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US stocks take a breather, Asian bourses rise in post-Christmas tradeRichard Parsons, who helped Time Warner divorce from AOL after what was considered one of the worst takeovers in history, has died. He was 76. His death was confirmed by Lazard , where he was a longtime board member. Parsons became CEO of AOL Time Warner in 2002, replacing Gerald Levin, who stepped aside two years after the media giant’s disastrous $165 billion merger with the upstart internet company. As CEO and later chairman, he led Time Warner’s turnaround, dropping “AOL” from the corporation’s name and shrinking the company’s $30 billion in debt to $16.8 billion by selling Warner Music and other properties. “The merger did not work out quite the way many of us expected. The internet bubble burst and we had to fix the leaks,” Parsons told The Independent in 2004. “It was not as monumental a task as many people thought, as the fundamental businesses of the old Time Warner — like publishing, the cable networks and movies — was running well.” He said that after the merger, AOL’s business had collapsed and Warner Music Group was declining, along with the entire music industry. “So we sold our music business, as well as other nonstrategic assets, to strengthen our balance sheet and put in new management.” Parsons stepped down from Time Warner in 2007. The Rockefeller connection Richard Dean “Dick” Parsons was born into a working-class family on April 4, 1948, in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant section and grew up in South Ozone Park in Queens, New York. He was a middle child among five siblings. He attended public school, skipping two grades, and at age 16, the 6-foot-4 Parsons enrolled at the University of Hawaii, where he played basketball and met his future wife, Laura Ann Bush, whom he married in 1968. After graduation, he returned to New York state to attend Albany Law School, moonlighting as a part-time janitor to help pay his tuition and finishing at the top of his class. During an internship at the New York state legislature, he developed ties to moderate Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who became vice president under Gerald Ford in 1974 in the wake of President Richard Nixon’s resignation. Parsons became associate director of President Ford’s domestic policy council. “The old-boy network lives,” Parsons told The New York Times in a 1994 interview. “I didn’t grow up with any of the old boys. I didn’t go to school with any of the old boys. But by becoming a part of that Rockefeller entourage, that created for me a group of people who’ve looked out for me ever since.” After Ford’s defeat by Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election, Parsons returned to New York and joined the law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler in 1977, as did his friend Rudy Giuliani. Parsons and his wife and three children moved to Rockefeller country, Briarcliff Manor in Westchester County. Coincidentally, his maternal grandfather had been a groundskeeper on John D. Rockefeller’s nearby estate, Kykuit. Parson’s clients included Rockefeller’s widow, Happy, and the Dime Savings Bank of New York. In 1988, he accepted an offer to head Dime Bancorp, which had been struggling through the savings & loan crisis after aggressively approving high-risk mortgages as housing prices crashed. In 1989, it posted a $92.3 million loss. By the end of 1993, after ordering massive layoffs, Parsons helped the bank complete a $300 million recapitalization. In 1995, he helped engineer Dime’s merger with Anchor Savings, creating one of the nation’s largest thrift institutions. Parsons joined the Time Warner board on the recommendation of Rockefeller’s brother Laurance. He became president of Time Warner in 1995. As a Rockefeller Republican, Parsons considered himself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. Parsons worked for Giuliani’s campaign for New York mayor but kept a behind-the-scenes profile. ′′I didn’t want to be positioned as the Mayor’s Black guy,′′ he told the Times a few years later. Giuliani put him in charge of the mayoral transition team in 1993 but Parsons turned down an offer to become deputy mayor for fiscal affairs. His relationship with Giuliani later soured after the mayor tried to pressure Time Warner Cable to carry the then-fledgling Fox News Channel in New York. Two years after stepping down from Time Warner, Parsons became chairman of Citigroup in 2009, helping to stabilize the banking giant in the wake of the financial crisis. In May 2014, he was named interim CEO of the Los Angeles Clippers after the NBA banned owner Donald Sterling for life because he had made racist remarks. “Like most Americans, I have been deeply troubled by the pain the Clippers’ team, fans and partners have endured,” Parsons said. Parsons played down race as a factor of his success. “For a lot of people, race is a defining issue. It just isn’t for me,” he told the Times in 1997. “It is ... like air. It’s like height. I have other things that I’m focused on.′′ He later came out of retirement to briefly serve as CBS chairman in the wake of Les Moonves ’ ouster following sexual harassment and assault allegations during the #MeToo movement. After only a month as CBS’ interim chairman, Parsons stepped down suddenly in October 2018, citing health concerns. “When I agreed to join the board and serve as the interim chair, I was already dealing with a serious health challenge — multiple myeloma — but I felt that the situation was manageable,” Parsons said in a CBS statement announcing he had been replaced by Strauss Zelnick. “Unfortunately, unanticipated complications have created additional new challenges, and my doctors have advised that cutting back on my current commitments is essential to my overall recovery.” Parsons was active in many charities, including playing leading roles for the Jazz Foundation of America, the Apollo Theater Foundation and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. During his years on the Apollo Theater board, he helped the historic Harlem entertainment venue raise nearly $100 million. Parsons and his wife also donated 40 works of art to the American Folk Art Museum in July 2021 to help celebrate its 60th anniversary.
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BISMARCK — Oil and gas production in North Dakota showed varied results in October 2024, according to the latest report from the North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC). Statewide oil production increased by 1.5% to 36.52 million barrels (BBLS), while natural gas production experienced a slight decline, totaling 105.97 million thousand cubic feet (MCF). McKenzie County led the state in production, contributing over 11.34 million BBLS of oil and 49.46 million MCF of gas. This accounted for approximately 31% of North Dakota’s total oil production and 47% of its gas output. Compared to September, oil production in McKenzie County dropped by 2.7%, while gas production remained largely unchanged. ADVERTISEMENT In Divide County, oil output surged by 42.2%, reaching nearly 991,000 BBLS, while gas production rose by 19.9% to 1.26 million MCF. This marked one of the most significant month-to-month increases among the counties. Dunn County, the state’s second-largest oil-producing county, reported stable oil production at 8.47 million BBLS. However, gas production in Dunn County fell by 7.6%, with a total output of 15.25 million MCF. Bottineau County recorded a 3% increase in oil production, rising to 121,204 BBLS in October. Burke County saw a 1.8% increase in oil production, producing 241,481 BBLS. Gas production also grew to 586,604 MCF. Stark County’s gas production dropped by 6.7%, totaling 390,748 MCF. Wells and Activity Levels The number of wells capable of production in North Dakota rose to 21,632 in October, compared to 19,334 in September. This growth in active wells underscores continued investment and operational activity in the state’s oil and gas sector. Key counties such as McKenzie, Williams and Mountrail reported significant shares of these producing wells. The oil and gas industry remains a cornerstone of North Dakota’s economy, supporting nearly 50,000 jobs and accounting for over 51% of the state’s tax revenues in recent fiscal years, according to the North Dakota Petroleum Council (NDPC). According to a report by the NDPC, advancements in technology, such as three-mile lateral wells, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and the integration of AI and real-time analytics, are helping producers maximize efficiency while reducing environmental impact. These innovations, they assert, have enabled the industry to explore and produce oil more cleanly and efficiently, using techniques like CO2 injection to extend the productive life of wells and advanced drilling technologies to reduce the number of wells required for development. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Bakken Formation holds up to 3.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil, while industry experts suggest the potential could reach as high as seven to ten billion barrels. ADVERTISEMENT Last year, the October 2023 report indicated that the state set a record with 18,619 producing wells, averaging 1.245 million barrels of oil per day. For detailed production statistics , the October 2024 Oil and Gas Production Report can be accessed through the NDIC’s official website.President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele shared a photo of the country’s Bitcoin cryptocurrency portfolio on Thursday, showing that the country has over $573 million worth of bitcoin and a 113.84 percent profit as a result of the cryptocurrency’s recent surge in value. Bitcoin is experiencing a record-breaking surge in value in the days following the U.S. presidential election, where President-elect Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris. On Thursday, Bitcoin rose above $98,000 for the first time in its history and remains hovering around that value at press time. In addition to the fight against El Salvador’s violent criminal gangs, the adoption of the bitcoin cryptocurrency is a core policy of the Bukele government. In 2021, El Salvador officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender, becoming the first country to do so. Bitcoin joined the United States dollar as one of the country’s two official currencies. El Salvador began purchasing bitcoin when the value of the cryptocurrency hovered around $52,600. Using his Instagram account’s story feature, Bukele published a picture of the country’s bitcoin portfolio on Thursday. The information in the photo indicated that the country made a 113.84-percent profit from its bitcoin reserves from the ongoing surge, with an unrealized profit of $305 million and a current balance of $573.25 million. Posts made on Instagram’s story feature are automatically set to expire after 24 hours. According to the information in the image, El Salvador invested $268 million worth of Bitcoin. Instagram Screencap/@NayibBukele Bukele accompanied the screenshot of the portfolio information with another story post of the “Chill Guy” meme , edited to resemble him. Instagram Screencap/@NayibBukele He also shared the original image on his Twitter account. On Thursday, several cryptocurrency news outlets reported that a cryptocurrency bearing the “Chill Guy” meme imagery and name was “pumped” in value after Bukele shared the meme on Twitter, leading to a 65-percent surge in the value of the “memecoin” in 90 minutes. Since then, Phillip Banks, the artist who drew the original “Chill Guy” dog meme image in 2023, announced that he would take legal action against individuals or groups using the meme for cryptocurrency or other profit-related purposes. At press time, a public tracer known as the “Nayib Bukele Portfolio Tracker” estimated the country’s total Bitcoin holdings at roughly $556 million. In March, Bukele announced that some $400 million worth of El Salvador’s Bitcoin holdings had been stored in a “cold wallet” and safely secured in a physical vault inside the country. A “cold wallet” is a device completely disconnected from the internet, which prevents any possible hacking attack or intrusions that could lead to a potential loss of assets. As all bitcoins exist within their online blockchain, the “cold wallet” does not store the cryptocurrency itself — but rather, it contains the means to access the account’s assets. Bukele’s bitcoin policies have been widely criticized by international organizations over the past year, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which urged the Salvadoran president to revoke Bitcoin’s legal tender status in 2022 as it could “destabilize the nation’s economy.” Last week, Bukele bragged, declaring “I told you so” when El Salvador’s unrealized bitcoin profit passed the $100 million threshold. Throughout his presidential campaign , President-elect Trump vowed that this upcoming administration would adopt policies in favor of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here .
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Michigan defensive tackle Kenneth Grant declared for the 2025 NFL Draft on Thursday after three seasons with the Wolverines. The 6-foot-3, 339-pound junior was a third-team All-American and a second-team All-Big Ten selection this season. He had three sacks among his 32 total tackles over 12 games in 2024. As a sophomore, Grant helped the Wolverines claim the national championship with 29 tackles and 3 1/2 sacks in 15 games. "I am very appreciative to Coach (Jim) Harbaugh and coach (Sherrone) Moore and the rest of the University of Michigan staff that I have crossed paths with," Grant posted on social media. "It has been an honor to be developed into a Michigan Man." Other Michigan players who intend to leave the program for the draft include defensive lineman Mason Graham, cornerback Will Johnson and tight end Colston Loveland. --Field Level MediaStep into the action for Monday Night Football with the latest FanDuel promo code offer. 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Call 1-800-Gambler.WASHINGTON — A lead organization monitoring for food crises around the world withdrew a new report this week warning of imminent famine in north Gaza under what it called Israel’s “near-total blockade,” after the United States asked for its retraction, U.S. officials told the Associated Press. The move came after the U.S. ambassador to Israel publicly criticized the report. The rare public dispute drew accusations from prominent aid and human-rights figures that the work of the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning System Network, meant to reflect the data-driven analysis of unbiased international experts, has been tainted by politics. A declaration of famine would be a great embarrassment for Israel, which has insisted that its 15-month war in Gaza is aimed against the militant group Hamas and not against its civilian population. U.S. Ambassador Jacob Lew this week called the warning by the internationally recognized group inaccurate and “irresponsible.” Lew and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funds the monitoring group, both said the findings failed to properly account for rapidly changing circumstances in north Gaza. Humanitarian and human rights officials expressed fear of U.S. political interference in the world’s monitoring system for famines. The U.S. Embassy in Israel and the State Department declined to comment. Officials at the warning network did not respond to questions. “We work day and night with the U.N. and our Israeli partners to meet humanitarian needs — which are great — and relying on inaccurate data is irresponsible,” Lew said Tuesday. USAID confirmed to the AP that it had asked the famine-monitoring organization to withdraw its stepped-up warning issued in a report dated Monday. The report did not appear among the top updates on the group’s website Thursday, but the link to it remained active. The dispute points in part to the difficulty of assessing the extent of starvation in largely isolated northern Gaza. Thousands in recent weeks have fled an intensified Israeli military crackdown that aid groups say has allowed delivery of only a dozen trucks of food and water since roughly October. The warning network said in its withdrawn report that unless Israel changes its policy, it expects the number of people dying of starvation and related ailments in north Gaza to reach between two and 15 per day sometime between January and March. The internationally recognized mortality threshold for famine is two or more deaths a day per 10,000 people. The warning network was created by the U.S. development agency in the 1980s and is still funded by it. But it is intended to provide independent, neutral and data-driven assessments of hunger crises, including in war zones. Its findings help guide decisions on aid by the U.S. and other governments and agencies around the world. A spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Oren Marmorstein, welcomed the U.S. ambassador’s public challenge of the famine warning. “FEWS NET - Stop spreading these lies!” Marmorstein posted on X . In challenging the findings publicly, the U.S. ambassador “leveraged his political power to undermine the work of this expert agency,” said Scott Paul, a senior manager at Oxfam America, a humanitarian nonprofit. Paul stressed that he was not weighing in on the accuracy of the data or methodology of the report. “The whole point of creating FEWS is to have a group of experts make assessments about imminent famine that are untainted by political considerations,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and now a visiting professor in international affairs at Princeton University. “It sure looks like USAID is allowing political considerations — the Biden administration’s worry about funding Israel’s starvation strategy — to interfere.” Israel says it has been operating in recent months against Hamas militants still active in northern Gaza. It says the vast majority of the area’s residents have fled and relocated to Gaza City, where most aid destined for the north is delivered. But some critics, including a former defense minister, have accused Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza’s far north, near the Israeli border. North Gaza has been one of the areas hardest-hit by fighting and Israel’s restrictions on aid throughout its war with Hamas militants. Global famine monitors and United Nations and U.S. officials have warned repeatedly of the imminent risk of malnutrition and deaths from starvation reaching famine levels. International officials say Israel in the summer increased the amount of aid it was allowing into Gaza, under U.S. pressure. The U.S. and U.N. have said Gaza’s people as a whole need between 350 and 500 trucks a day of food and other vital needs. But the U.N. and aid groups say Israel recently has again blocked almost all aid to that part of Gaza. Cindy McCain, the American head of the U.N. World Food Program, called this month for political pressure to get food flowing to Palestinians there. Israel says that it places no restrictions on aid entering Gaza and that hundreds of truckloads of goods are piled up at the teorritory’s crossings, and accused international aid agencies of failing to deliver the supplies. The U.N. and other aid groups say Israeli restrictions, ongoing combat, looting and insufficient security by Israeli troops make it impossible to deliver aid effectively. Lew, the U.S. ambassador, said the famine warning was based on “outdated and inaccurate” data. He pointed to uncertainty over how many of the 65,000 to 75,000 people remaining in northern Gaza had fled in recent weeks, saying that skewed the findings. The warning network said in its report that its famine assessment holds even if as few as 10,000 people remain. USAID in its statement to AP said it had reviewed the report before it became public, and noted “discrepancies” in population estimates and some other data. The U.S. agency said it had asked the famine warning group to address those uncertainties and be clear in its final report to reflect how those uncertainties affected its predictions of famine. “This was relayed before Ambassador Lew’s statement,” USAID said in a statement. “FEWS NET did not resolve any of these concerns and published in spite of these technical comments and a request for substantive engagement before publication. As such, USAID asked to retract the report.” Roth criticized the U.S. challenge of the report, given the gravity of the crisis there. “This quibbling over the number of people desperate for food seems a politicized diversion from the fact that the Israeli government is blocking virtually all food from getting in,” he said, adding that “the Biden administration seems to be closing its eyes to that reality, but putting its head in the sand won’t feed anyone.” The U.S., Israel’s main backer, provided a record amount of military support in the first year of the war. At the same time, the Biden administration repeatedly urged Israel to allow more access to aid deliveries in Gaza overall, and warned that failing to do so could trigger U.S. restrictions on military support. The administration recently said Israel was making improvements and declined to carry out its threat of restrictions. Military support for Israel’s war in Gaza is politically charged in the U.S., with Republicans and some Democrats staunchly opposed to any effort to limit U.S. support over the suffering of Palestinian civilians trapped in the conflict. The Biden administration’s reluctance to do more to press Israel for improved treatment of civilians undercut support for Democrats in last month’s elections. Knickmeyer writes for the Associated Press. Sam Mednick and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Luxury Cart Set To Create A One-Stop Destination For Pre-Owned Luxury Cars With The Launch Of A New Showroom In Gurgaon"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum." Section 1.10.32 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum", written by Cicero in 45 BC "Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?" 1914 translation by H. Rackham "But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?" 1914 translation by H. Rackham "But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?" To keep reading, please log in to your account, create a free account, or simply fill out the form below.
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