Tech college student shot dead

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PUBLISHED : 20 Nov 2023 at 11:43

Tech college student shot dead
Police and rescue workers at the student-murder scene on Soi Ranong 2 Road in Dusit district on Monday morning. (Photo: Ruamkatanyu Foundation)

A teenage vocational college student wearing his school uniform was shot dead in Dusit district on Monday morning. Witnesses said his four attackers fled on motorcycles.

The murder occurred on Soi Ranong 2 Road in front of Kornkaew Montessori School. The victim was 16 years old and a second-year student at Dusit Technical College, which is on the same road.

The slain student was shot in his chest and died on the spot. Police found a pen gun at the scene.

The victim’s friends said he was attacked by four men on two motorcycles without licence plates. They fled along Rama V Road.

The street killing came a week after a teacher was killed by a stray bullet when a vocational student was shot in Klong Toey district.

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Default daily limit of S,000 for CPF withdrawals among new measures to protect against scams

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UPDATING OF ACCOUNT DETAILS

Besides imposing a daily limit for online CPF withdrawals, Singpass face verification and the 12-hour cooling period will also apply when members update their contact details with CPF Board from Nov 30.

By the end of December, changes to bank account details will also require Singpass face verification.

New bank accounts will only be activated after the bank confirms that the account belongs to the CPF member. This process will take up to two working days.

Notifications via SMS or email will also be sent to CPF members whenever they make a withdrawal, update the daily withdrawal limit, or change their contact or bank account details.

CPF Board said that members must update their contact details online before they can adjust the daily withdrawal limit or update their bank account details.

They will be notified once the changes have taken effect, after the 12-hour cooling period or after their bank account has been verified by the bank.

This cooling period gives members enough time to take action to prevent any unauthorised adjustments or updates from taking effect.

“While these precautionary measures may cause some inconvenience for CPF members, we seek their understanding that it is better to be safe than sorry, especially in today’s environment,” said CPF Board.

“CPF Board will continually review our measures to achieve a right balance between convenience and security.”

If CPF members suspect they have fallen prey to a CPF scam, they should contact CPF Board, get their bank to freeze their accounts, reset their Singpass password, and set the daily withdrawal limit to S$0. 

They should also make a police report.

At least S$218,000 in CPF savings were lost to Android malware scams in the first half of this year, the police said in September.

The growing spate of scams targeting Android users has prompted several public advisories by the authorities. In August, the police and Cyber Security Agency of Singapore issued a joint advisory highlighting some tactics used by scammers.

Fraudsters deceive people into installing malicious apps, which they use to access victims’ devices and steal sensitive information.

Some victims responded to advertisements for services – such as home cleaning and pet grooming – on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

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Wife-sharing rapes: Last man convicted of raping accomplice’s unconscious, drugged wife

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SINGAPORE: The last man in a series of wife-sharing cases has been convicted of raping a drugged woman in a conspiracy with her husband.

The 45-year-old man, referred to only as O as the victim cannot be identified under gag orders, was the last in a group of seven men to be dealt with in the larger case involving other wives. 

The men involved had met each other online, largely on Sammyboy Forum, to discuss wife-sharing fantasies before turning them into reality.

O is the only one to claim trial, and is one of five men who raped the same victim – the wife of a man referred to as J.

According to J, O was the first man involved with his wife. J had intended for O to test the loyalty of J’s wife, but O wound up having an affair with the woman instead.

The pair had consensual sex without J’s knowledge, but O later went over to J’s house at J’s invitation to rape J’s wife, whom J had drugged to an unconscious state.

The long-running case stems from an incident in 2011 that was exposed only in 2020 when the victim discovered explicit photos of herself on her husband’s phone.

On Monday (Nov 20), Justice Mavis Chionh convicted O, finding that his account was “riddled with inconsistencies” and “wholly lacking in credibility”.

Not only were O’s accounts in court incongruent with his own defence’s case, they also did not make sense, said Justice Chionh.

She found that the prosecution had proven its case beyond reasonable doubt.

The defence, Ms Luo Ling Ling and Mr Chan Eng Hui, had argued that J had reason to fabricate accusations against O.

This was because J was angry at O for betraying his trust by having an affair with J’s wife, or because J was jealous as his wife preferred O sexually.

However, Justice Chionh said this could not be reconciled with the nature of interactions between the two men in the years following the rape.

She said the defence had “no explanation” as to why, in the years after, the pair continued to interact on friendly terms, talking about their sexual fantasies and other exploits.

J and O also reminisced about the incident involving J’s wife in their text messages.

The defence had argued that these messages related to the consensual encounter, but the judge rejected this, saying it would not have involved O going over to J’s apartment.

The rape took place in March 2011, on the date of J’s third wedding anniversary with his wife, with whom he later had a total of four children.

The judge said the victim could give a vivid and textured account of what happened in the bedroom, and J described the anger, thrill and guilt he felt seeing O with his wife.

He also remembered cleaning his unconscious wife after, in an account consistent to the court documents he had pleaded guilty to separately.

The victim testified that she later blocked O, because he suggested that they have a threesome with J.

O denied that this was why the victim blocked him, but did not give any plausible alternative reason for why she had.

Justice Chionh said this went towards establishing O’s motive for the offence – which was to be able to turn his wife-sharing fantasy into reality.

It points towards O having a specific sexual interest in not just having sex with J’s wife, but in doing so in the presence of J, said the judge.

O, who wore dark spectacles, a mask and a suit, stood stiffly in the dock as the judge read out her decision.

He faces other charges, including circulating obscene images and possessing obscene videos, which are pending.

Sentencing arguments will be heard at a later date.

J was sentenced to 29 years’ jail and the maximum 24 strokes of the cane in May for his role.

The other men in the larger network received jail terms ranging from three to 22 years, depending on their involvement. Some of them also received caning.

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Governments use IMF bailouts to hurt political foes: study

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Sri Lanka received a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in March amid soaring inflation, debt and a sovereign default.

In exchange for US$3 billion, the government committed to spending cuts and tax and financial sector reforms. Leading to protests in the streets of Colombo, these measures have prevented Sri Lankan wages from recovering after they fell by almost half in real terms during the preceding financial crisis.

Sri Lankans’ experience of these measures has been far from uniform. Emerging evidence indicates that the government — led by Ranil Wickremesinghe, part of the Buddhist Sinhalese majority — has concentrated the burdens primarily on ethnic minorities, which include many of the poorest people in Sri Lanka and which typically support the opposition.

The government has sought to protect the primarily Buddhist Sinhalese elite by avoiding imposing wealth taxes and only making small increases in corporation tax. It has placed the cost burden of austerity on low-income people by doubling the value-added tax rate to 15%.

It has also doubled the tax that people pay on pension fund returns. Again, this hits poor ethnic minorities hardest because they frequently earn too little to pay income tax.

Unfortunately, this experience is part of a worldwide pattern. Our new book, IMF Lending: Partisanship, Punishment and Protest, shows how governments lump the burden of adjustment on opposition supporters while shielding their own backers – in other words, using IMF programs for political gain.

IMF programs and past research

Scholars have long noted that IMF restructuring programs create winners and losers, but always in relation to different sectors of the economy. For example, the fact that programs attempt to strengthen exports has been shown to favor farmers and business owners over urban middle-class state employees like civil servants.

The problem with purely comparing sectors is highlighted when you look at citizens’ experiences. One segment of the survey data we used in our research, covering nine countries in Africa, showed that three out of ten civil servants actually thought IMF reforms made their lives better, while a similar proportion observed no difference.

Admittedly this data is from 1999-2001, since none of the more recent surveys that we used asked this question, but it raises an important point: If IMF reforms are entirely bad for the civil service, why are so many civil servants upbeat about the effects? Politics is likely to be the missing piece of the puzzle.

Citizens’ views of IMF programs in their countries

Chart showing how citizens viewed IMF programmes in their countries
Based on 659 civil servants from Afrobarometer (1999-2001), covering Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Afrobarometer

An extensive academic literature already shows that governments often use their discretion to play politics over development loans. For example, a recent study found that projects funded with Chinese money are more likely to be undertaken in the birth region of a political leader.

IMF programs are commonly assumed to narrow borrowing governments’ policy options, but that is an oversimplification. Borrowers certainly have less overall freedom over economic policy, but they maintain broad discretion in how they implement loan conditions. Our study is the first to quantify how they use this discretion and examine the consequences for protests within the countries in question.

Our study

We collected individual survey data from over 100 countries from four widely used sources: Afrobarometer, Asian Barometer, Latinobarómetro and the World Values Surveys. The study covers a 40-year timespan up to the late 2010s, with periods varying from region to region.

We first examined whether opposition supporters had different experiences of reforms than government supporters. Sure enough, these were indeed more negative.

We worried this might be because opposition people are more critical of their governments in general. So we compared countries that had just experienced restructuring programs with others that had not – and found that sentiment among opposition supporters was much more negative in borrower countries.

The following graph explains, showing that opposition supporters in countries on IMF programs suffer relatively more deprivation than government supporters compared with countries not in programs.

Partisan deprivation in IMF v non-IMF countries

Graph showing how opposition supporters are affected by IMF programmes
Based on 101,055 individuals from 46 countries surveyed in 2011-18. World Values Survey

This “partisan gap” was also wider in countries that went through more burdensome recent IMF adjustments, which points to the same conclusion.

Partisan deprivation by severity of IMF restructuring

Graph showing deprivation of opposition supporters in less and more severe IMF programmes
Based on 101,055 individuals from 46 countries surveyed in 2011-18. World Values Survey

The effect on protest

We expected that this highly unequal treatment would increase the chances of protest – especially protest stoked by opposition politicians. This, too, was robustly supported across the surveys.

In Africa, people who reported being worse off due to the structural adjustment programs were more likely to protest. Opposition supporters as a whole were also more likely to protest, especially if their country had just experienced a more severe IMF program.

Again, this data was from 1999-2001. Nonetheless, the other surveys also showed that protest was more likely among opposition supporters, especially during times of high pressure for adjustment.

What can be done?

Scholars normally blame the increase in inequality caused by IMF programs on the loan conditions, but the effects are clearly amplified by governments’ policy choices. How could this situation be improved?

The IMF could require borrower countries to impose loan conditions in a non-partisan way, but would probably argue that its mandate prohibits considering domestic politics. Policing this would also be very difficult and time-consuming.

An alternative would be for the IMF to tame its demands on borrower countries. This would reduce the burdens that could be inflicted on opposition supporters. Economists might warn that this could encourage countries to be more financially irresponsible.

Equally, however, it ought to make it more likely that adjustment programs will be completed, thereby making the borrowing countries more economically resilient in the future. It would also avoid adverse reactions from financial markets against a country that broke conditions.

Another potential avenue is to let opposition parties and civil society organizations participate in bailout negotiations. This would ensure everyone “owns” the bailout, and might even make it harder for incumbent governments to exploit policy conditions for political gain.

M. Rodwan Abouharb is an associate professor in international relations at University College London; Bernhard Reinsberg is a reader in politics, at the University of Glasgow.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Evolving Japan-Philippines security ties

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Japan’s natural security ally in Southeast Asia is the Philippines. That country, which is an archipelagic nation like Japan, has seen a continuous increase in security pressure from Beijing.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited the Philippines on November 3 and met with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The two leaders agreed on expanding their bilateral defense cooperation to address security challenges due to China’s growing military activities in the South and East China Seas.

The two reached an agreement on starting negotiations for a defense pact, a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) that would help facilitate the presence of visiting forces and further conduct military training activities collectively. 

Kishida asserted that a defense agreement with the Philippines would allow the deployment of Japanese troops to the country, which would strengthen ties between the two nations and work on countering China’s aggressive behavior. There have been increased tensions in the East and South China Seas and both Tokyo and Manila are locked in territorial disputes with China. 

In June, Japan had sent a coast-guard patrol ship, the Akitsushima, to the Philippines and participated in a trilateral exercise with the US and the Philippines. Long-standing treaty allies of the United States are Japan and the Philippines. Because of this, their armed forces have been exposed to and probably impacted by American military tactics for a long time, which facilitates cooperation among them.

Moreover, Japanese leaders believe that stronger security ties with the Philippines could bolster deterrence in the Western Pacific. Japan has been steadily expanding its security engagement with the Philippines as Tokyo is also trying to move away from its pacifist stance, which was explicitly evident in its revised National Security Strategy document that came out in December 2022. 

Both Japan and the Philippines explored the idea of such an agreement in 2015. However, this has now taken an urgency due to China’s assertive behavior.

As part of its Official Security Assistance (OSA) program, Japan intends to donate coastal radar systems to the Philippine Navy, valued at about $4 million, to enhance its capabilities. With the announcement in April that the Philippines will be among the primary beneficiaries of the aid program, Japan has given Manila access to air surveillance radars, satellite communications equipment, and coast-guard vessels.

Moreover, with the launch of the OSA, Japan has broken with its long-standing policy of not using development aid for anything other than disaster relief in the military.

The Terms of Reference (TOR) pertaining to the Japan Self-Defense Forces’ (JSDF’s) humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) operations in the Philippines were already signed by the two leaders in February. The two nations are currently preparing to expand their cooperation into the military sphere.

Relations between the two nations date back at least six decades. Japan is the largest supporter of infrastructure development in the Philippines, contributing funds to the construction of bridges, railroads, and the Manila subway, among other projects.

Concerns have been expressed regarding China’s objectives in the region and readiness to abide by international law and standards due to its military buildup and increasingly assertive maritime maneuvers. Beijing claims that because it has “indisputable sovereignty” over some South China Sea islands, its activities are legal.

Perhaps nowhere are these worries more felt than in the Philippines, where Chinese warships have been obstructing fishermen’s passage and Manila is unable properly to explore oil and gas deposits in a region that an international tribunal has determined to be part of its exclusive economic zone.

In the contested waters, tensions between China and the Philippines have recently increased. Chinese ships crashed into a Philippine Coast Guard ship and a supply boat in the South China Sea in October. Japan and the US both condemned the incidents and reaffirmed their commitment to support the Philippines in the event of an armed attack.

Japan denounced the incident and sided with the Philippines in preserving the maritime order, while Manila accused Beijing of purposefully colliding with its boats. It is evident that Manila’s and Tokyo’s decision to strengthen security ties was significantly influenced by their growing concerns about an increasingly assertive China.

Way forward

The two nations are in the process of negotiating a Reciprocal Access Agreement, which may enable cooperative military exercises and other joint operations by their armed forces. The Philippines has similar agreements with both the United States and Australia, and Japan has separate agreements of a similar nature with the United Kingdom and Australia.

The Philippines is seen as essential to preserving regional security and stability because of its location relatively close to Taiwan and along important maritime trade routes. This is because there are worries in some circles that a crisis similar to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could arise in the region.

An RAA between Japan and the Philippines would facilitate joint exercises and give the JSDF more access to Philippine bases, possibly even enabling rotational deployments. Such an agreement would also greatly facilitate the JSDF’s deployment to the Philippines during emergencies such as natural disasters.

Furthermore, the agreement would enhance trilateral collaboration with US military forces. The United States was able significantly to strengthen its defense posture in the disputed South China Sea and close to Taiwan this year thanks to an agreement reached by Washington and Manila that allowed access to four more military installations in the Philippines. 

The Marcos administration canceled several development projects under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and suspended a military exchange program with China because of the recent severe deterioration of Sino-Philippine relations.

Kishida’s visit to Manila also included a number of agreements in the tourism and infrastructure sectors, coinciding with the two nations’ strategic alignment on matters of defense and security. They not only share the same interests in the area of maritime security, but they also agree that resistance to Chinese coercion is necessary.

Japan aims to uphold the US-dominated “rules-based international order” and secure the “free and open Indo-Pacific” vision amid growing concerns over China.

It is unlikely that the Philippines is the only nation that would welcome increased security cooperation with Japan given China’s persistently assertive actions. Most notably, Vietnam has accepted Japan’s offers of patrol boats and participated in maritime drills with it. Meanwhile, it has been suggested that Japan may provide military support to Fiji and Malaysia in the future.

Though it has undoubtedly gotten off to a slow start, Japanese security engagement could soon pick up momentum.

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Supermagnets changing the rules of nuclear fusion

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This is the seventh installment in Asia Times Science Editor Jonathan Tennenbaum’s series “Fusion Diary.” Read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.

During my August visit to nuclear fusion facilities in the UK, I spent an afternoon at Tokamak Energy Ltd, one of the world’s leading private fusion companies. Tokamak Energy’s basic strategy is to apply the technology of high-temperature superconductors to build compact spherical tokamak reactors with super-intense magnetic fields, capable of achieving fusion conditions with high efficiency and at low cost.

Tokamak Energy is the only private fusion company that has more than 10 years’ experience of designing, building and operating its own tokamak devices. The company is pursuing an ambitious timeline, aiming to build a prototype electricity-producing fusion plant that would go onto the grid in the 2030s. 

Tokamak Energy has so far attracted over US$200 million in private investments, and possesses a substantial amount of intellectual property, among other things through its ground-breaking innovations in the area of high-temperature superconducting magnets. 

In contrast to many private fusion companies, Tokamak Energy is fully integrated into international fusion research, regularly publishing its results in peer-referred papers and working in partnership with institutions such as the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of Illinois, CERN in Geneva and others. Tokamak Energy’s UA subsidiary was selected for an award as part of the US Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program.

Spherical tokamaks built and operated by Tokamak Energy  Left: ST25  Right: ST40    Photos: Tokamak Energy

Last year the company’s ST40 tokamak achieved a record temperature of over 100 million degrees Celsius – the highest temperature reached in a privately owned spherical tokamak reactor so far and a threshold for commercial fusion. ST40 operates with magnetic fields that are 3-5 times more intense than those of other spherical tokamak devices, such as the MAST-U or the USA’s “National Spherical Torus Experiment” (NSTX).

In addition to the temperature record, experiments on ST40 since 2018 have provided a wealth of data underlining the feasibility of achieving practical fusion power with this type of reactor. They support the UK government’s decision to place its chief bets on the spherical tokamak – rather than the conventional doughnut-shaped design adopted by other nations – in the race to fusion.

Left: Hot plasma in the vacuum chamber of Tokamak Energy’s ST40 reactor  Right: Tokamak Energy Chief Technical Advisor Paul Thomas, left, with the author in the ST40 control room.  Photos: Tokamak Energy

ST40 also validated a novel method of heating the plasma, called “merging compression.” Using a special set of magnetic coils, two rings of plasma are merged together, causing an event known as “magnetic reconnection” in which magnetic energy, stored in the plasma rings, is converted into heat.

YouTube video

[embedded content]

Source: YouTube

Merging compression was used in last year’s experiments demonstrating record 100 million-degree temperatures.

While ST40 uses conventional copper coils, Tokamak Energy has already successfully employed high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coils in a smaller experimental device, the ST25. The next step after ST40 is larger device, christened STX, which will use 100% HTS coils and operate at much higher magnetic fields.

This device, scheduled for build completion in the late 2020s, is intended to demonstrate multiple advanced technologies required for fusion energy and inform the design of a fusion pilot plant. The plan is for the fusion pilot plant to demonstrate the capability of delivering electricity into the grid in the 2030s, paving the way for globally deployable 500-megawatt commercial plants.

A leader in high-temperature superconducting magnet technology

A particular focus of Tokamak Energy’s activity is the development of “super-magnets” employing high-temperature superconductors (HTS). The company is a world leader in this area. HTS coils capable of producing ultra-intense magnetic fields are key to the company’s strategy for achieving fusion, while having countless applications in other areas.

In my next article, I shall describe some of Tokamak Energy’s ground-breaking innovations in the area of HTS magnets.

Earlier this year Tokamak Energy entered into an agreement with the giant US firm General Atomics to collaborate on HTS technology for fusion energy and other industrial applications. GA is a leading high-technology company active in the fields of fission and fusion energy, defense and aerospace. The two companies announced that their collaboration “will leverage GA’s world-leading capabilities for manufacturing large-scale magnet systems and Tokamak Energy’s pioneering expertise in HTS magnet technologies.”

How Tokamak Energy began

David Kingham. Photo: Tokamak Energy

During my visit, I had the opportunity to talk with Tokamak Energy cofounder David Kingham about the company’s history and its future perspectives.

Jonathan Tennenbaum: Could you tell me a bit about the background of your company, and how you came to be building spherical tokamaks?

David Kingham: Back in the late 1970s, early ’80s, a guy called Martin Peng was working on the theory of spherical tokamaks. That work was picked up by Alan Sykes at Culham in the 1980s and they could see theoretically the plasma physics was going to get better. But somebody had to build one of these without knowing what was going to come out.

Alan Sykes basically badgered the director of Culham to build one, and he wouldn’t shut up about it. He said, “Let me build one.”

“There’s no budget.”

Alan Sykes. Photo: Tokamak Energy

“I don’t need a budget. just let me build it.”

So eventually the director gave way and said, “Okay. We’re not going to announce it in any budgets. You can borrow some stuff from some old tokamak and see what you can do.” So he cobbled this device together. He found a big enough vacuum vessel and the device is now known as START.

What it did was show very good plasma confinement and demonstrate high beta. People got pretty excited in the late 90s about its performance. My cofounder Mikhail Gryaznevich had joined START as one of the key scientists. He was behind this demonstration of high beta and high performance in START.

Then the UK government said, Oh, that’s interesting. That could be our next device. The spherical tokamak seemed to be a better way to go and UKAEA described it as probably the best option for the long term for fusion power. That was known and well-accepted in 2000.

UKAEA was running JET at the time, and JET had achieved 16 MW of fusion power.  At the same time, the people at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory that ran TFTR (the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor) successfully and got to 10 MW of fusion power also realized the spherical tokamak would be the way forward for them. So two devices were then built. MAST in the UK, at Culham, and NSTX in Princeton, both during the early 2000s. Both produced really exciting results, again validating the physics of the spherical tokamak.

Both were upgraded rather slowly from about 2012 onwards. Then we came on the scene and decided we would build ST40. We’d take the knowledge from NSTX and MAST. What we wanted to do was to go smaller and double or more the magnetic field. That’s our basic thesis. Go for a higher magnetic field. Then you can have a more compact device and you can sort out all the other engineering challenges by collaboration or just trial and error. 

In 2009 we formed the company, myself and Mikhail Gryaznevich, who’s now the chief scientist. The rationale was: The physics of the spherical tokamak is so good, it’s worth solving the very difficult engineering challenges.

Early on, we were looking at high-temperature superconductors, but it wasn’t really until 2011 that we did our first serious experiments with high-temperature superconductors. We did that by borrowing a tokamak in Prague and asking them nicely if we could replace their poloidal field coils with high-temperature superconducting magnets. So we did that and it worked. And we found the material was relatively easy to use and quite robust.

That set us on a pathway – spherical tokamak plus high-temperature superconducting magnets. The technologies match because you have a very narrow center column in the device. So you want a high-temperature superconductor, you want that very high current density. That gave us a solid foundation for the business from which we could build more intellectual property, and attract private investment.

Moving on, we attracted more and more private investment. Starting at a million pounds or less, the investment got up towards 10 million. In total, we’ve raised about 150 million pounds so far.

We have had support from the UK and US governments. The US Department of Energy supported research on ST40 and the UK government gave us significant grants and R&D subsidies. Princeton really got behind ST40. They’ve been really helpful on the physics, the data interpretation, experimental campaign advice and so forth.

We started to scale up. We always wanted to build prototypes and demonstrate performance rather than do too much theoretically or in subsystems. So we built one tokamak out of copper at small scale, and one using high-temperature superconducting magnets, but at a very low field, and that worked.

Then we decided to scale up quickly: to develop the ST40 with copper magnets, and in parallel, high-temperature superconducting magnets. So that’s where we are at the moment, planning our next device.

David Kingham (at right) with Member of Parliament David Johnston, in the ST40 control room. Photo: Tokamak Energy

JT: So what is your strategy moving forward?

DK: Fusion can’t be delivered by private companies or governments alone. The science horsepower of national laboratories with the speed and agility of a private company working together is very powerful. The US Department of Energy has set the target of a fusion pilot plant on grid within 10 years, and we have recently been awarded a grant as part of that process.

We like the time scale and ambition of that program.

JT: What would your role be in STEP?

DK: It’s also a great endorsement of our approach and technology that the UK’s fusion prototype plant [STEP] will be a spherical tokamak with HTS magnets. We are extremely excited about the UK’s investment in STEP and believe we can bring real value to the program with our extensive knowledge of spherical tokamak design and operation, along with our HTS magnet technology.

JT: In the meantime, I understand that you are planning to build another spherical tokamak.

DK: We would like to build some form of intermediate device that is before a pilot plant, say on a three- or four-year timeline from here, to de-risk technology. But that is essentially an option in our business plan rather than an essential part of it.

The overall business plan now is really to build up intellectual property and to become an IP provider to various consortia who will develop fusion energy. We’re pushing for this relatively capital-light, IP-intensive business model.

Warren East has recently joined our board. He was previously chief executive of Rolls-Royce. Before that, he was chief executive of ARM, which is just about to float at a $70 billion valuation. It’s a fabless semiconductor company based out of Cambridge, and it designs chips for everybody. It has protected its intellectual property around the high-performance chips.

So this is the business model that we’re aiming for: to have control of the greatest ownership of the highest-value components of future fusion reactor control systems, magnets, some novel materials, and some design capabilities.

Next: The magnet wizards

Jonathan Tennenbaum, PhD (mathematics), is a former editor of FUSION magazine and has written on a wide variety of topics in science and technology, including several books on nuclear energy.

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Optus: Telecom boss Kelly Bayer Rosmarin quits after Australian outage

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Kelly Bayer RosmarinOptus

The chief executive of Australian telecom giant Optus has resigned after a nationwide outage this month.

Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has been under pressure to quit after overseeing a tumultuous three years for the firm.

Along with the network failure which left almost half of Australia disconnected, she was at the helm during a major data breach last year.

In a statement, she said it had been “an honour to serve” but it was now appropriate for her to step down.

“Having now had time for some personal reflection, I have come to the decision that my resignation is in the best interest of Optus moving forward.”

Ms Bayer Rosmarin will be replaced by chief financial officer Michael Venter while the firm searches for a replacement.

The chief executive of Optus’s Singaporean parent company thanked her for her hard work during a “challenging period” – pointing out she had improved financial performance despite being appointed at the beginning of the pandemic.

But Yuen Kuan Moon said the Singtel Group understood her decision to resign.

“We recognise the need for Optus to regain customer trust and confidence… Optus’ priority is about setting on a path of renewal for the benefit of the community and customers,” Mr Moon said.

The outage on 8 November left 10 million Australians and thousands of businesses without mobile or internet coverage for over 12 hours.

The failure caused transport delays, cut hospital phone lines, shut down payment systems, and blocked about 200 people from calling emergency services.

Ms Bayer Rosmarin has faced criticism over her response to the incident, including at a Senate hearing on Friday.

There she revealed thousands of Australians were pursuing the telecom for compensation.

The company is also fighting a class action lawsuit from more than 100,000 current and former customers over the data breach in September 2022.

Affecting 10 million people, it was at the time believed to be the worst data breach in Australian history.

Optus had apologised and blamed a sophisticated cyber-attack, but critics disputed that, including the Minister for Cyber Security who said the firm had “effectively left the window open” for data to be stolen.

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