffer the most damage from climate change, despite producing relatively little pollution.Smaller and developing countries are desperate for monetary assistance from the actual top polluters of the world like the US, India and China.Next steps: COP27 delegates agreed to create the fund by the next summit in 2023. But there are still big questions like who will pay into it, who will receive it and if will it be big enough. While agreeing to a ‘loss and damage’ fund was historic, elsewhere at the summit other negotiations were less successful.Efforts to reduce carbon emissions by agreeing a date to phase-down the use of all fossil fuels failed after countries reliant on oil and gas pushed back, because they want to exploit their reserves, as western countries did historically.
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TECHFormer Silicon Valley darling sentenced for fraud
What happened?On Friday Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in jail for defrauding investors about the effectiveness of her company's blood-testing tech. How did we get here?Back in 2003 19-year-old, Holmes, dropped out of Stanford University to start the healthcare firm. Theranos claimed it invented a machine that could test for diseases with a single drop of blood. It was aiming to transform the health industry by performing life saving tests in convenient locations like the supermarket, at a fraction of their usual costs.At it’s peak the firm was valued at $10bn and attracted funding from high profile investors including the Walmart founders the Walton family and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Holmes was hailed as the next Steve Jobs and was named by Forbes magazine as the youngest female self-made billionaire.But in 2015 things began to unravelTheranos was notoriously secretive, sharing very little about its technology with the public or medical community. A whistle-blower report in the Wall Street Journal exposed that the tech did not work and in 2018, Theranos was shut down and a criminal investigation began. Holmes' rise and fall has been captured in a book, a documentary, an award-winning TV series and multiple podcasts.What’s next: Holmes has been held as an example of how the ‘fake it until you make it’ culture in the startup world can go seriously wrong. The criminal case has been viewed as one of the biggest scandals in Silicon Valley. But the recent downfall of the crypto exchange FTX – once valued at $32bn – could soon supersede it.
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