Walter Mondale, who transformed the role of the vice president during Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency, yet suffered a crushing political defeat as the Democratic nominee against incumbent Ronald Reagan in 1984, has died. He was 93.
Mondale, often called by his nickname “Fritz,” died Monday in Minneapolis, his family said in a statement. No cause of death was given.
“Today I mourn the passing of my dear friend Walter Mondale, who I consider the best vice president in our country’s history,” Carter said in a statement. “During our administration, Fritz used his political skill and personal integrity to transform the vice presidency into a dynamic, policy-driving force that had never been seen before and still exists today.”
Day 1
Focusing on Norway and California’s partnership in the global effort to combat climate change, their strong coastal cultures, and their shared interest in deploying new technology to promote a sustainable future, the program for Day 1 will addresses how important an exchange of ideas is to achieving common climate goals.
HRH Crown Prince Haakon will be joined by Governor Newsom, Ambassador Krutnes and Minister of Foreign Affairs Søreide for a high-level conversation, before visiting UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and a performance from Norwegian Singer Angelina Jordan.
Day 2
The Norwegian business sector follows political, economic, and technological developments in California with keen interest. The program for Day 2 will focus on some of these developments, including three panels with Norwegian companies that have developed relevant, specialist expertise and solutions. The panels will center around Zero Emission Mobility on Land and Sea, Offshore Wind, and Funding Sustainable Excellence.
HRH Crown Prince Haakon will open the program together with Lt. Governor Kounalakis, Minister of Trade and Industry Nybø and Minister of Petroleum and Energy Bru.
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Corporate training startup Attensi — which originally emerged out of Oslo, Norway — has raised $26 million from New York-based Lugard Road Capital, DX Ventures (a VC fund backed by Delivery Hero) and existing shareholder Viking Venture. The new funding will be used to expand in North America and Europe.
Attensi uses a gamified approach to corporate training, putting employees into 3D simulations of their workplace and work processes. Its competitors include companies like GoSkills, Mindflash, SAP Litmos and Skilljar.
With the pandemic shifting all office work to remote, digital training platforms like this stand to benefit. This is also yet another recent example of how U.S. VCs are “going hunting” for startups in Europe, putting pressure on local VCs.
Chevron is the first U.S. oil major to invest in offshore wind power after signing a deal with Norway’s Moreld to help develop the turbine technology of tech firm Ocergy, while European oil giants Shell, Equinor and Total have already waded deeply into offshore wind projects.
“Offshore wind power is undergoing a period of rapid innovation in an effort to provide lower carbon energy at a substantial scale,” Barbara Burger, president of technology ventures at Chevron, said in a statement. “Ocergy has developed technology that could be part of the solution to enable more affordable, reliable, and ever-cleaner energy in a marine environment.”
Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL) today announced it signed an eight-year contract with the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) to deploy and operate Diskos, the Norwegian national repository of seismic, well, and production data for the oil and gas industry.
Halliburton Landmark will deliver Diskos 2.0 using DecisionSpace® 365 cloud services in iEnergy® – the industry’s first E&P hybrid cloud. The cloud native services are Open Subsurface Data Universe™ compliant and provide high quality data, security and governance so users can easily access, visualize, and interpret data from the Norwegian Continental Shelf.
The open architecture and scalability of the service enables workflows across the repository and operator systems on premise, or in the cloud, to support efficient, effective and agile operations. Diskos 2.0 will use the DecisionSpace 365 cloud applications to apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to unlock the full value of subsurface data by revealing additional basin, reservoir, drilling, and production insights to improve reservoir recovery and exploration outcomes.
Norway’s $1.3 trillion wealth fund, the world’s largest, should reduce the size of its global company reference index by between 25% and 30% to better follow up companies, primarily by removing small-cap stocks, the finance ministry proposed on Friday.
The move reflects the growing awareness among international investors about risk in the environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) field, in which the Norwegian wealth fund has often set the pace.
The fund’s reference index would be cut to around 6,600 companies from 8,800 now, the ministry said in its annual recommendation to parliament.
The fund also should not add, for now, more companies from emerging markets, including from Saudi Arabia, in the index governing its investment, it said.
Norway’s Norse Atlantic NORSE-ME.OL, a recently formed long-haul budget airline that plans to launch operations this year, made its Oslo stock market debut on Monday, trading up 5% in early trade.
Norse traded at 21 Norwegian crowns ($2.46) per share at 0731 GMT, up from a price of 20 crowns in a private placement late last month.
“The global economy has been hit hard by the pandemic but a new era is coming. People will once again travel for business and pleasure,” Norse founder and Chief Executive Bjoern Tore Larsen said in a statement.
Norway’s Equinor ASA has decided to stay in the American Petroleum Institute after the major U.S. oil lobby group changed its stance on climate policy. However, Equinor has quit the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association as the firm has wound down operations in Australia after giving up an exploration drilling plan in the Great Australian Bight.
In a report dated March 2021, Equinor said it had completed an annual review of industry groups’ climate policy alignment with the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and the company’s goal to be net zero by 2050.
Small airports with short runways, an established short-haul network and experience with electrification of transport makes Scandinavia and the Nordic countries an obvious place for electric aircraft to thrive.
Despite the year-long crisis for the aviation industry caused by the coronavirus pandemic, airlines in the Nordic region have reaffirmed long-term commitments to exploring electric aviation.
Rolls-Royce and Widerøe have collaborated on a zero-emissions aviation research program since 2019. The Norwegian airline hopes to put 9-seater all-electric aircraft into commercial use as early as 2026.