Raw video shows how a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on February 28 over a potential mineral deal ended with a tense exchange between US President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
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Warren Buffett has spent the past 60 years transforming Berkshire Hathaway from a failing textile mill into a $1 trillion company that's more valuable than Tesla, Walmart, or JPMorgan.
The legendary investor took control of Berkshire in 1965 and has steadily acquired scores of businesses including Geico and See's Candies, and built multibillion-dollar stakes in public companies including Apple and Coca-Cola.
But at 94 years of age, the business titan knows the end of the Buffett era is near at hand — and he's carefully paved the way for his departure.
Buffett has warned his shareholders the clock is ticking on his time in charge. He's talked up Greg Abel and set the stage for his planned successor. He's also sought to protect his legacy and ensure his vast fortune isn't squandered once he's gone.
"Succession planning is the most important thing in corporate governance for a company led by an iconic CEO," Lawrence Cunningham, the director of the University of Delaware's Weinberg Center on Corporate Governance and the author of several books about Buffett and Berkshire, told Business Insider.
Buffett's conglomerate is "providing an exemplary and under-appreciated model for how this can be done well," Cunningham continued, adding that it has "prepared the way not only for Greg to succeed Warren as CEO" but also prepared stockholders for their company to no longer have a controlling shareholder.
"At 94, it won't be long before Greg Abel replaces me as CEO and will be writing the annual letters," Buffett said in his recent missive to Berkshire shareholders, making it explicit he'll hand over the reins soon.
The billionaire bargain hunter has repeatedly reassured stockholders that Abel is a worthy successor. In his new letter, he wrote that in those rare moments when opportunities are everywhere, Abel has "vividly shown his ability to act at such times as did Charlie," referring to his late business partner, Charlie Munger.
Buffett joked during last year's annual meeting that shareholders "don't have too long to wait" for a change in management. "I feel fine, but I know a little about actuarial tables," he quipped.
The investor mentioned in his latest letter that he requires a cane to walk, perhaps because he's "considering the possibility of stepping down as CEO in the near future," David Kass, a finance professor at the University of Maryland who's been closely following Buffett's company for four decades, told BI. He added that the nonagenarian might announce the decision as soon as Berkshire's annual meeting in May.
Buffett appears to be clearing the decks before the next captain takes over the ship.
Berkshire's $334 billion cash mountain may reflect a "desire to hand a relatively clean slate to Greg" and enable him to "more easily perform the main function of a CEO, which is allocating capital," Kass told BI.
More specifically, he and his investment managers have sold several small but long-held investments including General Motors and Procter & Gamble in recent years.
They've also cashed in $158 billion worth of stocks on a net basis in just the past two years, which has helped to boost Berkshire's cash pile to record levels. Their efforts could leave plenty of dry powder for Abel to spend on stocks or finally bag the elephant-sized acquisition that has evaded Buffett for years.
Buffett and his deputies might be pulling back on purchases, ramping up sales, and halting buybacks because stock valuations have grown too expensive. But they might also see value in leaving a treasure chest for Abel to draw from and deploy as he wishes.
Buffett disclosed last year that when he dies, his roughly 14% stake in Berkshire — worth more than $150 billion — will pass into a trust that counts his three children as trustees, and they'll have to vote unanimously on how it's spent.
The plan not only protects the money from the taxman and earmarks it for worthy causes, it also aims to thwart activist investors who might otherwise seek to buy up Buffett's shares once he's gone and clamor for his conglomerate to be dismantled.
"I regard Berkshire Hathaway sort of like a painter regards a painting, the difference being the canvas is unlimited," Buffett said in 2016, underlining his vision that the company will persist for generations.
In fact, Buffett's efforts to prepare his shareholders for the inevitable, voice his confidence in Abel and set him up for success, and protect his personal stake in the business, all speak to his devotion to ensuring Berkshire thrives long after he's gone.
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Let's stipulate that Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million. So he can do anything he wants with it.
Like ordering the paper's editors not to make a presidential endorsement. Or announcing that from now on the paper's op-ed pages would only publish stuff that supports "personal liberties and free markets," as he announced this week.
That said, those decisions seem to be costing Bezos money, at the very least.
When the billionaire announced his non-endorsement plans last fall, days before the election, hundreds of thousands of subscribers canceled their subscriptions in less than two weeks, NPR's David Folkenflik previously reported.
Now Folkenflik reports that 75,000 subscribers have left the paper following Bezos' op-ed shift, announced on Wednesday. Though a Post executive told Folkenflik the paper signed up another 400,000 subscribers in between Bezos' announcements, numbers Folkenflik has seen indicate the Post has "a net loss of a couple hundred thousand subscribers," he reported. A Post rep declined to comment about subscription numbers.
The important context here is that prior to Bezos' op-ed moves, he had installed new leadership at the Post, tasked with finding new readers and new ways to make money. Now, he appears to be making both things harder.
It's always possible that Bezos' moves will generate more readership from people who want to read an op-ed page promoting a libertarian/conservative point of view. Though it's hard to believe that market is "underserved," as he argued in his memo announcing the changes: Among traditional media, both The Economist and The Wall Street Journal service that market today.
And it's very easy to find that point of view on the wider internet (and particularly on Twitter, now that Elon Musk bought it, changed its name to X, and began amplifying right-learning accounts).
It's also possible that after this newest controversy, the Post will eventually settle into another version of the Journal, which has a famously right-wing op-ed section and does respected, down-the-middle news reporting in the rest of its pages.
And it's also worth noting that on Friday, two days after Bezos kicked off the latest unrest among his readers and his staff, WaPo op-ed writer Dana Milbank published a story arguing that "the single greatest threat to "personal liberties and free markets" in the United States today [is] President Donald Trump." So we really don't know how all of this will shake out.
That said … from outside the paper, Bezos' moves look like they're calculated to please a single reader. President Donald Trump.
Ask Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News personality who now hosts a successful podcast/YouTube show: "He's doing what Joe [Scarborough] and Mika [Brzezinski] did. He's bending the knee," she said at an event hosted by Semafor this week, referring to the MSNBC hosts' visit to Trump days after last fall's election.
Will that work? Maybe, says Kelly, who appeared onstage at a Trump rally during the last campaign.
"You win respect with Trump when you go to him and you tell him 'I like you,' which is clearly what Bezos did. The reporting is very clear," she said. "I think Trump and he will be fine. But that doesn't make any difference at all to somebody like me, who's actually looking for sincerity."
So if you follow that critique, Bezos is in a bit of a pickle: He can steer his paper in a way that could make the president of the United States happy — but will lose readers on the left, and won't gain them on the right.
Maybe all of that is OK for the third-richest man in the world, who could buy another 100 Washington Posts and still have more money than Larry Ellison, who's currently one slot behind him on Forbes's tally of the world's billionaires.
But then why own the Post at all? Then Bezos wouldn't have to worry about what Donald Trump, or Megyn Kelly, or anyone else — including the paper's readers — think about it.
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While many movie lovers expect actors and directors like Zendaya and Martin Scorsese at the Oscars, another category of A-listers are also invited to Hollywood's biggest night: athletes.
From serving as executive producers on Oscar-nominated films (hello, Venus and Serena Williams) to actually bringing home the famed gold-plated statue, athletes have successfully crossed over into the world of entertainment many times, and they've looked good while doing it, too.
In 2018, Olympic bronze medal-winning figure skater Mirai Nagasu walked the carpet in a cornflower-blue embroidered gown by Tadashi Shoji, and in 2022, Venus Williams had one of the night's most daring looks with a low-cut white gown with silver detailing by Elie Saab.
While we wait to see who will grace the carpets this year, here's a look back at some of the athletes' best fashion moments at the Oscars and the Vanity Fair after-party.
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In 2018, the late Kobe Bryant and animator Glen Keane won the Oscar for best animated short film for "Dear Basketball." Bryant became the first professional athlete to win an Oscar with the win.
For the history-making occasion, he wore a charcoal-grey tuxedo with black trim and a black bowtie, while his wife, Vanessa Bryant, wore a burgundy off-the-shoulder mermaid gown.
In his acceptance speech, Bryant thanked his wife and daughters, telling them, "Ti amo con tutto il mio cuore," or "I love you with all my heart" in Italian.
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Seven-time Grand Slam singles champion Venus Williams worked with image architect Law Roach for her Oscars look in 2022. Williams and her sister, Serena Williams, served as executive producers of the film "King Richard," based on their father, which was nominated for six awards that year.
"Throughout awards season, I just wanted to keep raising the bar and making the most of every moment," Williams told Vogue then. "I'm usually stepping off a tennis court or in workout clothes when the cameras are on me, so it was fun to get dressed up and dive into the glitz and glam over these past few weeks."
Vogue reported that Elie Saab created Williams' gown and that she accessorized with Tiffany & Co. Bone cuffs by Elsa Peretti, a detail she told the outlet "tied the entire look together, giving it this futuristic yet elegant feel."
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Shortly after the 2018 Olympic Games concluded in PyeongChang, South Korea, Team USA figure skater Mirai Nagasu attended the Oscars in a cornflower-blue embroidered gown by Tadashi Shoji.
She told Access Hollywood that year that she took inspiration from Lupita Nyong'o, who famously wore a baby-blue Prada gown with a deep V-neck when she won the Oscar for best supporting actress in 2014.
Nagasu also had the perfect accessory stashed in her clutch: Her bronze medal.
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For 2020's Oscars ceremony, former NFL player turned writer and director Matthew A. Cherry put a twist on a classic black tuxedo by opting for a velvet jacket.
He and producer Karen Rupert Toliver took home the award for best animated short film for "Hair Love."
In his acceptance speech, Cherry said "Hair Love" was created "because we wanted to see more representation in animation. We wanted to normalize Black hair."
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Super Bowl XLII winner Michael Strahan is a staple on the Oscars red carpet thanks to being a cohost for "Good Morning America." The Oscars and GMA air on the same network, ABC.
In 2020, he wore a dark teal and black tuxedo from his own M by Michael Strahan collection.
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Twenty-time Grand Slam singles champion Roger Federer made his second Oscars appearance in 2024.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, he wore a Prada dinner jacket, sunglasses from his collection with Oliver Peoples, and a Rolex Daytona Le Mans.
After the event, Federer told the outlet, "It was so exciting to be back at the Oscars," adding that Ryan Gosling's performance of "I'm Just Ken" from the "Barbie" movie and the acceptance speech for "Oppenheimer" star Cillian Murphy, who won best actor, were two of the night's memorable moments.
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Lindsey Vonn attended the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar Party in a vibrant-red draped gown by Balenciaga and black Manolo Blahnik heels, W Magazine reported.
The three-time Olympic medalist also tagged Rolex on Instagram for her accessory.
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Five-time Grand Slam singles champion Maria Sharapova attended the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar Party in a sleeveless olive-green gown by Emilia Wickstead, which she paired with long black gloves and black heels.
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Three-time Olympic gold medalist Shaun White and his now fiancé Nina Dobrev were among the best-dressed couples at the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar Party.
While Dobrev shined in silver, White wore a cream tuxedo jacket and coordinating bowtie, which he paired with black slacks and shoes.
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Serena Williams attended the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar Party in a long black gown by Off-White with red and white detailing. The 23-time Grand Slam singles champion accessorized with coordinating gloves and Messika jewelry.
Williams told Vanity Fair's YouTube Live hosts Michelle Buteau and Tan France that the party is "way more nerve-racking than like being on the tennis court" but added that it's a "super fun environment."
