FabrikaCr Oil prices slipped on Wednesday after a Wall Street Journal report that pointed out that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has proposed its largest-ever oil reserve release amid the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. The oil release is expected to exceed 182M barrels released in 2022 during Russia's Ukraine invasion, potentially covering over 124 days of lost Gulf supply, the report added. B...
FabrikaCr Oil prices slipped on Wednesday after a Wall Street Journal report that pointed out that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has proposed its largest-ever oil reserve release amid the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. The oil release is expected to exceed 182M barrels released in 2022 during Russia's Ukraine invasion, potentially covering over 124 days of lost Gulf supply, the report added. Brent oil futures for May fell 0.5% to $87.37 per barrel, while WTI crude futures fell 0.4% to $81.78 a barrel on Wednesday after the report surfaced. Oil prices remained volatile before trending lower amid mounting uncertainty surrounding the Iran war and shipping through the vital Strait of Hormuz. The Paris-based agency circulated the proposal during an emergency meeting with energy officials from its 32 member countries on Tuesday, with a decision on the proposal expected on Wednesday. The IEA was created in 1974 after the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo to coordinate emergency responses to energy supply crises. The IEA members currently hold about 1.2B barrels in public emergency reserves and an additional 600M barrels in mandatory commercial inventories, according to Executive Director Fatih Birol . Oil ETFs: ( USO ), ( UCO ), ( DBO ), ( OILK ), and ( USL ). More on oil Oil Shock: Why I Just Bought More Energy Stocks Oil Prices: What If Iran Manages To Keep The Strait Of Hormuz Closed For Longer? Crude Oil: Too Late To Buy And Too Early To Short Energy secretary's deleted tweet sparks another wild oil market trading day U.S. crude stockpiles fell 1.7M barrels last week, API says
U.S. Bancorp ( USB ) declares $0.52/share quarterly dividend , in line with previous. Forward yield 4.0% Payable April 15; for shareholders of record March 31; ex-div March 31. The company has now announced a dividend of $0.52 for three consecutive quarters. See USB Dividend Scorecard, Yield Chart, & Dividend Growth. More on U.S. Bancorp U.S. Bancorp H PFD Vs. Owning One Of The 4 Fixed-Rate PFDs U...
U.S. Bancorp ( USB ) declares $0.52/share quarterly dividend , in line with previous. Forward yield 4.0% Payable April 15; for shareholders of record March 31; ex-div March 31. The company has now announced a dividend of $0.52 for three consecutive quarters. See USB Dividend Scorecard, Yield Chart, & Dividend Growth. More on U.S. Bancorp U.S. Bancorp H PFD Vs. Owning One Of The 4 Fixed-Rate PFDs U.S. Bancorp: Dividend Value Stock In Buy Range U.S. Bancorp (USB) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript U.S. Bancorp Advisors targets new offerings for those new to building wealth U.S. Bancorp raised to Buy from Hold at Truist Securities
Plans at Cologne Cathedral to start charging visitor fees have sparked an outcry, with critics warning against limiting access to the majestic gothic building to the well-off. Officials said this month that the cathedral, the tallest twin-spired church in the world and a tourist magnet in Germany’s fourth largest city, could only be maintained with a new revenue stream. They announced a scheme to ...
Plans at Cologne Cathedral to start charging visitor fees have sparked an outcry, with critics warning against limiting access to the majestic gothic building to the well-off. Officials said this month that the cathedral, the tallest twin-spired church in the world and a tourist magnet in Germany’s fourth largest city, could only be maintained with a new revenue stream. They announced a scheme to start selling tickets from July. The price of admission to the Kölner Dom, from which worshippers would be exempt, is estimated to come in at €12 to €15 (£10 to £13) – a cost seen as prohibitive to many. Architect Barbara Schock-Werner, who heads the non-profit Zentral-Dombau-Verein zu Köln (ZDV) association, which supports the cathedral’s conservationand has more than 19,000 members, said anything above €10 would be irresponsible. “I would find that unfair to the people of Cologne and the surrounding region,” she told the local newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. “If only the well-off can afford to go into a church, I think that’s socially unjust.” Schock-Werner, who oversaw conservation and restoration work on the building until her retirement in 2012, said it was “very, very regrettable” that Germany’s most famous church would soon be charging tourists an entrance fee at all. “There must also be non-commercial spaces. People shouldn’t have to pay for everything – least of all for visiting a church,” she said. Inflation and high staffing costs for 170 employees have driven up the price of the upkeep of the building, the cathedral’s management said. Meanwhile, cash reserves used to plug financing gaps in recent years have largely dried up, in part because fee-paying visits to the cathedral’s 157-metre towers and treasure chamber were halted for long periods during the Covid-19 pandemic. Church officials have made savings, such as reducing staff by attrition, but the numbers are still not adding up. The maintenance of the cathedral costs €16m per year while income only reached...
Ron Howard: ‘She taught me card tricks aged seven’ I first met Liza in 1963 when I was playing Eddie in a movie called The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. I was seven years old and I got this choice role, which was directed by the great Vincent Minnelli. There were no other kids on this movie, so I had a welfare worker who was also the studio teacher, and I was alone in my little second-grade classro...
Ron Howard: ‘She taught me card tricks aged seven’ I first met Liza in 1963 when I was playing Eddie in a movie called The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. I was seven years old and I got this choice role, which was directed by the great Vincent Minnelli. There were no other kids on this movie, so I had a welfare worker who was also the studio teacher, and I was alone in my little second-grade classroom. But one day, Vincent introduced me to his daughter, who he said was just going to hang around. She was 14. Hanging out with this seven-year-old kid must have been painful for her, but she was effervescent and fun. I remember feeling so cool that this teenage girl was showing me card tricks. She taught me how to shuffle. She taught me how to play solitaire. When she became a star, which wasn’t that many years later, I recognised her and thought, “OK, that’s Liza Minnelli.” We never really bumped into each other again until she did Arrested Development in 2003. [Creator] Mitch Hurwitz had a great idea for this character, Lucille 2, and Liza was the only person we pursued. He knew that I’d known her, but I said, “Well, I don’t know if she even remembers me.” But her agent said she did, so I called her to try to recruit her. We laughed about our connection and she was delighted that I remembered. And I was thrilled that she did too. View image in fullscreen ‘I just marvelled at her comic energy’ … Minnelli and Ed Begley Jr in Arrested Development. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy I was always laughing on the show and always having to collect myself. I just marvelled at how great Liza’s comedy energy was at that point in her life. But she’s always been bold. She has never played it safe her entire life. She’s always been a fearless performer and an artist. Ron Howard is an actor and director and was the narrator and executive producer of Arrested Development Bruce Roberts: ‘She spilled red wine all over my white carpet’ Liza and I were neighbours in LA, and she drove...
Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis – who exec produced this adaptation of Patricia Cornwell’s novels – have terrific chemistry. But this trashy drama is just weird Scarpetta has been a rather long time in the making. Demi Moore was attached to the role of Patricia Cornwell’s crack forensic pathologist in the 90s, as was Angelina Jolie in the 00s. In a recent interview, the author said she had even...
Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis – who exec produced this adaptation of Patricia Cornwell’s novels – have terrific chemistry. But this trashy drama is just weird Scarpetta has been a rather long time in the making. Demi Moore was attached to the role of Patricia Cornwell’s crack forensic pathologist in the 90s, as was Angelina Jolie in the 00s. In a recent interview, the author said she had even approached Jodie Foster and Helen Mirren along the way. Now it has finally come to our screens, thanks in part to Jamie Lee Curtis, who is both an executive producer and one of its stars, with Nicole Kidman in the title role, continuing her run as TV’s hardest-working A-lister. What a shame, then, after such a long wait, that it is so dire: a boilerplate mess that insists on stripping the original work for parts and putting a cynical techy spin on proceedings to boot. There are – for no good reason, really – two timelines in the series. In the present, Kidman plays Virginia’s chief medical officer Kay Scarpetta – a little icy, professional but prone to overstepping, haunted by secrets from the past. She is called to a crime scene where a woman’s naked body – sans hands – has been bound together with rope. We flash back to the 90s, where young Scarpetta (Rosy McEwen) is on the trail of a similar killer, who leaves a strange, glittery residue on his victims. Initially, at least, it seems as though this could be an interesting proposition, despite all the to-ing and fro-ing between past and present, which wasn’t part of Cornwell’s original novel. The idea that Scarpetta and her colleague and brother-in-law Pete Marino (played by Bobby Cannavale) may have got the wrong man in the 90s – when DNA evidence was still in its infancy – could have been the basis for a smart whodunnit. Instead, we get a sluggish procedural that barely bothers to build tension. Moments of gore come out of left field; major revelations in the case come to Scarpetta as sudden, deus ex machina revelations...
Fabio Orazzo should have been on his way home to Naples for the weekend. Instead, curiosity kept him in Rome, where he teaches art and history, long enough to jump on a bus to visit a little-known church in the north-east of the Italian capital. He came to Sant’Agnese fuori le mura (St Agnes Outside the Walls), built above fourth-century catacombs, to see a marble bust depicting Christ the Saviour...
Fabio Orazzo should have been on his way home to Naples for the weekend. Instead, curiosity kept him in Rome, where he teaches art and history, long enough to jump on a bus to visit a little-known church in the north-east of the Italian capital. He came to Sant’Agnese fuori le mura (St Agnes Outside the Walls), built above fourth-century catacombs, to see a marble bust depicting Christ the Saviour. A fixture in the church since 1590, it has been thrust into the spotlight by the bold claim that it could have been sculpted by Michelangelo. “I read about it in the news and decided I must come to see it,” Orazzo said while examining the sculpture on the altar of a side chapel. “I’ve read all the cynical comments and comparisons to Cristo della Minerva, the Michelangelo statue in another Rome church. They say this bust isn’t the artist’s style. But perhaps they were made in different periods of his life and so in my humble opinion, this is a Michelangelo too.” Orazzo was among a steady stream of visitors to the church since Valentina Salerno, an independent researcher, claimed during a press conference last week that newly discovered documents linked the bust to Michelangelo. The announcement caused a stir in the art world, especially since a sketch attributed to the Renaissance master – but dismissed by some as a copy – sold for £16.9m at a Christie’s auction in London on 5 February. View image in fullscreen Fabio Orazzo, an art and history teacher, takes a picture of the Christ the Saviour sculpture in north-east Rome. Photograph: Victor Sokolowicz/The Guardian Salerno, a fiction author and actor, is the first to admit she “is not an art historian”. Neither did she finish university. But, she said, her three years at law school were “very useful” because they equipped her with the skill and tenacity to “read these notary acts, wills and inventories with a legal eye”. For more than a decade, she has sifted through records in Italian and Vatican state archives in pursuit...
Waging war with no fixed purpose means victory can be declared at any point. Donald Trump’s motives for launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran were incoherent at the start. They are no clearer now that he has declared it “very complete, pretty much”. US and Israeli bombs have caused death and destruction, shaking but not toppling the government in Tehran. Among the targets was the supreme lead...
Waging war with no fixed purpose means victory can be declared at any point. Donald Trump’s motives for launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran were incoherent at the start. They are no clearer now that he has declared it “very complete, pretty much”. US and Israeli bombs have caused death and destruction, shaking but not toppling the government in Tehran. Among the targets was the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. He has been replaced by his son – an “unacceptable” candidate in the US president’s evaluation. Regime change was the plan, but Trump finds it easier to change plans than regimes. What began as a long-haul commitment to roll back decades of Islamic revolution has become a “short-term excursion” to neutralise Iran’s military capabilities. Trump has not quite declared “mission accomplished”. He says he has won, but also that he has more winning to do. This is the familiar stage of rhetorical climbdown, indicating dawning awareness that a problem is more complicated than the president initially thought. Complexity resists his whim. It bores him. Iran turns out to be unlike Venezuela, except in a superficial analysis as energy-exporting countries with a history of hostile relations with Washington. The model of regime decapitation and coercion that saw Nicolás Maduro kidnapped from Caracas and replaced with his compliant vice-president earlier this year whetted Trump’s appetite for an Iranian sequel. But the Islamic Republic has reserves of ideological and institutional resilience. It can also spook international markets by menacing trade in the Gulf. The White House seems not to have anticipated the predictable economic repercussions of war in the Middle East – soaring oil prices, falling stock markets, disrupted supply chains feeding inflation and choking growth. Flashing red lights on the financial dashboard were surely the prompt for Trump’s pledge to bring his military adventure to a swift conclusion. A tacit deal has come into view. Forget freedom. Irani...
When I was about 10, my mother mentioned something to me about the advantage of being able to raise one eyebrow. I can’t remember quite how she put it – I think she described it as an actor’s trick, a useful skill for conveying inner thoughts. We both spent a couple of minutes trying to lift one eyebrow without the other following it. Neither of us could manage it. It was harder than Mr Spock made...
When I was about 10, my mother mentioned something to me about the advantage of being able to raise one eyebrow. I can’t remember quite how she put it – I think she described it as an actor’s trick, a useful skill for conveying inner thoughts. We both spent a couple of minutes trying to lift one eyebrow without the other following it. Neither of us could manage it. It was harder than Mr Spock made it look, and possibly not so much an acting skill as a genetic predisposition, like being able to roll your tongue. I don’t think my mother meant this as advice – she didn’t expressly say, “If you want to get anywhere in this life, you gotta be able to raise one eyebrow.” But for some reason, on this occasion, I took her assertion to heart. I spent hours practising raising one eyebrow in the mirror. It’s an immensely frustrating business, trying to isolate the muscles needed to hoist one brow from all the others controlling your forehead. Had I been a more outgoing, fun-to-be-with child, I might have found something else to do with my time. But I wasn’t, and I didn’t. Eventually, I cracked it: I found I could raise either eyebrow at will. But by then I was embarrassed by all the work I’d put in. I couldn’t show off my new talent without revealing that secretly I’d been in training for a year, so I kept my triumph to myself. View image in fullscreen Tim Dowling, pictured with his parents in Rowayton, Connecticut, c 1971. Photograph: Courtesy of Tim Dowling Some years later, in my freshman year in college, I was strong-armed into appearing in somebody’s theatrical sketch, part of a revue. I played a spy – I wore a dinner jacket and sunglasses, and sat centre stage at a small table with a martini glass on it. I had no lines; I wasn’t even supposed to move. No acting was required, which was good because I couldn’t act. Everybody else had lines – the action happened all around me. My lack of reaction was part of the joke, but it never seemed very funny. Rehearsals were tedious....