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Dave Calhoun was supposed to turn Boeing around, but after 4 years on the job, he's out. Here's where things went wrong.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Boeing announced Monday that CEO Dave Calhoun would resign at the end of the year.It makes him the second successive chief to go after a 737 Max crisis.Attorneys for crash victims say he failed to refocus the planemaker on safety above profit.On Monday morning, Dave Calhoun became the second successive Boeing CEO to lose his job in the wake of a 737 Max crisis.
The company announced he would step down at the end of the year while Stan Deal, the head of Boeing's commercial airplanes division, was immediately replaced.
Calhoun, Boeing's former chairman, became CEO after Dennis Muilenburg was ousted by the board in 2020. A year later, Boeing raised its mandatory retirement age from 65 to 70 — a sign it had faith that Calhoun, then aged 64, could continue piloting the firm.
Muilenburg was terminated as the planemaker fought for its reputation after 346 people died in two 737 Max 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019.
The company was accused of putting profit above safety as it hurried production of the Max in order to compete with the Airbus A320neo — which broke order records at the 2011 Paris Air Show.
After the longest-ever grounding for a US airliner, the 737 Max was ungrounded 10 months into Calhoun's reign.
Under his leadership, the firm worked to reassure both customers and the public that the Max was safe. MCAS, the software that played a major role in the crashes, now relies on two sensors rather than one, and is easier for pilots to override.
In 2021, Boeing paid $2.5 billion in a deferred prosecution agreement to settle charges that it defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration by misleading it about MCAS.
Family members of 737 Max 8 crash victims attended then-CEO Dennis Muilenburg's Senate testimony.Win McNamee/Getty Images
Most people's concerns about the 737 Max looked to have been assuaged, until the Alaska Airlines blowout on January 5.
The fact that the incident occurred on a jet delivered just 66 days earlier immediately sent alarm bells ringing that it could be the manufacturer's fault, rather than a maintenance issue at the airline.
In its preliminary report, the National Transportation Safety Board said the 737 Max 9 left Boeing's factory missing key bolts designed to secure the door plug that came off in midair.
The Department of Justice is now reviewing whether the incident constituted a violation of the deferred prosecution agreement, and the FBI has sent letters to passengers on the blowout flight saying they may be victims of a crime.
"The watershed moment should have been when nearly 400 people died in the Boeing Max 8 disasters years ago," Bob Clifford, the lead counsel in pending federal litigation for families of the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash victims, said in an email.
"If the company had taken the Max crashes seriously, it is likely that the Alaska Air debacle could have been averted, and the company would be on the way to healing itself, and ensuring the safety of the flying public," he added.
According to data from Muck Rack, the media monitoring company, around 40% of news coverage of Calhoun was negative last quarter, compared to 50% this quarter.
Maintenance problems at United Airlines, Boeing's biggest customer, also created bad headlines for the planemaker, like a tire falling off a 777. Even though that doesn't appear to be Boeing's fault, interest in the planemaker's problems soared following the blowout.
News coverage of Boeing has soared following the Alaska Airlines blowout.Courtesy of Muck Rack
However, it was the airline chiefs who appeared to have the biggest sway, after Boeing's deliveries of new jets have been delayed.
The Wall Street Journal first reported last Saturday that airline CEOs requested a meeting with Boeing's board to discuss their frustrations. The meeting hasn't yet taken place, but was called by the bosses of United, Southwest, Alaska, and American as a symbolic vote of no confidence in Calhoun, The Air Current reported.
Boeing declined to comment when reached by Business Insider.
In an email to BI, Timothy Hubbard, assistant professor of management at the University of Notre Dame, said: "His departure is a long time coming. The embattled leader has struggled to rebuild confidence in Boeing's products following years of design and manufacturing issues."
He added that Boeing's culture around safety and quality needs to change, but "it's unfortunate" that it will take nine months for a new CEO to take over and take control of that process.
"This delay may reflect poor succession planning or a desire by Calhoun to keep power a little longer," Hubbard said.
In an interview with CNBC following the announcement, Calhoun said the decision to leave was "100%" his own.
He added that Boeing has a "bad habit" of being too focused on delivering planes on time, which suggests "the movement of the airplane is more important than the first-time quality of the product."
That's notable given the planemaker has often come under criticism for an emphasis on profit over safety.
For example, Clifford said: "The families of the victims knew that the culture of profit over safety would not change when Calhoun took over in January 2020 because he was raised on that principle."
Dave Calhoun chaired Boeing's board before becoming the CEO.DAVID RYDER/Reuters
The Journal reported last September that Boeing staff were frustrated by Calhoun's use of private jets to commute to the office. It added that he was rarely seen at the headquarters, even while managers encouraged employees to return to the office after the pandemic.
Critics also cite the distance between Boeing's headquarters in Virginia and the 737 factory near Seattle as evidence that safety isn't prioritized. In February, the board shut down a shareholder's attempt to force a vote on relocating Boeing's headquarters back to its historic base.
Calhoun's interview with CNBC took place in Renton, Washington, the home of the 737 factory — a sign of the firm's renewed focus on manufacturing.
For now, it looks like the outgoing CEO has come to agree with his critics. In his memo to employees, Calhoun said the company needs to have "safety and quality at the forefront of everything that we do."
"The next CEO must know that his or her role will be to prioritize safety, not just profit," Justin Green, a partner at Kreindler and Kreindler who represents 34 families of Max 8 crash victims, said in an email.
Green praised the personnel changes but called on the company to be "fully transparent" regarding every change it makes involving manufacturing processes.
"For too long, Boeing has been avoiding public accountability and these leadership changes open a window for the company to do so," he added.
Federal regulators are wielding a classic Warren Buffett concept to go after Apple — his biggest stock bet
AP
The Department of Justice is suing Apple for monopolizing smartphone markets with the iPhone.Regulators called Apple's defenses against its rivals a "moat," borrowing Warren Buffett's metaphor.Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is one of Apple's biggest shareholders with a nearly 6% stake.The Department of Justice is suing Apple for monopolizing smartphone markets — and cheekily used a term coined by Warren Buffett to make its case against the investor's No. 1 stock.
Federal regulators used the word "moat" eight times in their civil antitrust complain to describe the defenses that Apple sets up to keep competitors at bay.
They alleged the iPhone maker "built and reinforced" a "wide and deep" moat around its "smartphone monopoly," and said the company "crushes innovation that might help fill in the moat."
They also wrote that Apple's "moat building has not resulted in lower prices, higher output, improved innovation, or a better user experience for smartphone users," although some may disagree.
Castles and moats
Buffett popularized the concept of a company having a "moat" around it that protects it from rivals.
The Berkshire Hathaway CEO has used the metaphor dozens of times in his yearly shareholder letters, and during his company's annual gatherings.
Here's what Buffett said about two of his favorite businesses, Coke and Gillette, in his 1993 letter:
"The might of their brand names, the attributes of their products, and the strength of their distribution systems give them an enormous competitive advantage, setting up a protective moat around their economic castles. The average company, in contrast, does battle daily without any such means of protection."
The Berkshire CEO built on the idea in his 2007 letter:
"A truly great business must have an enduring 'moat' that protects excellent returns on invested capital. The dynamics of capitalism guarantee that competitors will repeatedly assault any business 'castle' that is earning high returns.
Therefore a formidable barrier such as a company's being the low-cost producer (GEICO, Costco) or possessing a powerful worldwide brand (Coca-Cola, Gillette, American Express) is essential for sustained success. Business history is filled with 'Roman Candles,' companies whose moats proved illusory and were soon crossed."
The billionaire deployed the metaphor once again during Berkshire's 2017 meeting:
"If you've got a wonderful business, even if it's a small one like See's Candy, you basically have an economic castle. And in capitalism, people are going to try and take away that castle from you.
So, you want a moat around it that can protect it. And then you want a knight in the castle that's pretty darn good at warding off marauders."
Crocodiles, poison — and sand
Moats have been core to Buffett's investing philosophy for decades. He seeks to invest in businesses with "unbreachable moats," he said in his 1995 letter.
His valuation process includes analyzing a company's moat, as it affects the certainty and size of its future cash flows, he said at the 1999 meeting.
The Berkshire chief also tells the managers of all of the conglomerate's subsidiaries to work relentlessly to widen their moats, he wrote in his 2012 letter.
He even defended moats at the 2018 meeting after Tesla CEO Elon Musk called them "lame." His response: "I don't think he'd want to take us on in candy."
Buffett is clearly passionate about moats, but he's still had some fun with the metaphor over the years. At the 2000 meeting, he praised See's CEO at the time for throwing "crocodiles, and sharks, and piranhas in the moat" as that made it "harder for people to swim across and attack the castle."
Moreover, he described Moody's moat as being "far wider, deeper, and infested with far more poisonous characters."
Buffett's late business partner, Charlie Munger, also chimed in during the 2009 meeting, bemoaning that "a lot of moats have been filling up with sand lately."
Regulators aren't moat fans
Buffett almost certainly evaluated the moat around Apple and the iPhone and liked what he saw, given he put about $36 billion into the tech titan between 2016 and 2018.
Berkshire's position has more than quadrupled in value to more than $150 billion, making Apple the top holding in Buffett's roughly $350 billion stock portfolio — while Berkshire's near-6% stake ranks it among Apple's largest shareholders.
Unsurprisingly, Buffett has loudly praised Apple in recent years. He's called it a "better business than any we own," and hailed CEO Tim Cook as a world-class manager.
He's also underscored how indispensable the iPhone is by suggesting owners would probably turn down a $10,000 offer to never use the device again.
The iPhone is a big part of Apple's "moat."NurPhoto / Getty
The stickiness of Apple's product ecosystem, and how that staves off competition, may well have been a factor in Buffett's backing and high praise.
Yet regulators are accusing Apple of going too far in digging its moat. They've alleged it illegally excludes and deters competition by stopping its products from working well — or at all — with non-Apple devices and apps. Apple has argued that a so-called walled garden is more secure and allows a more consistent user experience.
While Buffett clearly sees moats as beneficial to a company and its investors, even he might admit they're not always good for consumers or for fostering innovation.
The Department of Justice has added insult to injury by not only targeting Buffett's biggest stock bet, but also wielding the investor's moat metaphor against him, at least indirectly.
Here's the cast of Amazon's 'Fallout' and the shows and movies where you've probably seen the actors before
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon's "Fallout" is based on Bethesda Softworks' post-apocalyptic video game series.It takes place in an alternate world, where nuclear technology is used for everything.The cast include actors from "Yellowjackets" and "The Hateful Eight."The "Fallout" video games have gripped players since the late '90s and the franchise is finally getting the live-action treatment from Amazon. The show starts streaming on Prime Video on April 12, and fleshes out the post-apocalyptic wasteland from the games.
Bethesda Softworks bought the franchise from Interplay in 2007 for $5.75 million, and the four games it has published since then have sold 45.4 million copies in total.
The most recent entry, "Fallout 76," pushed the single-player franchise online. Per Bethesda Softworks, since 2018, 17 million players have explored the multiplayer game, which the studio has frequently updated with new storylines, missions, and loot.
The franchise imagines a world inspired by 1950s futurism where society relies on technology that is more advanced than our own, from chunky wearable computers, to floating robots, and giant suits of armor. But all that technology didn't stop a nuclear war from breaking out.
Some people survived the apocalypse thanks to huge underground bunkers, called Vaults, which were built by a nefarious company called Vault-Tec.
When the "Fallout" TV series kicks off, one of these Vault Dwellers leaves the safety of the bunker to find her father.
Here's who's in the cast of "Fallout."
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images/Amazon Prime Video
"Fallout" mainly follows Lucy MacLean, a vault dweller born and raised in Vault 33 after the apocalypse, played by Ella Purnell.
Purnell previously played Jackie, a high school soccer team player who survives a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness, in "Yellowjackets."
She also appeared opposite Dave Bautista and Hiroyuki Sanada in Zack Snyder's "Army of the Dead" as Kate Ward.
In "Fallout," Lucy has spent her entire life inside Vault 33 with her father and brother. She has an idealistic view of the world because she was educated by the company behind the underground bunker, Vault-Tec.
So, she's forced to adapt quickly when she leaves the safety of the Vault to find her father in the outside world.
Hutton Supancic/SXSW/Getty Images/Amazon Prime Video
During Lucy's quest to find her missing father, she crosses paths with an irradiated bounty hunter called The Ghoul, and actor Walton Goggins is the star under all that makeup.
He previously played career criminal Boyd Crowder in "Justified," as well as Captain Mannix in Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight."
As players of the games will know, most ghouls are creatures who were once human but have been turned into mindless creatures by exposure to radiation. But The Ghoul has retained his humanity and has been alive for hundreds of years by the time "Fallout" starts.
Goggins' character used to be a normal man called Cooper Howard, and he shows up in a Vault-Tec commercial in the trailer.
Frederic J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images/Amazon Prime Video
The third protagonist of the series is Maximus, a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, played by Aaron Moten. The star played Ben in the Fox TV series "Next," as well as Petey in HBO's "The Night Of."
Maximus was raised in the wasteland but adopted by the militaristic Brotherhood of Steel when he was a child. When "Fallout" starts, he's a squire who serves one of the knights in the hulking suits of Power Armor that are synonymous with the franchise.
In Vanity Fair's lengthy first-look at the series, executive producer Jonathan Nolan said that Maximus' role in the Brotherhood of Steel was inspired by medieval legends.
"This is a drawing on the classic Arthurian Knight legends where life was cheap, and you had a squire as long as they were useful," he explained. "They had to prove their worth, they had to prove their valor and their strength, and if they didn't, they were kind of cast aside."
Mat Hayward/Getty Images/Amazon Prime Video
Lucy's journey in "Fallout" revolves around finding her father, Hank MacLean, after he goes missing from Vault 33.
He's played by Kyle MacLachlan, who fans might recognize as Agent Dale Cooper from David Lynch's "Twin Peaks," as well as The Captain in "How I Met Your Mother," and villain Calvin Johnson in "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."
Hank is the Overseer of Vault 33, and he's respected among the vault dwellers, which is why Lucy bravely decides to leave the safety of Vault 33 to find him.
Fans of the "Fallout" games will know that aside from saving some of the population, Vault-Tec used the vaults to experiment on their inhabitants. So it'll be interesting to see whether Hank has also been tasked with experimenting on the people he's in charge of.
Marleen Moise/WireImage/Getty Images
The wasteland is filled with colorful characters, some more mysterious than others. One of those intriguing individuals is Wilzig, played by Michael Emerson. Little is known about the character, but the Vanity Fair feature describes him as an "enigmatic researcher."
Wilzig may be a Vault-Tec employee or a member of the sinister Enclave, which experiments with radiation in the games. He can briefly be seen in the trailer warning Lucy about the dangers of post-apocalyptic America.
Emerson is best known for his role as the scheming villain-turned-ally, Benjamin Linus, in "Lost." He also played genius billionaire scientist Harold Finch in "Person of Interest."
Oklahoma's lax marijuana laws made it a green utopia for the cannabis industry. Then came the mass murder.
BI
Fourteen months after the murders, the garage of the abandoned marijuana farm on prairie tableland northwest of Oklahoma City sits frozen and dark.
Clothes hangers meant for drying weed dangle from metal poles stretched across the ceiling. Electric fans and plastic footstools are toppled over. The remnants of face-high marijuana plants lie flat on the unswept concrete.
Electrical outlets and two air-conditioning units are crudely cut into white plaster walls. Under one of those outlets is a sign of the horror that happened here: blood splatter dried to a reddish brown.
Situated in Kingfisher County, Oklahoma, the farm sits on a dirt path about two miles from the nearest paved road, surrounded by flatland. The closest town is Ames, Oklahoma, population 193, about 13 miles to the northwest.
On November 20, 2022, a man with a handgun executed four people on this farm, inside this garage.
On the night of the murders, responding officers found a whimpering dog standing beside one of the bodies.
Today, paw prints are still visible in the dust.
This inconspicuous rural farm may have seemed like an ideal place for its owners to go unnoticed.
And if a mass murder hadn't happened here, it may have worked.
Broadway Avenue in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, about 30 miles south of where Wu Chen, 47, executed four people at a marijuana farm.Mike Simons for BI
On June 26, 2018, Oklahoma voters approved, by about a 57 percent margin, the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Legalization Initiative, becoming the 30th state in the country with legal cannabis in one form or another. But rules around how the state regulated it were remarkably spare, making it one of the most lenient states for growing and selling marijuana.
In Oklahoma, the application fee to start growing or selling medical pot is $2,500, and there is no statewide limit on the number of growers that can be licensed to sell to dispensaries. Compare that to Pennsylvania, where there's a cap of 25 marijuana growers or processors for the whole state, a nonrefundable $10,000 fee just to apply to grow marijuana, and a requirement that each licensed grow operation have access to $2 million in capital, including at least $500,000 in the bank. California has dozens of different designations for types of marijuana-growing licenses, which can cost as much as $77,905 a year. Arkansas, next door to Oklahoma, has a strict license cap and restrictions on residential cultivation, and requires license holders to prove they have $500,000 in liquid assets.
Pretty much every state has designed its own complicated set of barriers to start growing or selling marijuana, except Oklahoma. When Oklahoma legalized medical marijuana, the only real requirement was that Oklahoma residents had to be involved in marijuana growing and selling. Oklahoma, a boom-and-bust state since oil was first discovered there in 1859, exploded with marijuana operations. By October 2021, Oklahoma had more licensed cannabis farms than California, with a 10th of California's population. And marijuana proved a windfall for the state. According to data from the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority — known as OMMA, the agency set up to write and regulate marijuana policy in Oklahoma — the state pulled in over $100 million in tax revenue from marijuana sales in 2020 alone.
But lax oversight of Oklahoma's legal marijuana market invited corruption and violence. Thousands flocked to the state seeking quick profits in cannabis, only to find fierce competition and rampant fraud. As criminal enterprises exploited the system's openness, law enforcement responded with heavy-handed crackdowns, gutting legitimate businesses as well.
While Oklahoma voters had welcomed in the marijuana industry, its law-enforcement community — and some of the state's law-and-order voters — saw red. And not just because of the threat of violence. Folks paying attention to property records started to see lots of business names connected to investors from around the world, particularly Chinese investors. The panic went national.
In July 2022, Oklahoma's Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, went on Sean Hannity's Fox News show to warn that Oklahoma was the state with the "No. 1 land purchases by the communists or foreign nationals" in 2020, which he described as "a red flag for anybody."
A month later, Dan Newhouse, a Republican Washington state representative, wrote an op-ed for Fox News warning of "Chinese nationals buying Oklahoma farmland at exorbitant prices, growing thousands of pounds of marijuana, and distributing it on the U.S. black market. Perhaps China considers this a bonus."
Then the quadruple murders happened. The name on the growing license for that farm in Kingfisher County was Liu and Chen Inc., and the property was owned by Yi Fei Lin, a Chinese national.
Afterward, people wondered why no one in law enforcement stopped a Chinese marijuana-growing operation where armed guards were known to hang out nearby before it turned into the site of a mass murder. Legalization was supposed to reduce the incentives for powerful cartels to sell marijuana on the black market. Instead, Oklahoma turned into a playground for marijuana growers — both criminal and not.
Many grow operations are connected to Chinese organized crime, said Mark Woodward, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, or OBN, the law-enforcement entity that polices the state's marijuana industry. "These farms are ultimately run by people who are tied to violent crime, human trafficking, labor trafficking, sex trafficking, homicides, extortion, money laundering — there's so many other criminal activities."
At its peak in 2021, OBN received applications for more than 9,400 growing operations. In 2022, the Oklahoma legislature set a moratorium on new licenses.
Adria Berry, the executive director of the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, or OMMA, is tasked with regulating and tracking marijuana processing and selling in one of the most open cannabis systems in the US.Mike Simons for BI
Adria Berry, the executive director of the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, is tempted to say, "I told you so."
"I'm personally not against the use of cannabis," she said. But the lack of any regulatory framework meant only one thing.
"It was obviously going to explode."
In 2020, Barb Miuccio, a 52-year-old entrepreneur then based in the northern suburbs of Dallas, was looking for business opportunities during the pandemic. She wanted a new business — one she could potentially pass on to her kids.
She partnered with Jeremy Grable, an experienced marijuana grower looking to capitalize on Oklahoma's lax laws. Originally from Dallas, Jeremy honed his marijuana-growing skills out West before returning home. Considering Oklahoma's approach to legal weed, Barb and Jeremy saw an opportunity.
But Barb soon discovered the dark side of the unchecked green rush: minimal oversight, shady players, and criminal practices. After years of thwarted harvests, broken partnerships, and the very real threat of prison time, she said she's burned through a substantial amount of her savings.
Barbara Miuccio, 52, with some of the strains of marijuana grown for her business, Emerald Treez, in Moore, Oklahoma.Mike Simons for BI
Barb, who is admittedly "not a weed person," saw in Jeremy someone with a green thumb who could handle the plants while she handled the business.
That meant taking the lead on licensing. But Oklahoma required 75% of any marijuana business to be owned by an Oklahoma resident. A quick Google search gave her options for plenty of lawyers offering to help would-be weed entrepreneurs.
She found Matt Stacy, an Oklahoma City-based lawyer, whose background seemed perfect for helping outsiders navigate his home state. A chummy 44-year-old white guy born and raised in Oklahoma, Stacy served for over 20 years in Oklahoma's Army National Guard, where he's a lieutenant colonel and decorated war hero after serving multiple tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine. He's a member of numerous legal associations and politically connected: Stitt appointed Stacy to lead the state's COVID-19 response team despite Stacy having no evident experience in health or science prior to the pandemic.
Jeremy Grable, 45, among plants in the Moore, Oklahoma, building where he grows marijuana for Emerald Treez.Mike Simons for BI
Barb said Stacy assured them he'd take care of the details, including finding an Oklahoma resident to claim a 75% stake in the business, and guaranteed Barb and Jeremy they'd get licensed.
Matt Stacy declined to be interviewed for this story.
By August 2020, Barb and Jeremy had Stacy on retainer and rented a beige, no-frills industrial building in Moore, about 10 miles south of Oklahoma City. Stacy told them that he'd filed their paperwork, and in September, inspectors from OMMA dropped by to evaluate their location.
"This all happened pretty quickly," Barb said.
Barb and Jeremy decided on a name — Emerald Treez — and OMMA issued them a license.
That's when things started to get strange.
In November 2020, according to Jeremy and Barb, Stacy called them out of the blue and said he was going to send over one of his other clients to buy marijuana plants.
That their politically connected, Republican war-hero lawyer was, as Barb and Jeremy tell it, acting as a middleman didn't initially strike them as odd. "We're like, 'Hey, this guy's got a network,'" Barb said.
Barb said Stacy seemed to have a lot of clients who had migrated from China to take advantage of Oklahoma's growing laws. Jeremy and Barb didn't care where they came from. "Money's money," Jeremy said.
Then, Barbara and Jeremy said, Stacy hooked them up with a "marijuana-friendly" local bank — a necessity since federally backed banks won't accept deposits for marijuana businesses.
But some of Stacy's advice about banking seemed off, like telling them not to open an account in their names or under the name Emerald Treez. "He told us, 'Go open your bank account in this name. Don't tell 'em it's marijuana,'" Barb said. When she questioned this, she said Stacy responded: "Oh, don't worry. I walk in there with gym bags full of half a million dollars and it's all good."
Despite the banking irregularities, they continued working with Stacy — he had, after all, fulfilled his promise to set up their license, and he continued to send them clients who wanted to buy plants. They assumed his connections in the state would protect them.
Some of the various strains of cannabis grown at Emerald Treez.Mike Simons for BI
In December 2020, one of Stacy's clients visited Emerald Treez to buy plants but asked to see their OBN license first.
Barb said it was the first time she'd heard of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
Marijuana licensing in Oklahoma was lax but it did require registering with OBN as well as OMMA, which neither Barb nor Jeremy knew about because, they said, Stacy hadn't told them.
Stacy blamed the mix-up on OBN, Barb said. He texted Barb a screenshot of what was supposedly Emerald Treez's OBN license number. The potential buyer wouldn't accept it because it wasn't an OBN application number — not even close.
Barb and Jeremy pushed ahead, not knowing the worst was still to come.
One day in May 2021, Jeremy and Barb left the grow facility to get supplies. According to Barb, the owner of a neighboring building called Jeremy and said, "OBN is at your building. Doors open on squad cars, guns drawn." Their neighbor, Barb said, walked over and the agents told him to mind his business. Barb and Jeremy decided to stay away.
Ultimately, OBN didn't raid Barb and Jeremy's business then, but they called Matt Stacy and said Stacy marked it up to confusion — OBN probably had the wrong place.
They assumed their lawyer was right and went back to work.
On June 30, 2021 — nearly a year after they started the process to grow in Oklahoma — Barb and Jeremy received an email from Stacy.
"It's like, 'Your grow is not gonna get approved for a license, and if you have any product in your building, I suggest you get rid of it now,'" Barb said.
They tried to call Stacy but he didn't pick up. They got in the car and drove to Stacy's office, but it was locked up tight with no one inside; it looked to be closed.
Barb and Jeremy were dumbfounded.
"We were losing it," Barb said.
The same chaotic, unregulated gold rush that sucked in Barb and Jeremy left four dead in Kingfisher County.
The garage where three men and one woman — all of them Chinese nationals — were killed in November 2022 was unlocked on the January morning when Business Insider visited this year. The saltbox-roofed building was a refuge from zero-degree temperatures and cutting wind.
A heavy, gray metal fence slid open on creaking casters. A dirt path led to the building where the killings occurred — the garage with the hangers and the blood splatter.
A dried bloodstain remains on the wall of a garage on the Kingfisher County marijuana farm where Wu Chen executed four people on November 20, 2022. Chen pleaded guilty to the killings on February 11.Mike Simons for BI
A large mobile-home trailer sat just behind the garage. Inside the trailer, a sign on the door was written in Chinese: "Please shut the door behind you." Clothes were strewn everywhere. In the main room, two refrigerators sat empty, save for some decaying condiment bottles. Dry weed shake lay intermingled with dust on the floor. A hallway adjacent to the main room led to at least six bedrooms with mattresses and Chinese soda and beer cans and cigarette butts on the floor and more shoes and clothing tossed everywhere. In another section of the mobile home, the kitchen was a dusty jumble of pots and pans toppled over in haphazard piles to the floor.
An abandoned mobile home on the Kingfisher County farm where four murders took place.Mike Simons for BI
Jonathan Riedlinger, one of the Kingfisher County sheriff's deputies who arrived at the scene after the murders, said the farm itself was mostly empty.
"Everything was overgrown," Riedlinger said. "There wasn't a whole lot there. There was one barn that had two rooms that had an active marijuana grow."
Around dusk on November 20, 2022, Riedlinger's office received an emergency call from Yi Fei Lin, according to charging documents filed by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. Despite a language barrier, Lin attempted to describe a hostage situation at 2372 N. 2760 Road, in Hennessey, Oklahoma.
Sheriff's deputies arrived and found Lin in a black Ford F-150. He had been shot multiple times and was severely wounded. Deputies cautiously approached the two-car garage, where they found three men and a woman — later identified as Qirong Lin, Hechun Chen, He Qiang Chen, and Fang Lee — dead on the garage floor.
Deputies found two other people alive on the farm. One survivor, Wenbo Lin, told investigators through a translator that he had been working on the farm for 10 days. On the night of the murders, Wenbo Lin told investigators that he was working in the garage when a man named Wu Chen — whom Wenbo Lin didn't know, but another witness told investigators Chen had worked on the farm a year earlier — arrived unannounced. Witnesses told investigators that once inside the garage, Chen shot one man, identified as "The Boss," in the leg and then shot a dog. Chen then held the four others at gunpoint.
Chen demanded $300,000, according to the charging documents, and he threatened to kill everyone in the room if he didn't get it. Over the next half hour, workers at the farm made phone calls, desperately trying to pull together the money. While they waited, two of the men in the garage attempted to rush Chen. Chen shot and killed one of the men, and then shot Yi Fei Lin as he attempted to flee the garage. Lin was able to hide and told investigators that he heard multiple shots from inside the garage.
More than a year after the murders, the property remains empty.Mike Simons for BI
In the aftermath, the shot dog whimpered beside its dead owner. "She wasn't aggressive," Riedlinger said of the dog. "I mean, she was pretty docile for being shot. You would've thought that she'd be a little more mad." A vet came and checked the dog out, but Reidlinger didn't know what happened to the dog after that.
The Kingfisher murders were a turning point in Oklahoma's marijuana crackdown. "It woke the public up, it scared the public because they're all over Oklahoma — these farms are," Mark Woodward, from the OBN, said. "I think people started saying, 'That could happen across the road from me and my family.'"
Jed Green, a pro-marijuana activist in Oklahoma, said the murders "reinforced the narrative that the majority — or at least a lot — of the grow operations here are or have been operated by cartels."
"It's one thing to bust some folks and say, 'Hey, this was a cartel deal,'" Green said. "But when you have a quadruple homicide, it really drives home the narrative point of the shady criminal side of a number of these past operations."
Deputies from the Kingfisher County Sheriff's Office were the first to arrive at the scene of a quadruple homicide at an abandoned marijuana farm.Mike Simons for BI
On October 17, 2022, Oklahoma prosecutors filed 34 felony charges against Matthew Alan Stacy, including five counts of illegally manufacturing thousands of pounds of marijuana — charges that, if he were convicted, could put Stacy in prison for the rest of his life and then some. Barb and Jeremy are listed as witnesses in the charging documents. Stacy pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The state of Oklahoma isn't claiming that Stacy grew pot illegally in some back room of his law office. It alleges that he led at least six aspiring growers — including Jeremy and Barb — to believe that they had submitted all the necessary paperwork to be licensed to grow pot under Oklahoma's new rules when, in fact, they hadn't. Prosecutors say that since Stacy led the growers to believe they could legally manufacture a controlled substance — literally thousands of pounds of marijuana — he's ultimately responsible for it.
Stacy also set up a network of "straw owners," prosecutors say, helping out-of-state growers skirt the requirement that 75% of a cannabis business be owned by Oklahoma residents. He was listed as the registered agent for at least 214 different LLCs licensed to grow or sell marijuana through OMMA. He'd put his own name on these license applications, prosecutors say, and then used names of other Oklahoma residents to ensure that each application technically met threshold requirements.
Straw owners would claim to own 75% of a business while knowing almost nothing about it. "These people said, 'All I know about the business is that I go to the mailbox once a month, and I get a check to say that I'm the owner,'" Woodward said. "They committed fraud."
During Stacy's preliminary hearing in May 2023, a woman named Helen Carillo, the Oklahoma resident listed on Barb and Jeremey's application, testified that Stacy had paid her $5,000 apiece to be a silent owner for three marijuana licenses — and then placed her name on dozens of others without informing her. Her objection was not that Stacy placed her name on dozens of licenses but that she didn't get paid for all of them.
Barb and Jeremy are also suing Stacy in civil court. The case is pending, and Stacy has filed a motion to dismiss the allegations.
"He's personally responsible for ruining our business," Jeremy said.
None of the state charges against Stacy indicate a connection to violent crimes.
The abandoned marijuana farm in Kingfisher County was also licensed with a straw owner. The person who arranged that license — Kevin Pham, the founder and CEO of CSI Accounting Services in Oklahoma City — is charged with many of the same crimes Stacy faces, including defrauding the state by providing false information to obtain marijuana licenses. (Pham also faces methamphetamine trafficking and firearms charges.)
Kevin Pham, 47, covering his face at a January 12 hearing in Kingfisher County. Pham has been charged by Oklahoma prosecutors with defrauding the state by providing false information to obtain marijuana growing licenses, including the one for the farm where Wu Chen murdered four people.Mike Simons for BI
Pham has pleaded not guilty in the ongoing case. He declined to speak to Business Insider for this story.
Oklahoma's primary illegal-drug law-enforcement entity has shut down thousands of marijuana-growing operations, arrested more than 250 people connected with those grows, and confiscated nearly 1 million pounds of illegally grown marijuana, according to internal OBN data.
"These are grows that are tied to homicide, that are tied to sex trafficking and labor trafficking and environmental messes, gambling operations," Woodward said. "You're talking about nearly 11,000 businesses that were operating in Oklahoma." OBN's job, he said, is to figure out who was doing it legally versus illegally.
A 2022 report from Whitney Economics, a group that studies the cannabis industry, found that as much as 75 percent of marijuana production in the US is done for unlawful sales. An investigation by ProPublica and The Frontier uncovered evidence of Chinese organized crime groups engaging in human trafficking to support illicit marijuana operations. NBC spoke to Chinese workers at illegal grows in California who said they were recruited for their jobs through Mandarin-language websites, and a Searchlight New Mexico investigation found that Mandarin-language ads run on the social-media app WeChat offered to bring Chinese nationals Stateside to work on illegal farms.
Woodward said Oklahoma is ground zero for these workers and illegal marijuana production generally. Court filings in Oklahoma seem to back up that belief.
In February 2023, local law enforcement arrested a Chinese national and accused him of transporting more than 2,700 pounds of marijuana in a fake Amazon delivery truck to an Oklahoma City grow operation for illegal distribution. Another raid led to charges against owners of a Chinese restaurant, who prosecutors say concocted a scheme to launder $25 million in illegal marijuana proceeds. In January, local police raided an Airbnb in Edmond, just north of Oklahoma City, and arrested nine Chinese nationals, who are facing charges related to distributing marijuana out of state. And human trafficking is a constant concern: In October, investigators arrested a suspect on human-trafficking charges, alleging he was involved in an Oklahoma City brothel where many clients appeared to be managers and administrators of Chinese-owned marijuana grows.
Woodward said one of OBN's goals is to help legitimate growers: "The industry just has not had a chance to even really get off the ground because the criminals immediately came in and undercut prices and workers and labor costs and everything."
But Oklahoma's marijuana crackdown has sparked accusations — perhaps not surprisingly, given the xenophobic overtones — of overreach.
A Vietnamese Hmong grower near Tulsa told Business Insider that he and other Hmong growers are targeted by OBN and local law enforcement as though they're on orders from China to grow marijuana and ship it illegally to other states. They "see all Asians as Chinese," he said. The grower, a former schoolteacher, declined to be identified, fearing recriminations for speaking out.
OBN denied it targeted Asian growers. "OBN has identified and shut down illegal grows, as well as made arrests on illegal farms tied to organized crime from China, Mexico, Russia, Bulgaria, Armenia, and the Italian mob over the last three years, as well as numerous American-owned and operated operations," said Woodward.
Green, the legal-weed advocate who heads up Oklahomans for Responsible Cannabis Action, described the rocky start in Oklahoma's legalization efforts as growing pains. He talked about the historical booms and busts of Oklahoma industries like oil, shale gas, and wheat, which contributed to one of the most significant environmental disasters — the Dust Bowl — in American history. Oklahoma's aggressive law-enforcement efforts to eliminate marijuana grows are typical for the state. "You get a rush of enthusiasm, then a clampdown," Green said.
Green sees Oklahoma's marijuana troubles as a hiccup in the gradual movement toward federal legalization. "That's our goal," he said.
Indeed, it's difficult to imagine Oklahoma's half-decade weed rollout being as chaotic as it has been if Congress passed federal legislation making marijuana legal and regulating it like alcohol — with federal rules around production but allowing each state to make its own rules around sale and consumption.
Barb and Jeremy have an interest in seeing marijuana legalized at the federal level, too.
It's been a rough few years for them. They were forced to destroy a crop because of OBN licensing issues, and then their grow operation caught fire, apparently because of faulty electrical work, killing a harvest. They tried to open a dispensary to sell their product, but the deal they were working on went sour. They hope to sell through other dispensaries when their current harvest is ready for sale, but so far Emerald Treez is deep in the red. Barb's hope is that if marijuana does become legal on a federal level, they can expand their business out of Oklahoma.
Until then, they're stuck here.
After a steak dinner at Cattlemen's Steakhouse in Oklahoma City in February, Barb considered whether she would have done things differently.
"Yeah, I'll tell you what I wish I did differently," she said, taking a drag off a Virginia Slim. "I wish I'd never fucking stepped foot in Oklahoma."
The deserted farm in Kingfisher County.Mike Simons for BI
After the murders, Wu Chen fled the scene, but he dropped his phone. Investigators were able to analyze it and determined he was headed to Florida. Police in Miami Beach found him two days later, on November 22, 2022, and arrested him without incident.
Ken Thompson, a Kingfisher County Sheriff's Office lieutenant deputy, traveled to Miami with another deputy to drive Chen back. Thompson said Chen didn't speak a word of English. "It's not like he could tell me anything about his concerns," Thompson said. "But I gathered he feared for his life."
Investigators said Chen told them through translators that he'd invested $300,000 in the farm and came to get it back. The farm's owner was unable to come up with the money to pay Chen. At some point, he opened fire.
There are rumors around the Kingfisher County courthouse that the killings may have been in retaliation for another shooting. Court records showed Yi Fei Lin and one of the murder victims, He Qiang Chen, were awaiting trial on charges related to a shooting in 2020, in uptown Oklahoma City, after a dispute over money. Lin and the now-deceased He Qiang Chen pleaded not guilty to those charges.
A preliminary hearing for Wu Chen had been scheduled for early February, and Yi Fei Lin and others were set to testify about what happened. But prosecutors offered Chen a deal: life in prison with no death penalty. He took it, ending the case. He'll spend the rest of his life in an Oklahoma prison.
In addition to the uptown Oklahoma City shooting, prosecutors have charged Yi Fei Lin with manufacturing at least 1,000 pounds of marijuana illegally — a charge that could land him in prison for more than 20 years. He's also accused of having used a straw owner to set up the business and has been charged with conspiracy against the state of Oklahoma. Lin has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Murders like the ones in Kingfisher happen "more frequently than people realize," said Woodward. "Rule No. 1 is you don't leave a witness. He left a witness." If there are no witnesses, said Woodward, "you bury the bodies in the tree line, you bring another working crew in, and you pick up where they left off — and with a group that will bring you the money that they're supposed to be bringing in. These people are expendable and undocumented — nobody's missing these workers."
At the scene of the murder, deputies found a wounded, black-and-gray pit bull. "She wasn't aggressive," Jonathan Riedlinger, one of the deputies, said. "I mean, she was pretty docile for being shot." A neighbor says he took in this dog he found wandering around shortly after the murders.Mike Simons for BI
A half-mile south of the farm, next to a corrugated-steel building on land unaffiliated with Liu and Chen Inc., a man with an electrician's truck was pulling a big wire spool out of the enclosed bed of his pickup. He said the owner was inside the building.
A man with long brown hair, who declined to identify himself to Business Insider, emerged from the building. He had a dog with him — a black-and-gray pit bull he called Kiki.
He said that after the murders happened, the pit bull showed up and he took her in.
"I don't care if she's Chinese or not," the man said, as the dog sniffed a reporter's boots. "This is the best dog I've ever had."
Why Russian separatists called an exorcist when they discovered a Ukrainian POW was an evangelical Christian
Viktor Cherniiavskyi
A Ukrainian soldier said he was tortured by Russian separatists and forced to undergo an exorcism.Viktor Cherniiavskyi said he was targeted because he was an evangelical Christian.Some on the US Christian right have ironically shown support for Russia.A Ukrainian soldier said he was tortured by Russian separatists and forced to undergo an exorcism , partly because of his evangelical Christian faith.
Viktor Cherniiavskyi is now a first-person view (FPV) drone pilot, but he said he was a chaplain to evangelical Christians in the Ukrainian army in 2014 when Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula.
While serving as a volunteer in the city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, Cherniiavskyi said he was captured by Russian-aligned forces.
During his 25 days of captivity, Cherniiavskyi said he was held in a basement cell in a prison in Luhansk, where he said he was beaten with a baseball bat, had unloaded pistols shot at his head, and was repeatedly Tasered.
When his captors became aware of his evangelical faith, a Russian Orthodox priest from Moscow was called to carry out a form of exorcism on him, he told Business Insider.
"When the priest tried to cast demons out of me, he gave me two reasons: First, because of my 'black eyes.' Second, because I'm an evangelical Christian. Crossing his hands, he pushed me to kiss the crucifix," Cherniiavskyi said.
He added that the Kremlin had a particular hatred of Protestants and evangelical Christians and that Moscow saw anyone affiliated with US churches as "foreign agents."
By contrast, some on the US Christian right have ironically shown support for Russia as they see Russian President Vladimir Putin's country as an ally in a global culture war.
By contrast, the Christian right in the US frequently expresses profound admiration for Putin's Russia as a beacon of "traditional Christianity" in a global culture war.
"Whose side is God on now?"
Christian evangelicals in South Carolina, in 2016.NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)
Some Christian conservatives have embraced Russia's staunchly traditionalist views on family, sexuality, and gender — to the extent that when Russia launched its invasion of Crimea in 2014, former presidential advisor and paleoconservative Pat Buchanan asked a simple question in a post on Townhall: "Whose side is God on now?"
Buchanan went on to highlight his admiration for the way Putin apparently upheld Christian values.
"In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia's flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity," he wrote.
US conservative evangelicals have forged symbolic bonds with the Russian Orthodox Church, drawn to Russia's religious traditionalism and white nationalism, the Boston Review reported.
In spite of such links, the Kremlin has not reciprocated any fondness for US Christian denominations.
Ukraine's religious pluralism is under threat, experts say
A destroyed church dome, Orikhiv, Zaporizhzhia region, southeastern Ukraine, March 20, 2024.Dmytro Smolienko / Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images
A report by the Atlantic Council said that Russia's occupation of parts of Ukraine was threatening Ukraine's religious pluralism.
Russia has banned certain religious groups, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, for example.
Earlier this year, a Russian court sentenced nine Jehovah's Witnesses to substantial prison terms for "extremism," adding to a series of jailings and interrogations of believers since the ban was introduced in 2017, Reuters reported.
Religious sites have also been targeted since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as Putin's forces have sought to eradicate Ukrainian culture.
Some of the roughly 30,000 books in the library of the Protestant Tavriski Christian Institute in Kherson were looted and thrown in the trash, per local reports.
In a video testimony, Pastor Dmitry Bodyu of the Word of Life Church in Melitopol, occupied by Putin's forces in the first weeks of the war, added, "The Russian military seized our church building. I was imprisoned and told that I would soon be killed. For local evangelical believers under Russian occupation, a deadly threat remains."
Bodyu told NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth that his Russian captors thought he was a spy, which is seemingly a common occurrence.
Rev. Mykhailo Brytsyn, pastor of the Grace Church of Evangelical Christians Melitopol, told a summit International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington DC in February: "Most priests and pastors like me have been threatened, intimidated, humiliated, detained, beaten and deported," Pastor Brytsyn said per The Christian Post. "Some priests and believers are still in Russian prisons today. Some of them were killed."
The Kyiv-based Institute for Religious Freedom (IRF) said that as of October 18, at least 660 religious sites had been damaged or looted during the invasion, adding that at least 206 of those sites were evangelical churches.
"In reality, Russian society, and the Kremlin, to be more precise, hates any type of Christian denomination, bar the Orthodox Church," Cherniiavskyi said.
I worked for Beyoncé for a year. She wasn't a diva and wasn't passive — it was a master class in executing a creative vision
Marcus Collins; Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Parkwood; Alyssa Powell/BI
Marcus Collins shares the major lessons he learned helping Beyoncé to bring her fan base online.Collins said Beyoncé's platforms didn't perform as well as expected in the beginning.One lesson was the importance of facilitating an existing community instead of building a new one.This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Marcus Collins, author, and professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. It has been edited for length and clarity.
For a year, I worked with Beyoncé, overseeing her digital ads and social media. I started working with her in 2009, as her director of digital strategy and new media. During that time, I shifted my focus toward helping Beyoncé bring her fan base online. This is when I learned my biggest marketing lessons from her.
She's the most gracious and kind person I've ever met. At the same time, she knew what she wanted from her team. She has high standards for those around her because she has high standards for herself.
Here are three big takeaways from working with Beyoncé that have helped shape my career.
1. Don't build community, facilitate it
Part of my job in overseeing Beyoncé's digital strategy was maintaining her Facebook page and Twitter account. The team would put together our recommendations, and we'd present these ideas to her father, Matthew Knowles, who was overseeing Music World Entertainment, which produced her earlier work.
If he liked our ideas, we'd share them with Beyoncé. She'd hear us out, say what she liked or didn't like, and give recommendations. Even when she disagreed, she was always gracious. It was during these in-person meetings that it seemed she wasn't really excited by social media or inclined to post on Facebook or Twitter.
This was back in 2009 or 2010. The internet felt like the wild, wild west. There were no rules. Beyoncé had just finished the Brazilian leg of her "I Am Sasha Fierce" tour, and it seemed like social media wasn't for her.
In fact, for years, she had a Twitter handle she never tweeted on. And yet, she had lots of followers waiting for her. So, when we became active on these platforms for her, we expected them to light up with activity. But they didn't in proportion to her stardom, which was a quagmire for us. We kept asking ourselves: "What is going on here? Why aren't any of her platforms taking off?"
Then, the team noticed there was already a group that found each other online, and they were far more active than anything we were trying to do. And those folks were the Beyhive.
We stopped working on building Beyoncé an online community and instead started engaging with the online community that already existed. We found people who saw the world similarly to Beyoncé, and then we engaged with them based on their shared values and beliefs.
People who come together under the moniker of the Beyhive don't just love Beyoncé's music; they subscribe to her point of view. To me, that was one of the biggest lessons of my marketing experiences working with her: You don't build community, you facilitate it.
2. Dial in and focus on the creative vision
I think Beyoncé's greatest skill as a businesswoman was her ability to be involved in everything we did. It's wild to think that someone as talented and profound to the cultural zeitgeist, would be so nice. You'd expect a diva attitude, but she's so far from that. She's extremely gracious, but she isn't a pushover.
As my interactions with her became more frequent, we started making plans to revisit her website, and she wanted to be very much a part of it. She wasn't the passive player.
She's dialed in. She was very aware of her creative vision and I never had one bad interaction with her. I learned that you have to have a point of view about how you see the world. You have to know what you like and be courageous enough to follow it even if it's not the direction most people are going, and folks may not seem to get it right away.
3. Engage authentically
It seems somewhat obvious now, but people who went online to engage with each other about Beyoncé didn't want to be treated like consumers. It felt like when we first engaged with them, they told us: "Don't talk to me as though I were someone with money in their pocket. Talk to me as if I were a human being and engage with me based on your understanding of who I am and how I see the world."
Beyoncé's fans use her music to see the world through a cultural lens. The fans liked her authenticity and responded to it. But bloggers at the time took great license in throwing shade and jabs her way. It was at this point that her community started to take shape. The Beyhive became a battering ram for all those bloggers.
Once we were able to shift from focusing on fans to focusing on the community, we connected with the audience in a more meaningful way
When we saw the targeted audience for who they were, they felt validated. And we learned they were then more inclined to be engaged. The secret was treating this community as a community, not consumers. And then what happens is, those people you've engaged with, in an authentic way, tell other people. Then that community becomes the marketer for you.
After working with Beyoncé, I wanted to go into advertising because I felt like the ad industry was using contemporary technologies better than the music industry was. But I learned a lot from my time working with Beyoncé. My book, "For The Culture," is predicated on these experiences. Chapter one is all about finding who your tribe is, which is what marketers do.
Billionaires' superyachts are bigger, better, and have more on board than ever
Courtesy of Tankoa Yachts
Superyachts, the most expensive asset a billionaire can own, are pushing the boundaries of luxury.The boats, which cost eight or nine figures, are getting larger and include more features than ever.From massage rooms to basketball courts, here's what the world's richest want on board.For many wealthy boat owners, a private spa is a must-have on board. A sauna is a nice touch. A Jet Ski or two makes days at sea way more fun. And if you don't have someone on board who can whip up a Michelin-star-worthy meal, you might as well stay on land.
In the world of massive yachts, there's no such thing as too much. After all, if someone spends eight or nine figures to design the vessel of their dreams — or at least $500,000 a week to charter one — more is more.
"Yachting. It's not rational; it's emotional," Ralph Dazert, the head of intelligence at SuperYacht Times, told Business Insider at the Palm Beach International Boat Show, where dozens of superyachts — often defined as vessels over 30 meters in length — were on display.
And while there are certain classic features, such as jacuzzis and bars, what superyacht owners want is evolving, insiders at the show said. That might mean more crew members, more space for helicopters, or more water toys, but might also include manicure salons and putting greens.
The massage room aboard the Talisman C, a $60 million superyacht for sale at the Palm Beach show.Courtesy of Burgess Yachts
"The bar of what is the baseline expectation has increased exponentially just over the last four or five years," Anders Kurtén, the CEO of brokerage Fraser Yachts, said. Clients are "spending more time on the boat and really wanting to extend the lifestyle they lead on the shore."
A lot of this can be chalked up to the pandemic. Superyacht purchases and charters spiked as life and luxury travel on land screeched to a halt. While the market has moderated slightly, the number of superyachts on order — 1,166 as of September, according to Boat International's Global Order Book — is still above pre-pandemic norms.
"What the pandemic really showed is that the appetite for being out there at sea, sort of living the marine lifestyle, is still as valid as ever," Kurtén said.
That means there's a lot of money on the water. The total value of the 203 superyachts over 30 meters delivered last year was $6.4 billion, according to data from SuperYacht Times. New custom builds from the world's most prestigious shipyards — Lurssen, Feadship, Oceanco, Benetti — can run into the hundreds of millions. Even used superyachts at the Palm Beach show cost as much as $75 million.
And it's not just traditional buyers like retired wealthy couples looking for a place to relax or celebrities looking for a place to party away from the paparazzi. New clients are often younger and have families, so want areas to work and watch movies. They also want pricey water toys, access to fitness equipment, or even pizza ovens for picky eaters.
The gym aboard the Nero superyacht has 360-degree views of the water and a number of cardio and weight machines.Courtesy of Burgess Yachts
"This would've never happened in the nineties," said Giovanna Vitelli, the vice president of the Azimut Benetti Group, the world's biggest producer of superyachts. "You would go with your beautiful woman, Champagne — the idea of yachting was much more showing off with your jacuzzi and things like that."
Pure opulence has made room for function.
When Benetti's Nabila set sail in 1980, its 50-person crew, gold-and-diamond-encrusted interiors, and lavish parties captured headlines and even inspired the Queen song "Kashoggi's Ship."(Seven years later, Donald Trump bought Nabila for $30 million, renaming her the Trump Princess.)
"Life on board was considered very formal — big formal dining rooms, boats were high on the water, you would be segregated from the rest of the world," Vitelli said, remembering another client who insisted on a replica of the Sistine Chapel above the dining table.
The Nabila yacht, which launched in 1980, was emblematic of a more opulent era of superyachting.Courtesy of Azimut Benetti Group
But the ostentatious, palatial-like interiors that used to be highlighted in yacht brochures have made way for lists of more functional features.
Rather than esoteric novelties like an extra-large safe for rifles that one builder had to construct per a Russian yacht owner's request, the superyachts on display at the Palm Beach show featured basketball courts, saunas, and ice baths.
Owners want elevators and luxury gyms. Pampering options, be it a massage room, manicure station, or a professional-grade facial machine, are a dime a dozen. Some bathrooms have fancy Toto toilets, which can cost around $20,000.
Sterns (that's the back of the boat) used to be built high to guard guests' privacy. Now, they're built as "beach clubs" — an open swim platform.
The roomy bathroom of the Triumph, which costs $650,000 per week to charter, includes a steam room.Courtesy of Breed Media
And what good is a massage room if no one on board can give one? Many superyachts can hold twice as many crew members as guests, if not more. One broker, representing a boat that didn't have a masseuse, said it could be quite a "tricky" issue because if a charter wants one, they have to find someone who can massage guests and "pull their weight with the crew."
"It's not uncommon to look for a deckhand who can also mix a martini, play an instrument, maybe entertain the guests with singing, and ideally even give a massage," Kurtén said.
Of course, a crew comes at a cost. Most are considered full-time employees, requiring salaries and benefits like health insurance. Captains, first mates, and chief engineers often make six figures a year. That's without tips; a charter guest will typically spend six figures on gratuities for the crew who worked during a weeklong vacation.
The Grateful, which costs $15.9 million, exemplifies the open feel of today's superyachts — particularly its "beach club."Courtesy of the Azimut Benetti Group
For the superrich, there must be room for toys.
It's not just the onboard amenities that count. What's known as "toys" in the industry — water slides, eFoils, Jet Skis, and underwater scuba diving jets — are popular, and costs range from merely hundreds of dollars (banana boats) to millions (submersibles, which are still popular despite the recent tragedy).
"Tenders and toys, the sky seems to be the limit," Kurtén said. "More is more."
Of course, if you can't fit all those toys in the yacht's storage space, you can just use another boat. Jeff Bezos' support yacht is a superyacht in itself, measuring 75 meters and costing tens of millions of dollars. (His main yacht, Koru, cost a reported $500 million.)
Support yachts are also faster, meaning the crew can get to a destination first and set up the Jet Skis, seapools, and the like, Dazert said. "By the time the owner arrives on the main yacht, everything's set up, and he can go and have fun."
Modeled after J.P. Morgan's yacht, the Nero is available to charter for about $500,000 a week. One of its custom tenders is also pictured.Courtesy of Burgess
Even tenders, the smaller vessel that brings guests from the ship to the shore, are getting glow-ups. The Nero, a 90-meter beauty available to charter for about $500,000 a week and modeled after J.P. Morgan's 1930s ship, has custom-built tenders to match the design. The most expensive ones often cost seven figures. Nero has three.
"It used to be a tender was a tender," Jeffrey Beneville, who handles yacht insurance at NFP, told BI. "Now they're called limousine tenders. Think of an incredibly luxurious gondola that's got a hard top so nobody's hair gets mussed when they're being dropped off at the Monaco Yacht Club."
One thing that clearly hasn't changed in superyachting: showing off. If the boat next door at the marina has an indoor-outdoor cinema, it's natural to want one too. Ditto a wine cellar or helipad.
"It's a bit of a celebration of your success in life, of wealth," Vitelli, whose employer is behind the Lana yacht Bill Gates chartered for a birthday party three years ago, said. "You push it a little more."
And that's a boon for yacht makers and brokers catering to the superrich.
"Our job is to make clients' dreams come true," Kurtén said.
I'm a Gen Z mom. DINKs showing off their splurging and traveling gave me FOMO, but I don't regret having kids.
Courtesy of Megan Pagel.
Before Megan Pagel and her husband were parents, they spent their money on going out with friends.Now that they have two children, she said they prioritize what their kids need.Pagel said she doesn't regret her choices, although she did experience some FOMO around DINKs.This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Megan Pagel, 24, who lives in Tasmania, Australia, about having children in her early 20s. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Before I met my husband, Michael, I was pretty adamant I didn't want kids.
I was 19, and he was 20 when we met in 2019. We got engaged in September and were married in March 2020. He really wanted kids but said it was fine if I didn't, as he loved me and just wanted to be with me.
Something about the way he was so understanding made me come around to the idea. I thought having a family with him would be amazing.
My mum had my older brother at 21. I really like the age gap between her and me, and I thought I'd prefer to be a younger parent.
We had our daughter in 2021 when I was 21 and our son in 2023.
Our DINK — double income, no kids — era was really fun. It was a nice time for us to bond and not take life too seriously — but we don't miss it.
Pagel and her husband on their wedding day in March 2020.Courtesy of Megan Pagel.
Before having children, we spent money on our enjoyment. Now, we focus on buying our kids the things they need.
Before we had kids, my husband and I didn't travel much but spent a lot of our money on enjoying our weekends like most 20-somethings would — partying with friends and going bowling or to minigolf.
I was an apprentice chef at a café when we met. In 2020, when Covid hit, I stopped doing my apprenticeship and eventually switched to barista work because the hours were a bit more friendly. I now work as a hospitality all-rounder at a different café, earning around 30 Australian dollars an hour.
I work casually, typically around three days a week, and my husband works full-time as a tree planter and firefighter.
Now that we have kids, we prioritize spending money on things they need. Groceries cost more now that both kids are eating solid food, and we try to make sure they're eating healthily. I'd say we spend around $AU250 to $AU300, which is about $163 to $200, on groceries a week, which includes things like diapers and wipes, while we spent between $AU100 and $AU150 before having kids.
Pagel and her husband were together for around two years before having children.Courtesy of Megan Pagel.
The cost of living has gone up since Covid.
We do have to look a bit closer at our bank account than before, but it's very doable, and I think we're quite comfortable because we have backup savings.
We want to strive to make a little bit more than what we need, but it's not an easy task. It takes a lot of budgeting and is constantly on our minds.
I don't go out for many social outings, but we have made friends who are parents, and it's nice to hang out with them while the kids run around with each other.
We're really big on grocery vouchers. My Gen Z mum friends and I like thrifting to save money for ourselves and our kids. With the rising cost of everything, it's just part of our lives now.
From March 2022 to September 2023, we rented a house that cost between AU$610 to AU$685 a week, but in October, we moved back in with my parents. We don't pay them rent, which is a load off for us. My mom is also happy to babysit the kids when I need to work.
I felt FOMO when I saw DINKs trending on TikTok, but I realized I'm not really missing out
At the moment, I think it's very trendy to have kids later. More people seem to be putting it off and prioritizing themselves, which I'm all for. It's good to see people doing what they want.
Last year, I started to see the term DINK popping up on TikTok. People would be showing off all the traveling and splurging they were doing as DINKs, and it made me feel a bit of FOMO. I thought, "Maybe we should have waited. Maybe we could have made more money?"
Pagel had her daughter when she was 21 and her son when she was 23.Courtesy of Megan Pagel.
I think it is easy to look at things on social media and get caught up on what other people are doing, but at the end of the day, I look at my kids and realize I'm not really missing out.
When I was a teenager, I thought I'd spend my 20s traveling and having experiences, but our early 20s coincided with Covid. It stopped us from doing most of the things we wanted to do anyway, so we thought we might as well have a child.
The DINK lifestyle is presented on social media as a way to splurge on yourself and do things you wouldn't be able to do with kids, like traveling, but I don't think that's necessarily true.
Last year, my husband and I traveled across Australia for four weeks with the kids. I don't think we would have planned far ahead enough to do a trip like that before having kids.
I don't regret having kids young
I really enjoy being a mom.
I feel like the advantage of having kids at a younger age is I've had the opportunity to stop and start work as much as I need to. I didn't want to get to a point in my career where I was doing really well and then take a big break. I wouldn't have been happy if I had been unable to go back straight to where I was.
I don't regret that our DINK era was only around two years. We had more financial freedom, but it wasn't super glamorous.
We're enjoying the family era. We love spending our Sunday mornings making pancakes and dancing in the kitchen to kids' music.
I think we had children at the right time and it's worked out really well for us.
China's property crisis is bleeding into its banking sector, which is being asked to prop up developers
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China's property crisis has impacted the country's biggest banks, increasing non-performing loans.Beijing is urging banks to boost financing for "white list" property developers to help the sector.Despite the crisis, Chinese banks say they have sufficient buffers to manage risks.China's property crisis has hit the books of its biggest lenders, which are reporting an uptick in non-performing loans.
Non-performing loans at China's big four banks — Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Agricultural Bank of China — jumped 10.4% in 2023, from 1.117 trillion Chinese yuan, about $155 billion, in 2022 to 1.23 trillion yuan.
This is according to a Nikkei analysis based on the companies' earnings, which were released this week.
The banks were all profitable last year, but their margins are being increasingly pressured by the fallout from China's real-estate debt crisis.
Even so, Beijing is urging banks to boost financing for property developers featured on a "white list" of companies.
China's real-estate sector has been mired in crisis since the second half of 2021, when a liquidity crunch at Evergrande — once China's second-largest developer — came to light.
Evergrande is now in liquidation, while other Chinese real-estate developers have run into similar issues and have begun defaulting on their bond payments, spurring fears the crisis could spill over into other sectors of the economy, and globally.
Despite the rise in bad loans, Chinese lenders said they had enough buffers to weather the storm and will control lending risks to property developers, per Nikkei.
A former Apple employee leaked details about products he didn't like from his work iPhone, lawsuit says
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Apple is suing a former software engineer for leaking confidential information.Apple said Andrew Aude shared information about products to media and staff at other companies.It said Aude still poses a threat because of his knowledge of confidential company information.Apple is suing a former employee who it said leaked confidential information, including about products he didn't like, from his work-issued iPhone.
In a complaint filed on March 18 at a California court, Apple said former software engineer Andrew Aude shared information about projects, including Apple's Journal app and the Vision Pro, to media outlets and employees at other tech companies over a period of five years.
The tech giant is suing Aude, who was hired in 2016, for breaching its confidentiality agreement and violating labor laws.
The lawsuit was first reported by MacRumors.
Apple said it discovered the leaks in late 2023. When confronted, it said Aude denied his involvement but then feigned a bathroom break and "permanently deleted significant amounts of evidence from his device."
This included deleting the Signal app — which he used for communications — from his work-issued phone, it said.
But the lawsuit said that Aude often saved screenshots of his communications on his work iPhone "to preserve them for posterity," and Apple was able to retrieve those.
According to Apple's lawsuit, an analysis of Aude's Apple-issued work iPhone showed he had over 1,400 encrypted communications with one Wall Street Journal journalist over a four-month period.
Aude also sent a journalist at The Information over 10,000 text messages, and traveled to meet her, according to Apple.
Aude's screenshots were attached to the lawsuit. In one particular leak to the Journal journalist around April 2023, Aude's screenshots showed "'giddy anticipation" of the "chaos" awaiting the company following the publication of leaked information, Apple said.
Aude had also characterized the leak to other colleagues as a "necessary evil," it added.
"In connection with one leak, Mr. Aude admitted that he violated his obligations to Apple so he could 'kill' products and features with which he took issue," Apple said separately in the lawsuit.
Aude's leaking of information led to the publication of multiple news reports, according to Apple.
"His disclosures also have impeded Apple's ability to surprise and delight with its new offerings," the tech company said in its lawsuit.
While Aude's employment has been terminated, Apple said he poses an "ongoing threat" to the company due to his knowledge of its confidential and proprietary information, as well as his "long and extensive history of disclosing it to third parties intentionally and without authorization."
Apple is pursuing a jury trial, damages, and an order directing Aude not to disclose the company's confidential and proprietary information to third parties without its consent. It also wants Aude to give up his discretionary bonuses and restricted stock units.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment, sent outside business hours.
Inside Big Tech's nasty battle for coveted AI talent
Nuthawut Somsuk/Getty
Hiring for AI talent is ruthless — and Big Tech may be to blame. Recruiters say tech giants offer high salaries to talent that smaller firms can't match.There also aren't many workers with the right skills for AI-related jobs, though that will change.The fight to hire the best AI talent is heating up as companies large and small compete in the race to create the best products in the booming sector. It looks like the biggest players in the tech industry with the biggest bank balances are winning out right now.
Last week, Mustafa Suleyman, the cofounder of Google's DeepMind, left his startup Inflection AI to lead tech giant Microsoft's consumer AI division as CEO. A week before that, Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of Perplexity, said on a podcast he couldn't poach a top AI researcher at Meta because his startup didn't have enough GPUs, Nvidia's pricey and in-demand chips. Following Sam Altman's brief ouster from OpenAI last November, Salesforce tried to lure researchers away from the ChatGPT-maker by offering to match their compensation packages.
This carousel of labor between companies illustrates the high demand for employees who can build and train large language models — key to getting AI to actually produce the results firms want. But recruiters say that startups and smaller firms struggle to hire workers with technical and non-technical AI skills, with some tech execs believing Big Tech is squeezing them out of the sector.
"Companies like Meta are stealing away and holding talent," J.T. O'Donnell, the founder and CEO of career-coaching service Work It Daily, told Business Insider. And "smaller companies are not going to be able to lure away that talent because they don't have what they need," O'Donnell says.
Big Tech is willing to pay up to a million for AI talent
One reason it's so difficult for smaller companies to get workers with the right skills: it's expensive.
"AI talents are some of the most highly compensated in today's job market," Alex Libre, the cofounder and principal recruiter of Einstellen Talent, a service that matches job candidates with generative AI startups, told BI.
And generally, bigger, more established companies tend to offer the most money. He's seen major firms offer at least $100,000 for junior positions and nearly seven-figure compensation packages for high-level specialists. That's bad news for smaller businesses with less financial firepower.
Still, according to Libre, startups are now starting to be "extremely generous" with their offers to early-stage AI hires to compete with the tech giants, including offering equity.
"I've seen a founding machine learning engineer get 4% of the startup's outstanding shares, which used to be completely unheard of," Libre told BI.
There are not enough workers with AI expertise.
But uneven financial incentives aren't the only factor in the battle for workers. Many job applicants simply don't have the skills for the job.
"There is undoubtedly a shortage in AI talent," Libre says.
Typically, candidates for generative AI roles include "highly skilled' programmers and data scientists with advanced degrees who are well-versed in programming languages like Python, Libre says. They're also familiar with deep learning software libraries like TensorFlow, Ray, and PyTorch.
However, the recruiter says companies now want to hire copywriters, product managers, and other professionals who may not have a technical background — as long as they have a strong grasp of AI. That includes knowing how to apply the technology to workflows, crafting quality prompts, and understanding bot-generated outputs.
"This combination of skills is not as abundant as the industry needs and not as abundant as most people think," Libre says.
Flavien Coronini, a recruiter at Hugging Face, agreed that a talent shortage coupled with Big Tech's sector dominance has made it tough to fill roles at the open-source AI startup.
"As a rapidly growing startup in a niche area like AI, we face stiff competition from larger companies and more established players in the industry," Coronini told BI. "Additionally, the skills and expertise required for our team are very specific, and a limited pool of talent is available with the necessary experience and knowledge."
Companies are just getting started with AI.
Still, recruiters who spoke to BI acknowledge that generative AI is still fairly new, and companies need time to catch up — but will.
Some do so by hiring a chief AI officer, leveraging consultants, and having internal discussions on how the technology can be deployed across the company.
Workers, too, are starting to learn more about how to use generative AI through their employers' skills training programs and external online courses. Hugging Face now offers public educational resources such as videos and tutorials to help developers learn about natural language processing, among other related topics.
Once employers and employees understand the technology more, filling AI-related roles with the right talent may get easier.
"It's a journey," O'Donnell said. "Anytime you have a new skill set, it's like the wild, wild west, and everyone's racing to get to the cream of the crop regarding hiring."
But for now, a juicy paycheck and an already established AI setup — whether that's having enough GPUs or other talented workers — may be just what a company needs to offer to secure the ideal candidate. And that leans in favor of big, rich players like Microsoft and Meta.
"Somebody who's really into AI is going to hold out for an employer that will have what they need to be successful," she says.
Thousands of student-loan borrowers got their debt wiped through a new repayment reform. 11 GOP states just filed a lawsuit to block that relief.
Anna Moneymaker
Eleven GOP state attorneys general filed a lawsuit to block the SAVE income-driven repayment plan.They argued that the shortened timeline for debt relief through the plan is unconstitutional.An Education Department official said Congress allows the authority to set terms for income-driven repayment.The lawsuits to block President Joe Biden's student-debt relief efforts are back.
On Thursday, 11 state attorneys general — led by Kansas' Kris Kobach — filed a lawsuit to block Biden's SAVE income-driven repayment plan, implemented over the summer to give borrowers cheaper monthly payments with a shorter timeline for relief.
The lawsuit, filed in Kansas' district court against Biden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, stated that the "lawsuit is now necessary to prevent Defendants from continuing to flout the law, which includes ignoring Supreme Court decisions," referring to the high court's decision at the end of June to strike down Biden's first attempt at broad student-loan forgiveness using the HEROES Act of 2003.
"Once again, the Biden administration has decided to steal from the poor and give to the rich," Kobach said during a Thursday press conference. "He is forcing people who did not go to college, or who worked their way through college, to pay for the loans of those who ran up exorbitant student debt. This coalition of Republican attorneys general will stand in the gap and stop Biden."
Last month, the Education Department implemented a provision of the SAVE plan ahead of schedule: $1.2 billion in debt relief for 153,000 borrowers who originally borrowed $12,000 or less and made as few as 10 years of qualifying payments. The lawsuit argued that the relief was "in defiance of the Supreme Court" and asked the federal court to declare the SAVE plan unconstitutional and require borrowers to make payments.
An Education Department official told Business Insider that while the department does not comment on pending litigation, "Congress gave the US Department of Education the authority to define the terms of income-driven repayment plans in 1993, and the SAVE plan is the fourth time the Department has used that authority."
"From day one, the Biden-Harris Administration has been fighting to fix a broken student loan system, and part of that is creating the most affordable student loan repayment plan ever that is lowering monthly payments, protecting millions of borrowers from runaway interest and getting borrowers closer to debt forgiveness faster," the official said. "The Biden-Harris Administration won't stop fighting to provide support and relief to borrowers across the country — no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us."
While the lawsuit makes several comparisons to the debt relief plan the Supreme Court struck down, the legal basis for the two plans differ. Biden's first attempt at broad student-loan forgiveness would have canceled up to $20,000 in debt for borrowers making under $125,000 a year using the HEROES Act — a law that allows the education secretary to waive or modify borrowers' balances in connection with a national emergency, like a pandemic.
The SAVE plan, on the other hand, went through a process mandated by the Higher Education Act known as negotiated rulemaking, which requires negotiations with stakeholders and public comment before its final implementation. The Education Department is currently undergoing the negotiated rulemaking process for its second attempt at a broader form of debt relief.
The Education Department has not yet filed its response to the lawsuit. For now, borrowers who received relief through SAVE are not impacted, and enrollment in the plan can continue.
Everything former Nickelodeon stars have said in response to the docuseries 'Quiet on Set'
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Former Nickelodeon stars are speaking out after Investigation Discovery's docuseries "Quiet on Set."The docuseries included revelations of abuse and a toxic work environment at the network.Drake Bell, Alexa Nikolas, and more actors shared their responses to the doc on social media.Investigation Discovery's docuseries "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV" has cast a shadow over Nickelodeon's legacy in children's TV.
"Quiet on Set," released in four parts across two nights on March 17 and 18, has been watched by more than 16 million viewers, the largest audience for an unscripted series since the launch of the streaming service Max. The docuseries came after years of reports of a toxic work environment under producer Dan Schneider at Nickelodeon, including a 2022 investigation by Business Insider's Kate Taylor, on which the series is based.
The docuseries has reignited a conversation about unsafe working conditions for child actors, and put former cast, crew, and Schneider himself back in the spotlight to relitigate their past experiences at the network. Schneider also released a nearly 20-minute video in which he addressed claims made about him in the docuseries and apologized, saying he wished he'd treated people better on set.
The conversation is still going: On Tuesday, ID announced that a bonus fifth episode of "Quiet on Set" will be released on April 7. The episode will feature Drake Bell and other Nickelodeon cast and crew members sharing their reactions to the docuseries.
In the meantime, here's everything former Nickelodeon stars have said since the release of "Quiet on Set."
Alexa Nikolas, who starred as Nicole Bristow on the first two seasons of 'Zoey 101,' slammed Schneider's apology video
Nikolas reacted to Schneider's video during a livestream that was uploaded on the YouTube channel for her activist group Eat Predators.
She described Schneider as a "bully" and said that she "would've appreciated if Dan apologized directly to me."
"When someone doesn't personally come to you and apologize, it's not an apology," Nikolas said. "If you hear about it through other people, it's not really an apology, right? An apology is to the person that you hurt. That's what an apology is for."
While watching Schneider's video for the first time, Nikolas criticized the producer for not taking accountability.
"I don't forgive Dan Schneider," she said. "Not saying I'll never, right? But currently, right now, that made me a little more upset, just because that just wasn't it. That wasn't proper accountability. That was avoiding a lot of the main discussions here that were mentioned in 'Quiet on Set.' This was him playing the sympathy card, centering himself, playing the victim."
After coming forward about being sexually abused as a teen, Drake Bell called Nickelodeon's response 'empty'
Drake Bell in episode two of the Investigation Discovery docuseries "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV."Investigation Discovery
In the docuseries, Bell revealed that he was the 15-year-old actor who was sexually abused by acting and dialogue coach Brian Peck.
Nickelodeon reacted to Bell's revelation in a statement shared with Deadline.
"Now that Drake Bell has disclosed his identity as the plaintiff in the 2004 case, we are dismayed and saddened to learn of the trauma he has endured, and we commend and support the strength required to come forward," the statement read.
Bell spoke about the fallout from the docuseries during an in-depth interview for "The Sarah Fraser Show."
The actor said that he wasn't impressed by Nickelodeon's statement.
"There's a very well-tailored response saying, 'Learning about his trauma,' because they couldn't say that they didn't know about this or know what had happened, or anything," Bell said. "So I think that was a really well-tailored response by probably some big attorney in Hollywood. I find it pretty empty, their responses, because they still show our shows, they still put our shows on. And I have to pay for my own therapy."
"If there was any truth behind them actually caring, there would be something more than quotes on a page by obviously a legal representative telling them exactly how to tailor a response," he added.
At the time of his interview with Sarah Fraser, Bell said that no one who wrote the letters in support of his abuser Peck had reached out and genuinely apologized to him.
"I haven't gotten an apology, or a sorry, from anybody that had written letters, or was involved in supporting him at all," he said.
He added that he did appreciate "X-Men" producer Tom DeSanto's statement to People magazine, in which he said that he was given misinformation regarding the case.
"With the knowledge and understanding I possess today, I want to personally apologize to Drake and his family and emphatically state that had I been fully informed of all the accusations, my support would have been absolutely withheld," DeSanto said.
Bell also said that his "Drake & Josh" costar Josh Peck (who is unrelated to Brian Peck), reached out to him privately.
Bell acknowledged that he and Josh Peck have had "ups and downs" in their relationship over the years, but said they have a special bond and that he didn't want the public to attack his costar for not speaking up after the docuseries' release. Bell shared similar comments in a video posted on TikTok in which he asked fans to "take it a little easy" on Peck for not speaking out publicly.
Since the letters were made public in the docuseries, directors Beth and Rich Correll have also publicly apologized to Bell for supporting the acting coach.
"If we had known the truth at the time the letters were written, we never would have written them," they said, in part, in a statement to Variety.
Josh Peck said that he contacted his 'Drake & Josh' costar Drake Bell privately to offer his support
Josh Peck and Drake Bell on season four of "Drake & Josh."Nickelodeon
"I finished the 'Quiet On Set 'documentary and took a few days to process it," Peck wrote in a post shared on Instagram. "I reached out to Drake privately, but want to give my support for the survivors who were brave enough to share their stories of emotional and physical abuse on Nickelodeon sets with the world. Children should be protected."
"Reliving this publicly is incredibly difficult, but I hope it can bring healing for the victims and their families as well as necessary change to our industry," he added.
'The Amanda Show' star Raquel Lee Bolleau said that appearing in the docuseries and watching it back has resulted in 'deep pain'
"I've been in deep pain the past few days watching the documentary 'Quiet on Set,'" Bolleau said in an Instagram post. "To know that I am not alone in some of the things I experienced as a child actor, but to also hear the types of environments I was in as a kid without even knowing, just sickens my stomach. I know that everything happens for a reason and we all deserve to heal from our trauma, but this is so hard to take in."
Bolleau said she grappled with being part of "Quiet on Set" out of fear that she wouldn't find work after speaking out, but she felt that it's important "that we all begin our healing, now that we have more clarity and truth."
Devon Werkheiser apologized to Bell after he and his costars from 'Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide' joked about the allegations from 'Quiet on Set'
Fisker Ocean reservation cancellations top 40,000 as the EV company tries to fight off bankruptcy, leaked data shows
FREDERIC J. BROWN
Fisker has faced a wave of reservation cancellations, according to internal data viewed by BI.Reservation cancellations for the Fisker Ocean recently topped 40,000. Preorders began in late 2019.Fisker recently paused production of its EV and dropped its price by 39%.Tens of thousands of Fisker customers have canceled their vehicle reservations, according to leaked data obtained by Business Insider, as the electric car company scrambles to find additional financing and a potential bankruptcy filing looms over its operations.
More than 40,000 out of well over 70,000 reservations for the Fisker Ocean have been canceled to date, according to internal company metrics viewed by Business Insider. The company first began accepting pre-orders in November 2019, and announced in February 2023 that it had "approximately 65,000" reservations ahead of its first deliveries.
Fisker was averaging around 70 to 80 cancellations per day in a recent seven-day average, according to the internal metrics viewed by BI.
The reservation cancellations pose an issue for the company, representing potential sales slipping away during a time when the company desperately needs to generate more revenue.
The cancellations also represent a drag on company costs. While it costs $250 to reserve a Fisker, that amount is refundable aside from a $25 processing fee, the company's website says. Individuals who reserve more than one of the company's EVs are entitled to a $100 refund if they cancel, according to Fisker's reservation terms online. The company said a reservation "will hold your approximate spot in our order queue to purchase your Fisker EV."
It's not clear how many reservation cancellations Fisker has already reimbursed in the years since November 2019, when it began accepting reservations, but the total cost to date of around 40,000 reservation reimbursements would be in the ballpark of $9 million.
The company also has a few thousand order cancellations, according to the data viewed by BI, which are different than reservations and not fully refundable. The company says on its website it will keep the $5,000 order deposit, as well as the transportation fee if a cancellation is made after the company has started the process of transporting the vehicle to the customer.
Fisker has delivered more than 6,000 of the vehicles to date since the automaker released the Fisker Ocean SUV in June 2023, according to the metrics viewed by BI.
Fisker confirmed the deliveries but declined to comment on cancellations of reservations or orders.
The automaker dropped prices for its flagship EV by 39% on Wednesday in an apparent attempt to boost sales — meaning the most affordable version of the SUV is now selling for about $25,000.
During Fisker's earnings last earnings call in February, it warned that the company might not have enough funds to survive 2024.
The company said in a regulatory filing earlier this month it had paused production of its electric car for six weeks and it had around $121 million in the bank as of March 15. On March 18, the company said it had secured a commitment for up to $150 million in additional financing from an existing investor. On March 22, Fisker said in a regulatory filing that negotiations with a major automaker had failed and that Fisker was continuing to evaluate strategic alternatives.
The end of negotiations with the major automaker meant that Fisker was unable to meet a closing condition with the existing investor for the up to $150 million of financing previously announced, which meant that the funds were no longer guaranteed, the company said in the regulatory filing. Fisker said in the filing it planned to try to negotiate a waiver to that closing condition or a financing deal with the investor under different terms.
The company is Henrik Fisker's second automotive startup. The Fisker CEO and Danish car designer's previous startup, Fisker Automotive, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2013. Fisker launched his second automotive company in 2016.
Do you work for Fisker or own one of their EVs? Reach out to the reporter through a non-work email or device at gkay@businessinsider.com or via Signal at 248-894-6012
Google DeepMind unveils ‘superhuman’ AI system that excels in fact-checking, saving costs and improving accuracy
Lauren Boebert 'makes George Santos look like a saint,' says retired House Republican who she's trying to replace
Shawn Thew/Getty Images
Former Rep. Ken Buck recently sounded off against Lauren Boebert, who's now running for his seat.He said the congresswoman and her various controversies "makes George Santos look like a saint."Boebert has accused Buck of resigning early in order to make it harder for her to win his seat.According to audio that recently aired on a Colorado talk radio station, former Rep. Ken Buck doesn't think all that highly of Rep. Lauren Boebert.
"She makes George Santos look like a saint," Buck can be heard saying on the audio heard on the "Dan Caplis Show." Buck was referring to the recently expelled New York Republican who's known for his myriad lies; Santos has been indicted on 23 charges, including wire fraud, identity theft, and money laundering. He has pleaded not guilty.
According to Politico, which first reported on the existence of the audio, Buck made those comments at a Rotary Club event after being asked about the controversial congresswoman.
"I've been asked about her moving across the mountains to run in the 4th congressional district, and I have not said anything," Buck can be heard saying before he references controversies surrounding her ex-husband and son, as well as her infamous "Beetlejuice" incident.
On Friday, Buck told Politico: "I went through a list of issues that I have not responded to that the press has asked me about."
Boebert, appearing on the show to respond to Buck's comments, fired back: "Ken Buck is so irrelevant and such an embarrassment to Colorado… I really don't care what he's asked about me."
The two Colorado Republicans have been at loggerheads recently over Buck's decision to suddenly resign, which has triggered a special election in Colorado's 4th district.
Boebert, facing the prospect of an expensive reelection campaign and a potential loss to a Democrat in her old district, opted to move across the state and run in the 4th district in December after Buck announced that he would retire.
She had already faced accusations of "carpetbagging" and a potentially tough fight to stay in Congress.
But Buck's decision to leave even sooner than the end of his term — which also shaved down the House GOP majority upon his departure last Friday — makes her path to staying in office even harder.
She's already sworn off seeking the GOP nomination for the special election, given that she would trigger another special election in her old seat if she won. Later on Thursday, local GOP officials are set to choose another candidate, possibly one of her current primary opponents.
That means Boebert may have to run against someone who has been anointed by the local party to serve for at least 6 months in Congress, putting her at a greater disadvantage.
SambaNova announces new AI Samba-CoE v0.2 that already beats Databricks DBRX
4 small things I'm doing differently around the house that save me $200 a month
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The author, Jen Glantz.Jen Glantz
With inflation raising the cost of everything, I've been looking for creative ways to save money. I'm selling items around the house that I no longer need, and reducing my electricity use. Being more mindful of food waste is helping me save money at the grocery store.With inflation causing the price of food and household items to skyrocket, I've become obsessed with finding ways to save more money every month.
As a fully remote worker, I spend a lot of time at home. For the last two months, I've started to brainstorm ways that I can change my habits around the house in order to save $200, or more, every single month.
By making a few changes and trying out new behaviors, here are the four ways I was able to make that happen.
1. Selling items around the house
One of my favorite ways to make extra money on the weekends is by selling items I have around the house that I don't use or don't need anymore.
I spend 45 minutes every Sunday rounding up anything that I want to try to sell before listing those items on apps like Poshmark (great for clothing and shoes), Facebook Marketplace (great for furniture or random items like rollerblades, dishes, or household accessories), or OfferUp (great for furniture or household accessories).
Last month I was able to make $75 by selling three furniture items, and this month, so far, I've made around $100 selling clothes and shoes. While I do spend some of that money, I try to save 25% to 50% and put the cash in either my emergency fund or my general savings account.
2. Lowering my electric bill
When I look at my electric bill during the summer months, I begin to sweat. In an average month, the electric bill for my 500-square-foot one-bedroom apartment can hover around $180.
In an effort to lower the bill as much as possible, I've started to get strategic about my habits around the house using advice from my local energy provider.
I am guilty of leaving the house with the lights and the air on, even when I don't plan to be home for hours. I put a sticky note on my front door reminding me to shut everything off before I leave.
Instead of blasting my air conditioning all day, since I work from home, I've started to lower our shades to keep the apartment cooler and run the air for 20 minutes at a time before turning it off for 40 minutes.
Finally, when it comes to using appliances (like the dishwasher or in-unit washer and dryer), rather than turning them on three to four times a week, I've limited my dishwashing to once a week (handwashing the rest of the items) and doing laundry once a week.
While the amount of the electric bill can change based on many factors, I'm hoping that by getting more rigid about these behavior shifts, I can knock off at least $20 a month from that bill.
3. Being mindful about food waste
A few months ago, I took an audit of how much I spend every 30 days on groceries and realized my total was around $600. I started to notice that I could shave some money off that amount if I was smarter about not only how I was buying these food items, but also about how I was making sure they didn't go to waste.
After getting better at searching for coupons before heading to the store, and buying more frozen produce, I found another simple way that I could save $15 to $20 a week on groceries.
Instead of letting food items go to waste, I found ways to turn them into meals and put them in the freezer before they went bad. For example, last week, I had an unused garlic bulb, onion, potato, and zucchini that were all about to go bad before I could consume them. I turned them into soup and put the container in the freezer. I can have that soup for lunch for at least two or three days, saving me money on having to buy other items to eat.
I also realized that every week I was buying a new loaf of bread (around $5) and was only eating a third of the loaf. I started to put the leftover bread in the freezer and now only buy bread every three weeks.
Using these techniques has helped me save around $60 to $80 a month on my grocery bill.
4. Buying off-brand cleaning products
An easy way I was able to save money on my grocery bill was by being mindful about buying generic or store-brand items over more popular and well-known brand items instead. When I started doing this with cleaning supplies, I noticed that I was saving anywhere from $15 to $30 a month, depending on what I needed to buy.
For example, if I needed new dish soap, I found I was able to buy the store-brand version for $1 instead of the $5 dish soap I was buying from a major brand I was loyal to. When I switched most of my cleaning products away from well-known brands, my savings started to increase. Plus, depending on the store you shop at, you might even find more coupons offered, or buy-one get-one deals, if you buy the store brand instead.
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This article was originally published in September 2022.
How to buy Inter Miami tickets for Messi and co: Dates and prices compared for 2024
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Lionel Messi is loving soccer again with Inter Miami.CHANDAN KHANNA/Getty Images
Since Lionel Messi joined Inter Miami last summer, interest in the team and the sport has soared. Whether you're a Messi enthusiast or a longtime Inter Miami fan, we've compiled everything you need to know about how to buy Inter Miami tickets to see Messi live.
Inter Miami was first established in 2018. Messi, a world-class player who helped Argentina win the 2022 FIFA World Cup, signed on to join MLS in June of 2023. When he has been able to play, Messi has been an excellent asset to the team, although he's been grappling with some injury issues, and it's unclear exactly which games he'll be able to participate in this season. In addition to the regular MLS season, which is underway, Inter Miami is scheduled to participate in a couple of exciting upcoming tournaments, including Concacaf and the Leagues Cup.
We've got you covered if you're looking for tickets to Inter Miami games in 2024, where you'll maybe get a chance to see Messi play. Here's our breakdown of the team's schedule, purchasing details, and original and resale ticket prices. If you're interested, you can also browse resale ticket sites like StubHub and Vivid Seats.
See also: India vs. Pakistan cricket tickets | US Masters tickets | Watch Champions League free live streamInter Miami home game schedule 2024
Inter Miami has over a dozen home games left this season, including the Concacaf Quarterfinals against Monterrey (April 3) and the Leagues Cup against Puebla FC (July 27). Browse all the dates below, and if the team advances in any tournaments, keep an eye out for updates.
Date | Prices from | Versus | Location |
March 30 | New York City FC | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
April 3 | C.F. Monterrey (Concacaf Quarterfinals) | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
April 6 | Colorado Rapids | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
April 20 | Nashville SC | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
May 4 | New York Red Bulls | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
May 18 | D.C. United | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
May 29 | Atlanta United | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
June 1 | St. Louis City SC | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
June 19 | Columbus Crew | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
July 17 | Toronto FC | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
July 20 | Chicago Fire | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
July 27 | Puebla FC (Leagues Cup) | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
August 24 | FC Cincinnati | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
September 14 | Philadelphia Union | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
September 28 | Charlotte FC | Fort Lauderdale, FL | |
October 19 | New England Revolution | Fort Lauderdale, FL |
Inter Miami away game schedule 2024
Inter Miami has more than a dozen away games left this season, including the Concacaf Quarterfinals against Monterrey (April 10) and the Leagues Cup against Tigres UANL (August 3). Take a look at all the dates below and check back for any updates should the team advance in any tournaments.
Date | Prices from | Versus | Location |
April 10 | C.F. Monterrey (Champions Cup Quarterfinals) | Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico | |
April 13 | Sporting Kansas City | Kansas City, MO | |
April 27 | New England Revolution | Foxborough, MA | |
May 11 | CF Montréal | Montréal, Canada | |
May 15 | Orlando City SC | Orlando, FL | |
May 25 | Vancouver Whitecaps FC | Vancouver, Canada | |
June 15 | Philadelphia Union | Chester, PA | |
June 29 | Nashville SC | Nashville, TN | |
July 3 | Charlotte FC | Charlotte, NC | |
July 6 | FC Cincinnati | Cincinnati, OH | |
August 3 | Tigres UANL (Leagues Cup) | Houston, TX | |
August 31 | Chicago Fire | Chicago, IL | |
September 18 | Atlanta United | Atlanta, GA | |
September 21 | New York City FC | Bronx, NY | |
October 2 | Columbus Crew | Columbus, OH | |
October 5 | Toronto FC | Toronto, Canada |
Need travel arrangements?
Flights & hotel: Booking.com | Expedia | CheapOAirFlights: Booking.com | Expedia | Tripadvisor | Skyscanner | CheapOAirAccommodation: Booking.com | Expedia | Airbnb | Tripadvisor | SkyScanner | CheapOAirParking: Spot Hero | The Parking SpotHow to buy Inter Miami tickets
Original standard tickets to Inter Miami games are sold through Ticketmaster. Resale tickets can also be purchased on websites like StubHub and Vivid Seats, which typically offer more variety in pricing.
How much are Inter Miami tickets?
Prices for standard original tickets to Inter Miami games vary depending on the date, location, and whether it's a regular-season or championship match. The cheapest available original standard tickets on Ticketmaster range from $40 (July 3 in Charlotte, NC) to $382 (October 2 in Columbus, OH). The lowest home game tickets available start at $100 for grandstand spots on three dates. Some dates have no original standard tickets left for sale. Most of the cheapest available tickets range from $100 to $200.
On StubHub, resale ticket prices to Inter Miami games are typically a little cheaper than the original standard tickets. The lowest prices range from $43 (July 3 in Charlotte, NC) to $368 (April 10 in Mexico). Most of the cheapest available tickets range from $50 to $200. Vivid Seats offers similar prices with a similar range.
Note: Certain services and regions prohibit the resale of tickets. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal reselling of tickets, and entry into an event is at the venue's discretion.
A complete timeline of Rebel Wilson and Sacha Baron Cohen's feud over the claims about him in her memoir
Rachpoot/Bauer-Griffin/Getty Images/Stefanie Keenan/VF22/WireImage/Getty Images
A chapter of Rebel Wilson's memoir is about her claims that Sacha Baron Cohen harassed her on set.The actors worked together on the action comedy, "The Brothers Grimsby."Wilson claimed that Cohen used lawyers to threaten her memoir.Rebel Wilson's memoir, "Rebel Rising," features a chapter about her experiences with Sacha Baron Cohen while they were filming the action comedy "The Brothers Grimsby."
The movie, which was released in 2016, stars Cohen as Nobby Butcher, a man from the north of England who discovers that his long-lost brother (Mark Strong) is a spy.
Wilson plays Nobby's girlfriend, Dawn Grobham. For years, Wilson has alleged that Cohen continuously asked her to go nude for the role and that he acted inappropriately with her on set. Most recently, she wrote about the alleged incident in her memoir and has claimed that the "Borat" star hired lawyers to threaten her over its publication.
Cohen has strenuously denied the accusations.
Here's a complete timeline of the drama between Wilson and Cohen, which dates back nearly a decade.
In 2014, Rebel Wilson said Sacha Baron Cohen asked her to put a finger in his butt while filming a scene for 'The Brothers Grimsby'
Rebel Wilson as Dawn and Sacha Baron Cohen as Nobby in "The Brothers Grimsby."Sony Pictures Releasing
Wilson first accused Cohen of behaving inappropriately on "The Brothers Grimsby" set in 2014 when she appeared on the "Kyle and Jackie O" radio show in Australia, according to The Courier Mail.
The "Pitch Perfect" star said Cohen kept asking her to go naked for the film, but she didn't want to. She said: "Every day he's like, 'Just go naked. It will be funny. Remember in "Borat" when I did that naked scene? It was hilarious.'"
The star added: "On the last day, I thought I'd obviously won the argument, and he got a body double to do the naked scene."
During the same interview, Wilson also claimed that Cohen sprung the idea of a lewd scene on her during filming.
"Then in the last scene ... he was like, 'Rebel, can you just stick your finger up my butt?' And I went, 'What do you mean, Sacha? That's not in the script,'" she recalled.
She continued: "And he's like, 'Look, I'll just pull down my pants, you just stick your finger up my butt, it'll be a really funny bit.'"
Wilson declined and said she smacked her hand on the star in the scene instead.
In 2017, Wilson discussed being harassed by an unnamed male costar in now-deleted tweets
Three years later, Wilson appeared to discuss the same "Grimsby" incident on then-Twitter now X in two tweets, which have since been deleted.
In the tweets, which Business Insider reported on at the time, she said that an unnamed male costar asked her to perform a lewd act on him in front of his friends, who she said were filming the incident.
Wilson also claimed that the actor's representatives threatened her not to bad mouth him. She didn't name Cohen in the tweets at the time.
Rebel Wilson has been extremely consistent over the past decade in talking about what she experienced with Sacha Baron Cohen. Here are some tweets from 2017. pic.twitter.com/sJFNX4lcGo
— Kayleigh Donaldson (@Ceilidhann) March 25, 2024In March 2024, Wilson teased that a chapter of her upcoming book would expose an actor she worked with
Wilson announced her memoir, "Rebel Rising," in October 2023, but it wasn't until March 2024 that she told fans how a former male costar was attempting to threaten her over what she'd written about him in the book.
Posting to her Instagram story on March 22, Wilson wrote: "I wrote about an asshole in my book. Now, said asshole is trying to threaten me. He's hired a crisis PR manager and lawyers. He is trying to stop press coming out about my book."
Wilson said the book would come out regardless, "and you will all know the truth."
Days later, Wilson finally named Cohen as the person she says hired lawyers to threaten her memoir
On March 24, Wilson posted another Instagram story naming Cohen as the "asshole" she'd written about in "Rebel Rising."
"I will not be bullied or silenced by high priced lawyers or crisis PR managers. The 'asshole' I am talking about in ONE CHAPTER of my book is: Sacha Baron Cohen."
On Tuesday, People magazine published an excerpt from Wilson's book detailing her claims about Cohen's behavior
On Tuesday, People published an excerpt from "Rebel Rising," in which Wilson alleges that Cohen frequently asked her to go nude in "The Brothers Grimsby."
"It felt like every time I'd speak to SBC, he'd mention that he wanted me to go naked in a future scene. I was like, 'Ha, I don't do nudity, Sacha.'"
Writing about a scene in the film shot in Cape Town, Wilson says: "SBC summons me via a production assistant saying that I'm needed to film an additional scene. 'Okay, well, we're gonna film this extra scene,' SBC says."
"Then he pulls his pants down … SBC says very matter-of-factly: 'Okay, now I want you to stick your finger up my ass.' And I'm like, 'What?? … No!!'"
"I was now scared. I wanted to get out of there, so I finally compromised: I slapped him on the ass and improvised a few lines as the character," she continues.
Cohen's representatives have denied Wilson's allegations and provided anonymous source statements in his defense
A spokesperson for Cohen denied the allegations in an emailed statement to BI on March 25, the day after Wilson publicly named him on her Instagram story.
They wrote: "While we appreciate the importance of speaking out, these demonstrably false claims are directly contradicted by extensive detailed evidence, including contemporaneous documents, film footage, and eyewitness accounts from those present before, during, and after the production of 'The Brothers Grimsby.'"
On March 28, Cohen's spokesperson also provided BI (via email) with nine statements from anonymous crew members, producers, and writers who said they worked with Cohen and Wilson on "The Brothers Grimsby."
Several of the unnamed sources, including a producer, a writer/producer, an assistant director, and a cameraman who all say they were present during the alleged incident, say that Wilson's recounting of the events is inaccurate and that the incident took place on a professional movie set, not in a "room" as she'd characterized it in her 2017 tweets.
"As per the script, which Rebel had read and approved in advance, her character was attempting to put a finger in Sacha's character's butt," the unnamed producer's statement read, in part. "At no point did Sacha actually ask her to put a finger in his butt, or any other of his body's orifices, for that matter."
That producer also said Wilson was "treated with the utmost respect and empowerment" as a creative collaborator and claimed that Wilson and Cohen had a "good relationship" until Wilson saw an early cut of the movie that cut out several of her improvised scenes, which the source deemed "frankly very problematic." According to the producer, the cuts made Wilson "extremely angry" and resulted in her hostility toward Cohen.
An anonymous executive producer also echoed that the scene Wilson described was in the "approved shooting script" and said they'd never received any notice about Wilson's concerns about the scene before or after shooting.
Several of the statements said that they never personally witnessed or heard about any bad behavior on Cohen's part and that the set was very professional.
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