Business News Roundup, March 3
Aubrey McClendon, a natural gas industry titan, was killed when police say he drove his sport utility vehicle “straight into a wall” in Oklahoma City on Wednesday, a day after he was indicted on a charge of conspiring to rig bids to buy oil and natural gas leases in northwest Oklahoma.
Police Capt. Paco Balderrama said McClendon, co-founder of Chesapeake Energy and a part-owner of the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder, was the only occupant in the vehicle when it slammed into a concrete bridge embankment shortly after 9 a.m.
The information out there at the scene is that he went left of center, went through a grassy area right before colliding into the embankment.
McClendon’s death follows an announcement Tuesday that he had been indicted by a federal grand jury.
The Department of Justice said Tuesday that McClendon, 56, was suspected of orchestrating a scheme between two large energy companies, which are not named in the indictment, from December 2007 to March 2012.
The companies would decide ahead of time which would win bids, with the winner then allocating an interest in the leases to the other company, according to the statement.
All my life I have worked to create jobs in Oklahoma, grow its economy, and to provide abundant and affordable energy to all Americans.
Brazilian authorities released a Facebook executive from custody Wednesday after a judge overturned an order that led to his arrest one day earlier.
On Tuesday, the Brazilian federal police arrested Dzodan, an Argentine, after the company did not hand over information from a WhatsApp messaging account.
The information had been requested by a judge in Sergipe as part of a drug trafficking investigation.
The federal police said the arrest was made because Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, repeatedly failed to comply with judicial orders.
After the arrest, the company filed a habeas corpus petition that was reviewed and granted by a judge in Sergipe’s highest state court early Wednesday, leading to Dzodan’s release.
The grant will help raise awareness, limit transmission of the virus, kill mosquitoes and aid in diagnostics.
In a blog post, Google also said its workers are helping UNICEF organize data so it will be more helpful to groups fighting the virus, and put out information about Zika in 16 languages.
Target Corp. is stepping up spending on capital expenditures, primarily in its supply network and technology, as the retailer aims to be more nimble in an era of online shopping.