This week Norway hosted 150 partners and 10,000 attendees across 50 events in Oslo, the country’s technology and startup epicenter. The event attracted entrepreneurs and innovators from around the globe, including the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama.
Former US President Barack Obama may have left the oval office two years ago, but he feels that he has business left unfinished. And right at the top of that list is the issue of environmental sustainability and climate change.
Former President Barack Obama on Wednesday laid out his vision before the Oslo Business Forum in Norway for tackling climate change if he were once again in the White House, while criticizing the administration’s environmental policy. “Unfortunately we have a U.S administration that deals differently around these issues,” he said to laughter from the audience as he addressed business leaders in the Norwegian capital, Oslo. Obama said that If I was president for one more day I would focus more on sustainability and environment.
INTERVIEWER: First of all, what everyone is curious about, if you were president once more for a day, what would you have done and why?
OBAMA: You know, the truth is if I would president for a day I would do much because the nature of the U.S. presidency, although it is obviously is an extraordinarily powerful position, you stand atop a big ocean line. Steering that ship takes a lot of people and a long time, even if there is a move of a few degrees. So, in one day, I would say hello to all the staff at the White House that I miss. But, obviously, if I had a longer stretch of time, there was a lot of unfinished business when I left. That’s the nature of democracy, you take the baton from the person behind you and you run your race, then you have pass it on and you haven’t done everything you would like to do. The single highest priority that I see globally is the issue of environmental sustainability and climate change.
Obviously, Paris Accords were an important step in the right direction, but it was only a first step and so much more work needs to be done. The good news is technology is accelerating faster than we might have expected, and I’m confident that if we’re able to create an effective ridge over, let’s say over the course of 25-30 years with more efficiency and deployment of existing technology, that we could get to a point were new technologies take us where we need to go. But, that requires a level of political and social commitment on the part of all of us: businesses, the non-profit sector, each of us individuals, that right now is not forthcoming. Unfortunately, we have a U.S administration that deals differently around these issues.
In a wide-ranging talk, Obama outlined the need for a higher global focus on the environment, greater diversity in business, and the need for technology to solve global problems.
Obama praised many young businesses for being aware that they must be thinking globally. He then told an anecdote that he’s always learning things from his children and that older generations can be stubborn to embrace change.
“To all the young people here, old people don’t give up what they have.” boldly stated Obama. “At some point you’ll have to take it. It’s not just true in business or in politics, it’s true in life.” He urged the audience to make fostering young talent a priority.
“If you are a business leader or entrepreneur my age, if you are not cultivating young talent, your organization will fail. The single most important thing for you to do is to identify and empower and nurture that next generation. One thing I was very proud of in the White House was at the very pinnacle of power [and] making decisions that had impact on billions of people [is that] I had a couple of 30-something year olds who were our key policy makers.” When making hiring decisions, hiring a wide range of age groups will encourage differing viewpoints. Having this diversity can help your team solve problems through a broader lens.
Expressing frustrations with US business organizations he explained that “They are very interested in cutting their own taxes. They are very interested in reducing regulatory constraints on their operations. They are less interested in exerting influence to make sure that the society is operating in a more just option.” He then advised that this in turn “will be bad for business.”
Obama encouraged the audience to think about your company policies and actions from the perspectives of not those not only in close proximity but also around the globe. He urged business to “pay attention outside of the four corners of their balance sheet.” Insinuating that oftentimes brands are concerned with just their bottom line, he then explained that if we all are concerned with the well being with others, it will make the world economy a better place for business.
“The single thing I do know: Humans are the same wherever you go. People are people. With hope, dreams and aspirations. With that as a foundation, we can solve any challenge in this world” he said.
Obama said Norway was a country that used “political and social” levers to achieve social democratic goals. He also praised Norway for its focus on gender equality — it’s one of very few countries that has legislated on women in the boardroom, requiring 40 percent of non-executive board members to be female.
«Norway is small, but very effective. We should put the Norwegians in the lead of everything» “Companies with a critical mass of women in leadership perform better, are more profitable, have higher stock valuations. If you are on the board of a company and you look around and it is all a bunch of men, you have got a problem. You are not well organized to succeed,” he said.
“I think that globalisation and global capital combined with technology in some ways have stitched the entire world together — you have this global supply chain. I can order goods on the other side of the world and have it here in two days. [Globalisation] is drawing upon the talents, skills, culture around the world,” said Obama.
“If you have a unique skill, talent, or algorithm, you now have access to an entire global market. You can amass an extraordinary wealth very quickly,” he said.
“If you don’t have a special skill or talent, a lot of your work is being replaced. So what you have is in advanced countries an increasing number of people who feel that the economy has left them behind, and that their social and economic status is declining, [which] breeds resentment and fear and feeds the political trends that we are seeing now.”
“If you only have people like yourself at the board meeting – you don’t need a meeting, says Barack Obama at the Oslo forum conference”. He added that in a U.S that was undergoing rapid demographic changes, companies that failed to recruit Americans who’re Asian and Latin American in origin were doomed to fail in the long term.
“This is not charity or social policy,” he said. “This is a matter for your business success.”
Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States. His story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.
With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. He was raised with help from his grandfather, who served in Patton’s army, and his grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management at a bank.
After working his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, President Obama moved to Chicago, where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants.
He went on to attend law school, where he became the first African—American president of the Harvard Law Review. Upon graduation, he returned to Chicago to help lead a voter registration drive, teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and remain active in his community.
He was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009. He and his wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia and Sasha.
To express the gratitude on part of the city of Skopje and its citizens, for the help that the Norwegian diplomat has provided after the catastrophic earthquake in Skopje in 1963, the street that links the City Park, the main stadium and the bank of river Vardar will be named as “Stoltenberg Street.”
The city of Oslo busy Oslo Innovation Week, one of Europe’s premier technology start-up-investor events including Greenpeace , 2018 highlights of European Green Capital 2019, many more 53 different business events getting started September 24th.
Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide is open for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to be invited to the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Finnmark next year.
Norway is enjoying the latest instalment in what has been dubbed the world’s most-boring television.
Norway’s internal security service continued to assess that Islamist terrorism remains the primary terrorism threat to Norway, although officials expressed concerns about increasing violent right wing threats. A small but outspoken group of Islamist extremists in and around Oslo remained active, although they did not conduct any attacks. In 2017, authorities convicted several Norwegians for supporting or aiding ISIS. The flow of Norwegian citizens or residents who traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight on behalf of ISIS continued to decrease in 2017. Since the April arrest of the leader of an Islamist extremist group, no known individual has left Norway to join ISIS. Police Security Service (PST) officials continued to assess publicly that approximately 100 individuals have traveled as foreign terrorist fighters in total. Norway and the United States maintained good collaboration on counterterrorism.
The Land of Fjords (as Norway is known) delights us with truly magical, colorful sceneries, mainly thanks to the narrow and deep inlets of water flanked by steep cliffs.
The Kongsberg Group has entered into a new framework contract for remote-controlled weapons stations with the US Army. The contract is worth NOK 4.1 billion.
Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund wants companies in which it invests to follow stricter guidelines on global sustainability and strengthen efforts to combat plastic pollution of the oceans, it said on Wednesday.
Relations between the UAE and Norway have witnessed significant growth over the past decades, and the value of trade between the two countries reached some AED2.3 billion (US$640 million) in 2017, compared to AED1.2 billion in 2016.
The Norwegian government has come under fire from pro-migrant groups after announcing it would be removing refugee status from some 1,600 Somalians and sending them back to Somalia, noting the situation in the country had improved.
“There have been a number of serious terrorist attacks in recent years. They have focused in particular on non-Western targets, not least against police and military, but also against, for example, schools and religious places… Terrorist attacks are taking place in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), in the tribulations against the border with Afghanistan (FATA) and in Balochistan. Terrorist attacks are taking place in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), in the tribulations against the border with Afghanistan (FATA) and in Balochistan. Attacks could take place against security authorities, religious gatherings and places visited by westerners. Western targets, especially with American interests, are exposed to an increased risk,” the Danish foreign ministry warned.
Denmark has conveyed to Pakistan that the travel advisory was made in unison with the rest of the Nordic countries.
An Indian Navy warship of the Western Naval Command patrolling the Gulf of Aden rushed to the help of a Norwegian vessel after its all-Indian crew sent a distress call on August 25.
‘I am concerned that the situation for UNRWA, which is already critical, will deteriorate further as a result of President Trump’s decision to end all funding to the organisation,’ said Minister of Foreign Affairs Ine Eriksen Søreide.
“We are honored to welcome President Barack Obama to Norway,” says founder and CEO of Oslo Business Forum, Christoffer Omberg. The former President of the United States will travel to Oslo to speak to Norwegian businesses.
The first music star in history. The inventor of rap. The first to compose a music on a single note. But above all, a Gioachino Rossini as we had never heard, through the audacious and surprising piano version of Mario Mariani: The Rossini Variations. A reinterpretation, or rather a rewriting, of Rossini’s most famous music, interpreted by Mariani’s creative piano, which will be released on September 5th 2018. From the famous composer from Pesaro to his original fellow citizen, who has always worked according to the motto “another piano is possible”. Mariani declares: «I always hope for another way of understanding my instrument. The work on Rossini has suggested to me, having in some way to reconstruct a music born to be performed by an orchestra, the use of extended piano techniques intended both sonic and performative, since the sound necessity also produces a gesture that becomes “theatrical”. For example, in the incipit of La Gazza Ladra I play the snare with my beloved Ikea milkfrother, or use the chinese balls to make the bending on the strings, imitating the sound of the cat in the famous “Duetto Buffo” that here, with a “spaghetti western” connotation becomes a “Duello buffo di due gatti” (funny duel of two cats).
The Rossini Variations is the fourth solo piano album by Mario Mariani, a unique figure of its kind. Showman and shaman, unpredictable performer and creative interpreter who has always dealt with the piano as an instrument of knowledge and dialogue with the audience, the composer and pianist from Pesaro has distinguished himself in the international scene for his style using in his performances a wide variety of piano extended techniques, many of them of his own invention. The Rossini Variations is released a year after the The Soundtrack Variations (dedicated to cinema) and presents a captivating path, which combines respect for the Rossini figure and a whimsical, ironic but never excessive interpretation. “For years now and then I performed some paraphrases and variations on Rossini overtures and the probably the triggering event that led me to this perhaps was the repair of my beloved Steinway of 1906 (on which I later recorded Rossini Variations) making me, after years of radical experiments, feeling again the desire to play classical music. Although in “my way”… The preference initially went to the most popular pieces, so as to allow the audience to appreciate the particular sounds and variations, with the addition of some “musicological” gems like the one-note-only version of Mi lagnerò tacendo (I will complain silently) on the text of Metastasio and the Variations on La Petite Messe Solennelle that allowed me a musical excursion from John Dowland to the Addams Family, making the verse also to that “piano minimalism” that is so fashionable today and that I prefer to call “minimism”, which I’m not a big fan “.
The Rossini Variations is released on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Rossini’s death (1868-2018) with remakes, variations and improvisations of the most famous pieces including the overtures of Gazza Ladra, William Tell and L’Italiana in Algeri, the Largo al Factotum, the “Duetto funny of two cats “and the famous Tarantella. The transcriptions by Mariani are flanked by polystylistic variations with moments of improvisational nature, to make the sparkling Rossinian spirit that, to use Stendhal’s words, “takes away all the sad emotions from the soul”. Mariani again: «When I speak of an “anti-pianistic” Rossini, I refer to the difficulty of transcribing a music originally written for orchestra, an operation made even more difficult by the sparkling Rossini spirit, full of ribattuto (playing the same note fastly for many times) that is one of the most difficult piano technique issues. Rossini himself was “pleased” of the performance difficulty of his music especially on the piano, particularly in the transcriptions. And it is said that when Liszt presented him with a transcription, however excellent, it should be the William Tell, Rossini felt a little bit disappointed” … ».
Graduated in piano at the Conservatory of Music G. Rossini, Mario Mariani is known for his long career as a composer and pianist, present in many Italian and international festivals thanks to a recognizable and eclectic piano approach. In his figure, as shown by the work for the cinema, the albums, the artistic residences and the “site specific” operations, the composer, the performer and the performer merge. The Rossini Variations is his fourth solo piano record, after Utopiano (2010), Elementalea (2012) and The Soundtrack Variations (2017). The Rossini Variations is a highly representative work of the eclectic temperament of Mario Mariani: “For me it is all part of a unique in which the figures of composer, interpretation and improviser, as it was in the past, used to belong to a single musician, merge. In addition to these figures, purely musical, I always thought of myself as a performer or rather a “piano artist” since this term can include much more. Many call me “showman” because they see me interacting with the audience with irony and – I believe – empathy. My great curiosity leads me to document and study many different disciplines and gather them in my center that is precisely the musical one and if I had to define my approach to music, but also to life, I would say that is a mixture between a Renaissance man and a hacker ».
Trade exchange between the UAE and Norway reached around $639.9 million in 2017, compared to $326.7 million in 2016, a media report said.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Ine Eriksen Søreide announced this contribution in Berlin at the high-level conference on the crisis in the Lake Chad region, which Norway is co-hosting with Germany, Nigeria and the UN. The conference (Oslo II) is a follow-up of the humanitarian high-level conference on Nigeria and the Lake Chad region that was held in Oslo in 2017.