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Lampert Makes $4.4 Billion Bid to Keep Sears Alive

Sears Holdings Corp. Chairman Eddie Lampert submitted a $4.4 billion takeover bid for the bankrupt U.S. retailer, representing its only chance of escaping liquidation and laying off tens of thousands of workers, a spokesman for the billionaire’s hedge fund said Friday.

Lampert’s bid is backed in part by $1.3 billion in financing from three different financial institutions, the spokesman for his hedge fund, ESL Investments Inc., said. It would preserve about 425 stores that Sears has yet to close and secure the jobs of up to 50,000 workers out of the 68,000 employed by the retailer. An affiliate of ESL, Transform Holdco LLC, submitted the bid, the spokesman said.

​People familiar with the matter said the financing comes from Sears’ existing lenders Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc, as well Royal Bank of Canada, which was not previously a lender, which together agreed to provide a $950 million asset-based loan and a $350 million revolving credit line.

Some of Lampert’s bid relies on $1.8 billion of Sears debt that ESL already holds and plans to forgive to back the offer, the sources said. The bid also includes about $400 million in financing from non-bank lenders, the sources said.

The bid contemplates assuming protection agreements Sears has previously sold to reassure customers who have bought appliances, televisions, lawn tractors and other big-ticket items, the ESL spokesman said.

“Factoring for all considerations, we believe that our going concern bid provides the best path forward for the company, the best option to save tens of thousands of jobs and is superior for all of Sears’ stakeholders to the alternative of a complete liquidation,” the ESL spokesman said. “Much work remains and there is no assurance our proposal will be completed.”

Next move is Sears’

Sears will now evaluate the bid to determine whether it is viable, and there remains a possibility the company could reject it, some of the sources said.

A Sears spokeswoman declined to comment. Bank representatives either had no immediate comment or did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A U.S. bankruptcy court judge must approve any sale of Sears. The judge will weigh the opinions of other stakeholders, including unsecured creditors who have argued they could recover more of their investment if the department store operator winds down.

Without the financing or another buyer, Sears faces the prospect of closing its doors for good and putting roughly 68,000 people out of work.

​125-year-old retailer

The 125-year-old retailer filed for bankruptcy Oct. 15 and developed plans to restructure around the sale of 500 stores and businesses including Kenmore, DieHard and the company’s home services division. Only Lampert’s ESL offered to buy the entire company.

The only other bids Sears has received are from suitors interested in pieces of the company and liquidators prepared to run going-out-of-business sales at stores and shut down the retailer.

Sears dates back to the late 1880s. Its mail-order catalogs with merchandise ranging from toys, medicine and gramophones to automobiles, kit houses and tombstones made it the Amazon.com Inc. of its time.

But the iconic retailer gradually lost its shine as consumers increasingly favored brick-and-mortar rivals such as Walmart Inc and Target Corp and e-commerce.

Lampert, who through ESL is Sears’ biggest shareholder and creditor, formed Sears Holdings in 2005 by acquiring Sears Roebuck in an $11 billion deal and combining it with discount chain Kmart, which he had also taken over.

Lampert had pledged to restore Sears to its glory days, when it owned the Sears Tower in Chicago, then the world’s tallest building, and companies that included a radio station and Allstate insurance. But the company stopped turning a profit in 2011, and it gradually started to sell assets, such as its legendary Craftsman brand and many of its properties, to stay afloat.

Sears Holdings listed $6.9 billion in assets and $11.3 billion in liabilities in documents filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York.

The largest U.S. toy retailer, Toys ‘R’ Us, tried to emerge from its 2017 bankruptcy filing but was forced to liquidate six months later after creditors lost confidence in its turnaround plan.

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WHO: DRC Ebola Progress Will Be Lost if Violence Persists

Progress in fighting Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ebola outbreak, the second worst ever, will be reversed if fighting continues around the disease hot spots of Beni and Butembo, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday.

“We have reached a critical point in the Ebola response,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. “After an intensification of field activities, we were seeing hopeful signs in many areas, including a recent decrease in cases in Beni. 

 

“These gains could be lost if we suffer a period of prolonged insecurity, resulting in increased transmission. That would be a tragedy for the local population, who have already suffered too much.” 

 

The disease has killed 356 of the 585 people infected during the almost six-month outbreak, and one-fifth of the cases have occurred within the past three weeks, according to a weekly update from WHO. 

 

The epidemic in a volatile part of DRC is now surpassed only by the 2013-16 outbreak in West Africa, where more than 28,000 cases were confirmed. 

 

Congo has suffered 10 Ebola outbreaks since the virus was discovered there in 1976. It spreads through contact with bodily fluids and causes hemorrhagic fever with severe vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding. 

 

On Thursday, Congo’s Health Ministry said 24 patients fled an Ebola treatment center in Beni when it came under attack by people protesting the cancellation of voting in the eastern city in Sunday’s presidential election. 

 

“Protests at government buildings in Beni spilled over to an Ebola transit center, frightening people waiting for Ebola test results and the staff who were caring for them. Staff at the center temporarily withdrew and most suspected cases were transferred to a nearby treatment center,” Tedros said. 

 

Health teams in Beni were prevented from carrying out critical field work, including vaccinations, tracing of potential Ebola carriers, and following up on alerts of potential new cases. 

 

In Butembo, health workers were unable to give vaccinations or trace people who may have come into contact with the disease — a critical part of preventing its spread. 

 

In other areas, the fight against Ebola has continued, and local communities have been generally supportive of the health teams, Tedros said.

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UK Honors Cave Rescue Divers, Twiggy, Monty Python’s Palin

British divers who rescued young soccer players trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand are among those being recognized in Britain’s New Year’s Honors List, along with 1960s model Twiggy and Monty Python star Michael Palin.

Twiggy, a model who shot to stardom during the Beatles era, will become a Dame — the female equivalent of a knight — while Palin, whose second career has seen him become an acclaimed travel documentary maker, receives a knighthood.

Jim Carter, who played the acerbic Mr. Carson in “Downton Abbey,” was also recognized, as was filmmaker Christopher Nolan, director of “Inception” and “Dunkirk,” and best-selling author Philip Pullman, creator of the Dark Materials trilogy.

The list released Friday also named 43 people who responded quickly to the extremist attacks in Manchester and London in 2017.

The honors process starts with nominations from the public, which are winnowed down by committees and sent to the prime minister before the various honors are bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II or senior royals next year.

The 92-year-old monarch has increasingly called on her children and grandchildren to hand out the coveted awards.

Divers

Divers Joshua Bratchley, Lance Corporal Connor Roe and Vernon Unsworth will be made Members of the Order of the British Empire for their roles in the risky Thai cave rescue last summer.

Four other British cave divers will receive civilian gallantry awards for their roles in the thrilling rescue of 12 boys and their coach, who were trapped in the cave for more than two weeks.

Richard Stanton and John Volanthen, the first to reach the stranded children and their coach, have been awarded the George Medal, while Christopher Jewell and Jason Mallinson received the Queen’s Gallantry Medal.

Twiggy​

Twiggy, whose modeling career lasted for decades, burst on the London Mod scene as one of the original “It” girls. She earned worldwide fame by 17 and went on to a career in theater and films.

“It’s wonderful, but it makes me giggle,” said Twiggy, 69, whose real name is Lesley Lawson. “The hardest thing has been keeping it a secret.”

Michael Palin

Palin’s knighthood recognizes his contribution to travel, culture and geography. He said the news had not sunk in yet but noted “I have been a knight before, in Python films. I have been several knights, including Sir Galahad.”

“I don’t think it will (sink in) until I see the envelopes addressing me as Sir Michael Palin,” said the 75-year-old. 

 

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Study: Migrants to Affluent Nations May Be Healthier Than Natives

International migrants who relocate to high-income countries to work, study or join family members are less likely to die prematurely than people born in their new homelands, a research review suggests. 

For the analysis, researchers examined data from 96 studies with mortality estimates for more than 15.2 million international migrants in 92 countries. 

Overall, migrants were about 30 percent less likely to experience premature death from all causes than other people in the general populations of the countries where they moved, the analysis found. 

“Migrants to rich countries have lower rates of death due to most major disease areas compared to the general population,” said lead study author Robert Aldridge of University College London in the U.K. 

“We know from U.N. data that the majority of migrants to these rich countries tend to be moving for work or study,” Aldridge said by email. 

About 258 million people worldwide reside outside their countries of birth, accounting for more than 3 percent of the world’s population, researchers note in The Lancet. 

In many high-income nations, public perception that migrants place an undue burden on society in general and on health resources in particular has led to restrictions on migrants’ access to care, the authors write. 

But the current analysis suggests that, if anything, migrants may use fewer health resources than native-born residents, Aldridge said by email. 

Diseases, external causes

The only causes of death that were more common among migrants were infectious disease and external causes like homicide, the analysis found. 

Immigrants were 28 percent more likely to die of external causes and more than twice as likely to die of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and HIV than people who were born in their adopted homelands. 

However, immigrants were less likely to die from a variety of other causes including heart disease, digestive disorders, endocrine or circulatory problems, mental health disorders, cancers or diseases of the respiratory or nervous systems. 

Both men and women appeared to have a longevity advantage after migration. Male immigrants were 28 percent less likely to die prematurely from all causes than native-born men, while female immigrants were 25 percent less likely to die prematurely. 

The vast majority of the studies in the analysis focused on migration to high-income countries, not on refugees or asylum seekers. Researchers also excluded studies from their analysis that focused just on migrants with serious or chronic health problems or just on maternal and infant health outcomes. 

It may be, however, that migrants in the study were healthier than people in their native countries who didn’t migrate, said Anjali Borhade, director of the Disha Foundation in Gurugram, India, and co-author of an editorial accompanying the study. 

“Educated migrants have better sources of income and being healthy doesn’t affect their choice to migrate,” Borhade said by email. “Also, educated migrants have better living or working conditions and their health status is similar to the host populations, both for risks as well as outcomes.” 

Infectious disease and homicide deaths may be higher among migrants than other people in the general population because of unfavorable conditions immigrants face at work and in their new communities, Borhade added. That’s because many young, relatively healthy migrants may take low-paying and dangerous jobs and only be able to afford housing in subpar conditions. 

“Hazardous jobs and low living conditions increase their risk of dying due to external causes and infectious diseases,” Borhade said. “However, since migrants are healthier to begin with, their mortality due to other causes might be lower.” 

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Strong Week, Yet Horrible Month for Wall Street

Wall Street capped a week of volatile trading Friday with an uneven finish and the market’s first weekly gain since November. 

 

Losses in technology, energy and industrial stocks outweighed gains in retailers and other consumer-focused companies. Stocks spent much of the day wavering between small gains and losses, ultimately unable to maintain the momentum from a two-day winning streak. 

 

Even so, the major stock indexes closed with their first weekly gain in what’s been an otherwise painful last month of the year. The Dow Jones industrial average and S&P 500 rose more than 2 percent for the week, while the Nasdaq added nearly 4 percent. The indexes are still all down around 10 percent for the month and on track for their worst December since 1931. 

 

“It seems like convulsions in either direction have been the real norm for much of December and that’s certainly been the case this week,” said Eric Wiegand, senior portfolio manager for Private Wealth Management at U.S. Bank. “The initial push higher and then seeing it subside a little bit is perhaps getting back to a little bit more of a normal environment, reflecting the reality that we have still a number of issues overhanging the market.” 

 

The market’s sharp downturn since October has intensified this month, erasing all its 2018 gains and nudging the S&P 500 closer to its worst year since 2008. 

 

Investors have grown worried that the testy U.S.-China trade dispute and higher interest rates would slow the economy, hurting corporate profits. This week, with trading volumes lower than usual because of the Christmas holiday, served up some pronounced swings in the market. 

 

A steep sell-off during the shortened trading session on Christmas Eve left the major indexes down more than 2 percent. On Wednesday, stocks mounted a stunning rebound, posting the market’s best day in 10 years as the Dow shot up more than 1,000 points for its biggest single-day point gain ever. 

Late reversal

 

The market appeared ready to give much of those gains back on Thursday, before a late-afternoon reversal that erased a 600-point drop in the Dow left the market with a two-day winning streak. 

 

“The market was so oversold and then Wednesday and Thursday were key reversal days, but also stronger closes than opens,” said Janet Johnston, portfolio manager at TrimTabs Asset Management. 

 

“The market was starting to price in the worst-case scenario: a recession,” Johnston said 

 

Still, the market’s downturn has left stocks substantially less expensive than they were heading into the fourth quarter, Johnston noted. 

 

“And that sets up a good buying opportunity,” she said. 

 

On Friday, the S&P 500 index fell 3.09 points, or 0.1 percent, to 2,485.74. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 76.42 points, or 0.3 percent, to 23,062.40. The average had briefly climbed to 243 points. 

 

The Nasdaq added 5.03 points, or 0.1 percent, to 6,584.52. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks climbed 6.11 points, or 0.5 percent, to  1,337.92. 

 

Technology companies, a big driver of the market’s gains before things deteriorated in October, were among the big decliners. Alliance Data Systems dropped 1.4 percent to $149.82. 

 

Oil prices recovered after wavering in midmorning trading. Benchmark U.S. crude rose 1.6 percent to settle at $45.33 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, inched up 0.1 percent to close at $52.20 a barrel in London. 

 

Despite the rise in oil prices, energy sector stocks declined. Cabot Oil & Gas slid 3.5 percent to $22.95, while Hess lost 2.8 percent to $40.38. 

 

Retailers and other consumer-focused companies fared better. Amazon rose 1.1 percent to $1,478.02. 

 

Wells Fargo settlement

Wells Fargo rose 0.5 percent to $45.78 on news that the lender has agreed to pay $575 million in a national settlement with state attorneys general over its fake bank accounts scandal. The San Francisco-based bank has acknowledged that its employees opened millions of unauthorized bank accounts for customers in order to meet unrealistic sales goals. 

 

Tesla climbed 5.6 percent to $333.87 after naming two independent directors to its board under an agreement with federal regulators. 

 

Homebuilders fell broadly in the morning after the National Association of Realtors said its pending home sales index fell last month as fewer Americans signed contracts to buy homes. Higher mortgage rates and prices are squeezing would-be buyers out of the market, especially in the West. The stocks mostly recovered by midafternoon. William Lyon Homes gained 3.4 percent to $10.81. 

 

Bond prices recovered after a midday dip, sending the yield on the 10-year Treasury down to 2.72 percent from 2.74 percent late Thursday. 

 

The dollar declined to 110.41 yen from Thursday’s 110.74 yen. The euro weakened to $1.1442 from $1.1449. 

 

Gold edged up 0.1 percent to $1,283 an ounce and silver gained 0.8 percent to $15.44 an ounce. Copper rose 0.5 percent to $2.68 a pound. 

 

Overseas, major indexes in Europe closed higher while markets in Asia mostly rose. London’s FTSE 100 gained 2.3 percent, while the Nikkei 225 index fell 0.3 percent.  

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Revered Israeli Writer Amos Oz Dies at 79

Renowned Israeli writer Amos Oz, a passionate peace advocate whose stirring memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness became a worldwide bestseller, died Friday at age 79, his daughter said.

Fania Oz-Salzberger said on Twitter that her father had died and offered thanks to “those who loved him.”

“My beloved father, Amos Oz, a wonderful family man, an author, a man of peace and moderation, died today peacefully after a short battle with cancer,” she wrote.

Tributes poured in for Oz, including from Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon, who called his death “a loss for us all and for the world.”

While Oz’s writing is widely acclaimed, he is perhaps equally known as one of the earliest and most forceful critics of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands captured in the Six-Day War of 1967.

In recent years, Oz spoke out against the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, shunning official Israeli functions abroad in protest at what he called the “growing extremism” of his country’s government.

Netanyahu on Friday celebrated Oz as “among the greatest writers from the state of Israel.”

“Despite our diverging views on numerous issues, I have deeply appreciated his contribution to the Hebrew language and the revival of Hebrew literature,” the premier said in a statement released by his office.

Oz was described as a “literary great” by Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin.

“A tale of love and light and henceforth, great darkness,” he wrote on Twitter.

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Wells Fargo Agrees to $575 Million US Settlement on Consumer Ills

Wells Fargo agreed to a $575 million nationwide settlement over its opening of millions of unauthorized customer accounts and other alleged predatory practices, the bank and U.S. authorities announced Friday.

The agreement between the bank and attorneys general from the 50 states plus the District of Columbia covers a series of scandals that have dogged the big U.S. bank since 2016, when it was fined $185 million by U.S. regulators over its so-called fake accounts scandal.

Wells Fargo, which replaced its chief executive and overhauled its system for compensating staff in the wake of the debacle, said the deal “underscores our serious commitment to making things right in regard to past issues as we work to build a better bank.”

In addition to the payments, the San Francisco-based bank agreed to maintain a dedicated team and website to help consumers work through the problem and to periodically report to the states on the status of remediation efforts.

The agreement will help address conduct that was “unlawful and disgraceful,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, whose state will receive $148.7 million, by the far the largest settlement.

“Instead of safeguarding its customers, Wells Fargo exploited them, signing them up for products — from bank accounts to insurance — that they never wanted,” Becerra said.

“This is an incredible breach of trust that threatens not only the customers who depended on Wells Fargo, but confidence in our banking system.”

Wells Fargo has identified some 3.5 million accounts and 528,000 online bill-pay enrollments that may have not been authorized by customers, according to allegations listed in the settlement.

Other alleged violations short-changed consumers on auto insurance, mortgage rates and collateral protection insurance.

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Zuckerberg Sees ‘Progress’ for Facebook After Tumultuous Year 

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said Friday that the world’s biggest social network has “fundamentally” changed to focus on securing its systems against manipulation and misinformation. 

 

Capping a tumultuous year marked by data protection scandals and government probes, Zuckerberg said he was “proud of the progress we’ve made” in addressing Facebook’s problems. 

 

“For 2018, my personal challenge has been to focus on addressing some of the most important issues facing our community — whether that’s preventing election interference, stopping the spread of hate speech and misinformation, making sure people have control of their information, and ensuring our services improve people’s well-being,” he wrote on his Facebook page. 

 

“We’re a very different company today than we were in 2016, or even a year ago. We’ve fundamentally altered our DNA to focus more on preventing harm in all our services, and we’ve systematically shifted a large portion of our company to work on preventing harm.” 

 

He said Facebook now has more than 30,000 people “working on safety” and invests billions of dollars in security. 

Misuse of data

 

Zuckerberg’s comments come at the close of a year when Facebook was roiled by revelations about the misuse of personal data by the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 U.S. election and on data sharing with business partners.  

But he said the questions around Facebook are “more than a one-year challenge” and that the California giant was in the process of “multiyear plans to overhaul our systems.” 

 

“In the past we didn’t focus as much on these issues as we needed to, but we’re now much more proactive,” he said. 

 

The comments follow a message from Zuckerberg in January, before many of Facebook’s troubles emerged, when he outlined his goals of stemming abuse and hate and foreign interference, among other things, on the network used by more than 2 billion people. 

 

“My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues,” Zuckerberg said in January. 

Artificial intelligence

 

In Friday’s message, Zuckerberg enumerated a series of steps taken over the past year, including fact-checking partnerships, advertising transparency and artificial intelligence to remove harmful content. 

 

He added that Facebook’s systems were also being retooled with the aim of helping “improve people’s well-being,” based on research it conducted. 

 

The research, he said, “found that when people use the internet to interact with others, that’s associated with all the positive aspects of well-being. … But when you just use the internet to consume content passively, that’s not associated with those same positive effects.” 

 

One of the changes aims to reduce “viral videos” that are shared across the Facebook platform. 

 

“These changes intentionally reduced engagement and revenue in the near term, although we believe they’ll help us build a stronger community and business over the long term,” Zuckerberg said.

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NASA Spaceship Closes in on Distant World

NASA’s unmanned New Horizons spacecraft is closing in on its historic New Year’s flyby target, the most distant world ever studied, a frozen relic of the solar system some 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) away.

The cosmic object, known as Ultima Thule, is about the size of the U.S. capital, Washington, and orbits in the dark and frigid Kuiper Belt about a billion miles beyond the dwarf planet, Pluto.

The spacecraft’s closest approach to this primitive space rock comes Jan. 1 at 12:33 a.m. ET (0533 GMT).

Until then, what it looks like and what it is made of remain a mystery.

“This is a time capsule that is going to take us back four and a half billion years to the birth of the solar system,” said Alan Stern, the principal investigator on the project at the Southwest Research Institute, during a press briefing Friday.

A camera on board the New Horizons spacecraft is currently zooming in on Ultima Thule, so scientists can get a better sense of its shape and configuration — whether it is one object or several.

“We’ve never been to a type of object like this before,” said Kelsi Singer, New Horizons co-investigator at the Southwest Research Institute.

About a day prior, “we will start to see what the actual shape of the object is,” she said.

The spacecraft entered “encounter mode” on Dec. 26, and is “very healthy,” added Stern.

Communicating with a spacecraft that is so far away takes six hours and eight minutes each way — or about 12 hours and 15 minutes round trip.

New Horizons’ eagerly awaited “phone home” command, indicating if it survived the close pass — at a distance of just 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) — is expected Jan. 1 at 10:29 a.m. (1529 GMT).

Until then, the New Horizons spacecraft continues speeding through space at 32,000 miles (51,500 kilometers) per hour, traveling almost a million miles per day.

And NASA scientists are eagerly awaiting the first images.

“Because this is a flyby mission, we only have one chance to get it right,” said Alice Bowman, missions operations manager for New Horizons.

The spacecraft, which launched in 2006, captured stunning images of Pluto when it flew by the dwarf planet in 2015.

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50th-Anniversary Woodstock Event Set for 2019

Fifty years after the Woodstock music festival became one of the watersheds of hippie counterculture, an anniversary event will take place in August 2019 on the same field north of New York City.

The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts announced a three-day festival of “music, culture and community” that will celebrate “the golden anniversary at the historic site of the 1969 Woodstock festival.”

The Bethel Woods Center, a nonprofit that now owns the 37-acre (15-hectare) field that was the site of the 1969 Woodstock festival, said in a Facebook posting Thursday that the Aug. 16-18 festival will be a “pan-generational event.”

It will feature live performances from prominent and emerging artists across multiple genres and decades, as well as talks from leading futurists and tech experts. The festival is a joint venture with concert promoters Live Nation.

Details of performers, tickets and other participants will be announced at a later date, the Bethel Woods Center said.

The August 1969 Woodstock festival, billed as “three days of peace and music,” is regarded as one of the pivotal moments in music history and 1960s counterculture.

Over three sometimes-rainy days, more than 30 acts — including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, The Band, and the Grateful Dead — performed around the clock to a 400,000-strong audience, most of whom watched for free and camped onsite in the mud. The festival was documented in the 1970 film Woodstock, which won an Oscar.

Although it was known as Woodstock, the festival actually took place in Bethel, some 70 miles (110 km) south of the village of Woodstock in upstate New York. Bethel is 90 miles (144 km) north of New York City.

“Fifty years ago, people gathered peacefully on our site inspired to change the world through music,” Darlene Fedun, chief executive of the Bethel Woods Center, said in a statement announcing the 50th-anniversary event.

“We remain committed to preserving this rich history and spirit, and to educating and inspiring new generations to contribute positively to the world through music, culture, and community,” Fedun added.

The Bethel Woods festival is not affiliated with Michael Lang, a promoter of the 1969 festival, who has also spoken of plans to organize a 50th-anniversary event but has yet to make any announcement. Woodstock anniversary festivals were also held in 1994, 1998 and 1999.

Many of the 1969 Woodstock artists are now dead. Surviving musicians who are still performing into their 70s include Joan Baez, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who, and David Crosby, Neil Young, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

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