Also on today’s menu:
McLear Reveals State Lied About Developer
Major Breakthrough In Nuclear Fusion
FTX Founder Charged With Fraud
Joe “Eggy” Eggleston, an engineer on the Mount Washington Cog Railway and an avid hiker, died in a fall on Mount Willard over the weekend. Eggleston, 53, of Randolph, and his wife were hiking near the summit of the exposed peak in Crawford Notch on December 10 when he lost his footing while taking photographs and fell about 300 feet to the ledge below.
The New Hampshire Fish and Game Department said Eggleston and his wife were frequent hikers and were well-prepared for the trail and weather conditions on Saturday, including traction devices on their boots for the frozen and icy trail.
When his wife heard her husband yell and saw him falling over the edge of the steep cliff around 10:30 a.m., she called 911 for assistance. Conservation officers, along with members of Mountain Rescue Service, responded, rappelling down the cliff and eventually locating the dead hiker about 2:30 p.m. It took until 6:45 p.m. to carry him to the Mount Willard trailhead parking area.
McLear Reveals State Lied About Developer
Contradicting what Governor Chris Sununu and Commissioner of Administrative Services Charlie Arlinghaus said during last week’s meeting of the Executive Council, Lakes Region developer Rusty McLear said the committee reviewing Robynne Alexander’s $21.5 million offer to handle the $500 million redevelopment plan for the former Laconia State School property in Laconia had not evaluated her qualifications and background. They based their recommendation on what she proposed to do.
“We thought [Alexander’s plan] was put together in a way that, if they could do it, was the best plan we had seen, unquestionably,” McLear told the New Hampshire Bulletin. “When we had the meeting about picking the quote-unquote winner, it was based on what the plan was designed to do. It wasn’t based on the financial wherewithal.”
McLear added, “I’m pretty shocked actually that, first of all, that no real due diligence was done, and second, I find it hard to believe that [happened] with a state organization because they usually go overboard with due diligence and make you jump through all kinds of hoops.”
It was The Bulletin that revealed the multiple tax liens (since paid), lack of experience with comparably large projects, a lawsuit brought by an investor, and a Manchester project that is three years behind schedule that led to the Executive Council putting a pause on its approval of the contract. Sununu and Arlinghaus angrily reacted to the tabling of the project, blaming Laconia officials who sent a letter of concern and calling Laconia Mayor Andrew Hosmer “incompetent”.
Major Breakthrough In Nuclear Fusion
Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy will be announcing a breakthrough in nuclear fusion later today: Researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a $3.5 billion laser complex at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, succeeded in using laser beams to zap a tiny pellet of hydrogen fuel which released more energy than what the lasers put in. It is considered a major achievement that can lead to clean, safe electricity that does not emit greenhouse gas.
Today’s nuclear power plants use fission, which also creates energy by splitting atoms, but which produces radioactive waste. Fusion is the same process used by stars and offers the promise of around-the-clock clean power with less risk and hazardous waste than fission.
Yet independent scientists say practical application of the technology is decades away. Tony Roulstone, a nuclear engineer at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, says that, unless there is an even larger breakthrough, fusion is unlikely to play a major role in power production before the 2060s or 2070s. Even then, its potential market share would be challenged by solar and wind power, both of which are cheaper and whose main drawback — intermittent generation — is being addressed by the battery storage industry.
FTX Founder Charged With Fraud
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Sam Bankman-Fried with “orchestrating a scheme to defraud investors” in the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bahamian authorities arrested Bankman-Fried on December 12 at about 6 p.m. after receiving a copy of a sealed indictment from the United States. He was scheduled to appear in a magistrates’ court in the country’s capital, Nassau, today.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler said that Bankman-Fried built a “house of cards on a foundation of deception” by co-mingling FTX customers’ funds at Alameda Research LLC, his privately held crypto hedge fund, to make “undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations”.
He had been scheduled to testify before Congress today, but his arrest means that congressional investigators will have to rely on the testimony of John J. Ray III, the new chief executive officer of FTX, to explain how the company ended up in bankruptcy.
A Personal Loss
Angelo Badalamenti, the composer of the evocative theme to David Lynch’s 1990s television drama “Twin Peaks,” and the music for five Lynch films, has died at age 85. Although I never met him, I take his death as a personal loss because of his ability to create a haunting, hypnotic, yet beautiful piece of music I never tire of hearing.
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