Latest news with #Pottinger
Otago Daily Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Visions for city shared
Invercargill mayoral hopefuls shared their visions for the city at a lively candidate debate last night. The event held at Ascot Park Hotel featured classic council topics such as rates, water and the cost of the museum build, but also ventured into unfiltered territory under the moderation of Duncan Garner. Alex Crackett kicked things off by saying it was time to put Invercargill back on the map for the "right reasons". A promise from Ian Pottinger to sort out a burnt building on the corner of Spey St and Dee St evoked support from the crowd, while Ria Bond said she wanted to cut back on costs and improve efficiency. Tom Campbell spoke to the view that the city was on a good trajectory by way of an old joke he had heard: will the last person to leave Invercargill please switch the lights out? "Well, you don't hear them laughing now." He said the city had "turned the corner" and had a strong economy. Economy was a topic also tabled by Steve Chernishov, who wanted to see the local version built up. He said too much was being spent on companies which were not local. Tom Morton described himself as a "grafter" who had followed his father's advice to travel the world. Andrew Clark — who is running for mayor in Tasman as Maxwell Clark — was challenged by Garner a number of times for wanting the job in two different places. "If you win there and win here, will you be at every second council meeting? How will you split your time?" Garner asked. Clark effectively conceded defeat in the Tasman race and said he had spend his time in Invercargill. The event ended with a series of lighter questions, such as who candidates would vote for if they could not back themselves. Both Messrs Crackett and Campbell picked each other, while Mr Pottinger and Ms Bond did the same. Mr Chernishov picked Mr Pottinger, Mr Morton chose both Ms Bond and Mr Pottinger, and Mr Clark could not select just one person. As far as de-stressing, Mr Crackett said she spent time with friends and enjoyed being a "technology buff", while Mr Pottinger revealed he ran at 4.30am in the morning before meditating with his wife and going back to bed. Mr Chernishov enjoyed building projects, Ms Bond went to the gym and Mr Campbell indulged with whisky with a cigar. All but one mayoral candidate was present at the debate, with Gordon McCrone being barred by the organiser for his connection to a controversial website. Election Day is set for October 11.
Agriland
01-08-2025
- Automotive
- Agriland
Pottinger brings automation to steering front mower
Pottinger has further developed its Novacat F1300 Opticurve mower, a front mounted mower that turns with the tractor to ensure that no uncut strips are left when used in conjunction with a rear set. The company has now given it a significant upgrade in the form of the Profiline comfort control system, which will be available as an option. The difference that the new control system makes is that the mower will steer left or right automatically, depending on the turning angle of the tractor and the inclination of the slope. The information needed to do this is provided by an acceleration sensor installed directly on the mower. This works alongside the tractor's turning angle signal, increasing the accuracy of the calculation that dictates the position of the mower even further. All the ground is covered automatically with the new system There are two options for connecting the tractor and mower - it can be done by using the tractor's ISOBUS terminal or Pottinger's own Select Control terminal. Hydraulic oil is supplied by a load-sensing or the power beyond system, should the tractor be equipped with it. The side shift system comes into its own when cornering and on slopes, as it provides a perfect overlap with the rear mower, ensuring the tractor drives along a track free of forage. Slopes and corners are catered for with latest automation system The curved movement means that the entire working width of the cutter bar can be used and the effective width of the mower combination maximised. Pottinger note that in contrast, systems with straight-line side shift will leave several centimetres uncovered in this situation. The company claims that one great advantage of this technology is the ability to detect changing degrees of overlap between the front mower and the tractor or rear mower(s) and respond automatically. No grass is driven over, and no feathers are left standing, Pottinger tell us, neither when cornering nor on steep ground. A further benefit is that because there is no old crop left behind for the next cut, the follow-up harvesting machines can work undisturbed. With the automatic mode engaged, the operator can focus on driving the tractor while keeping an eye on the work as it progresses.
Extra.ie
17-07-2025
- Extra.ie
Grieving families targeted in heartless scam selling fake access to funeral live-streams
A new scam has appeared on Facebook, promising bereaved families and friends, access to funerals streamed over the internet. The scammer is believed to be trawling through obituary notices in newspapers and on social media posts to sell fake access to funerals streamed over the internet, charging €10 a time to view the ceremonies online. These heartless criminals have easy access to publicly available death notices, and they create fake Facebook profiles, posing as family or friends of the recently deceased. Pic: Shutterstock They then contact potential mourners to offer them links to a fake 'live stream' of a funeral for about ten euro, but after paying the money, the victims find they cannot log on. The fraudsters will also often ask you to support a fake 'donation page' they say has been set up on behalf of the deceased person's family, using trusted charity platforms, to make friends of the deceased believe they are contributing to a cause which had been close to the heart of the person who has passed on. Any donations are then pocketed by the scammers. Pic: Getty Images A UK based humanist celebrant Halde Pottinger, discovered the fraud after his own brother died, when he received FIVE fake invitations to watch the funeral online, despite having attended his brother's funeral in person, and the ceremony NOT being streamed online. Mr Pottinger says 'They waited until an hour before my brothers funeral, a time when people are at their most vulnerable' – He then saw five different accounts offering access to a 'Live-stream' of the funeral, and sickeningly the invitations included photos and details of his brothers funeral. Pic: Shutterstock Online funerals became common during the Covid pandemic, when ceremonies were often streamed over the internet because social distancing rules meant it wasn't possible for all family and friends to attend in person. The British Chartered Trading Standards Institute says that over the past few years they have seen an increase in this sort of 'disturbing scam'. Katherine Hart, from the CTSI, says, 'Targeting people during one of the most emotionally difficult moments of their lives is despicable. It is particularly upsetting as victims often feel they cannot report what is happening for fear of adding further stress to grieving families. The criminals count on their silence.' Halde Pottinger added, 'It is sick and disgusting. The more tragic a death, such as if someone dies young, a suicide or the death occurred in particularly unexpected circumstances – then the more it seems to attract scammers, and fewer people will come forward to admit they have been swindled'.
Chicago Tribune
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Chicago activists, wary about Trump's Israel-Iran ceasefire announcement, to keep protesting
Chicago activists welcomed word of a 'complete and total ceasefire' in the war between Israel and Iran at a downtown protest Monday evening but said they were cautiously optimistic and urged continued agitation. The protest at Federal Plaza attracted about 200 people despite Monday's extreme heat. Demonstrators called for the United States to stop bombing Iranian nuclear sites, among other demands. Many condemned U.S. military aid to Israel, supporting its war in Iran and also in Gaza, which has lasted nearly two years. President Donald Trump said on social media Monday that Israel and Iran have agreed to a ceasefire to be phased in over 24 hours. The countries had been at war for 12 days. The U.S. got involved Saturday, bombing three Iranian nuclear sites. Israeli military officials declined to comment on Trump's statement. Iranian state media had no word on what response Tehran had to the ceasefire. But back at Federal Plaza Monday, John Pottinger was skeptical. 'I wouldn't hold my breath on the ceasefire,' Pottinger, 71, said. Pottinger, who lives on the city's North Side, came out to the demonstration because 'protest is the only language that the government understands,' he said. The US-Palestinian Community Network, which organized Monday's protest as well as dozens of other demonstrations over Israel's war in Gaza, said it was likewise wary of the ceasefire announcement. 'The main thing is that we don't trust anything that Trump or Netanyahu say,' according to a statement from the group. 'Trump lies, exaggerates, and shares unsourced material all the time, so until there's true corroboration from Iran's foreign ministry or any other more responsible figure in the world, it means nothing.' Organizers said they told the crowd about the ceasefire at the start of the demonstration, but their message throughout the event remained largely unchanged. Demonstrators chanted, 'No boots on the ground, no bombs in the air, U.S. out of everywhere' and held signs that read, 'Hands off Iran now,' for about an hour before they marched north to Trump Tower. Iranian flags were scattered among the crowd. Evan Callan, 36, said his message to elected officials was 'don't get involved in a war that's not our own.' The Uptown resident said he came directly from work to the protest. Despite word of the ceasefire, Callan said, 'We still need to continue applying pressure,' citing the war in Gaza. He called for more people to protest. Adam Fleischer, 22, of Oak Park, said he didn't want the U.S. to get involved in another 'forever war.' He cautioned one ceasefire didn't mean an end to fighting in the Middle East.
Politico
23-06-2025
- Business
- Politico
Iran rattles Gulf AI dreams
With help from Aaron Mak With American B-2 bombers pummeling Iran this weekend, and Iran attacking a U.S. base in Qatar Monday, the region is suddenly looking like an inhospitable place for U.S. tech companies planning enormous new data centers in the Gulf to power artificial intelligence. For Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the multi-billion-dollar deals announced in May during President Donald Trump's trip to the region are a vital step in their strategic plans to diversify their economies away from oil. For the American AI companies, these deals deepen connections with countries that are already major investors in U.S. data centers, and give the companies access to abundant, cheap energy. But the past weekend's strikes on Iran, and Tehran's reprisal, underscore a possible downside: Once they're built, giant projects critical to the U.S. AI buildout could easily become targets for retaliation. Those projects include plans by OpenAI, Nvidia, Cisco, Softbank and the Emirati G42 company to build a data center campus in the UAE with a capacity of 5 gigawatts — enough to power Miami. And the state-backed Saudi Arabian AI company Humain intends to buy at least 18,000 chips from Nvidia for building 'AI factories,' part of a landslide of tech deals including a $5 billion partnership with Amazon and a $10 billion collaboration with AMD. Matt Pottinger, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the first Trump administration, said, 'The idea that we can build our largest data centers in the Middle East within easy drone and missile striking range of Iran and its proxies suggests to me that some people working for President Trump haven't done their homework. The joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran's nuclear weapons program in recent days only reinforces this point.' White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Monday, 'The President is fully committed to these deals and looks forward to continued prosperous relations with our Gulf partners.' To offset the increased cost of protecting AI infrastructure in the Gulf, Pottinger suggests that Congress demand American companies building data centers in the region contribute $3 billion a year to pay for their defense. 'The U.S. has spent $6 billion in the last two years on airstrikes, naval deployments and use of advanced munitions to defend against Iranian proxies attacking U.S. interests in the Gulf region,' Pottinger said, pointing to Iran-backed Houthi rebels attacking sites including U.S. ships in the Red Sea. Three billion dollars would be small change for some of the largest tech companies; Nvidia had the world's second-highest market cap of $3.5 trillion on Monday. A spokesperson for the company declined to comment over the weekend. OpenAI, Cisco and Oracle did not respond to requests for comment. Until this past week, critics of the AI deals focused on less kinetic concerns. Congressional Democrats, including Senate Intelligence Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Senate Armed Services ranking member Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), pointed in a statement in mid-May to the risk of U.S. technology leaking to China or otherwise leaving American soil. They wrote, 'we could become as reliant on the Middle East for AI as we are on Taiwan for advanced semiconductors – and as we used to be on the Middle East for oil.' Warner and Shaheen's offices did not reply to questions on the deals. The House Select China Committee, chaired by Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), wrote on X in May that the data center plans 'present a vulnerability for the CCP to exploit.' Moolenaar did not reply to a request for comment over the weekend. The White House, on the other hand, has defended the deals, even after Israel's airstrikes on Iran began on June 13. White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks told Bloomberg last week that the U.S. risked losing the tech race if it didn't expand to the Gulf: 'When we think about our goals here with respect to AI, we want the American tech stack to win. … We want to be the partner of choice in the world.' At an energy forum held by the Atlantic Council in Washington last Tuesday, OpenAI's head of global affairs Chris Lehane told POLITICO the U.S. gains a strategic benefit by pulling the Gulf's economic powers into its orbit over China's. In a speech to the same forum, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, called for restraint. 'The United Arab Emirates stands for dialogue, for de-escalation and diplomacy,' he said, before turning to his country's priority, AI: 'To realize the full power of AI, we must give it the power it needs,' he added. Dania Thafer, a lecturer at Georgetown University and founder of the Washington-based Gulf International Forum, said Iranian attacks on U.S. installations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia could challenge their visions of becoming tech superpowers. 'This is why they have been working hard to de-escalate,' she said. So far, it's not clear how far Iran will go in response to U.S. and Israeli strikes. Iran reportedly warned Qatar ahead of Monday's strike, minimizing harm. But the disruption in the region is already immense. Air traffic is interrupted across the Gulf including over the UAE. Iran's parliament also reportedly endorsed closing the Strait of Hormuz that runs between the UAE and Iran and serves as a critical corridor for some 30 percent of the world's oil shipments. Karen Young, a senior research scholar and Gulf specialist at Columbia University, said she was surprised Iran targeted an American base in Qatar, calling the nation Iran's 'best friend' in the region. The two also share the world's largest gas field. Even though it appears to be a symbolic strike — the Defense Department said there were no reports of U.S. casualties — the attack on Qatar could be an indicator of more to come that could undermine some core assumptions about the Gulf business climate. Young said the global boom in AI sparked by the release of ChatGPT in late 2022 overlapped with a strategic shift among Gulf countries, led by UAE and Saudi Arabia. Those countries shifted away from regional rivalries and turned to diversifying their economies away from oil — and American industry was eager to partner in the process. Conflict with Iran 'is the ultimate threat' to that shift, Young said. 'You start seeing the way Iran likes to fight wars — through hijackings, hostage taking, civilian attacks,' she said — tactics that undermine the idea of the Gulf as a stable and prosperous hub to the world. 'It doesn't work without foreigners, without technology partnerships,' she said. State AI law moratorium survives A spending bill provision preventing states from enforcing their AI laws for 10 years unexpectedly survived procedural objections in the Senate late Saturday, meaning it now needs to find enough Republican support to stay in the reconciliation process. Many Republicans — and Democrats — widely expected the moratorium to be nixed by the Byrd rule, which prohibits provisions from being included in spending bills if they are extraneous to budgetary matters. However, Senate Republicans reached a compromise in early June meant to abide by the Byrd rule by conditioning state eligibility for federal broadband funding on compliance with the moratorium. As POLITICO's Morning Tech team reports, child safety advocates are up in arms over the moratorium surviving the weekend. The provision has also generally faced pushback from state attorneys general, as well as Democrats and a handful of Republicans. In fact, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) previously indicated he would work with Senate Democrats to introduce a floor amendment removing the provision. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) reiterated her opposition to the moratorium in an X post Monday, calling it a 'poison pill.' The moratorium would prospectively impact every corner of the country, as all 50 states have either passed or introduced AI legislation to address deepfakes, data collection, copyright, and other issues. Hollywood opposes bill on noisy streaming ads Two major entertainment trade groups are opposing a proposal that would force streaming platforms to turn down the volume on ads. The Motion Picture Association and Streaming Innovation Alliance — which together represent the likes of Disney, Amazon and Netflix — are urging California lawmakers to drop a bill that would prohibit streamed ads from being louder than the content they accompany. In a memo obtained by POLITICO's California Decoded team, the groups argue the requirement would particularly burden smaller platforms due to the technical costs associated with implementing audio controls. They also claim that streaming platforms are already looking into ways to voluntarily lower volumes. Democratic state Sen. Tom Umberg introduced SB 576 in February after the senator's legislative director complained that unexpectedly loud streaming ads were waking up his daughter. Congress passed a federal law known as the CALM Act in 2010 to set volume standards for television ads, but it doesn't cover streaming platforms. post of the day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS Stay in touch with the whole team: Aaron Mak (amak@ Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@ Steve Heuser (sheuser@ Nate Robson (nrobson@ and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@
