Murdoch family launches a new Fox; former House Speaker Paul Ryan joins company’s board

Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox has spun off various television assets — including the Fox News Channel and Fox broadcast network — to form a new company that will be known simply as Fox Corp. The spinoff completed early Tuesday is part of a multi-pronged process that will culminate with the $71.3-billion sale of the rest of Murdoch’s entertainment company to Walt Disney Co. The company announced that it had finished the process of issuing shares in the new Fox Corp. to investors of 21st Century Fox. Fox announced its board members, including former U.S. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). Other board members include Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch, Anne Dias, Chase Carey, Roland A. Hernandez and Jacques Nasser. The new Fox is now “a standalone, publicly traded company,” the company said. Its shares are listed on the Nasdaq market; Tuesday marks the first day of trading.

The 88-year-old mogul from Australia and his family decided in late 2017 to break up their entertainment empire, and Disney was Murdoch’s preferred suitor. The Disney portion of the deal is expected to be complete late Tuesday night when the Burbank entertainment giant swallows the bulk of the Fox assets. The new incarnation of Fox is a slimmer version of the old Fox.

Its assets include Fox News Channel; Fox Business Network; two national Fox Sports channels, FS1 and FS2; the Fox Broadcasting network; and Fox’s chain of television stations, including KTTV Channel 11 and KCOP Channel 13 in Los Angeles. Fox also is holding onto the historic studio lot on Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles, where the mogul’s oldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, 47, is based. Lachlan Murdoch will run the new Fox company as its chairman and chief executive. The Murdoch family will control the company through its ownership of voting shares.

The spinoff comes amid high anxiety on the Fox lot in Los Angeles because of the anticipation that more than 3,000 jobs will eventually be eliminated as part of Disney’s consolidation of the remaining Fox assets, two people familiar with the matter said. Most of the affected positions are in Los Angeles. Fox alerted the employees whom it planned to retain in December. Disney has already identified key executives who will make the switch but must still decide in the coming days and months who will be integrated into the expanded company. Disney is buying the 20th Century Fox movie and television studios with their rich vault of titles, including “Modern Family,” “The Simpsons,” “Avatar” and “Deadpool.” The goal is to ramp up a programming pipeline for a new streaming service, called Disney+, that the company plans to launch later this year.

Other Fox assets going to Disney include the FX and National Geographic channels, international television assets, including Star India, and Fox’s 30% stake in streaming service Hulu, which will give Disney the controlling interest in that growing business. Disney must sell the 22 Fox regional sports networks, including the YES network in New York, which broadcasts Yankees baseball games, and Prime Ticket and Fox Sports West in Los Angeles. Disney wanted to buy the regional channels, but the U.S. Justice Department would not allow that. In order to gain regulatory approval of the deal, Disney agreed to divest the regional sports channels. Disney has 90 days to sell the regional sports channels but would like to identify a buyer within a month, according to a knowledgeable person who was not authorized to comment.

Fox Corp., whose ticker will be Fox, will be added to the Standard & Poor’s 500 index before trading begins Tuesday. The Murdoch family will continue to control their publishing company, News Corp., which includes the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Times of London. The family also will become major shareholders of Disney. The Murdochs stand to receive nearly $12 billion in cash and stock from Disney, according to Bloomberg.

https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-fox-spinoff-20190319-story.html

Kazakhstan's leader resigns after almost 30 years in power

Nursultan Nazarbayev made it clear he will continue to play a role determining the future of the nation.

Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev declared in a shock announcement on March 19 that he was resigning with immediate effect, thereby bringing a close to his almost three decade-long rule over the Central Asian nation. In a televised address to the nation, Nazarbayev said that the speaker of the Senate, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, would take over as head of state until presidential elections can be held. The next vote is scheduled to take place in December 2020. “Tokayev is the very person that we can trust to manage Kazakhstan,” Nazarbayev said. “I know him well. He is an honest, responsible and dependable person.”

In his resignation speech, Nazarbayev took stock of what he said were the achievements of his decades running Kazakhstan. “We put Kazakhstan on the map where there was never such a country,” said Nazarbayev. There have been growing indications that Nazarbayev might be inching toward leaving the scene. Last month, he generated heated speculation when he addressed the Constitutional Council for guidance on how he might be able to go about relinquishing office and what powers he would retain were he to do so. Even though he is stepping down as head of state, Nazarbayev will retain a wide-ranging degree of authority under his bespoke title of Leader of the Nation.

Also, parliament last May passed a law enabling Nazarbayev to remain head of the national Security Council for life. This provision was quickly approved by the constitutional court, enabling Nazarbayev to ease into the perpetual role on July 12, just days after his 78th birthday. In a parallel development, the Security Council was transformed from a purely consultative body into one with a certain degree of coordinating power over all state structures, including security agencies, ministries and local administrations.

n his resignation announcement, Nazarbayev made it clear he will continue to play a role determining the future of the nation. “I see my future task as supporting the coming to power of a new generation of leaders who will continue the transformations taking place in the country,” he said.

Social media users in Kazakhstan reacted to the news with a mix of shock and, depending on their political positions, concern or delight. Irina Petrushova, a veteran journalist and critic of the government, was sanguine, however, insisting that little would change. “In reality, he has gone nowhere since he still commands three centers of influence in the country,” Petrushova wrote on Facebook, before listing the Security Council, the board of directors of the Samruk-Kazyna national wealth fund and the ruling Nur Otan party. “Also, unlike Nazarbayev, Tokayev does not enjoy immunity [from prosecution],” she wrote.“So yes, he left, but he has not gone far.” Kate Mallinson, an analyst at London-based Prism Political Risk Management, agreed that the public should expect few dramatic shifts in policy. “Tokayev is very much a trusted and loyal lieutenant of the president’s and he’s unlikely to deviate from current trajectories,” she told Eurasianet.

https://eurasianet.org/kazakhstans-leader-resigns-after-almost-30-years-in-power

>>5772407

Indeed!

>>5772269

Beginning of the end, it won't take long either. People will walk away from Fox News just like they did the others.

Jeff Bezos is hosting his super nerdy Mars conference again, complete with flying robots and a Blue Origin engine

The conference is designed to be a showcase of sorts for the latest and quirkiest technology in the fields of machine learning, automation, robotics and space.

You might remember last year's conference, when Bezos made headlines for talking a walk with a robotic dog made by Boston Dynamics.

The conference is so exclusive that press aren't allowed in and tweets offer the only inside look

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is hosting his annual Mars Conference this week in Palm Springs. It's a super nerdy affair complete with flying robots and a Blue Origin engine. The conference is designed to be a showcase of sorts for the latest and quirkiest technology in the fields of machine learning, automation, robotics and space — hence the name, MARS. It's an annual reminder of Bezos' passion for cutting edge tech, as the founder races toward commercial space travel. You might remember last year's conference, when Bezos made headlines for talking a walk with a robotic dog made by Boston Dynamics.

The conference is so exclusive that press aren't allowed in and tweets offer the only inside look. Here's some highlights, posted by attendees:

Bezos launches a giant robotic dragonfly.

Mark Hamill, of "Star Wars" fame, talks robot sidekicks.

Bezos takes the helm of an electric single-passenger multicoptor, made by Hexa.

Blue Origin shows off its engine. The company rivals Elon Musk's SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic

A robot named Centauro does yoga.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/19/jeff-bezos-hosts-mars-2019-with-flying-robots-blue-origin-engine.html

Physicist Marcelo Gleiser: 'Science does not kill God'

Washington (AFP) - The annual Templeton Prize, which recognizes outstanding contributions to "affirming life's spiritual dimension," was awarded Tuesday to Brazilian Marcelo Gleiser – a theoretical physicist dedicated to demonstrating science and religion are not enemies. A physics and astronomy professor whose specializations include cosmology, 60-year-old Gleiser was born in Rio de Janeiro, and has been in the United States since 1986. An agnostic, he doesn't believe in God – but refuses to write off the possibility of God's existence completely.

"Atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method," Gleiser told AFP Monday from Dartmouth College, the New Hampshire university where he has taught since 1991. "Atheism is a belief in non-belief. So you categorically deny something you have no evidence against." "I'll keep an open mind because I understand that human knowledge is limited," he added.

The prize is funded by the John Templeton Foundation – a philanthropic organization named after the American Presbyterian who made his fortune on Wall Street, and who set on "seeking proofs of divine agency in every branch of science", as The Economist put it. Gleiser joins Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama and dissident Soviet author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as recipients of the prize, first awarded in 1973. At £1.1 million ($1.5 million), the prize money well surpasses that of the Nobels.

The physicist focuses on at making complex subjects accessible. He has written on climate change, Einstein, hurricanes, black holes, the human conscience – tracing the links between the sciences and the humanities, including philosophy. The author of five English-language books and hundreds of blog and press articles in the US and Brazil, Gleiser has also explored in depth how science and religion both try to respond to questions on the origins of life and the universe.

"The first thing you see in the Bible is a story of creation," he said. Whatever your religion, "everybody wants to know how the world came to be. This fundamental curiosity unites science and religion, though each provides very different answers: science has a methodology, where hypotheses are eliminated. "Science can give answers to certain questions, up to a point," Gleiser pointed out. "This has been known for a very long time in philosophy, it's called the problem of the first cause: we get stuck," the physicist, a father of five, said. "We should have the humility to accept that there's mystery around us."

https://news.yahoo.com/physicist-marcelo-gleiser-science-does-not-kill-god-090100672.html