内容摘要：National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, Port Angeles, Wash. (4,556 square feet)

National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, Port Angeles, Wash. (4,556 square feet)

But what, she wondered, do they actually do?The result of her inquiry is “Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream,” a deeply reported, briskly paced and highly disturbing account of how the private equity industry has “reshaped the American economy to serve its own interests, creating a new class of billionaires while stripping ordinary people of their livelihoods, their health care, their homes, and their sense of security.”

Instead of focusing on the macroeconomic level, she tells the story through four remarkable people whose lives were upended after private equity acquisitions. Liz was afloor supervisor when the storied retailer was acquired by Mitt Romney’s company, Bain Capital, and other investors and eventually went under, laying off 33,000 employees without severance pay.Roger practiced medicine in rural Wyoming when private equity acquired his hospital and gutted services. Natalia was working for local Gannett newspapers at a time when the chain eliminated more than half its staff after years of private equity ownership. And Loren, an affordable housing organizer, escaped public housing only to end up in a mold- and rodent-infested apartment complex in northern Virginia owned by a private equity firm on the other side of the continent.

Greenwell has written an essential guide to an industry that operates largely in the shadows, donates generously to Democrats and Republicans in Congress to keep it that way, and has contributed substantially to the hollowing out of the American dream. Despite her immersion in this predatory world, she remains surprisingly optimistic. “Every year,” she writes, “a few more people like Liz, Roger, Natalia and Loren start fighting back.”CANNES, France (AP) —

is sitting on a rooftop terrace in Cannes, trying to find all the movie tattoos on his body.

There’s a little one for 2001’s “Donnie Darko,” but there’s a much larger one on his arm for “Kes,” Ken Loach’s seminal British social realism drama from 1969.The report described “severe corrosion” in pipes and protective barriers around oil tanks in the vessel Fluminense, off Brazil.

Two workers were left “with moderate to severe burns” after an incident on a vessel off the U.S. coast in 2016.There were “degraded facilities” on the gas-producing ship Prelude anchored off Australia, where fire broke out in 2021. In 2023, more than a year after the safety report, problems on the Prelude persisted, according to Australian regulators who found health and safety violations related to “exposure to chemicals and risk of an explosion.” They ordered improvements.

In the case of the Prelude, Shell said a dedicated local team of safety engineers and experts looked after the vessel but didn’t provide more details.Other incidents have been reported by regulators or in the press. For example, another Shell ship off Nigeria, the Sea Eagle, began to take on seawater in 2022 and needed urgent repairs, something Cox said was highly unusual for floating production vessels.