Latest news with #Stahl
Chicago Tribune
30-07-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Winthrop Harbor rescue-boat plea rejected despite wide support; ‘They will require the resources to do their jobs safely and effectively'
The sun is out and the weather is beautiful, but the mood in the SUV parked at Illinois Beach State Park is subdued. Beach Park Fire Chief Tom Stahl and Winthrop Harbor Fire Chief Rocco Campanella sit, looking out at Lake Michigan, where a half-dozen boats trawl along the beachfront around the boulders of the breakwaters. It's July 23, and somewhere under the waves is the body of a 14-year-old boy, the second drowning victim at the park this summer. The sun sits almost directly above, and Stahl has been there for hours. He politely but firmly pushes away questions while helping direct recovery operations. 'Our sympathy goes out to the family and friends of the victim,' Stahl said in a press release. 'This is a deeply saddening event that also bothers the rescuers involved.' The month before, three of the area's fire departments had come together for a news conference after the drowning of a 20-year-old man, issuing a call for help from state and federal sources to help address the increase in water calls they had seen at the beach since the completion of a massive restoration project. The news conference was another page in a saga of what they believe to be lackluster support. Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that Winthrop Harbor applied for federal funding in June of 2024 for a new rescue boat, but was denied. This is despite a similar request that same year by Highland Park to the same grant program, also for a new rescue boat, being approved. Why was Winthrop Harbor overlooked for the funding? The funding in question is through the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Port Security Grant, which is meant to enhance security at ports and other maritime facilities. Last year, it provided about $90 million to applicants across the country, including about $470,000 to Highland Park, which according to city documents was used to help pay for a $663,000 Metal Shark 29 Defiant Fire-Rescue vessel. Winthrop Harbor's request was for about $430,000 in federal funding to help pay for a roughly $509,000 vessel and $50,000 in training, according to the fire department's application. Department officials previously said their current vessel, built in the 1980s, is not suited for the work. The request seemingly enjoyed area, state and federal support. The application included letters from Stahl, Zion Fire Chief Justin Stried and U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Highland Park, as well as IDNR Site Superintendent Damon Cederberg. According to the documents, U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth had both indicated an intent to provide letters of support, but could not do so by the submission deadline. In Cederberg's letter, written before the completion of the beach's $73 million restoration, he said he had 'no doubt' the project would increase Winthrop Harbor's callouts. Since the village also includes the North Point Marina, the largest on all of the Great Lakes, and the Coast Guard was consolidating its resources in the area, Cederberg gave his backing to Winthrop Harbor's application. 'Ultimately, all of this will put more pressure on local communities such as Winthrop Harbor, and they will require the resources to do their jobs safely and effectively,' Cederberg said in the letter. Exactly why Winthrop Harbor's request was denied while Highland Park's was approved is difficult to determine, with federal agencies pointing fingers at one another. When asked about the discrepancy, a FEMA representative pointed to the Coast Guard, saying it provides subject matter expertise and makes the determinations on which applications to choose for funding. However, Coast Guard officials were adamant that FEMA makes the ultimate decision, and that FEMA's choices may differ from the Coast Guard's recommendations. Whether this is the case for Highland Park and Winthrop Harbor is unclear. Port Security Specialist Tom Lake with the Coast Guard Sector Lake Michigan said his office oversees its participation in FEMA's grant program. This is done through an extensive field review of all applicants and their requests by a team of officials. The scores and rankings are then sent to FEMA. In response to questions about whether Winthrop Harbor received a favorable ranking during the review, or was ranked above or below Highland Park, Lake said limited information regarding the Coast Guard's review can only be shared with the applicant. The FEMA representative did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment or clarification. Back in Lake County, Winthrop Harbor is continuing to have to fundraise for water rescue equipment, with its 'Big Lebowski' themed bowling event scheduled for Aug. 9. According to a Beach Park Fire Department news release, on July 22 at around 4 p.m., the 14-year-old boy had been in thigh to waist deep water when he was struck by a wave and didn't return to the surface. Neighboring departments arrived within minutes of getting the call. Swimmers, divers, boats and drones were deployed. Later, a MABAS Box Alarm brought in more divers, more boats and sonar techs. Hours later, the operation went from rescue to recovery before ending for the day, and restarting the following morning. They didn't find his body that day either. The body of the boy, later identified as Kyle Williams of Milwaukee, was found on July 25 after days of exhaustive searching.
Business Wire
11-07-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
FRMO Corp. Announces New Board Chairman
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The FRMO Corp. (the 'Company' or 'FRMO') (OTC Pink: FRMO) Board of Directors ('Board') today accepted the resignation of Murray Stahl as Chairman of the Board, a position he has held since the Company's inception in 2001. Mr. Stahl will continue to serve as Chief Executive Officer of the Company. In connection with Mr. Stahl's resignation, Peter Doyle was appointed as the Chairman of the Board and Rimmy Malhotra as Vice Chairman and Lead Independent director. With Mr. Stahl's resignation, the size of the board is now set to 8. About FRMO Corp. FRMO Corp. invests in and receives revenues based upon consulting and advisory fee interests in the asset management sector. FRMO had 44,022,781 shares of common stock outstanding as of May 31, 2025. For more information, visit our website at Safe Harbor Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 – With the exception of historical information, the matters discussed in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Words like 'believe,' 'expect' and 'anticipate' mean that these are our best estimates as of this writing, but that there can be no assurances that expected or anticipated results or events will actually take place, so our actual future results could differ significantly from those statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: our ability to maintain our competitive advantages, the general economics of the financial industry, our ability to finance growth, our ability to identify and close acquisitions on terms favorable to the Company, and a sustainable market. Further information on our risk factors is contained in our quarterly and annual reports as filed on our website and on
Boston Globe
08-07-2025
- Science
- Boston Globe
Franklin W. Stahl, 95, dies; helped create a ‘beautiful' DNA experiment
Dr. Stahl's name and that of his collaborator, Matthew Meselson, were immortalized by the Meselson-Stahl Experiment, which is referenced in biology textbooks and taught in molecular genetics courses worldwide. In 2015, 'Helix Spirals,' a musical tribute to the experiment, was composed by Augusta Read Thomas and performed by a string quartet in Boston. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The two biologists proved a theory advanced by Nobel Prize winners James Watson and Francis Crick, who discovered DNA's helical structure in 1953. Watson and Crick posited in the journal Nature that DNA replicates in a so-called semi-conservative fashion. Advertisement In 1958, Meselson and Dr. Stahl, postdoctoral fellows in Linus Pauling's laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, proved that Watson and Crick were correct, by using an experiment that was celebrated for its design, execution, and results. 'It has been termed the most beautiful experiment in biology, and rightfully so,' Diana Libuda, an associate professor of biology at the University of Oregon and a member of the Institute of Molecular Biology there, said in an interview. Advertisement The experiment demonstrated that after DNA unwinds and is replicated, each new DNA molecule contains one original, or parental, strand and one newly copied strand. Dr. Stahl and Meselson proved this by using E. coli bacteria, which reproduce rapidly. Because nitrogen is a crucial component of DNA, the two scientists propagated the bacteria over multiple generations in a medium containing heavy nitrogen, which was absorbed by the bacteria and integrated into their DNA. The bacteria were subsequently transferred to a medium containing the normal isotope of nitrogen. With the two types of nitrogen now in the medium, Dr. Stahl and Meselson could trace the production of new DNA strands. The experiment provided powerful evidence that DNA is replicated semi-conservatively, which means that each new DNA molecule is a hybrid, composed of one old strand and one newly made strand. That finding was considered a landmark discovery. Their results were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 1958. The Meselson-Stahl experiment has since been praised as a model of simplicity and innovation. 'Watson and Crick had produced a pretty model, but had no hard data,' Andy Stahl said. 'But that's what the Meselson-Stahl Experiment did: It proved how DNA replicates.' In 2020, Meselson, an emeritus professor of molecular biology and genetics at Harvard University, discussed each of the experiment's steps in a video produced by iBiology, part of the nonprofit Science Communication Lab in Berkeley, Calif. Reminiscing in the video about the intellectual freedom at Caltech in the late 1950s, Meselson recalled an era of big ideas: 'We could do whatever we wanted. It was very unusual for such young guys to do such an important experiment. We had a wonderful house, a big house across the street from the lab. We talked about these experiments at almost every dinner. So we had this wonderful intellectual atmosphere.' Advertisement In the same video, Franklin Stahl marveled that he and Meselson had been able to achieve such definitive results. He noted that X-ray images of the centrifuged test medium unequivocally revealed the bands of DNA with light and heavy nitrogen, proving the helical molecule's semi-conservative replication. 'Most of the time, when you get an experimental result it doesn't speak to you with such clarity,' he said. 'These pictures of the DNA bands interpreted themselves.' Franklin William Stahl was born Oct. 28, 1929, in Needham. He was the only son of Oscar Stahl, who worked for the telephone company and fixed radios on the side to earn extra cash during the Great Depression, and Elinor (Condon) Stahl, who managed the home while Franklin and his sisters attended local schools. 'He wanted to go to Brown, but went to Harvard instead,' Andy Stahl said. 'He was a commuter student and could save money by living at home.' Franklin Stahl graduated from Harvard in 1951 with a bachelor's degree in biology. Later that year, he entered the University of Rochester, where he began work on a doctoral degree. He decided to specialize in genetics in 1952 after completing a short course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was introduced to bacteriophages, the viruses that infect bacteria. Also known simply as phages, the viruses are reliable tools in genetics and have been used to understand the genetic code and provide insight into how genes are regulated. Advertisement In Rochester, Dr. Stahl met Mary Morgan, a native of the city. They soon married, and she eventually became a research partner. Mary Morgan Stahl died in 1996. Dr. Stahl's research collaborator and former graduate student Henriette Foss then became his domestic partner; she died of Parkinson's disease in 2022. In addition to his son Andy, Dr. Stahl leaves a daughter, Emily Morgan, and eight grandchildren. Another son, Joshua Stahl, died in 1998. Dr. Stahl also had a prolific career as an author. He wrote 'The Mechanics of Inheritance,' published in 1964, and 'Genetic Recombination: Thinking About It in Phage and Fungi' in 1979. He was the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships, one in 1975 and the other in 1985, the same year he was awarded a MacArthur fellowship. In 1996, Dr. Stahl received the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal, an award given to scientists who have made major contributions to the field of genetics. This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘60 Minutes' legend Lesley Stahl says she's ‘angry' at CBS boss Shari Redstone over Trump lawsuit
Lesley Stahl, who has spent decades as a correspondent for the seminal Sunday night newsmagazine 60 Minutes, is making it clear that she is 'angry' with her corporate boss for looking to settle Donald Trump's 'frivolous' civil lawsuit against CBS News. The legendary newswoman also said she is 'pessimistic' about the future of 60 Minutes, adding that 'we're in very dark times' and that she's already preemptively mourning the potential destruction of the long-running program amid an upcoming merger and the president's attacks on legacy media. In a wide-ranging conversation with The New Yorker's chief editor David Remnick, Stahl sounded off on CBS parent company Paramount's efforts to make Trump's $20 billion lawsuit over the way 60 Minutes edited an interview with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, which the president contends was done 'deceitfully' to interfere in the 2024 election. Following Trump's return to the White House, Paramount's top shareholder Shari Redstone has pushed for a settlement as the company needs the administration's approval for an $8 billion merger with Skydance Media, which pro-Trump business mogul Larry Ellison backs. Additionally, Redstone has not only pressured 60 Minutes to ease up on its Trump coverage amid the lawsuit and merger drama, but also criticized the show over the way it's covered the Gaza war. Amid the discussions with Trump's legal team about a settlement, 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens and CBS News chief Wendy McMahon – who had said they would not apologize as part of any deal with the president – abruptly resigned. Paramount's board has reportedly offered Trump a $15 million settlement, which is in line with ABC News' capitulation to the president, but Trump is demanding at least $25 million and an apology. Asked by Remnick what is behind the president's lawsuit, Stahl — who has interviewed Trump four times — said that it is an effort 'to chill us,' noting that 'there aren't any damages' suffered by Trump. 'I mean, he accused us of editing Kamala Harris in a way to help her win the election. But he won the election,' she added. Trump's legal team has since argued in court that the interview caused the president 'mental anguish.' Labeling it as a 'frivolous' lawsuit, Stahl went on to describe Owens as a 'hero' to the newsroom while lobbing criticisms towards Redstone over the 60 Minutes producer feeling the need to step down. '[H]e was being asked to either not run pieces or to change parts of the stories, and he was standing up to that. I don't know, frankly, if there was one request that led to it or just an accumulation, one after the next,' she said. 'That was just painful. Painful,' she continued, speaking about Owens' resignation. 'Everybody at '60 Minutes'—I think everybody, most of us—really appreciated his standing up to the pressure, and saw him in heroic terms. So when he announced that he was stepping down, it was a punch in the stomach. It was one of those punches where you almost can't breathe.' Adding that McMahon had also served as an 'intermediary between us and the corporation, and she sided with CBS News,' Stahl then expressed disappointment over the likelihood that Paramount will settle with the president. 'Are you angry at Shari Redstone?' Remnick wondered, prompting Stahl to reply: 'Yes, I think I am. I think I am.' At the same time, though, the veteran CBS reporter said that while Owens being forced out may have been a bridge too far for much of the staff, she claimed he urged everyone on the show to stay. 'Bill Owens leaving was a line, and here we all are,' she stated. 'He asked us not to resign. He explicitly asked us not to resign. Because it was discussed that we would leave en masse.' Stahl also said it was 'hard' and 'not a small thing' that Redstone had been applying pressure on the news division over its coverage, making her wonder if 'any corporation should own a news operation' going forward. 'It is very disconcerting,' she proclaimed. As for CBS News' new 'corporate overlords' at Skydance if the merger goes through, Stahl said she's 'praying' and 'hoping' that they'd allow the network 'to be independent' and for journalists to do their jobs. Still, she acknowledged that it could be a 'little Pollyannaish' to believe that will be the outcome. 'I'm not optimistic. I am not. I'm pessimistic,' she told Remnick. 'I'm pessimistic about the future for all press today. The public doesn't trust us. The public has lost faith in us as an institution. So we're in very dark times.' Stahl also expressed concern about the fragility of press institutions as a whole, especially with mega-billionaires and large conglomerations pressuring the news organizations they own to soften their coverage of the current administration while they cozy up to the president. 'The pain in my heart is that the public does not appreciate the importance of a free and strong and tough press in our democracy,' she lamented, adding: 'We are a headache. An expensive headache. And that's part of the fragility.' Amid the continued push to reach a settlement with Trump, Democratic lawmakers have warned the Paramount board and Redstone that paying the president to kill the lawsuit could run afoul of anti-bribery laws, considering that the company is hoping to coax the administration to approve a merger. The California State Senate has now opened an inquiry into Paramount over whether it violated state laws on bribery, inviting both Owens and McMahon to testify. Paramount executives, in fact, have even discussed the possibility of being held liable or criminally charged if the business settles the complaint. The Freedom of the Press Foundation has since threatened to sue the company if it reaches a settlement with the president.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'60 Minutes' reporter Lesley Stahl says she's angry with CBS' Shari Redstone over Trump lawsuit
Longtime CBS journalist Lesley Stahl admitted she was "angry" with Paramount Global chairwoman Shari Redstone over how things are being handled over President Donald Trump's lawsuit against the network on Friday. The "60 Minutes" reporter discussed the ongoing lawsuit and its effects on her program on The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast. She reflected on top producer Bill Owens stepping down in what she called a "painful" experience after he claimed that he was being restrained by the network on what stories to produce. After CBS News president Wendy McMahon's abrupt resignation, she called the situation at the network "hard" and partially blamed Redstone for putting pressure on them in what appears to be an appeasement to the Trump administration. "To have a news organization come under corporate pressure—to have a news organization told by a corporation, 'do this, do that with your story, change this, change that, don't run that piece.' I mean, it steps on the First Amendment, it steps on the freedom of the press," Stahl said. "It steps on what we stand for. It makes me question whether any corporation should own a news operation. It is very disconcerting." '60 Minutes' Producers Rail Against Trump's 'Bulls---' Lawsuit, Dread Prospects Of Paramount Making Settlement Still, she declined to use the word "turmoil" to describe the situation, although she revealed there was consideration for journalists to leave "en masse" after Owens' resignation. Stahl added that there's a sense of "fragility" in the press now thanks to things like Trump's "frivolous lawsuit" and a lack of trust in the media. Read On The Fox News App "The pain in my heart is that the public does not appreciate the importance of a free and strong and tough press in our democracy," Stahl said. "Even the Founding Fathers recognized that we need to have a strong fourth estate to hold our elected officials accountable, and to continue to cleanse the system. The public doesn't seem to want what we do to be part of our public life." She predicted Paramount Global, CBS' parent company, will ultimately settle with Trump to complete a merger with Skydance Media. If that were to occur, she hoped that the new owners would "hold the freedom of the press up as a beacon." The interview was recorded before news broke on Friday about Trump rejecting a $15 million settlement for his $20 billion lawsuit. Fox News Digital confirmed that the president's team is demanding at least $25 million and an apology from CBS News. Last October, Trump sued CBS News and Paramount for $10 billion over allegations of election interference involving the "60 Minutes" interview of then-Vice President Kamala Harris that aired weeks before the presidential election (the amount has since jumped to $20 billion). The lawsuit alleges CBS News deceitfully edited an exchange Harris had with "60 Minutes" correspondent Bill Whitaker, who asked her why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn't "listening" to the Biden administration. Harris was widely mocked for the "word salad" answer that aired in a preview clip of the interview on "Face the Nation." '60 Minutes' Reporter Lesley Stahl Admits Worry About Future Of Legacy Media: 'I'm Very Dark About It' However, when the same question aired during a primetime special on the network, Harris had a different, more concise response. Critics at the time accused CBS News of deceitfully editing Harris' "word salad" answer to shield the Democratic nominee from further backlash leading up to Election Day. Stahl denied there was any effort to make Harris look better and that the network simply aired two different halves of the answer. She claimed the lawsuit is being made only to intimidate them. "What is really behind it, in a nutshell, is [an effort] to chill us. There aren't any damages. I mean, he accused us of editing Kamala Harris in a way to help her win the election. But he won the election," Stahl said. Fox News Digital reached out to CBS and Paramount Global for a article source: '60 Minutes' reporter Lesley Stahl says she's angry with CBS' Shari Redstone over Trump lawsuit
