Latest news with #Irena
Trade Arabia
6 days ago
- Business
- Trade Arabia
Brazil, Irena to co-host first global energy planning summit
The Government of Brazil and the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) will co-host the 1st edition of Energy Planning Summit which runs until June 4 at the BNDES Headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. The event will mark the official launch of the Global Coalition for Energy Planning (GCEP), a landmark initiative emerging from Brazil's 2024 G20 Presidency to help close the investment gap in the clean energy transition through improved energy planning, said the organisers. The Summit and the Coalition will contribute to building momentum ahead of COP30 in Brazil and other key global milestones, they stated. "Although significant investment opportunities exist in emerging markets and developing economies, perceived risks remain a key barrier to investment, particularly from private sources," said Irena Director General Francesco La Camera. "Brazil has demonstrated how long-term energy planning, which incorporates investment-ready strategies, can help reduce those risks, attract private capital, scale up renewables, and strengthen local supply chains," he stated. "As GCEP Secretariat, Irena will leverage its near-universal membership and extensive repository of best practices for renewable energy planning and modelling to support countries, particularly in the Global South, in developing energy strategies that align with national development and climate goals," observed Le Camera. Alexandre Silveira, Brazil's Minister of Mines and Energy, said: 'Promoting a just and effective energy transition necessarily requires recognizing the leadership of developing countries. By advancing the Global Coalition for Energy Planning, Brazil reaffirms its commitment to multilateral dialogue and to strengthening tools that connect strategic planning, public policy, and financing mechanisms in support of a more inclusive and sustainable energy future.' This high-level event will bring together senior officials from energy planning and finance ministries in a structured dialogue to establish a new global platform for cooperation. Expected outcomes include agreement on priority workstreams, a roadmap for thematic coordination, and an initial mapping of partners ready to collaborate, said the organisers. By demonstrating how robust planning can reduce risks and unlock investment, the Summit aims to strengthen political commitment to use energy planning as a strategic tool to inform national and international development strategies.
The Courier
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Courier
Kirriemuir camera obscura under threat due to volunteer shortage
Kirriemuir's camera obscura is facing a new fight for survival – a decade after local volunteers saved it from closure. The attraction on Kirrie Hill is one of just three of its kind in Scotland. It is housed in a pavilion gifted to the Angus town by Peter Pan creator, Sir J M Barrie in 1930. Until 2015, it was managed by the National Trust for Scotland. But when Angus Council pulled a £10,000-a-year subsidy to keep open, Kirriemuir Regeneration Group was set up to secure its future. Since then, the camera and pavilion café have welcomed thousands of visitors. The 2025 season has been delayed by a technical issue with the camera in the roof space of the building. And while it has now been fixed, KRG treasurer Irena Krasinska-Lobban said volunteer numbers were critically low. 'This year, for some reason, we really are struggling for volunteers,' she said. 'March was the tenth anniversary of KRG being formed. 'I've been involved from the outset, but we've never struggled for volunteers as much as this year.' However, a plea on local social media has offered a glimmer of hope. 'One of our volunteers put a message up on Facebook. I've already sent out 20 emails to people who have said they might be interested in helping out. 'All we ask is for them to do a shift of three hours a month in the camera obscura or the café. 'It's not a big ask, but we need to know that we have volunteers so we can let people know we will be open. 'Ideally we'd like to open Saturday, Sunday and Monday. 'We are to be open this Monday, then we will try to arrange something with the people who have been in touch. 'If we could get even half of them to volunteer regularly it would make such a difference,' Irena added. Anyone willing to volunteer should email krg7630@ The pavilion features a host of items relating to Kirrie-born author Barrie. Those include prized pieces of history connected with his love of cricket. He first enjoyed the sport at Kirrie Hill. Thousands witnessed a match there to mark the gift of the pavilion on the day he was made a freeman of the town in June 1930. Irena added: 'Last summer was really excellent. 'The camera was busy with visitors, and the café has also become a place where Kirrie folk like to meet. 'It is lovely for them to come in for a coffee and a scone after enjoying a walk up The Hill. 'KRG is involved in a lot of other things, but I really hope we can get the volunteers to keep the camera open. 'It would break my heart to see it go.'
New York Times
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Triple-Digit Heat, and Scolded for a Sip of Water
After nearly 20 minutes of intense yoga in a 105-degree room, the influencer had grown thirsty. She dropped her pose, leaned down to pick up her Fiji water bottle and took a sip. She didn't think it would be a problem. She certainly didn't think that within days, hundreds of thousands of people would have seen a video about her impromptu water break. But that small decision, to take a drink of water partway through a 90-minute hot yoga session at Bode NYC, touched off a series of events — and one widely seen TikTok video — that resulted in an instructor losing her job. And as with so many other moments of consumer outrage, broadcast by indignant shoppers or travelers (or yogis) to the riled-up masses on social media, this one also found a large and often sympathetic audience. How could drinking water be a problem? In a yoga class? The video in question contained several potent accelerants known to stoke outrage: sweaty vulnerability; the indignity, in an age of obsessive hydration, of being told you can't drink; relatively low stakes. ('Denying hydration in ANY workout class is a huge red flag,' one TikTok user thundered in a comment.) Those chiming in from the sidelines missed some nuance, as they often do. But surprisingly, this modern moral tale finds its ostensible antagonist in a surprising place at the end: back on a yoga mat, at the same studio where all the unpleasantness began. The firestorm began on Jan. 26, when Roma Abdesselam settled in for a 6 p.m. yoga session on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The class was billed as Bikram style, meaning that practitioners would be expected to move through a carefully prescribed sequence of 26 yoga postures, directed by an instructor. While working through the sequence, which was developed by the yoga guru Bikram Choudhury, who fled the United States amid a hail of sexual assault accusations in the 2010s, practitioners are often encouraged to refrain from drinking water until about half an hour in, usually once they reach eagle pose. (Instructors sometimes call this 'party time.') Although her class hadn't yet reached eagle pose, Ms. Abdesselam, 29, exercised her free will and took a sip anyway. The instructor, a longtime Bikram practitioner named Irena, took notice and reminded the students not to drink water until they were cued to do so. Ms. Abdesselam, who said she did not remember that rule being explained at the start of the session, became frustrated and left early with her fiancé, who was also in attendance. They didn't say a word to Irena. 'I was a little taken aback because, like I said, I've taken the class before, and I never had an instructor say that to me at all,' Ms. Abdesselam recalled in a phone interview. Moments later, walking through the January night, she recorded a video for TikTok. Clutching her black yoga mat, the infamous water bottle sloshing in the corner of the frame, she stormed down a Manhattan sidewalk with all the fervor of a woman who had sought the meditative calm of a yoga session but got the opposite. In the 42-second post, Ms. Abdesselam vented her frustration. 'And the instructor bullies me — calls me out in front of everyone — and is like, 'It's not time to drink water, I'll let you know when you can drink water, you drink water when I want you to drink water,'' she says in the TikTok video, which has since been viewed by nearly two million users. Some commenters described similar experiences at the studio. Some faulted her for airing her grievances publicly. And others expressed skepticism that the incident had happened at all. The instructor in question is also skeptical. At least, she recalls the day differently. Irena, 56, who requested to be identified by only her given name, maintains that she did explain the instructions at the start of class, contrary to Ms. Abdesselam's recollection. She also said she didn't 'command' her pupil not to drink water but instead asked to 'please try to refrain' until the appointed time — the idea being that selectively forgoing water can strengthen discipline and improve flexibility, among other health benefits. 'I thought it was innocently said,' she said in an interview. 'It was my invitation — not an order, not a royal command.' 'It Just Felt Targeted at Me' The day after Ms. Abdesselam filmed herself, red-faced and fuming, the studio posted a lighthearted response on its own TikTok account saying that 'not only is drinking water allowed it is encouraged!!' In the caption, the studio added that 'while we try to hold off until after eagle pose in original hot yoga, please drink water whenever you feel your body needs it.' Then Jen Lobo Plamondon, who founded Bode NYC in 1999 with Donna Rubin, released a video statement in which she said that the situation 'does not align' with the studio's standards. At Bode NYC, one of the first studios in New York City to offer Bikram yoga, teachers are instructed to 'encourage clients to drink water in between postures when they need it' and not to 'micromanage when or how much water people drink,' according to Ms. Lobo Plamondon. 'We were the only hot yoga studio in town for six or seven years,' Ms. Lobo Plamondon said. 'You knew when you were going to hot yoga, you were going to a Bikram yoga class. But now, every studio is hot. So when they come in and we ask if you've done hot yoga before, they say yes, but then they come into a Bikram-style class and it's very different.' For Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a history professor at the New School and the author of a book about America's exercise obsession, the problem stems from the 'slightly awkward way' that Bikram-style yoga fits into today's group fitness universe, butting up against faddish and social-media-friendly studios like CorePower or Y7. Bikram fans might find value in the discipline baked into the practice. But in an era in which many think of yoga as rooted chiefly in 'self-care,' modern exercisers may find it abrasive. In a phone interview a few days after the incident, Ms. Lobo Plamondon said that she held an all-staff video meeting to go over the company's policies and to emphasize to teachers that external reviews are taken seriously. She also said that the studio and Irena had parted ways. 'One-off reviews are not going to jeopardize your job,' Ms. Lobo Plamondon said. 'But when it spirals like this and we see that other people had a similar experience, it's not going to be tolerated.' But despite Ms. Lobo Plamondon's efforts, it has proved difficult to reconcile the tenets of the practice with students' expectations. Another Bode student, Monica Carbone, 28, said that she had an experience similar to Ms. Abdesselam's during a 75-minute hot yoga class last month. About 25 minutes in, while holding a pose with one leg up and her foot clasped in her hand, Ms. Carbone began to feel lightheaded and took a sip from her water bottle. The instructor then asked the class to wait until after the pose was completed to take a water break. 'It just felt targeted at me,' Ms. Carbone recalled in a phone interview. 'I was sitting in the front row, and whether or not that was the case, it definitely made me feel a little bit uncomfortable.' Later, when Ms. Carbone got up to leave the room after starting to feel thirsty again, the instructor stopped her and offered to refill her bottle for her. She declined, then went to the front desk to explain to a manager what had happened. 'He said something which made me even more taken aback,' Ms. Carbone said. 'He was like, Yeah, I think she's one of the more traditional teachers. And traditionally you only leave Bikram classes when you have to do one of the three P's: puke, pee or pass out.' The Teacher Becomes the Student Irena has been practicing this style of yoga for 13 years and did teacher training with Bode in 2022. She said she understood that adaptation was necessary for any business to thrive — even ones rooted in tradition. Still, she stressed the importance of adhering to the principles of Bikram-style yoga whenever possible. 'You are seeing in this new era, young people are having a very hard time to be told what to do,' she said. Reflecting on the fallout from her video, Ms. Abdesselam said she never wished for Irena to lose her job, just 'for her to be talked to.' 'Just because it's always how something's been done doesn't mean that it needs to continue being done,' she added. Her onetime instructor might disagree. The same week she lost her job, Irena turned up for a class at Bode NYC's Flatiron location, where she remains a student. She loves the instructors and the community, she said, and has no plans to leave the studio. 'Yoga is bigger than you or I,' she said. 'Yoga is bigger than any teacher or any studio owner. Yoga is a culture, it's life, it's a discipline. The practice of yoga is my medicine.'
The Guardian
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Irena's Vow review – the extraordinary tale of a real-life Holocaust rescuer
Here is an extraordinary true-life tale. For more than two years during the second world war, a teenager named Irene Gut kept 12 Polish Jews safe from the Nazis, hidden in a basement right under the nose of her boss, a high-ranking Nazi officer. Following the war, Gut emigrated to America and never spoke a word about her wartime experiences until the mid 1970s. Now the story of her remarkable courage and heroism is told very politely in an English-language drama that feels a little too tactful in places to really say anything about the horrors of Nazism. Sophie Nélisse plays Irena, a Polish trainee nurse forced into slave labour by the Germans following the occupation in 1939, put to work first in a factory then a hotel. Then Nazi officer Rügemer (Dougray Scott) picks her to be his housekeeper – and when she moves in to his sprawling villa, Irena also sneaks in a group of Jewish prisoners whom she has been supervising at the hotel. When Rügemer is out during the day, the hideaways come out of the cellar to help cook and clean – anything to stop him making good on his promise to bring in more staff. The film doesn't linger too deeply on the experiences of 12 mostly young Jewish people: the terror and the boredom and the tensions they must have felt, crammed in together month after month. In its weakest moments Irena's Vow feels shallow; there are scenes of near-misses that should be heart-stopping but fall a little flat. That said, there is a horrible scene in the town, when Irena is forced by German soldiers to view the public hanging of an entire family for harbouring a Jewish man – the youngest child to be executed is only six or seven. The film gives us a rather saintly portrait of Irena, which is a faintly unsatisfying character treatment. It's a shame that the most fleshed-out character is the Nazi officer Rügemer, a repulsive man in his 60s whose vanity is puffed up by his uniform and power, and who drinks himself into oblivion to block out the sound of the mass shooting of the town's Jewish population. Irena's Vow is in UK cinemas and on digital platforms from 28 March.
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Surgicure Technologies Announces $1.785 Million Seed Round to Revolutionize Airway Management
Funding Fuels Development of Life-Saving Innovation to Replace Outdated Airway Securing Methods BOSTON, March 12, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Surgicure Technologies, a female-owned and operated company dedicated to advancing airway management and patient safety, today announced the closing of a $1.785M Seed funding round led by Launchpad Venture Group (LVG) with major contributions from Gurtin Ventures, alongside participation from BakerBridge Capital, TiE Angels, SBXi, Beacon Angels, SideCar Angels, Tidal River Fund and BBE Ventures. This investment will accelerate the commercialization of Surgicure's flagship product, the Horseshoe™, designed to improve the quality and safety of patient care across diverse medical settings. Founded in 2019 by Irena King, Surgicure Technologies is on a mission to reduce adverse events in airway management by introducing devices that optimize patient breathing and streamline clinical workflows. Originally invented by army respiratory therapists and now re-designed by Irena, the company's flagship product, the Horseshoe, is a novel patented solution for more reliable ET tube securement, prevention of facial pressure injuries, and more effective oral care. This technology not only improves clinical outcomes but also offers cost savings and device versatility in critical care, burn/trauma scenarios, and during evacuation or transport. "This investment marks a transformative moment for Surgicure Technologies," said Irena King, CEO & Founder of Surgicure Technologies. "The industry is poised for disruption as the current practices for securing life-sustaining breathing tubes often rely on flimsy tape, leading to potential complications such as cardiac arrest, brain damage, and a 30% rate of preventable deaths. Our breakthrough solution is designed to tackle these challenges head-on, driving substantial improvements in patient outcomes." "At Launchpad Venture Group, we are thrilled to lead Surgicure's oversubscribed Series Seed round and support their efforts to bring innovative, patient-specific surgical solutions to market," said Ian Levine, Managing Director, Launchpad Venture Group. "Surgicure's technology addresses critical unmet medical needs, including preventing unintended and accidental extubations - a serious and preventable cause of complications and mortality. We believe Surgicure has the potential to set a new standard of care, and we are excited to partner with their talented team to help make that vision a reality." For more information, please visit About Surgicure Technologies, Inc. Surgicure Technologies, Inc., is a medical device company committed to improving patient care through innovative solutions. We specialize in airway management for both civilian and military applications, enabling healthcare professionals to enhance patient outcomes by reducing adverse events. Our solutions are designed to optimize breathing support, accelerate deployment, and elevate the safety and quality of care, ensuring better results in critical situations. Surgicure is dedicated to setting new standards in healthcare through groundbreaking inventions and advanced technology designed to better serve clinicians and their patients. View source version on Contacts Media:Alexis Matsasalexis@ 617-797-3594 Sign in to access your portfolio
