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New York to charge fossil fuel companies for damage
ALBANY, N.Y. | Large fossil fuel companies would have to pay fees to help New York fight the effects of climate change under a bill signed Thursday by Gov. Kathy Hochul.
The new law requires companies responsible for substantial greenhouse gas emissions to pay into a state fund for infrastructure projects meant to repair or avoid future damage from climate change.
Lawmakers approved the bill earlier this year to force big oil and gas companies to contribute to the cost of repairs after extreme weather events and resiliency projects such as coastal wetland restoration and upgrades to roads, bridges and water drainage systems.
“The Climate Change Superfund Act is now law, and New York has fired a shot that will be heard round the world: the companies most responsible for the climate crisis will be held accountable,” said state Sen. Liz Krueger, a Democrat who sponsored the bill.
“The planet’s largest climate polluters bear a unique responsibility for creating the climate crisis, and they must pay their fair share to help regular New Yorkers deal with the consequences,” Krueger said.
The biggest emitters of greenhouse gases between 2000 and 2018 would be subjected to the fines.
The law won’t start penalizing companies immediately. Instead, the state must come up with rules on how to identify responsible parties, notify companies of the fines and create a system to determine which infrastructure projects will be paid for by the fund. Legal challenges are expected.
“This type of legislation represents nothing more than a punitive new fee on American energy, and we are evaluating our options moving forward,” the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s top lobbying group, said in a statement.
New York’s governor signed the measure months after Vermont put a similar law in place.
Finland stops Russia-linked vessel over damaged undersea power cable
FRANKFURT, Germany | Finnish authorities detained a ship linked to neighboring Russia as they investigate whether it damaged a Baltic Sea power cable and several data cables, police said, in the latest incident involving disruption of key infrastructure in the region.
Finnish police and border guards boarded the vessel, the Eagle S, early Thursday and took over the command bridge, Helsinki Police Chief Jari Liukku told a news conference. The vessel was being held in Finnish territorial waters, police said.
The Eagle S is flagged in the Cook Islands, but was described by Finnish customs officials and the European Union’s executive commission as part of Russia’s shadow fleet of fuel tankers. Those are aging vessels with obscure ownership, acquired to evade Western sanctions amid the war in Ukraine and operating without Western-regulated insurance. Russia’s use of the vessels has raised environmental concerns about accidents given their age and uncertain insurance coverage.
The Eagle S’s anchor is suspected of causing damage to the cable, Yle television reported, relying on police statements.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said in a statement that the incident was “the latest in a series of suspected attacks on critical infrastructure” and commended the Finnish authorities “for their swift action in boarding the suspected vessel.”
The ship “is part of Russia’s shadow fleet, which threatens security and the environment, while funding Russia’s war budget,” said Kallas, a former Estonian prime minister. “We will propose further measures, including sanctions, to target this fleet.”
The Estlink-2 power cable, which brings electricity from Finland to Estonia across the Baltic Sea, went down on Wednesday. The incident follows damage to two data cables and the Nord Stream gas pipelines, both of which have been termed sabotage.
The Estonian government met in emergency session over the incident. The shadow tankers “are helping Russia to earn funds that will aid Russian hybrid attacks,” Prime Minister Kristen Michal said at a news conference. “We need to improve the monitoring and protection of critical infrastructure both on land and on sea.”
He said repairs to the cable could take as long as seven months.
“Repeated damage to Baltic Sea infrastructure signals a systemic threat, not mere accidents,” Estonia’s President Alar Karis said on X. “Estonia will take action to counter this threat, together with Finland and other NATO allies.”
Two data cables — one running between Finland and Germany and the other between Lithuania and Sweden — were severed in November. Germany’s defense minister said officials had to assume the incident was “sabotage,” but he didn’t provide evidence or say who might have been responsible. The remark came during a speech in which he discussed hybrid warfare threats from Russia.
The Nord Stream pipelines that once brought natural gas from Russia to Germany were damaged by underwater explosions in September 2022. Authorities have said the cause was sabotage and launched criminal investigations.
Estonian network operator Elering says there is enough spare capacity to meet power needs on the Estonian side, public broadcaster ERR said on its website.
U.S. applications for unemployment benefits hold steady
WASHINGTON | The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits held steady last week, though continuing claims rose to the highest level in three years.
Jobless claim applications ticked down by 1,000 to 219,000 for the week of Dec. 21, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s fewer than the 223,000 analysts forecast.
Continuing claims, the total number of Americans collecting jobless benefits, climbed by 46,000 to 1.91 million for the week of Dec. 14. That’s more than analysts projected and the most since the week of Nov. 13, 2021 when the labor market was still recovering from the COVID-19 jobs wipeout in the spring of 2020.
The rising level of continuing claims suggests that some who are receiving benefits are finding it harder to land new jobs. That could mean that demand for workers is waning, even though the economy remains strong.
The four-week average of weekly claims, which quiets some of the week-to-week volatility, inched up by 1,000 to 226,500.
Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered representative of U.S. layoffs.
The labor market has hinted at some softening recently but remains broadly healthy and has held up better than many economists predicted considering that interest rates have been elevated for years. The Federal Reserve instituted a series of rate increases in 2022 and into 2023 to try to tame the four-decade high inflation that emerged during the U.S. economy’s rebound from a brief but sharp pandemic recession.
The Fed last week cut its benchmark interest rate for the third straight time in response to broadly receding inflation, though it remains above the U.S. central bank’s target of 2%. The Fed caught markets off guard when it projected just two rate cuts in 2025, down from the previous forecast of four.
Earlier this month, the government reported that U.S. job openings rebounded to 7.7 million in October from a 3 1/2 year low of 7.4 million in September, a sign that businesses are still seeking workers even though hiring has cooled.
In November, U.S. employers added a strong 227,000 jobs, following a paltry 36,000 in October, when the effects of strikes and hurricanes had sharply diminished employer payrolls. The government also revised up its estimate of job growth in September and October by a combined 56,000.
The government’s December jobs report comes out on Jan. 10.
Richard Parsons, prominent Black executive, dies at 76
NEW YORK | Richard Parsons, one of corporate America’s most prominent Black executives who held top posts at Time Warner and Citigroup, died Thursday. He was 76.
Parsons, who died at his Manhattan home, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2015 and cited “unanticipated complications” from the disease for cutting back on work a few years later.
— From AP reportsThe financial services company Lazard, where Parsons was a longtime board member, confirmed his death.
David Zaslav, the president and CEO of Time Warner successor Warner Bros. Discovery, remembered Parsons as a “great mentor and friend” and a “tough and brilliant negotiator, always looking to create something where both sides win.”
“All who got a chance to work with him and know him saw that unusual combination of great leadership with integrity and kindness,” Zaslav said, calling him “one of the great problem solvers this industry has ever seen.”
Parsons’ friend Ronald Lauder told The New York Times that the cause of death was cancer. Parsons stepped down Dec. 3 from the boards of Lazard and Lauder’s company, Estée Lauder, citing health reasons. He had been on Estée Lauder’s board for 25 years.
Parsons, a Brooklyn native who started college at 16, was named chairman of Citigroup in 2009, one month after leaving Time Warner Inc., where he helped restore the company’s stature following its much-maligned acquisition by internet provider America Online Inc.
He steered Citigroup back to profit after financial turmoil from the subprime mortgage crisis, which upended the economy in 2007 and 2008.
Parsons was named to the board of CBS in September 2018 but resigned a month later because of illness.
Parsons said in a statement at the time that he was already dealing with multiple myeloma when he joined the board, but “unanticipated complications have created additional new challenges.” He said his doctors advised him to cut back on his commitments to ensure recovery.
“Dick’s storied career embodied the finest traditions of American business leadership,” Lazard said in a statement. The company, where Parsons was a board member from 2012 until this month, praised his “unmistakable intelligence and his irresistible warmth.”
“Dick was more than an iconic leader in Lazard’s history — he was a testament to how wisdom, warmth, and unwavering judgment could shape not just companies, but people’s lives,” the company said. “His legacy lives on in the countless leaders he counseled, the institutions he renewed, and the doors he opened for others.”
Parsons was known as a skilled negotiator, a diplomat and a crisis manager.
Although he was with Time Warner through its difficulties with AOL, he earned respect for the company and rebuilt its relations with Wall Street. He streamlined Time Warner’s structure, pared debt and sold Warner Music Group and a book publishing division.
He also fended off a challenge from activist investor Carl Icahn in 2006 to break up the company and helped Time Warner reach settlements with investors and regulators over questionable accounting practices at AOL.
Parsons joined Time Warner as president in 1995 after serving as chairman and chief executive of Dime Bancorp Inc., one of the largest U.S. thrift institutions.
In 2001, after AOL used its fortunes as the leading provider of Internet access in the U.S. to buy Time Warner for $106 billion in stock, Parsons became co-chief operating officer with AOL executive Robert Pittman. In that role, he was in charge of the company’s content businesses, including movie studios and recorded music.
He became CEO in 2002 with the retirement of Gerald Levin, one of the key architects of that merger. Parsons was named Time Warner chairman the following year, replacing AOL founder Steve Case, who had also championed the combination.
The newly formed company’s Internet division quickly became a drag on Time Warner. The promised synergies between traditional and new media never materialized. AOL began seeing a reduction in subscribers in 2002 as Americans replaced dial-up connections with broadband from cable TV and phone companies.
Parsons stepped down as CEO in 2007 and as chairman in 2008. A year later AOL split from Time Warner and began trading as a separate company, following years of struggles to reinvent itself as a business focused on advertising and content. Time Warner is now owned by AT&T Inc.
A board member of Citigroup and its predecessor, Citibank, since 1996, Parsons was named chairman in 2009 at a time of turmoil for the financial institution. Citigroup had suffered five straight quarters of losses and received $45 billion in government aid. Its board had been criticized for allowing the bank to invest so heavily in the risky housing market.
Citigroup returned to profit under Parsons, starting in 2010, and would not have a quarterly loss again until the fourth quarter of 2017. Parsons retired from that job in 2012.
In 2014 he stepped in as interim CEO of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers until Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took over later that year.
“Dick Parsons was a brilliant and transformational leader and a giant of the media industry who led with integrity and never shied away from a challenge,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said.
Parsons, a Republican, previously worked as a lawyer for Nelson Rockefeller, a former Republican governor of New York, and in Gerald Ford’s White House. Those early stints gave him grounding in politics and negotiations. He also was an economic adviser on President Barack Obama’s transition team.
Parsons, whose love of jazz led to co-owning a Harlem jazz club, also served as Chairman of the Apollo Theater and the Jazz Foundation of America. And he held positions on the boards of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Parsons played basketball at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and received his law degree from Albany Law School in 1971. He is survived by his wife, Laura, and their family.
—From AP reports
