Day: July 22, 2025

• The owner of the LA Times said he’s going to take the paper public.
• Billionaire investor and businessman, Patrick Soon-Shiong, said the IPO will happen over the next year.
• The move would allow the paper to be “democratized,” he said in an episode of “The Daily Show.”

The billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, announced that he is taking the paper public.

Soon-Shiong, a businessman, investor, and medical researcher, broke the news in a Monday episode of Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show.”

“I’m going to announce something with you tonight,” he said to Stewart. “Is that we’re going to take LA Times public and allow it to be democratized, and allow the public to have the ownership of the paper.”

The announcement was followed by cheering and applause from the audience.

Soon-Shiong, through his investment firm Nant Capital, took over ownership of the paper in 2018 and became its executive chairman. It was previously owned by media company Tronc.

He said to Stewart that the IPO would go through over the next year. If it goes through, the LA Times will join other publicly traded news giants like The New York Times Co. and Tribune Publishing Co.

Soon-Shiong is also the executive chairman of ImmunityBio, a biotechnology company that develops vaccines and therapies for cancer and other diseases.

He said he grew up in South Africa during apartheid, without access to television, so he highly valued newspapers and radio.

“As I grew up in South Africa, the only thing that inspired me and kept me alive was the newspaper,” he said on “The Daily Show.”

He added, “So the opportunity for me, working on cancer and healing, hopefully curing cancer, is to have a place where the people, the voice of the people, truly the voice of the people, could be heard.”

Representatives for the LA Times and its union, the LA Times Guild, did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• Ukraine has been uploading clips of its troops destroying North Korean artillery with drones.
• Recent videos show Type-75 and M1991 launchers under assault from the cheap loitering munitions.
• The exposed nature of Pyongyang’s launchers could be a strong disadvantage as drone warfare rises.

Combat footage increasingly shows how North Korea’s old multiple launch rocket systems sent to Russia are susceptible to attack from first-person-view drones.

Ukrainian units have been uploading clips of their drones striking the artillery systems, with some igniting the launchers’ exposed munitions to cause catastrophic damage.

In one recent clip, posted by Ukraine’s 429th “Achilles” Separate Unmanned Systems Regiment on Friday, an FPV drone is seen flying into the rear of a North Korean 107mm Type-75 launcher.

Footage captured by the drone showed at least four rockets already loaded into the 12-barrel towed launcher at the moment of impact. The crew is nowhere to be seen as the drone appears to strike one of the missiles.

The Achilles regiment also uploaded a separate reconnaissance clip, filmed from a distance, that appeared to show the system detonating.

In the video, a rocket appears to fly out of the treeline, though it’s difficult to tell if both clips are definitively linked to the same attack.

The Type-75 has repeatedly been sighted in recent months on the Russian frontline and training grounds. It appears to be one of the latest systems that North Korea shipped for Moscow’s forces, and is Pyongyang’s version of the Chinese lightweight Type-63 launcher — an old 12-tube system that leaves all of its loaded rockets exposed.

Another Type-75 was reported destroyed on July 12 by a unit of Ukraine’s National Guard, which uploaded a clip of a drone dropping a munition on the system.

North Korea has also sent its longer-range M1991 multiple launch rocket systems for Russia’s use, one of which was seen heavily damaged by a drone strike last month.

Footage uploaded by Ukraine’s 413 Unmanned Systems Battalion in late June showed that a drone ignited one of the launcher’s exposed missiles, causing it to fire prematurely and pierce the truck’s driver chassis.

Two soldiers are seen jumping out of the smoking driver’s cabin.

Ukraine says North Korea has sent Russia hundreds of artillery pieces, including the M1991, the Type-75, howitzers, and Pyongyang’s more modern launchers such as the KN-09 multiple launch rocket system.

Much of North Korea’s equipment is based on Soviet or Chinese tech, so it’s typically highly similar to systems that Russia’s troops were already using in Ukraine.

The Cold War-era BM-21 Grad, for example, is a rocket system that has featured heavily in the war and is loaded by hand. And its munitions, like the M1991 and Type-75, are exposed and vulnerable to FPV drone attacks.

Conversely, modern Western rocket systems, such as the American M142 HIMARS, for example, often use containerized, enclosed munitions that are somewhat shielded from smaller explosions.

North Korea’s most recent military parades have showcased newer rocket launchers that appear to feature some additional protection, though these largely seem to just come in the form of larger tubes.

With the bulk of Pyongyang’s artillery arsenal believed by the West and South Korea to consist of older, legacy systems, it’s likely many of its launchers will suffer the same disadvantage as the M1991 and Type-75, while militaries around the world bet on the rise of drone warfare.

• Jon Stewart slammed CBS’s decision to cancel his friend Stephen Colbert’s talk show.
• CBS, which is owned by Paramount, said the cancellation was “purely a financial decision.”
• But Stewart said Paramount was capitulating to Trump over its proposed merger with Skydance Media.

Jon Stewart says CBS’s cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” has less to do with the show’s financials and more to do with getting into the Trump administration’s good books.

Stewart slammed CBS and its decision during his expletive-filled monologue on “The Daily Show” which aired on Monday night. Both Stewart’s and Colbert’s shows share the same parent company, Paramount Global.

“Now, obviously, I am certainly not the most objective to comment on this matter,” Stewart said of his longtime friendship with Colbert.

Stewart acknowledged the financial challenges that come with trying to run a late night television show like Colbert’s. Stewart said in his monologue that “late night TV is a struggling financial model” and is akin to “operating a Blockbuster kiosk inside of a Tower Records.”

“But when your industry is faced with changes, you don’t just call it a day. My god, when CDs stopped selling, they didn’t just go, ‘Oh well, music, it’s been a good run,'” Stewart said.

Stewart said the cancellation of Colbert’s show by CBS raised questions over whether it was “purely financial” or the “path of least resistance” for Paramount’s proposed merger with Skydance Media.

“I believe CBS lost the benefit of the doubt two weeks prior when they sold out their flagship news program to pay an extortion fee to said president,” Stewart said.

Earlier this month, Paramount said it had agreed to pay President Donald Trump a $16 million settlement. Trump had filed a lawsuit against CBS which accused the network of “deceptive editing” of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris on “60 Minutes.”

“Look, I understand the corporate fear. I understand the fear that you and your advertisers have with $8 billion at stake,” Stewart said.

“But understand this, truly, the shows that you now seek to cancel, censor, and control. A not insignificant portion of that $8 billion value came from those fucking shows. That’s what made you that money,” he added.

Stewart said that capitulating to Trump would not play out the way Paramount expects. He referenced the president’s recent lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal after it reported on a “bawdy” birthday letter Trump sent to Jeffrey Epstein on the latter’s 50th birthday.

“Donald Trump is suing Rupert Murdoch. The owner of Fox News, the man other than Biden may be most responsible for getting Trump elected,” Stewart said.

“Fox spends 24 hours a day blowing Trump and it’s not enough. Imagine suing someone mid blow. How could you? ‘Finish up. Finish up down there and I’ll see you in court,'” he added.

Stewart added that the reason Colbert’s show was ending was not because of its financial health but the “fear and pre-compliance that is gripping all of America’s institutions.”

“This is not the moment to give in. I’m not giving in,” Stewart said.

During his half-hour monologue, Stewart said versions of the word “fuck” over two dozen times.

CBS said in a statement on July 18 that the cancellation of Colbert’s show was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.” It added that the decision was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”

Last week, Puck’s Matt Belloni reported that Colbert’s show had been losing more than $40 million a year. This is in spite of Colbert’s popularity with viewers. His show was the only late-night show to gain viewers this year, per ratings from the American audience measurement company, Nielsen.

Advertising revenue across late-night shows like Colbert’s has been dropping, too. Ad revenue for late-night fell from $439 million in 2018 to $220 million in 2024, The New York Times reported, citing data it had obtained from advertising data firm, Guideline.

Representatives for Stewart, Colbert, CBS, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.