Response to My Letter to Jeff Bezos

Response to My Letter to Jeff Bezos



BEN MEISELAS AND MEIDASTOUCH NETWORK



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By Ben Meiselas

Yesterday, I wrote a letter to Jeff Bezos and the leadership of The Washington Post after they announced they were firing more than one-third of their newsroom.

Some of the best journalists in America. Investigative reporters. Writers who dedicated their lives to holding power accountable. Reporters who worked in war zones, some of whom learned they were fired not from an editor or a phone call, but from a form email sent by Human Resources. In some cases, while they were still stranded overseas.

That is corporate cruelty and journalistic malpractice along with obedience and complicity in fascism.

I sent my letter to Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post leadership to make sure they understood the magnitude of their betrayal and to plant a clear flag for independent journalism at a moment when too many legacy institutions are openly capitulating to fascism.

Let’s stop dancing around the truth.

Donald Trump is a fascist. His movement is authoritarian. And his goal is to turn American media into state-aligned regime media, something closer to Putin’s Russia than a democracy. What we are watching now is compliance with a fascist regime.

We’ve seen this surrender at The Washington Post. We’ve seen it at CBS. We’ve seen it across corporate media. These institutions believe silence and complicity will protect them. That obedience will spare them. That if they stop challenging power, power will protect and favor them.

That belief is pathetic and dangerous.

And it’s failing.

Because independent media is not retreating. It’s growing. And the MeidasTouch Network is leading that growth.

We are powered by one of the strongest pro-democracy communities anywhere.

We have on-the-ground reporters in Minneapolis, in Washington, D.C., and across the country. We have sent reporters to Greenland. We have sent reporters to Ukraine. We operate internationally. We run a sprawling network of shows, podcasts, and platforms covering breaking news, legal analysis, and accountability journalism, including a dedicated channel in Canada, with more countries coming next.

While legacy media cuts and collapses, we expand. We hire more reporters. We add more writers and editors and staff. We reach roughly a billion views a month across our digital platforms, and we’re still growing.

So yes, the death of The Washington Post as a serious independent institution is devastating for democracy. But their collapse is not the end of journalism. It’s proof that the old model is finished.

Since publishing my letter, I’ve received thousands of messages from readers, journalists, veterans, teachers, parents, and people more energized than ever to fight back against this fascist project and the media ecosystem enabling it.

Independent journalism is under attack precisely because it works. And because the MeidasTouch Network has become the largest pro-democracy media outlet in the country, we are a target as well.

But understand this clearly.

We are not intimidated.

We are not slowing down.

And we are not backing down.

Jeff Bezos’s silence is not neutrality. It’s complicity. History will remember who stood up when fascism demanded obedience and who surrendered.

If you believe the press should challenge power instead of serving it, now is the moment to act.

Become a paid subscriber now to this Substack. Not as a gesture, but as a declaration that independent journalism will not be surrendered to authoritarianism. Let’s send a message to Jeff Bezos.

This fight is real. And together, we are winning it.

—Ben

Golden Lion Brewing will celebrate 40 years this Canada Day

Golden Lion Brewing will celebrate 40 years this Canada Day

Sherbrooke Record · 3 days ago
by Matthew Mccully · News


Many reasons it could’ve failed, good reasons it’s still here

Michael Keegan
The Record – LJI

By rights, they shouldn’t even have the pub.

Well, they shouldn’t have had it for more than five years, anyway.

There certainly shouldn’t be a brewery.

But they’ve had their pub for over 52 years now, and on July 1, they’ll have been running the brewery they started for 40 years.
The Golden Lion Brewing Company, an outgrowth of Lennoxville’s popular Golden Lion Pub, will be celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. It was the very first microbrewery in Quebec, and opened on Canada Day, 1986.

The Record sat down with Stan Groves (Jr.) on the morning of Jan. 21, in the pub next to the brewery. Groves is the namesake Stanley Groves, one of three Bishop’s University professors who founded the pub, the others being David Seale and Robert Barnett. The latter two cashed out of the business not too long thereafter, and the pub and brewery have been Groves family businesses ever since. Stan Groves (Jr.) co-owns the brewery with his brother Kevin.

So how did you start a microbrewery in 1986?

It helped if you had a pub first. You had a client base. You knew how much beer you can sell.

Then you brewed what was popular: Blonde beers, like the big beer companies – Molson, Labatt’s, O’Keefe – sold. Right?

Well, not if you were the Groves family. The elder Stan had travelled widely, including to England. And Barnett had grown up there. And they loved British beer. So, the partners decided they wanted to push back against what they thought were the big breweries bland blondes with English ales.

“Choosing the British styled brown beer was probably the worst idea,” admitted Groves the younger. “Because back then, everything was a blonde beer. Even the SAQ was not importing a lot of British beer. You could get Bass, you could get Newcastle Brown Ale. Guinness, of course, […] but nobody was drinking that stuff. It wasn’t in cans or in bottles in the stores. You had to go to the SAQ Liquor Commission to get it. There was no brown beer on the market, really, outside of those important ones.”

Groves, meanwhile, had virtually grown up in the pub, which had been fun, but he wanted to do more, so he headed west to Edmonton for a couple of years.

While he was there, the first microbrewery in Canada, Troller, opened in Horseshoe Bay, B.C., in 1982. That meant it could be done: You could start a craft beer company — or microbrewery — and go up against the big boys.

Meanwhile, the founders of the pub had been renting, and eventually bought, an abandoned Texaco station next door and its parking lot, for the pub.

They’d been using it as a storage shed for the pub. And they’d rented the rest of the space out to various businesses. It had served, variously, as a paint shop, a tanning salon, a bakery, and an ice cream shop, as Groves recalled.

So when the decision came to found the microbrewery, they had the building. The next thing a British-style brewery needed was someone who knew how to brew beer, any beer. So Groves went to England to learn.

He paid for an internship at the very successful Ringwood Brewery in Hampshire, spending seven days a week there, climbing into and cleaning out the mash tun and learning the craft of making beer from their highly acclaimed master brewer, Peter Austin. Austin’s “second-in-command” as Groves put it, was a young man about his age named Alan Pugsley. Pugsley would eventually get hired by the D.L. Geary brewery in Portland, Maine, one of the first microbreweries on the East Coast, and one of a slew of successful ones Pugsley would help establish.

Why was this important?

Besides becoming a life-long friend of Groves’, Pugsley would eventually commission – or oversee the first brew of – the Golden Lion Brewing Company.



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We need more meaningful citizen involvement - Victoria Times Colonist

We need more meaningful citizen involvement - Victoria Times Colonist

Gene Miller: We need more meaningful citizen involvement, not just complaint

Civic conversation about matters larger than construction congestion and more credible than forged political accomplishment is sorely needed.

Gene MillerJan 26, 2026 5:15 AM

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday talked about a new and enlarged role for Canada on the world stage, a role that all of us should be proud to embody, while not blind to risks when you pop your head up, writes Gene Miller. Sean Kilpatrick, The Canadian Press

Listen to this article

00:05:28

It’s Tuesday evening, and I have just finished listening to our prime minister deliver an extraordinarily courageous and cautionary speech at the World Economic Forum, held annually in Davos, Switzerland.

It was breathtakingly courageous because it was utterly truthful about the rapidly emerging new world order and what that implies

It was also courageous because it represented, and in some ways defined, a new and enlarged role for Canada on the world stage — a role, in my view, that all of us should be proud to embody, to make our own, while not blind to risks when you pop your head up.

It was — and I use words not often associated with Canada — powerful, persuasive, riveting, profound.

One for the history books.

It will be consequential.

U.S. President Donald Trump, whose name Carney never mentioned, will, in the privacy of his White House office, curse our prime minister and our country and nurse revenge.

We will move to the front of that insane president’s retribution list.

While Carney’s speech was filled with a shockingly honest description of current geopolitical realities and prospects, he pointed unerringly and scarily to where all of this was headed: rupture and the end of global rules-based order — to a near-future more filled with basic appetite and aggression than modern.

To his credit, then, Carney, virtually stating that the world was headed toward an economic and, it appears, territorial war with the U.S., smoothed over nothing in his portrait of humanity’s next chapter.

Let’s leave the terrors of Davos and shift to a local frame.

I’ve lived in Victoria since 1970, when the Empress Hotel, that breathtaking architectural confection, was the crown of the capital, imperious and self-important.

Now, in its full embrace of modern times, Victoria has become a thriving and dynamic metropolis whose greatest cultural export is complaint, in bike lane, pothole and road-closure flavours.

I joke only to point out that citizen involvement has been reduced to complaint.

As many significant political and social thinkers are stating, “normal,” with its basket of traditions, shared assumptions and understandings, bows and curtsies, is going or gone, finished, exhausted.

While some new normal hasn’t coalesced yet, there are hints bathed, worryingly, in a sick yellow glow.

Consider the possibility that cellphone culture and Trumpism might be the new normal. A nightmare, but one we may wake to.

This column is constrained in its geographic and social reach, but in the face of mounting social urgencies, it asks readers, local and elsewhere, to look up, that is, to see the times for what they are.

In functional, operational terms, it calls for more civic conversation about matters larger than construction congestion and more credible than forged political accomplishment.

In the same way that physical exercise builds muscles, community conversation and project involvement build social muscle.

People — all of us — need to be better and more broadly informed about what’s happening in our communities and cities.

I’m in the habit of noting we are living in the middle of HISTORY. There’s a case to be made that threatening and tough times require a more prepared community with stronger psychological resources.

These don’t come from nowhere.

It calls for informed citizen passion and a hunger for informed viewpoint, for engagement.

In that context, shouldn’t we, in a small reflection of global realities, try to get to the root cause of local public abdication, the withdrawal of citizen energy from the civic concerns that affect quality of life here?

To do so, don’t we need to be more “here,” more present?

Turning everything over to mayor and council is a voluntary “donation” of social power by the public, and it always has “strong leader” consequences, sooner or later.

Sound familiar?

What is mysterious is not just the slow drift or transfer of social power but the failure of a community to recognize that it is taking place.

Elections, unfortunately, are the worst social tool for citywide conversation. They come too late and blunt legitimate interrogation of council aspirants and would-be returnees.

(Eight months from election time, we are starting to receive harp-string messages from multi-termers listing their accomplishments.)

What this writing calls for — as it has before — is kitchen-table and coffee-shop discussion about the appropriate distribution of social power in our local political environment, and whether accomplishment through a more direct city/citizen partnership might lead to more potent and successful outcomes.

A better next.

Gene Miller is the founder of Open Space, founding publisher of Monday Magazine, originator of the Gaining Ground urban sustainability conferences, founder/developer of ASH houseplexes, and currently writing “Nothing To Do: Life in a Workless World.” He’d be pleased to receive and respond to your thoughts. genekmiller@gmail.com

Fermeuse LNG Receives Boost in MOU with South Korea’s Hanwha Industrial Conglomerate

Fermeuse LNG Receives Boost in MOU with South Korea’s Hanwha Industrial Conglomerate

Fermeuse LNG Receives Boost in MOU with South Korea’s Hanwha Industrial Conglomerate
January 29, 2026
Reading time: 6 minutes

Full Story: The Energy Mix - Mitchell Beer




Linda Cutler Kenny/Facebook

A proposed $15-billion liquefied natural gas development off the coast of Newfoundland has received a major boost, after St. John’s-based Fermeuse Energy signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to advance the project with Hanwha Group, an industrial conglomerate based in Seoul, South Korea.

The deal “establishes Hanwha as a long-term strategic partner to Fermeuse Energy, supporting the project’s development, engineering, financing, shipbuilding, and LNG logistics across the full LNG value chain,” Fermeuse Energy (FEL) said in a Jan. 19 release.

Hanwha is also bidding on a multi-billion-dollar contract to build a new fleet of ice-capable patrol submarines for the Canadian military. FEL said the LNG project is “consistent” with the industrial partnerships Hanwha is offering as part of its bid.

“Hanwha is approaching Fermeuse Energy not merely as a service provider, but as a trusted partner committed to supporting the project from concept through execution and commercialization,” Sung-chul Eo, president of Hanwha Ocean’s Naval Ship Division, said in the release. “By leveraging the combined capabilities of Hanwha Ocean and the broader Hanwha Group portfolio, together with the support of the Korean government, we will contribute meaningfully to the successful realization of Newfoundland and Labrador’s LNG potential.”

Proton is Working on European Alternative to Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet - ITdaily.

Proton is Working on European Alternative to Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet - ITdaily.

Proton is Working on European Alternative to Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet.software
10.09.'25 14:46
2 minKatrien Duchène



Proton is working on its own meeting software to offer a European alternative to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom.

Proton is known for its privacy-friendly services including Proton Mail, Proton VPN, and Proton Pass. The Swiss company recently launched its own authenticator app. Proton is currently working on a new service, Proton Meet, which is intended to be a European alternative to Google Meet, Teams, and Zoom. The company confirmed this to Tweakers a few days ago. Proton Meet is currently in a closed beta testing phase.
Proton Meet

More and more companies are focusing on data sovereignty and are turning to local or European partners more quickly, to the detriment of American technology players. The Swiss company Proton now seems to want to capitalize on this. Proton is currently working on Proton Meet, its own meeting software that aims to offer a European alternative. The company has already added a new page to their product offerings on the website with ‘Proton Meet’.

‘Millions wasted killing healthy B.C. ostriches:’ Animal Justice | Oak Bay News

‘Millions wasted killing healthy B.C. ostriches:’ Animal Justice | Oak Bay News
‘Millions wasted killing healthy B.C. ostriches:’ Animal Justice Published 6:00 pm Thursday, January 29, 2026 By Jennifer Smith CFIA and RCMP created a wall of hay bales around the ostriches in Edgewood in 2025. (Facebook photo) Animal Justice is deeply troubled after learning that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s killing of more than 300 healthy ostriches in Edgewood last year, months after avian influenza was first detected on the farm, cost Canadian taxpayers at least $6.8 million. The massive sum was revealed this week in a response to a parliamentary inquiry from Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee MP Scott Anderson in December. The total includes $2.3 million spent on staff time, and $1.3 million on lawyers and legal fees. “The amount of money spent is absolutely outrageous,” said lawyer and Animal Justice executive director Camille Labchuk. “Millions of taxpayers’ dollars were poured down the drain, wasted to massacre these sensitive, intelligent animals who, by that point, were entirely healthy. That money could have helped support animal sanctuaries, improved welfare for animals, or funded real disease-prevention measures instead. Trending Instability extends closure of Victoria segment of Galloping Goose Oak Bay seeks input on Bowker Creek railing replacement project “Not to mention, a fraction of this money could have funded Canada’s only research centre devoted to replacing animal experimentation, which was forced to close last year after the federal government failed to fund it. This would have supported the federal government’s own goal of phasing out toxicity testing on animals.” Following last year’s slaughter, Animal Justice filed a formal complaint with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency over the method used to kill the ostriches, citing serious concerns about animal suffering and potential violations of federal and provincial animal protection laws.


Read more at: https://oakbaynews.com/2026/01/29/millions-wasted-killing-healthy-b-c-ostriches-animal-justice/

 

Amazon lays off 16,000 employees

Matthias Balk/Getty Images

Amazon announced another round of layoffs yesterday, and this time the company is eliminating 16,000 corporate jobs. This is the second major layoff since October when the company cut 14,000 roles and warned there was more to come. The e-commerce giant is trying to reduce bureaucracy after a Covid-era hiring surge, while likely also freeing up funds for future AI spending. The 30,000 positions cut represent about 10% of Amazon’s white collar workforce. The company said yesterday there could be more layoffs this year, but that the second round of terminations don’t mark “a new rhythm” of cuts every few months. The announcement didn’t include any mention of AI replacing workers, but the layoffs come as Amazon gears up to spend $125 billion this year on capital expenditures like data center buildouts. Last summer, CEO Andy Jassy told employees that AI adoption at the company would slowly start to reduce headcount. Big picture: On top of the job market seemingly grinding to a halt last year, employers announced 1.2 million layoffs in 2025, the highest since 2020, according to outplacement services firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. Tech companies like Microsoft, Intel, and Meta announced layoffs last year as part of the Great Flattening to cut out middle management.

 

EU and India clinch “mother of all deals”

Press Information Bureau/Getty Images

Odysseus spent 20 years away from Ithaca, which is about as long as it took the European Union and India to negotiate a watershed trade deal. But yesterday, the 27-nation bloc and the world’s most populous country finally sealed what European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen dubbed “the mother of all deals.” The big Indo-European handshake comes as India and the EU scramble to diversify their trade ties after President Trump erected export barriers to the US, their biggest trade partner. India is eager to find new takers for its wares after Trump raised its tariff rate to 50%. And the deal is expected to help the EU replace about a quarter of the export revenue it lost to higher US tariffs, according to Allianz Investment Management economist Jasmin Gröschl. Toodles tariffs Once ratified, the deal will reduce or remove duties on 90% of the goods traded between the two sides, valued at $136 billion last year: The famously protectionist India agreed to reduce tariffs on European autos from their current maximum of 110% to as low as 10% on up to 250,000 European cars yearly. It'll also slash tariffs on European specialties like wine, beer, and pasta. In exchange, the EU will allow duty-free Indian imports including clothes, chemicals, and furniture—sectors that suffered job losses due to US tariffs. Big picture: It’s part of a wider trend of US trade partners branching out, exemplified by recent trade deals between EU and four Latin American countries, and an agreement between China and Canada.

Trump administration sued over 2 deaths in boat strike off Venezuela's coast | The Straits Times

Trump administration sued over 2 deaths in boat strike off Venezuela's coast | The Straits Times

Trump administration sued over 2 deaths in boat strike off Venezuela's coast


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FILE PHOTO: A priest conducts Mass during a memorial held by family members of Chad Joseph, who believe he was killed in a U.S. military strike on a boat in the Caribbean, at Saint Michael's Roman Catholic Church in Las Cuevas, Trinidad and Tobago, October 22, 2025. REUTERS/Andrea de Silva/File Photo






Published Jan 27, 2026, 10:59 PM


Updated Jan 27, 2026, 10:59 PM




BOSTON, Jan 27 - Family members of two men killed in a U.S. missile strike against a suspected drug boat near Venezuela filed a wrongful death lawsuit on Tuesday, alleging the pair were murdered in a "manifestly unlawful" military campaign targeting civilian vessels.

Civil rights lawyers filed the lawsuit in Boston's federal court, marking the first court challenge to one of the 36 U.S. missile strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean authorized by President Donald Trump's administration that have killed more than 120 people since September.

Family members of Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo—two Trinidadian men who were among six killed during an October 14 strike—in the lawsuit say the two men did fishing and farm work in Venezuela and had been returning to their homes in Las Cuevas, Trinidad when they were attacked.


"These are lawless killings in cold blood; killings for sport and killings for theater, which is why we need a court of law to proclaim what is true and constrain what is lawless," Baher Azmy, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement.

His group and the American Civil Liberties Union filed the novel lawsuit under the Death on the High Seas Act, a maritime law that allows family members to sue for wrongful deaths occurring on the high seas, and the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 law that allows foreign citizens to sue in U.S. courts for violations of international law.

The lawsuit was filed by Lenore Burnley, Joseph's mother, and Sallycar Korasingh, Samaroo's sister, and seeks only damages from the U.S. government for the two deaths, not an injunction that would prevent further strikes.


But the case could provide an avenue for a court to assess whether the October 14 strike was legal.

Carney announces food affordability measures, including boost to GST rebate | CBC News

Carney announces food affordability measures, including boost to GST rebate | CBC News

Carney announces food affordability measures, including boost to GST rebate
Measures include $500 million in capital investment funding for food businesses, $20 million for food banks


Peter Zimonjic · CBC News · Posted: Jan 26, 2026 7:52 AM PST | Last Updated: 3 minutes ago


Listen to this article
Estimated 4 minutes

Finance and National Revenue Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne looks on as Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks outlines new affordability measures at a grocery store in Ottawa on Monda. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a suite of affordability measures on Monday that he says will help Canadian families struggling to cope with the rising cost of living.

The flagship measure in Monday's announcement is the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, which Carney said will boost what families and individuals receive through their GST rebate over the next five years.

"Canada’s new government is acting today to provide a boost to those Canadian families who most need one, while creating a bridge to longer-term food security and affordability," Carney said in Nepean, Ont., on Monday.


The prime minister said that his government is using the GST rebate designed for Canadians with low and modest incomes, because groceries and other essentials make up a larger share of their family budgets.

In its first year, the benefit will give low- and modest-income Canadians eligible for the GST rebate a one-time boost that raises the $1,100 a family of four receives annually to $1,890 and increases the $540 an individual gets to $950.

Starting next year, and running for the next four years, the GST rebate is being increased by 25 per cent, which means a family of four will get up to $1,400 annually, while an individual will get about $700 a year.

"The rise in food prices means that a lot of those Canadians need more support right now," Carney said.
Tackling food inflation

To help bring down the cost of groceries, which have been rising faster than inflation, Carney said he will direct $500 million from the government's Strategic Response Fund to help food suppliers "expand capacity and increase productivity."

It means food businesses looking to make capital investments to help strengthen their supply chains can apply to have some of those costs covered by the fund.

Carney announced a $150-million Food Security Fund that will help small- and medium-sized businesses to expand greenhouses and abattoirs, and strengthen food supply chains.

One immediate measure to help producers is a change that allows companies to fully write off greenhouses acquired on or after Nov. 4, 2025, that start being used before 2030.

"This measure supports increased domestic supply and investment in food production over the medium term," a government statement said.

The prime minister also announced his government will direct $20 million in funding to the Local Food Infrastructure Fund to ease the pressure on food banks.


"This will help boost community food programs, helping them to deliver more nutritious food for families in need," he said.

In addition to these measures, Carney said his government is developing a National Food Security Strategy to strengthen food production and improve access to affordable, healthy food.

"This strategy will include measures to implement unit price labelling so Canada can compare easily in this era of 'shrinkflation,' as well as support for the work of the Competition Bureau in monitoring and enforcing competition in our market," he said.

The strategy will also include measures to help reduce food insecurity in Canada's North.

 

Everyone is a fan of free merch at the game

Skalij/Getty Images

While NHL teams have yet to start handing out free Rozanov and Hollander jerseys (though one Canadian team is selling them), there’s plenty of other freebies enticing fans to come to games. Sports franchises rely on complimentary tchotchkes and quirky spectacles at their games to put butts in seats. And no league loves promotions more than the MLB—since its high number of outdoor, mostly weeknight games compared to other sports makes a full stadium far from guaranteed. Offer trinkets, and they will come Attracting spectators for whom the chance of catching a home-run ball isn’t enough to sit through a rainy nine innings often involves non-sports merch: Bobbleheads are as integral to the business of baseball as chewing tobacco, with teams distributing figurines of their players or of celebrity fans, like Bill Murray or Jon Hamm, on select nights. This year, baseball fans can snag Baltimore Orioles Hawaiian shirts, Diary of a Wimpy Kid bobbleheads courtesy of the Boston Red Sox, and The Mandalorian & Grogu jerseys from the Los Angeles Angels. Teams also put on special events for those who might start to yawn during the seventh inning, like fireworks nights, bring-your-dog-to-the-game days, and Star Wars-themed laser shows. It’s not just baseball teams…that dangle merch and eccentric promos to boost attendance. The NBA’s Atlanta Hawks will hand out Hello Kitty belt bags this season, while last year, the NFL’s Carolina Panthers gave mayonnaise fans a chance to win a lifetime supply of the condiment every time the team’s defense forced a turnover

Time to Consider Boycott of FIFA 2026?

 A German Football Association (DFB) official has said it is time to consider a boycott of the 2026 World Cup in the wake of United States President Donald Trump's actions.

The US will host world football's showpiece event this summer, along with Canada and Mexico.

President Trump caused outrage among European leaders earlier this month by threatening to acquire Greenland, which is controlled by Denmark.

The 79-year-old threatened to impose tariffs on eight European countries - including Germany - who opposed his plan.

Trump has since rowed back on that threat, but tensions between European leaders and the US government remain high.

"I really wonder when the time will be to think and talk about this [a boycott] concretely," Oke Gottlich, a DFB vice-president, told the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper.

"For me, that time has definitely come."

Intel aims to find clients and catch TSMC with new chip fab in Arizona

Intel aims to find clients and catch TSMC with new chip fab in Arizona

Tech

Inside Intel’s new Arizona fab, where the chipmaker’s fate hangs in the balance
Published Fri, Dec 19 20258:00 AM EST

Katie Tarasov@KatieTarasov
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Key Points
Intel’s advanced chip node, 18A, is now in high-volume production at its new Arizona fab, but no major outside customers have emerged
The fab is meant to help Intel catch back up to TSMC after years of missteps, with executives saying it’s “turned the corner.”
Lifelines include $8.9 billion from the U.S. government and $5 billion from Nvidia, although the AI chip leader didn’t commit to making chips at Intel Foundry



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Intel was once the world’s largest semiconductor company, but its market cap plummeted in recent years as the chipmaker fell behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and spent billions of dollars trying to catch up.

Now, Intel has entered high-volume production of 18A, the new chip node it says will turn things around.


The biggest problem? Convincing a big chipmaker to trust Intel with manufacturing on the new node. For now, Intel’s only major customer is itself. The company’s long-awaited Core Ultra series 3 PC processor, code-named Panther Lake, will come to PCs in January as the first major product made on 18A.

“It’s become an internal node for now,” said Daniel Newman, CEO of Futurum Group. “So many companies have made such massive investments into TSMC to ensure yield, to ensure capacity wafers that they just will not make the switch just yet.”

Intel is pinning its hopes of attracting customers on a new chip fabrication plant, Fab52, in Chandler, Arizona, where CNBC got an exclusive on-camera tour in November. Some 50 miles north, in Phoenix, TSMC also has a new fab, where it’s making chips with 4 nanometer technology. Its most advanced 2nm tech is currently only made in Taiwan.

Intel’s 18A is generally on par with TSMC’s 2nm node in some metrics such as transistor density. But as Intel works out the kinks after years of delays on previous nodes, some 18A wafers have had defects, making for a lower number of usable chips per wafer, typically referred to as yield.

“Yields are always an issue at the advanced node. This is not an uncommon problem,” said Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie, who served on Intel’s board from 1989 to 2018. He pointed to early yield issues with Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs at TSMC that were quickly fixed.


Intel’s renewed focus on foundry — manufacturing chips for outside clients — came when Pat Gelsinger took the helm as CEO in 2021. Gelsinger was pushed out last December and replaced by Lip-Bu Tan in March.

“Over the past several years, the company invested too much, too soon – without adequate demand,” Tan wrote in a memo in July.

Intel’s campus in Chandler, Arizona, now includes five chip fabrication plants, with Fab52 being the newest addition, shown here on November 17, 2025.
Tony Puyol


With Intel awaiting a big outside customer, the U.S. government stepped up in August, taking a 10% stake in the company with an $8.9 billion investment, primarily coming from grants promised under the CHIPS Act signed by President Joe Biden in 2022.

Days earlier, SoftBank invested $2 billion in Intel, followed by a $5 billion investment in September from Nvidia, which agreed to use some Intel technology but didn’t commit to using its foundry.

Here’s a look behind the curtain of Intel’s new chip factory where it hopes to find major foundry customers and, with them, redemption.
Fall of a giant

Founded in 1968 by Silicon Valley chip pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore and legendary investor Arthur Rock, Intel brought the world’s first commercially available microprocessor to market just three years later.

From the late 1970s through the early 2000s, Intel pumped out increasingly advanced process nodes at a rapid pace, leading to the term “Moore’s Law” — the doubling of components on a chip every couple years.

“The 1990s was a period of wonder and excitement at Intel,” Yoffie said. “We were the world’s largest semiconductor company, the world’s most profitable.”

But Intel largely missed the mobile revolution, famously turning down a deal to make Apple’s processors for the original iPhone. Then came a whiff in AI.

In 2024, Intel saw its worst year ever, losing about 60% of its value. The plunge came after two of its previous chip nodes, 10nm and 7nm, were delayed by several years. Analysts say the delays may have been triggered by an earlier choice to hold off on using ASML’s costly Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography machines.

“I think we lost the discipline of cycle time,” said client computing head Jim Johnson, who joined Intel more than 30 years ago. “Cycle time requires you to commit and deliver, and we started talking ourselves into, hey, we can have longer cycle times and try and lift more or do more.”

As it hustles to get back on track, Intel told CNBC there will be at least 15 EUV machines in Fab52.

Intel 18A production manager Lea Tensuan shows CNBC’s Katie Tarasov the EUV machines inside Fab52 in Chandler, Arizona, on November 17, 2025.



By 2021, TSMC had become the node leader, and Intel began to outsource some leading-edge chip production to the Taiwanese giant. Around the same time, Apple began replacing Intel chips in Mac computers with its own M-series chips, also manufactured primarily at TSMC.

In his earlier stint at Intel, more than a decade before rejoining as CEO, Gelsinger “was given the responsibility to build a GPU to compete with Nvidia,” Yoffie said. “Unfortunately, that project failed and that ultimately meant we ended up not playing a significant role in the AI revolution.”

Intel may now be considering a deal to buy custom AI chip design startup SambaNova for $1.6 billion, though the company declined to comment on the matter.
‘Changing our culture’

The trademark of Gelsinger’s tenure as CEO was Intel’s focus on chip manufacturing. His ambitious roadmap had Intel catching back up to TSMC by releasing five nodes in four years.

Now, Tan is CEO and Naga Chandrasekaran is in charge of foundry.

“We are making yield improvements, defect density improvements, month-over-month and hitting our goals,” Chandrasekaran told CNBC in an interview in November. “So I believe we have turned the corner.”

Chandrasekaran joined Intel last year after more than two decades at leading memory maker Micron. He said his top goal is finding foundry customers.

“I have to become part of their team and convince them that they can trust Intel Foundry to execute,” Chandrasekaran said. “That’s number one. And to do that, we are changing our culture. We are bringing a huge execution focus internally into Intel Foundry.”

Chandrasekaran told CNBC that Fab52 is capable of more than 10,000 18A wafer starts per week. There’s more than a million square feet of manufacturing cleanroom space in Arizona, with five fabs all connected by 30 miles of overhead track moving wafers between them. A sixth fab, Fab62, is expected to be ready around 2028.

18A also uses RibbonFet, Intel’s gate-all-around architecture that improves power control by fully surrounding the transistor, unlike previous designs that only contact the top and sides. Chandrasekaran said 18A offers “more than 15% performance per watt improvement” over Intel 3.

Perhaps the biggest way Intel stands out is in advanced packaging, the assembly and connections of chips onto the final systems where they appear in real-world applications.

Intel engineer Shripad Gokhale shows CNBC’s Katie Tarasov its next Xeon data center chip in Intel’s advanced packaging lab in Chandler, Arizona, on November 17, 2025.
Tony Puyol


CNBC went to Intel’s advanced packaging lab in Chandler to see several steps in the process, such as protecting chips with a polymer-based seal, and exposing them to a liquid that detects any defects. Yoffie said Intel’s advanced packaging “can help mitigate some of the power consumption problems.”

“One of the biggest problems today for everybody making chips for data centers is the power that it consumes,” Yoffie said.

Chandrasekaran said the Arizona fab is on almost 100% renewable energy. As for water, Intel’s Arizona facilities used more than 3 billion gallons in 2024 and returned 2.4 billion gallons to the local supply through a water recycling plant it has on site.
‘No blank checks’

Tan’s message to employees when it comes to spending on future foundry nodes is clear: “No more blank checks.” The company needs customers.

Intel’s big new Ohio chip fab is delayed until at least 2030, and Tan has made major cost cuts by slashing 15% of the workforce in July and axing projects in Germany and Poland.

“That’s what the company needed,” said Newman of Futurum. “It needed to be faster. It needed to be leaner. It needed to be more focused. It needed someone that would be a little bit more shrewd.”

Tan is waiting to see how demand shapes up before giving solid details about Intel’s next node, 14A. Chandrasekaran told CNBC it will first be developed in Oregon, with a goal of volume production in 2028.

Finding customers for 18A won’t be easy. Unlike TSMC which only makes chips for outside clients, Intel also makes devices powered by its chips, positioning it as a competitor to some of the customers it hopes to land.

“If I’m an Nvidia or AMD or Qualcomm or Broadcom, do you really want to put your secret sauce into a manufacturing operation where you’re giving Intel access to that secret sauce?” Yoffie said.

He suggests breaking out foundry into a different company.

“If you actually separated the two, I think you’d give Intel a much better shot at being successful,” Yoffie said. “And you’d also give the United States a much stronger position for being the home of a major semiconductor manufacturing organization.”

Intel client computing head Jim Johnson gives CNBC’s Katie Tarasov an early look at its Panther Lake CPU in Santa Clara, California, on November 12, 2025.
Marc Ganley


For now, Intel hopes Panther Lake will be a big proof point when it debuts in PCs from major companies like Samsung, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus and Acer in January. Intel’s next data center chip, Xeon 6+, is also made on 18A.

“If you’re a major company that wants to bet on a process node, you’re going to feel a lot more comfortable if you see Intel ramping the heart of their client product line to high volume on that process node,” Johnson said.

Microsoft and Amazon signed early deals last year committing to use Intel’s foundry for some of their in-house custom chips.

“It’s a good sign, but of course their volumes are very small relative to Nvidia and the other major chip companies,” Yoffie said.

Recent reports suggest AMD is considering manufacturing at Intel, and one analyst predicts Apple may once again make some Mac chips at Intel by 2027.

In the meantime, Intel got a lifeline with the U.S. government’s 10% stake.

“It shows the confidence that the U.S. government has in Intel and the belief that we need to have leading edge R&D and manufacturing on U.S. soil,” Chandrasekaran said.

The government investment came days after President Donald Trump called for Tan to resign, then reversed course.

“I worry sometimes about the scope creep here and how the U.S. could decide to take stakes in all kinds of things,” Newman said. “But you have industries that we have let leave the U.S. to an extent that put us into indefensible risk, and we need to bring them back.”

Some 92% of the world’s most advanced chips are made in Taiwan, following a decades-long decline in the percentage of chips made in the U.S.

“The stakes are incredibly high for Intel, for the U.S. and for the world,” Yoffie said. “The whole idea that the world’s most advanced products are dependent on a single location in an island a few miles off the Chinese coast is a terrible situation for the whole world to have to deal with.”

Chandrasekaran, for his part, is committed to turning Intel into a manufacturer of advanced chips.

“As a semiconductor community, we have to enable this solution for the world to move forward with AI,” he said. “There’s no other option than to be successful.”

Quebec revamps its coat of arms, removes British crown | CBC News

Quebec revamps its coat of arms, removes British crown | CBC News

Quebec revamps its coat of arms, removes British crown
'Vast majority of Quebecers have no attachment to the British monarchy,' says minister


Morgan Lowrie · CBC News · Posted: Jan 23, 2026 3:26 PM PST | Last Updated: January 23


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Estimated 3 minutes

Quebec’s Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette posted this photo on his X account, showing the province's old and new coats of arms. (Quebec government)

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The Quebec government announced Friday that it's removing the British crown from the province's official coat of arms, in what it described as a reaffirmation of the province's autonomy.

Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette and French Language Minister Jean-Francois Roberge said in a news release that removing symbols of the monarchy was a recommendation of a provincially-mandated committee studying constitutional matters.

"The vast majority of Quebecers have no attachment to the British monarchy and reject it," Jolin-Barrette said in a statement. "In withdrawing the British crown from our official coat of arms, we're ensuring that Quebec's institutions and national symbols respect the Quebec population, that they're modernized and, above all, that they better reflect Quebec's identity."


The coat of arms consists of a crown sitting atop a shield featuring three gold fleurs-de-lis, a gold lion — which also represents the British Crown — as well as three green maple leaves. The lion, which is sometimes referred to in French as a leopard, is not being removed.

In 1868, Queen Victoria granted Quebec its official emblem, but the Quebec government says the Tudor-style crown was added in 1939 along with the provincial motto "Je me souviens" — I remember.
Bloc leader condemns 'racist' and 'humiliating' monarchy while calling for Canada to cut ties with CharlesQuebec adopts law making oath to King optional for elected members

Roberge noted that the coat of arms hasn't been modified in almost 90 years. "Many things have changed since, and the need to turn the page on the monarchy is now very present in Quebec," he said in the statement.

The ministers noted that Quebec has made other efforts to strip the province of its ties to the monarchy, including no longer requiring new elected legislature members to swear an oath to the King. The province also plans to rename the title of lieutenant-governor to "officer of Quebec."

Simon Jolin-Barrette is Quebec's justice minister. (Sylvain Roy-Roussel/Radio-Canada)

The government says the coat of arms will be changed on some official correspondence and eventually on the medals handed out by the lieutenant-governor.

For heritage conservation purposes, the government says any emblems that appear on state buildings or furniture will not be changed.

The government did not immediately respond to a question about how much the changes would cost.
Québec Solidaire MNAs skip oath to King when sworn in, PQ to follow suit

Roberge and Jolin-Barrette's announcement drew rare praise from Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon. He noted it came one day after Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a speech in Quebec City on the Plains of Abraham, where British troops defeated French ones in a pivotal battle for New France in 1759.

The speech has drawn criticism from members of both the governing Coalition Avenir Québec and the PQ over Carney's characterization of the defeat as the beginning of a "partnership."

"This action by the CAQ comes, coincidentally, the day after Mark Carney used the plains in Quebec to present the conquest and centuries of colonial domination as a 'partnership,"' St-Pierre Plamondon wrote on social media.


"I commend the coherence of Simon Jolin-Barrette and Jean-Francois Roberge and am delighted by this announcement."

 

TikTok goes American

Rafael Henrique/Getty Images

TikTok is an American company now, so everyone’s password has been changed to the high note at the end of “and the rockets red glare.” Ownership of TikTok’s US operations has officially changed hands, but your experience on the app likely won’t change much…immediately. A group of American investors closed a $14 billion deal Thursday night to acquire the US version of the short-form video app and avoid a shutdown mandated by the 2024 divest-or-ban law due to national security concerns. Under the deal, TikTok’s original parent, ByteDance, will retain 19.9% of the company while Larry Ellison’s Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment company MGX will split 45% of the company as managing investors. Most of the remaining shares of the new US TikTok entity will be owned by existing ByteDance investors. The three managing investors will own US user data and be tasked with moderating US content. ByteDance will still own its wildly valuable algorithm, but, according to a White House official, it will lease a copy to the owners of the US entity. What will 200 million Americans’ midafternoon distraction look like now? For starters, you won’t need to download a new app. But you’ve probably already seen new service terms pop up. These have alarmed some users and pushed some to delete the app, because TikTok will now collect your precise location—not just your approximate location—if you agree to the new terms. Just like in the videos, there’s controversy. TikTok bans hate speech and inappropriate content, but with the new owners moderating, its standards could change (see also: Elon Musk buying Twitter). Some critics claim that the concern that necessitated the sale—that the Chinese government could manipulate the algorithm and spread propaganda—could simply shift to worry about the messages favored by the app’s new ownership, who are pretty close with the current US president. Plus…the 2024 law demands that ByteDance have no operational relationship with the US company, leading some observers to question whether the deal fully complies.

12 million OxyContin pills shipped to a town of 500

12 million OxyContin pills shipped to a town of 500: How profit fuelled America's opioid crisis
Drug companies were a huge driver of the opioid epidemic — but their CEOs were compensated, not punished
Graham Duggan · Posted: Nov 12, 2021 12:59 PM PST | Last Updated: November 15, 2021


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Estimated 6 minutes

A new documentary highlights the role drug companies played in oversupplying highly addictive opioids (Young Turks Productions)

"Everyone wanted to sell 'em. Everyone wanted to buy 'em. Everyone was doing them."

— Former drug dealer "Doug"

The Oxy Kingpins, a documentary presented by The Passionate Eye, unravels the story behind the opioid crisis in America. It's an inside look at the players in the country's OxyContin market: the dealers who pushed OxyContin on the streets, and the drug manufacturers and distributors who made it easy for them — and earned massive profits while doing so. It also follows a landmark legal case, led by Florida lawyer Mike Papantonio, aimed at holding the drug companies accountable.


A business model that relied on dealers

When OxyContin (oxy) was first released in 1996, it was marketed as a wonder drug: a powerful, non-addictive painkiller. Its manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, and the distributors began an aggressive campaign to sell the drug.

Doctors and pharmacies were pushed hard to prescribe and dispense OxyContin for any pain — from major surgery to a sprained ankle. In the film, Papantonio describes the main message as ''Hey, we've got this wonderful new narcotic that's not addictive."

But as prescriptions increased, more people became hooked. "You're addicted to OxyContin within a two-week time," said Alex Dimattio, a former drug dealer who started selling in 1999.

And as more patients became addicted, the illegal market for oxy grew. In The Oxy Kingpins, Dimattio and another former dealer who goes by "Doug" explain how easy it was to get more pills.

Dealers would take groups of people — strangers, family members, anyone available — to pain clinics and doctor's offices, where a physician would write each person a prescription regardless of their complaint. The dealers then loaded the group into a van and took them to a pharmacy, where the prescriptions would be filled.

"It was crazy. One doctor writing [prescriptions] for 500 [or] 600 pills," Doug recalled. "I mean, enough to kill 10 terminally ill cancer patients — giving it to somebody with a twisted ankle."


Pushing pills and ignoring the obvious

The U.S. Controlled Substances Act requires distributors to monitor how much medication is delivered to retailers. But Carol Moore, an investigator working on the lawsuit, discovered that those checks and balances were ignored as the demand for oxy skyrocketed.

The three largest American drug distributors — McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health — shipped as much of the drug as pharmacies asked for, making billions of dollars in sales.


Reading from an email thread between two employees, Moore revealed the level of awareness among drug company staff: "'Just got a release today. You will receive 1,200 bottles on Thursday morning.'" And she continued with the reply: "'Keep 'em comin'! Flyin' out of here. It is like people are addicted to these things or something. Oh, wait, people are.'"

Records show that millions of pills were supplied to small towns whose populations couldn't possibly absorb the volume. And distributors seemed to know exactly what was going on.

"They knew that there were people in the field that were illegal distributors," said Papantonio. "When you deliver 12 million pills to a town of 500 people, the criminal is going to get his hands on some of it. You can't run from the fact that you know that.…

"The people who were making the drugs, they understood that this was a cash cow for them. The manufacturers, the distributors, the big-store pharmacies — they're all part of it."



The wrong people were punished

Hundreds of thousands of people have died since the beginning of the opioid epidemic. Families have been torn apart.

The opioid crisis, the film finds, is an epidemic of design: one driven by profit chasing. And Papantonio's lawsuit is an attempt to hold the distributors and manufacturer responsible.

"McKesson: $194 billion in revenues is what they had last year — $194 billion," Papantonio said. "But they don't want to pay their share now to rehab all of these people that they have intentionally addicted. And I say 'intentionally' because I truly mean it."

In July, Papantonio's legal team and collaborating law firms secured a $26-billion settlement with the Big 3 drug distributors and manufacturer Johnson & Johnson, with the caveat that the money will pay for treatment and education programs in affected communities.


In recent years, greater awareness and a push to stop overprescribing OxyContin has not decreased the demand for opioids. Instead, a market for illicit opioids like fentanyl has emerged in North America, leading to a spike in overdose deaths.

As The Oxy Kingpins reveals, thousands of street criminals, including drug dealers and users, have been imprisoned, along with hundreds of doctors and pharmacists.

"Everybody that touched that drug after they finished making it went to jail. But [the distributors] get their money," said Dimattio, the former dealer. "These guys do the same thing I was doing, but they don't call themselves drug dealers. So they don't get the jail time and they don't get everything taken away from them."

In fact, for their roles in the crisis, the pharmaceutical executives were compensated — handsomely. The CEOs of the top 3 distributors made hundreds of millions during their tenure amid the unfolding crisis.

"I mean, at the end of the day, you got to give it to [John H.] Hammergren," Dimattio said of the former CEO of McKesson, the largest distributor of pharmaceuticals in the U.S. "I mean, the guy won.… 700 and something million dollars. I've met some gangsters, and that guy's a f--king gangster."

Mike Milner suspended for four months

Mike Milner suspended for four months Former Sail Canada high-performance director Mike Milner has been suspended for four months under the national Abuse-Free Sport Program. Milner’s sanction was posted January 8 on a public registry established by the Office of the Sports Integrity Commissioner. No specific incident was detailed in the Abuse-Free Sport Registry, stating only that Milner was sanctioned for “Aiding and Abetting, Neglect, Psychological Maltreatment.” Milner was hired in 2018 as the organization’s high-performance director before leaving in 2024. Sail Canada appointed Anders Gustafsson as its new High Performance Director in May 2025. In September 2025, a former Olympic hopeful alleged she was raped in July 2024 by one of her fellow sailing competitors and launched a lawsuit that named Sail Canada, Sail Nova Scotia, and the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron. Responsibility for the oversight of athlete safety has recently changed. For details, click here. America One Racing Performance Report America One Racing, as the largest private financial supporter of elite USA sailors, pivoted in 2023 to a hands-on organization with coaches and training plans. Here is their 2025 end-of-year report: 2025 has been a strong year for America One Racing. We continued to build real momentum across our programs—Project Podium and the Foiling Pipeline—delivering structured training, world-class coaching, and smarter operations that are making a difference on and off the water. Our athletes and coaches worked hard, pushed standards higher, and represented A1R with professionalism and purpose. The integration of sport science, technology, and performance planning has taken another big step forward. Our partnerships with clubs, foundations, and private supporters have been key to that progress. We’re in a good place—focused, efficient, and ready to take the next leap in 2026. - Full report Travel Medical Insurance by Risk Strategies The travel medical and trip insurance specialists at Risk Strategies, part of the Brown & Brown Team, understand the complexities and risks that come with domestic and worldwide vacations and adventures. We provide exclusive access to domestic and international medical insurance, and trip insurance policies designed for travelers in search of the highest available benefit limits and most extensive coverage options. Our solutions include options for all types of travel and travelers, including domestic and international trips, sailing charters, business travel, adventure travel, helicopter & backcountry skiing, vacations on yachts, and other types of luxury vacations and adventure travel. We also offer group coverage for employees in locations around the world, solutions for aircraft passengers and crew, and solutions for captains, passengers, and paid crew aboard vessels.  • Learn More & Online quote: www.risk-strategies.com/travelmedical • Connect with a Specialist: travelmedical@risk-strategies.com Shakespeare was wrong “What’s in a name?” is a famous line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, meaning a name is just an arbitrary label, and the true essence, character, or quality of a person or thing is what truly matters, not the sound or label itself But SpinSheet magazine reminded us that in ancient times, boats were given names of gods or saints to safely guide them to port. The habit today typically has little to do with this tradition, though billionaire yachtsman did once buy 191-foot superyacht named for a Shinto deity. The name Izanami was deeply rooted in Japanese mythology for giving birth to the Japanese islands, but that didn’t mean much when he learned what the name spelled backwards – I’m a Nazi. Ellison, who was Jewish, renamed the boat Ronin – a samurai without a master that often becomes a mercenary. What movie has the best sailing scene? American actor W.C. Fields famously said “Never work with kids and animals” due to their chaotic and uncontrollable nature, but movie sailing scenes must be a pain too. The question was asked on the Old Boat Sailor Facebook page: What movie has the best sailing scene? With over 300 comments, Captain Ron was very popular with plenty of additional submissions: • Caddyshack • Captains Courageous • Dead Calm • Dove • Master and Commander • Tenet • The Thomas Crown Affair • Top Gun: Maverick • Waterworld • What About Bob? • White Squall • Wind For full report, click here. MORE: It was in 2020 during COVID lockdown when Scuttlebutt also compiled a list. Great Britain win at SailGP Perth Dylan Fletcher and his Great Britain team didn’t miss a beat as they won the opening event of the 2026 SailGP season on January 17-18 in Perth, Australia. A strong day two got them in the Finals against Australia and France, and the defending champions led from the start for an easy win. Here are some notables from the event: • As teams practiced in the Perth waves, the Spanish broke a foil and hull, and Australian wing trimmer Iain Jensen injured his knee, keeping both on the sidelines. Glenn Ashby joined his Aussie mates the day before racing to fill-in. • On the first race, the Swiss gybed to starboard near the leeward mark, catching the Kiwis unprepared. The resultant collision took both out for the day, with the Swiss bow repaired for day two. New Zealand will need to repair their stern in time for the next event in Auckland. • Moderate waves and mid-teen winds on day one were not too much for either the new Swedish team, or USA which had typically struggled in those conditions, with both joining France in a three-way tie for first. However, more wind and bigger seastate on day two had both slide down the standings. For full results and video highlights, click here. Records fall in RORC Transatlantic Race The 2026 RORC Transatlantic Race was a fast edition with new multihull and monohull elapsed records set for the 3000 nm course from the Canary Islands to Antigua. First in was Jason Carroll’s MOD70 Argo (USA), taking Multihull Line Honors on January 16 with crew Chad Corning (skipper), Pete Cumming, Sam Goodchild, Charles Ogletree, Alister Richardson, Brian Thompson. They set a new Multihull Race Record of 04 Days 23 Hrs 51 Mins 15 Secs. “By Day Two, we were doing 30 to 32 knots in big seas,” said Corning. “The nights were long; 13 hours, very dark, very little moon. It felt like skiing a black diamond run with a blindfold on.” Helming rotations were reduced to 45-minute stints, with drivers stepping off soaked, exhausted and eyes stinging from constant spray. - Full report Jules Verne: Hot race against the clock Ever since Francis Joyon and crew on the 103-foot trimaran IDEC Sport were awarded the Jules Verne Trophy in 2017, there have been many failed attempts to better their record time around the world. Some efforts were abandoned early when wind conditions proved insufficient, while others conceded to damage. If a team is in the final ascent of the Atlantic Ocean to the finish off western France, they are in a hot race against the clock. That’s the case for Thomas Coville and his crew on the 105-foot Sodebo Ultim 3 which got underway on December 15. They crossed the equator on January 19 with a 300+ nm lead over Joyon, and will need to complete the final 3000+nm before 20:31 on January 25 to win. Also on the course is Alexia Barrier and her crew of The Famous Project CIC on the record holder IDEC Sport. While ahead of Coville, their start on November 29 has them over 2000 nm behind record pace. Their goal is to finish and establish a reference time for an all-female team. North Sails welcomes Dave Hughes as NA One Design Manager Elite performance starts with expertise. North Sails welcomes longtime North Sails collaborator Dave Hughes, a multiple-time Olympian and World Champion, to lead our One Design program in North America. With decades of racing and coaching experience, Hughes brings a clear vision: continue delivering the fastest sails on the water and help sailors dominate every start line. As the season heats up with regattas like the Bacardi Cup on the horizon, now is the time to choose sails engineered for speed. Hughes says it best: “North Sails wins more regattas than any other sailmaker.” Shop North One Design sails online today for podium-ready results and unmatched reliability. Performance starts here. Order now. DOCK TALK European Yacht Of The Year 2026 Advancing from the nominees for the European Yacht Of The Year 2026, there has not been such a promising year in yacht building for a long time. Instead of focusing primarily on increasing volume and living space or, worse still, cutting costs in production, most shipyards have now refocused on core values. The six award-winning models in particular epitomize the return to the essentials. - Full report Match Racing Tours finish in Middle East The 2026 finale for the World Match Racing Tour and the Women’s World Match Racing Tour will be hosted by AMAALA Yacht Club on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast. Additionally, for the first time in the history of the Tours, prize money for the Open and Women’s finals will be equalized. - Full report New 72-footer for 2027 Clipper Race When the 15th edition of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race gets underway in 2027, the crews will be competing on a newly launched fleet of 72-footers. Over 7000 crew have participated since the first biennial event was staged in 1996, with ten teams now racing the Clipper 70s in the 14th edition. - Full report Eight Bells: Lydia Jewell Lydia Edes Jewell, 96, crossed the final bar on January 12, 2026, closing a remarkable life defined by adventure, curiosity, and a lifelong love of the sea. Born March 7, 1929, in Boston, MA to Oliver L. and Della S. Edes, she grew up in Plymouth, Massachusetts where her relationship with the water began. At the age of 12, she got her first boat, a Duxbury Duck. Learning to sail sparked a passion that would chart the rest of her life. Growing up amid the Second World War led to a keen interest in Military History and the Battle of the Bulge, in particular. She spent hours listening to her parents and their friends discuss politics at the dinner table and followed U.S. Politics her entire life. - Full report GUEST COMMENTARY Scuttlebutt strongly encourages feedback from the Scuttlebutt community. You can add your comments directly to stories on the website or submit commentary by email. Please save your bashing and personal attacks for elsewhere. US SAILING: BUILDING A STRONGER FUTURE (#6496) I read Charlie’s account and his desire to give back to the sport and all the trials and tribulations, but did not see anything about the grass roots.  We need support of the hundreds of small clubs that support US Sailing. There is a desperate need for Umpires and Craig Daniels has been alone in his efforts to increase the number of volunteers to support Match and Team Racing, and Sarah Ashton has just taken the helm of the Judges Committee. There are a small number of judges to cover all these venues, and it’s Mark Townsend that chairs the Judge’s training, making sure that we have properly trained judges. I fielded several complaints from venues (College and High School) about bad Rule 42 calls, and the first 42 seminar is about to be offered.  PROs are needed to run races and they too are few and far between.  Without this group of dedicated volunteers, we would not have quality Olympics, Trials, Regional, National, and World Championships. Judie McCann and Matt Hill at US sailing provide support but it stops there. For the past two years, dedicated volunteers have to pay for their own liability insurance. I understand that Charlie has bigger fish to fry, but without supporting the grass roots, our sport would crumble. - Richard P Sullivan, US Sailing National Judge and Umpire OLYMPIC SAILING NEEDS A LE MANS START (#6496) St. Croix used to have a Le Mans start on its annual Boxing Day regatta. There was a 100-yard slot between downtown Christiansted and Hotel on the Cay.  Classes would come in and anchor. Pick your spot. Then at the horn, one swimmer dove in.  Main can’t go up until the swimmer touched the boat. The “key” was to give yourself some headway on the anchor pull.  Different yet so interesting.  On the other end of the island, the yacht club would occasionally have “down wind” starts, which were also cool. - Maurice Cusick SEXISM AND INSPIRING GENERATION OF GIRLS (#6496) Oh barf! I raced sailboats in Seattle starting 1966 and was team captain for both men's and women's sailboat racing teams at Western Washington University. In 1976, I bought a San Juan 24 and successfully competed in the one-design fleet. Sailing is a sport where we compete on the water and cooperate with the community when we come back to the dock. Is it necessary to provide a platform for these sexist broadcast? - Shannon Morris CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION “I told the dentist how my teeth are going yellow. He told me to wear a brown tie.” - Rodney Dangerfield SPONSORS THIS WEEK Sail To Prevail - Risk Strategies - North Sails - UK Sailmakers - FOILFAST - Lex Risks Need Stuff? Check out our Sailing Suppliers and Resources page.