Squatters’ Movement Surges in Barcelona

Juan Carlos Padilla lives in an apartment building with crumbling walls, exposed electrical wiring and peeling linoleum floors. It’s far from luxurious. But the rent the 27-year-old sometime construction worker pays makes it all worthwhile: nothing. Padilla is among an estimated 1,500 young Spaniards who have taken over empty buildings as homes, triggering major clashes …

Zell Takes Over Tribune, Closing $8.2 Billion Buyout

Billionaire investor Sam Zell completed the $8.2 billion buyout of Tribune Co., ending the newspaper publisher’s 24 years as a publicly traded company. Zell becomes chief executive officer and chairman, taking on about $12 billion in debt as advertising revenue from the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune declines. The purchase follows an industrywide plunge …

Silicon Valley Is Laying Low on Net Neutrality

To sustain net neutrality rules designed to check the power of the country’s largest internet providers, Craig Aaron of Free Press will need all the help he can get. But the president and CEO of the Washington public interest policy group isn’t expecting an outpouring of activism from Silicon Valley. “It wouldn’t hurt,” Aaron said. “Anybody who …

Rockaway’s Wave Seeks to Rebuild a Neighborhood, and a Newspaper

Six weeks after Hurricane Sandy tore through the Rockaways, pouring five feet of seawater into Kevin Boyle’s home, the part-time adjunct professor and one-time bar owner found himself rebuilding not just his house of 20 years but the peninsula’s 120-year-old weekly newspaper and the community that depends on it. On Oct. 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy, …

Leon Lazaroff