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AT&T, owner of HBO and Warner Bros studios, and Discovery, home to lifestyle TV networks such as HGTV and TLC, said on Monday they will combine their content assets to create a standalone global entertainment and media business.
Discovery chief executive David Zaslav will lead the proposed new company, which will comprise one of Hollywood s most powerful studios, including the Harry Potter and Batman franchises, news network CNN, sports programming and Discovery s unscripted home, cooking and nature and science shows.
Shares in Discovery climbed about 16 per cent to $41.3 in premarket trade but fell 2 per cent afterward as investors digested that it would take time for Discovery to scale up in streaming, said Rich Greenfield, partner at LightShed Partners.
For the whole of 2020, losses in the crypto sector through fraud and crime were $1.9 billion. In 2019, crypto crime losses hit a record $4.5bn.
Cryptocurrencies are once again in the spotlight with the surge in prices for the second-largest token, Ether, and social media darling Dogecoin.
The drop in crypto crime reflects some maturity in the industry, as infrastructure improved and companies and exchanges boosted security systems.
DeFi, however, is another story. The value locked – the total number of loans on DeFi platforms – was $86bn as of Wednesday, DeFi Pulse data showed, up roughly 650 per cent from $11bn in October.
The surge in the industry s growth has attracted bad actors and market participants said the rise in crime is likely to accelerate as DeFi expands further.
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Turkey s Karpowership, which provides electricity to Lebanon from two barges, said it was shutting down supplies on Friday over payment arrears and after a legal threat to its vessels in the country, which is in the middle of a deep economic crisis.
The company, which supplies Lebanon with 370 megawatts, the equivalent of about a quarter of the country s current supply, told the government this week that it would have to take the step if there were no moves to reach a settlement.
A source familiar with the situation said the measure was taken about 8am on Friday as fuel on the vessels ran out.
The US Transportation Security Administration screened 1.64 million passengers on Thursday at US airports, the highest number since March 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic slashed travel demand.
The number of US air travellers is still about 35 per cent lower than the same date in 2019, down nearly
one million travellers, the TSA said. Airlines in the country have been adding more flights, anticipating rising summer travel demand.
US airline stocks rose on Friday, on optimism about travel demand, with United Airlines up 2.3 per cent, American Airlines up 2 per cent and Delta Air Lines up 2.3 per cent. An American Airlines flight taxis to the runway prior to departing Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, on May 4. EPA