Daily Business Report: Wednesday, October 1, 2025
Influential lawyer Frederick Schenk ready to pass baton as 22nd DAA Board chair
By Tristan Hallman | Del Mar Fairgrounds
After two consequential years as chair of the distinguished 22nd District Agricultural Association Board of Directors, Frederick Schenk will officially turn over the reins to new Chair Sam Nejabat on Wednesday.
Schenk — a longtime fixture on the Board who has now served two stints as Board chair — will remain on the Board of the 22nd DAA, the self-sustaining state institution that produces the annual San Diego County Fair and owns and operates the Del Mar Fairgrounds.
“During the past two years, we have worked to ensure the 22nd DAA remains on the path for success in the present and in the years ahead,” said Schenk, an influential litigator and civic leader in San Diego.
Mojave Desert Solar Plant Once Hailed as a Marvel Will Close as a Glowing Relic
By Beige Luciano-Adams| The Epoch Times
It is a familiar sight for revelers traveling Interstate 15 from Southern California to Las Vegas: In the final stretches of the Californian Mojave Desert, just before the Nevada border, there is little else interrupting the vast, Martian expanse aside from a near-abandoned border town and this glittering relic of California’s renewable energy boom.
A little more than a decade ago, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System opened to great fanfare, with a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)—part of the Obama administration’s push to install green energy production on public lands—and a promise to help California meet its increasingly ambitious decarbonization goals.
At the time, it was the world’s largest solar plant, its nearly 4,000 acres covered in a blinding array of high-tech mirrors, arranged in supplication around three 450-foot towers. It nearly doubled the amount of solar thermal energy then produced in the United States, according to the DOE.
By Viasat
Space42 (ADX: SPACE42), the UAE-based AI-powered SpaceTech company, and Viasat, Inc. (NASDAQ: VSAT), a global leader in satellite and secure communications, today announced they intend to form Equatys, a jointly held entity, to enable global Direct-to-Device (D2D) services and evolving existing and planned Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) to a 5G network environment.
Equatys is expected to unite satellite and terrestrial networks leveraging a 3GPP Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) Release compliant platform accessible to standard smartphones and IoT devices, extending service to billions of people and devices worldwide. Anticipated to be capable of supporting well over 100 MHz of harmonized MSS spectrum already allocated across more than 160 markets, the venture is expected to establish a foundation for reliable global communications with commercial rollout targeted within 3 years.
Karim Sabbagh, Managing Director Space42 and Ali Al Hashemi, CEO Space Services Space 42, co-said, “Equatys will achieve what the satellite industry has pursued for decades: combining the scale of terrestrial networks with the efficiency of space. The promise of universal connectivity is now becoming a reality. Backed by global spectrum, proven technology, and strong partners, Equatys represents infrastructure built to power societies and transform economies worldwide.”
