Goldman sachs pledges 500 million for female founders

More than half a million acres of California’s public lands are locked away by private landowners, a report from the New York Times found this week. The Times story used data from a popular hunting app called OnX. The app uses publicly available state and federal records to show private property lines, critical information for hunters trying to avoid trespassing. Although the intention of the app’s creators wasn’t to spotlight the conflict between public land and private ownership, its maps inadvertently show how many public areas are surrounded by private property, creating landlocked pockets around the Western U.S. “The revelation that millions of acres of public lands aren’t really open to the public has increased tensions in several communities and resonated far beyond the audience for whom OnX was intended,” the Times reports. BEST OF SFGATE Local | 40 reasons not to leave San Francisco Food | Remembering the Bay Area suburbs' fanciest buffet: Fresh Choice … [Read more...] about Private landowners bar access to 500,000 acres of California public land

Donald Trump, as expected, announced on Tuesday night that he’ll run for president again in 2024, despite being twice impeached, castigated for fomenting the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, investigated for potential fraud at his family’s business and blamed for Republicans’ weak showing in last week’s midterm elections. But while the former president is counting on faithful Republicans to once again flock to him, he appears to be losing supporters — including deep-pocketed conservative donors who are instead looking for alternatives. Just this morning, Stephen A. Schwarzman of Blackstone , a longtime ally of Trump’s, told Axios that he would back someone from a “new generation” of Republicans. And the attendee list for Tuesday night’s announcement was telling: Loyalists like Roger Stone and Mike Lindell, the C.E.O. of MyPillow, were there, but few members of Congress made the trip. Mr. Trump outlined what a second term would look like. In his meandering 63-minute speech, he focused … [Read more...] about Big-Name Donors Are Moving On From Trump

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The job offer from a Chinese semiconductor company was appealing. A higher salary. Work trips to explore new technologies. No matter that it would be less prestigious for Kevin Li than his job in Taiwan at one of the world’s leading chip makers. Mr. Li eagerly moved to northeast China in 2018, taking part in a wave of corporate migration as the Chinese government moved aggressively to build up its semiconductor industry. He went back to Taiwan after two years, as Covid-19 swept through China and global tensions intensified. Other highly skilled Taiwanese engineers are going home, too. For many, the strict pandemic measures have been tiresome. Geopolitics has made the job even more fraught, with China increasingly vocal about staking its claim on Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy. The Taiwanese government has begun to discourage local engineers from going to China, concerned that they were taking proprietary information with them. “Some who went to … [Read more...] about Engineers From Taiwan Bolstered China’s Chip Industry. Now They’re Leaving.

President Obama’s political team is fanning out across the country in pursuit of an ambitious goal: raising $50 million to convert his re-election campaign into a powerhouse national advocacy network, a sum that would rank the new group as one of Washington’s biggest lobbying operations. But the rebooted campaign, known as Organizing for Action , has plunged the president and his aides into a campaign finance limbo with few clear rules, ample potential for influence-peddling, and no real precedent in national politics. In private meetings and phone calls, Mr. Obama’s aides have made clear that the new organization will rely heavily on a small number of deep-pocketed donors, not unlike the “super PACs” whose influence on political campaigns Mr. Obama once deplored. At least half of the group’s budget will come from a select group of donors who will each contribute or raise $500,000 or more, according to donors and strategists involved in the effort. Unlike a presidential … [Read more...] about Obama’s Backers Seek Big Donors to Press Agenda