Latest news with #MarkNelson
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Redwood Credit Union Birthday Bash Raises Over $31,000 for Youth Arts Programs
SANTA ROSA, Calif., June 17, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A shared birthday celebration raised over $31,000 to support music programs for youth in the North Bay. The third annual Birthday Benefit Bash, hosted by Brett Martinez, President and CEO of Redwood Credit Union (RCU), and Mark Nelson, lead singer of Walking Mirrors Music, brought together 250 guests at HopMonk Tavern in Sebastopol on Saturday, April 19. The sold-out event raised a total of $31,502, with all proceeds benefiting the Redwood Credit Union Community Fund (RCUCF). The funds will support three local nonprofits: Enriching Lives Through Music (ELM) "We're going to use the proceeds from RCU's Birthday Bash Fundraiser to support our Summer Music Program," said Andrea Lloyd, director of development for ELM. "It's a chamber music program where students come together to play without a conductor. They need to listen to each other, take turns leading, and work together. It's a great way for them to learn about collaboration, leadership, and other essential skills." Chop's Teen Club Music Program "We want to support our teens by having the right equipment, the right instruments, and professional recording tools they can use in the real world," said Melissa Stewart, executive director of the Chop's Teen Club. "It's an expensive program, so to have an infusion of money to ensure it stays here and has longevity is really important to us." Luther Burbank Center's Mariachi Ensemble "Our Mariachi Ensemble keeps growing, and so does the need for instructors, and uniforms," said Ashleigh Worley, director of education and community engagement for the Luther Burbank Center. "We plan to use the funds to make sure we have the staff to support this program and the crisp, beautiful traje de charro uniforms the students get to wear when they perform." "This was a fun and meaningful way for Mark and me to celebrate our birthdays while giving back to the community," said Martinez. "Thanks to the generosity of our supporters and the incredible work of these three organizations, we're helping to inspire the next generation of musicians and artists." Walking Mirrors is a rock band formed in 2019 by Nelson and guitarist/producer Craig Bartock (of the band Heart), that donates proceeds from all performances to local nonprofits. "Celebrating with my good friend Brett while supporting causes we care about is a true honor," said Nelson. "It's exactly what Walking Mirrors Music is all about—connecting with the community through live music." The RCU Community Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, channels 100% of donations directly into the community, supporting financial education, disaster relief, housing, and community wellness initiatives. Visit to learn more. About Redwood Credit Union Founded in 1950, Redwood Credit Union is a full-service, not-for-profit financial institution providing personal and business banking to consumers and businesses in the North Bay and San Francisco. With a mission to passionately serve the best interests of its members, team members, and communities, RCU delivers many ways for its members to save and build money through checking and savings accounts, auto and home loans, credit cards, digital banking, business services, commercial and SBA lending, and more. Wealth management and investment services are available through Redwood Wealth Management, and insurance and auto-purchasing services are also offered through RCU Services Group (RCU's wholly owned subsidiary). RCU has more than $9.3 billion in assets and serves more than 497,000 members with full-service branches from San Francisco to Ukiah. For more information, call 1 (800) 479-7928, visit or follow RCU on Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn for news and updates. View source version on Contacts FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT: Redwood Credit Union Public Relations Department(707) 576-5224 | (800) 479-7928, ext. 65224 | PR@ Hi-Res Photos Available Here Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
The Herald Scotland
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
BBC Scotland cuts coverage of Edinburgh's festivals
It will be staging only five days of events with ticketed audiences after deciding to share space with the Pleasance Courtyard and the EICC. Stand-up comedian Mark Nelson will also be returning with a festivals highlights programme, Edinburgh Unlocked, for the BBC Scotland channel. Read more: More than 100 shows have recorded or broadcast live across at least two weeks by the BBC since it started running its own pop-up venue during the summer festivals in 2011. The line-up had gradually expanded to include programmes for the UK radio network, the BBC Scotland TV channel and Radio Scotland, the iPlayer and the BBC Sounds platform. BBC Scotland is based at Pacific Quay in Glasgow. (Image: Newsquest) The BBC's pop-up venue drew thousands of ticket-holders to the visitor attraction Dynamic Earth every day during the 2023 and 2024 festivals. Special guests included singer-songwriters Kyle Falconer, Richard Jobson and Tom Robinson, authors Denise Mina, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid and Andrew O'Hagan, actors Brian Cox, Jack Docherty and Miriam Margolyes, comics Connor Burns, Frank Skinner and Susie McCabe, and theatre-makers Cora Bissett, Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair. The BBC's pop-up venue was previously set up in the grounds of George Heriot's School, and at sites at Potterrow and High School Yards. Stars who appeared in shows included comics Paul Merton, Nicholas Parsons, Tim Vine, Lucy Porter, Susan Calman and Russell Kane, writers Jackie Kay, Louise Welsh, Stig Abell and Alexander McCall Smith, and singer-songwriters Edwyn Collins and Rachel Sermanni. The cuts in coverage of the Edinburgh festivals, which have emerged a few months into the tenure of new BBC Scotland director Hayley Valentine. A spokesperson for the BBC said: "The BBC will return to the Edinburgh festivals with shows coming from the EICC and the Pleasance Courtyard between August 4 and 8. "Our coverage will include ticketed events for audiences to attend recordings and live broadcasts of BBC Radio Scotland and BBC Radio 4 shows. "Edinburgh Unlocked presented by Mark Nelson will also return to the BBC Scotland channel, giving audiences a backstage pass to all the best of the Fringe and the wider festivals. "We will also continue to provide special reports from the Edinburgh festivals across news tv, radio and online throughout August. "Details of our programming line-up will be announced in due course.' The scaling back of Edinburgh's festivals coverage has emerged following a number of recent controversies over the BBC's output in Scotland. There was anger last year over a shake-up in Radio Scotland's music programming and its impact on long-running specialist shows on jazz, classical music and piping. The BBC also came came under fire when it announced that its hour-long news programme The Nine would be scrapped just five years after its launch on a new BBC Scotland channel and replaced with a new early evening show, The Seven, which was launched in January. However fresh controversy erupted in March when the BBC announced that it would be bringing the long-running drama series River City to an end, with the budget for the show redirected towards three dramas. More than 12,000 supporters have backed a petition to save the show, while a politicians joined cast and crew to stage a protest outside the Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood. The BBC said the show, which has been on air since 2002 and is due to end in the autumn of 2026, was no longer offering "value for money." The BBC spokesperson added: "The BBC works within an increasingly competitive marketplace and tight budget constraints. "We have to make tough decisions to ensure we are delivering value for money which inevitably means evolving our offer accordingly whilst remaining committed to covering the Edinburgh festivals across all platforms."
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Woodbury County Board of Supervisors vote 4-0 on budget amendment
WOODBURY COUNTY, Iowa (KCAU) — The Woodbury County Board of Supervisors just approved a more than $3.1 million amendment to the current budget. Supervisors voted 4-0 on the amendment. Supervisor Mark Nelson was absent from Tuesday's meeting. Woodbury County Board of Supervisors approves FY 2026 budget Some of the biggest changes include: A decrease of $1.5 million in revenue for the county sheriff's office, due to the delay in the construction of the new LEC. An increase of $240 thousand to the supervisors' budget, because of the need for legal and accounting consultations. A nearly $31 thousand increase to the county conservation fund due to unexpected repairs because of flood damage. The in-depth amendment can be found on page 42 of the Woobury County Board of Supervisors meeting minutes. woodburycountmin5-27Download Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Russia Today
23-05-2025
- Business
- Russia Today
US firms explore reboot of Germany's nuclear plants
US companies have been assessing the feasibility and costs of restarting Germany's decommissioned nuclear power plants, Bild reported on Friday. The EU's largest economy has been struggling with soaring energy costs and a prolonged economic slowdown. Germany shut down its last three reactors in April 2023, following a post-Fukushima parliamentary decision to phase out atomic energy. However, with the country's industrial output under pressure, calls to reverse the policy have been gaining momentum. This week, politicians and nuclear energy advocates met in Berlin to discuss the feasibility of reactivating the country's mothballed plants. Among them was US nuclear engineer Mark Nelson, founder of Radiant Energy Group, who has been analyzing how quickly and affordably a nuclear restart could happen. 'There's no cheaper way to generate electricity anywhere in the world than with your fully paid-off nuclear plants,' Nelson told Bild. Backed by a consortium of investors, he believes that nine German reactors could be brought back online. Arguments that nuclear power is too expensive, he said, are based on flawed assumptions or are politically motivated. Nelson also argued that renewable energy alone remains insufficient. In Q1 2025, renewables accounted for just 47% of Germany's electricity consumption. Germany relied heavily on affordable Russian gas to power its industry before the Ukraine conflict, and ramped up electricity imports in 2023 after shutting down its last nuclear plants. With the EU aiming to end its reliance on Russian energy, Berlin now plans to spend €20 billion ($23 billion) on new gas-fired power stations to support moving away from coal and maintain supply stability. Moscow has repeatedly said it remains a reliable supplier and is open to restarting gas exports to Europe. However, Chancellor Friedrich Merz reportedly opposes any resumption of Russian gas purchases. Germany's energy crunch has taken a toll on its economy, now in its third straight year of recession. Nearly 200,000 companies shut down in 2024 – the highest figure since 2011, according to Creditreform. In April 2025, company insolvencies exceeded levels recorded during the 2008 financial crisis. Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), told Bild he expects 'a major nuclear comeback.' From an economic perspective, he said, Germany will need 'both storable renewables and nuclear energy.' Merz, a longtime critic of Germany's nuclear phaseout, has reportedly shown support for investing in small modular reactors and nuclear fusion technologies.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why GE Vernova's stock is power surging after just one year of existence
Storied General Electric doubled down on fossil fuels in the power sector a decade ago with its largest industrial acquisition ever, paying almost $11 billion for the French conglomerate Alstom's electric business to dramatically grow GE Power. GE made the purchase just months before the oil and gas sector crashed and the renewable energy sector began to take off. The deal was dubbed a boondoggle and the latest misstep in GE's many struggles. Even when GE decided to split into three parts in 2021, including spinning off its power and renewables business, the focus was on clean energy. The name GE Vernova loosely translates to 'new green,' meant to reflect a new and innovative low-carbon era. But the funny thing is that green company holds GE's massive gas-turbine manufacturing business. And, thus, the once ill-fated GE Power division has hit it big. After years of seemingly poor timing, GE Vernova struck the zeitgeist when it finally launched as a publicly traded standalone in April 2024. Since then, GE Vernova's shares have surged nearly 250%, including a massive 65% spike just since the beginning of April to new highs, up to a market cap of about $125 billion. Just a few years ago, electricity demand was essentially flat, so two factors dominated investment concerns in the mature power generation business: cost and climate impact, giving wind and solar potential advantages. Now, the world is suddenly changed with new data centers for artificial intelligence spurring the fastest growth in power demand in decades. The demand for gas turbines for power plants is booming and they cannot be built quickly enough. 'One of the pinnacle technologies underlying the modern world is the high-temperature, high-efficiency gas turbine, and only a few companies on Earth can make the highest efficiency turbines,' said Mark Nelson, the managing director of the consultancy Radiant Energy Group. 'GE Vernova is one of the few.' The company's combined backlog of orders for new gas turbines and maintenance services for its existing customers now totals $123 billion. GE Vernova reported first-quarter earnings of 91 cents per share from sales of $8 billion, easily beating Wall Street analysts' estimates of 45 cents on $7.6 billion. Highlighting the dramatic speed of its growth, GE Vernova posted a loss of $106 million, or 47 cents per share, at this point last year. 'Sitting here today, '26 and '27 are largely sold out, we are approaching filling out '28, and starting to sign agreements for later years,' GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik said on last month's earnings call. 'I give that context to just frame that I continue to see this market normalizing to a higher-for-longer gas market. The world needs more dispatchable power generation to support economic growth and national security.' GE Vernova declined Fortune's request to interview Strazik, but said: 'We are just getting started, and the best is yet to come.' Notably, the company said its backlog of orders for turbines and maintenance service grew by nearly $4.5 billion in three months. 'Rising electricity demand is good for anybody who produces power generation equipment, and GE is a leader both on the natural gas turbine side and also on the wind side,' said Brett Castelli, an equity analyst for the research firm Morningstar. Power demand looks set to grow for decades to come as the country transitions to using more and more electricity for manufacturing, vehicles, heating and cooling, he said. 'While electric vehicles are a 20-year thing, the biggest thing in the next five years is all these AI data centers,' Castelli said. 'That's why the stock has become so data center-centric.' The company's signature 7F heavy-duty gas turbine takes just 11 minutes to reach full capacity. The machine—essentially a giant jet engine—is designed with specially-cast blades made with single-crystal alloys and precisely punctured holes that allow turbines to reach temperatures that would typically melt metal, harnessing huge amounts of energy. Unlike the wind turbines from GE Vernova's weaker-performing renewables arm, the gas turbines take up relatively tiny amounts of land and can run virtually anytime regardless of the weather. And while GE Vernova is pinning hopes on building next-generation nuclear reactors in large numbers in the 2030s, gas power plants are constructed now in just a few years—still not quickly enough for demand forecasts. Just last week, and in conjunction with President Trump's Middle East visit, GE Vernova announced power generation and grid initiatives in Saudi Arabia worth up to $14.2 billion, primarily focused on gas-fired power. But those nuclear dreams show sparks as well. Earlier in May, Canadian regulators gave the company the green light to start construction of its first small modular reactors—essentially a smaller, modernized version of the large-scale boiling water reactors it once built in Japan and the United States—with Ontario's state power company. In the U.S., the Tennessee Valley Authority this week submitted the application to build the first American project using GE Vernova's BWRX-300 reactors. While Trump has sought to block new wind projects in federal waters and on public lands, Strazik says his company's two turbine divisions go hand-in-hand, with the gas turbines providing critical backup to wind turbines when the air is calm. 'Ultimately, gas is the force multiplier for more wind and solar to get built,' he said in an appearance on Jim Cramer's CNBC show last month. 'Without gas, you can't get to renewable penetration rates that the world is looking for.' This broader movement to build power generation—gas and renewables—is now defined by the same forces that underpinned the U.S. economy after the Second World War, including national security, Strazik said in the earnings call. 'To put today's investment super cycle into perspective in terms of energy needs and decarbonization, the scale of load growth we're seeing in North America is the most significant since the post-World War II industrial build-out,' he said. 'But, unlike then, the growth is global.' This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
