Category: 3. Business

The entertainment company Paramount Global is expected to close its $8bn merger agreement with Skydance Media on August 7, a date that marks two weeks after the administration of President Donald Trump gave its approval.

On Friday, the two companies announced the final stage of the year-long deal, which was first announced in July 2024.

The merger is considered a massive shake-up in the media landscape of the United States, drawing to a close the reign of the powerful Redstone family over the Paramount entertainment empire.

But the merger has garnered even more attention in recent weeks for its political backdrop.

On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gave the green light for the merger to go forward, after a series of moves under Paramount that were widely interpreted as concessions to the Trump administration.

The FCC is technically an independent agency of the federal government, but since taking office in January for his second term, President Trump has sought to bring such agencies under his influence, including by appointing loyal allies to their leadership.

That put the fate of the Paramount-Skydance merger in question, particularly given Trump’s combative relationship with CBS Broadcasting Inc, one of Paramount’s premier properties.

Conflicts over content

Trump has long taken an adversarial approach to the news media, and CBS’s flagship news programmes were no exception.

Some of those tensions came to a head in the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election, when Trump, a Republican, was facing off against Democratic contender Kamala Harris.

The TV news magazine 60 Minutes had a tradition of interviewing each of the major party nominees for the presidency in the lead-up to the vote, and it had invited both Trump and Harris to participate.

Harris accepted the invitation, but 60 Minutes said Trump cancelled. Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, disputed that characterisation.

“There were initial discussions, but nothing was ever scheduled or locked in,” Cheung wrote on social media. “They also insisted on doing live fact checking, which is unprecedented.”

The back-and-forth escalated when 60 Minutes aired two different cuts from its interview with Harris.

One version, which aired on a sister programme Face The Nation, featured more of Harris’s answer about her stance towards Israel. The other version, which aired on the 60 Minutes broadcast, was shorter.

Trump called the different edits evidence of deceptive reporting tactics and filed a lawsuit against Paramount, CBS’s parent company.

“CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news,” his court filing alleged.

“That is false,” 60 Minutes responded in a statement to its website.

“When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point. The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment.”

While many media experts expected Paramount to prevail on the merits of the case, the company instead sought to negotiate an end to the case. Earlier this month, it agreed to pay $16m to Trump, to go to his future presidential library.

Shortly thereafter, another top CBS show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, revealed it had been cancelled, allegedly for financial reasons.

But the timing and unexpected nature of the cancellation drew speculation that it might have been an attempt to appease Trump and streamline the merger, given the fact that Colbert frequently lambasted the Republican president on his show.

Trump himself posted on Truth Social, “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings.”

The Late Show was consistently the top-rated late-night comedy show, and it had won a Peabody Award and multiple Emmy nods.

South Park TV show takes aim

Within weeks of both the 60 Minutes lawsuit settlement and the cancellation of The Late Show, the FCC gave its blessing to the merger between Paramount and Skydance.

Under the merger, Skydance founder David Ellison, the son of Oracle Corporation CEO Larry Ellison, is expected to helm operations.

Upon the merger’s approval, Trump’s appointee to lead the FCC, Brendan Carr, released a statement echoing some of the president’s criticisms of major news outlets.

He also hinted that the merger would result in changes to CBS’s news output.

“Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly,” he wrote. “It is time for a change. That is why I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcasting network.”

“In particular, Skydance has made written commitments to ensure that the new company’s programming embodies a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum.”

To ensure compliance with that commitment, Carr said an ombudsman would be appointed to the media giant for a period of at least two years.

Carr added that the merger between Skydance and Paramount would also bar the new mega-company from implementing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, which are designed to create an equal playing field for people regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion or ability.

But hours after the FCC granted its approval, the Paramount-owned channel Comedy Central aired an episode of the animated series South Park that mocked President Trump and satirised its parent company’s $16m settlement.

In one scene, an animated Jesus attempts to warn the show’s characters about Trump.

“The guy can do whatever he wants now that someone backed down, OK?” the animated Jesus says. “You guys saw what happened to CBS? Yeah, well, guess who owns CBS? Paramount! You really want to end up like Colbert?”

The Trump administration has since blasted the show as irrelevant.

Tea, an app designed to let women safely discuss men they date has been breached, with thousands of selfies and photo IDs of users exposed, the company confirmed on Friday

Tea, an app designed to let women safely discuss men they date has been breached, with thousands of selfies and photo IDs of users exposed, the company confirmed on Friday.

Tea said that about 72,000 images were leaked online, including 13,000 images of selfies or selfies featuring a photo identification that users submitted during account verification. Another 59,000 images publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments and direct messages were also accessed without authorization, according to a Tea spokesperson.

No email addresses or phone numbers were accessed, the company said, and the breach only affects users who signed up before February 2024.

“Tea has engaged third-party cybersecurity experts and are working around the clock to secure its systems,” the company said. “At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that additional user data was affected. Protecting tea users’ privacy and data is their highest priority.”

Tea presents itself as a safe way for women to anonymously vet men they might connect with on dating apps such as Tinder or Bumble — ensuring that your date is “safe, not a catfish, and not in a relationship.”

“Tea is a must-have app, helping women avoid red flags before the first date with dating advice, and showing them who’s really behind the profile of the person they’re dating,” reads Tea’s app store description.

404 Media, which earlier reported the breach, said it was 4Chan users who discovered an exposed database that “allowed anyone to access the material” from Tea.

“While reporting this story, a URL the 4chan user posted included a voluminous list of specific attachments associated with the Tea app. 404 Media saw this list of files. In the last hour or so, that page was locked down, and now returns a “Permission denied” error,” 404 Media reported Friday.

Tea said in an Instagram post this week that it has reached 4 million users.

By Emily Bary

PayPal’s stock rose for the eighth session in a row Friday, but analysts have a hard time making a call about the future

PayPal Holdings Inc. has been a “battleground stock,” according to Bernstein analyst Harshita Rawat – with some investors worried about competition for the company’s core checkout busines, and others hopeful that the current management team will be able to execute better than past leaders.

Looking at a short window, PayPal’s stock (PYPL) is on a hot run – it logged its eighth session in a row of gains Friday, and is ahead almost 7% over that period. It’s the stock’s longest winning streak since a 10-session one that ended April 13, 2021, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

Taking a wider view presents a different picture, however, with PayPal shares off about 75% from their all-time closing high achieved in July 2021 and off more than 8% so far this year.

The next big catalyst for PayPal’s stock is Tuesday morning’s earnings report, and Rawat sees a “favorable setup” going into that. There have been seemingly strong and stable e-commerce trends in the period and there’s the potential for currency benefits from the weaker U.S. dollar DXY, though she acknowledged that PayPal has “a fairly robust hedging program which can mute the impact” of the currency trend.

In general, the company has “improved product velocity” and it seems to be see growing traction with its debit card, Rawat added.

Trevor Williams of Jefferies expects the company to beat on transaction gross profit and transaction margin dollars, but he thinks investors will be most focused on branded total payment volume – and he’s less upbeat about the trend there. He wrote in a note to clients last week that he thinks branded volume growth slowed in the second quarter due to tariff-related pressures on Chinese e-commerce platforms like Temu (PDD) and Shein.

See also: Earnings push Fiserv’s stock toward its worst year since 2008. Here’s what worries Wall Street.

“Without visibility into a branded acceleration above mid-single digits (we believe not likely by [year-end]), we don’t see what drives the story forward out of the print,” Williams wrote. He predicted 5% growth in branded volume on a currency-neutral basis for the second quarter, down from the 6% rate seen in the first quarter after excluding Leap Day impacts.

Williams is on the sidelines when it comes to PayPal’s stock, recently maintaining his neutral rating. Bernstein’s Rawat also stuck with her market-perform call.

The stock could either wind up a “multibagger” with big returns or be “a structural short” over a three-year timeframe, Rawat wrote. “The problem: We currently lack conviction on which outcome is more likely,” she noted.

-Emily Bary

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  07-25-25 1711ET
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A Royal Caribbean crew member jumped overboard to his death on Thursday night after stabbing another crew member on the cruise, according to the Royal Bahamas Police Force.

The crew member, a 35-year-old South African man, allegedly stabbed a 28-year-old South African woman multiple times onboard the Icon of the Seas cruise ship shortly before 7:30 p.m., police said in a statement to NBC News. The ship was in the waters off the coast of San Salvador Island in the Bahamas.

The man then fled the scene and jumped off the ship, according to police. He was later found dead by onboard medical staff.

The woman suffered stab wounds to her upper body and is in stable condition according to police.

A Royal Caribbean spokesperson said the incident was “a personal dispute,” but did not provide any further details.

“One of the crew members was injured, was attended to by the onboard medical team, and she is now in stable condition,” the spokesperson said. “Unfortunately, the other crew member is deceased after he went overboard and was recovered in a search and rescue operation.”

Royal Caribbean did not identify the crew members involved in the incident.

An autopsy to determine the man’s exact cause of death is pending, according to police.