90-yr-old Warren Buffett becomes 6th member of $100 bn club as Berkshire shares hit record high

News Network
March 11, 2021

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Warren Buffett has been a fixture at the top of the world’s wealth rankings for decades, but in recent years he’s slipped down the list as tech fortunes soared and his hot hand cooled.

Now, at 90, his net worth has blown past $100 billion.

The Berkshire Hathaway Inc. chairman’s wealth jumped on Wednesday to $100.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That makes Buffett the sixth member of the $100 billion clubs, a group including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and his friend Bill Gates.

The clan’s combined wealth has grown rapidly, fueled by government stimulus, central-bank policy and the surging equity market. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill cleared its final congressional hurdle as the House voted to approve the legislation, adding to the $3 trillion or so in stimulus Washington has already disbursed in the past year.

Berkshire, the source of virtually all of Buffett’s wealth, has had a good start to 2021. The firm’s A-shares are up 15% this year, outpacing the 3.8% gain of the S&P 500 Index. That’s been helped by Buffett’s recent push to spend record amounts buying back Berkshire’s own stock, a notable shift for an investor who previously preferred to use the $138 billion cash pile to buy other businesses or common shares.

Share Buybacks

Buffett’s been struggling in recent years to find sizable deals to spark Berkshire’s growth, partially due to the sheer size of the conglomerate. That’s caused the shares to underperform the S&P 500 over the past five years. But in 2020, Buffett spent a record $24.7 billion on buybacks and filings indicate he’s already bought at least $4.2 billion worth of stock through mid-February.

Surpassing $100 billion is all the more notable considering how much the Omaha billionaire has given away. A co-founder of the Giving Pledge, a campaign to encourage billionaire philanthropy, Buffett has donated more than $37 billion in Berkshire stock since 2006. Without those gifts, which have cut his holdings of Berkshire Class A shares nearly in half, he’d be worth more than $192 billion.

The staggering amount of wealth accumulated by the ultra-wealthy -- $1.8 trillion by the world’s 500 richest in 2020 alone -- highlights the K-shaped recovery that’s taking place as the US emerges from the pandemic. While millions of disproportionately poor, working-class and minority people remain unemployed, the rich have seen incomes and net worth levels rise thanks to a buoyant stock market and rising home prices.

Meanwhile, more than 8 million Americans -- including many children -- fell into poverty in the second half of last year, according to an analysis by University of Chicago economist Bruce Meyer, University of Notre Dame’s James Sullivan and Zhejiang University’s Jeehoon Han.

Buffett added $1.9 billion to his fortune on Wednesday as Berkshire Class A shares hit a record high, helping lead the second day of gains for the S&P 500. 

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News Network
November 12,2024

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The Taliban regime has appointed Ikramuddin Kamil as the acting consul in the Afghan mission in Mumbai, Afghan media has reported.

It is the first such appointment made by the Taliban set up to any Afghan mission in India.

There was no immediate comment from the Indian side on the appointment that came.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan has announced the appointment of Kamil as the acting consul in Mumbai, the Taliban-controlled Bakhtar News Agency reported on Monday, citing unnamed sources.

"He is currently in Mumbai, where he is fulfilling his duties as a diplomat representing the Islamic Emirate," it said.

The appointment is part of Kabul's efforts to strengthen diplomatic ties with India and enhance its presence abroad, the media outlet said

Kamil holds a PhD degree in international law and previously served as the deputy director in the department of security cooperation and border affairs in the foreign ministry, it said.

He is expected to facilitate consular services and represent the interests of Afghanistan in India, the report added.

Kamil's appointment comes days after the external affairs ministry's point-person for Afghanistan held talks with the Taliban's acting defence minister, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, in Kabul.

Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the Taliban's deputy foreign minister for political affairs, also posted on X about Kamil's appointment.

The appointment of Kamil is seen as part of efforts to facilitate consular services to the Afghan population in Mumbai.

There has been almost negligible presence of diplomatic staff at the Afghan missions in India.

Most of the diplomats appointed by the Ashraf Ghani government have already left India.

In May, Zakia Wardak, the seniormost Afghan diplomat in India, resigned from her position after reports emerged that she was caught at the Mumbai airport for allegedly trying to smuggle 25 kg of gold worth Rs 18.6 crore from Dubai.

Wardak had taken charge as the acting ambassador of Afghanistan to New Delhi late last year, after working as the Afghan consul general in Mumbai for more than two years.

She took charge of the Afghan embassy in New Delhi last November, after the mission helmed by then ambassador Farid Mamundzay announced its closure.

Mamundzay, who was an appointee of the Ghani government, had moved to the United Kingdom.

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News Network
November 15,2024

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Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has killed or captured 69 terrorists linked to the Israeli spy agency Mossad during a major counterterrorism drill in the country's southeast, its spokesman says.  

General Ahmad Shafaei, the spokesman for the “Martyrs of Security” drill, said Friday that a total of 23 terrorists have been killed and another 46 arrested in various clean-up operations ever since the IRGC Ground Force launched it in the Sistan and Baluchestan province on November 1.

Seven terrorists have also turned themselves in during the period.

“The undeniable fact about terrorists is that they rely on arrogant powers, particularly the intelligence service of the wicked and vicious Zionist regime," Shafaei said.

“Unfortunately, weapons and munitions at terrorists’ disposal are among the most sophisticated ones in the world. This accounts for their heavy dependence.” 

The official stated that several members of the disbanded terror teams were non-Iranian nationals, who had been hired by foreign intelligence agencies to carry out acts of sabotage and terror inside Iran.

In a most recent operation, six terrorists were arrested and four others were eliminated, three of whom were non-Iranians, he added. 

On October 26, ten members of Iran's law enforcement forces were killed in a terrorist attack in the Gohar Kuh district of Taftan in the Sistan and Baluchestan province.

The so-called Jaish al-Adl terrorist group claimed responsibility for the assault, which was one of the deadliest in the province in recent months.

The group has carried out numerous terrorist attacks in Iran, primarily in Sistan and Baluchestan.

Its tactics include the abduction of border guards as well as targeting civilians and police stations within the province to incite chaos and disorder.

In January, Iran launched a military operation during which the headquarters of the Pakistan-based terrorist group was targeted in missile strikes, destroying its infrastructure.

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News Network
November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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