What company has turned $250 million into $100 billion in the past 25 years by focusing mostly on online marketplaces? You might be thinking Amazon, but the company I'm actually referring to is IAC/InterActiveGroup (NASDAQ:IAC), the interactive media conglomerate long led by media mogul Barry Diller.

Following its spinoff of Match Group last year, IAC -- along with the 10 enterprises it has spun off over its history -- would be worth about $100 billion, according to a recent shareholder letter from the company. This is up from the $250 million that IAC's predecessor, Silver King, was worth when Diller took it over in 1995. That comes out to a compound annual growth rate of 27%, easily besting the S&P 500 historical average return of 9% and even topping Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, which has compounded at 20% since 1965.

Read more at The Motley Fool.

South Africa is battling to contain a mutant strain of COVID-19 that has now been found in more than 30 other countries, including in the U.S., which has prompted a raft of travel bans on South Africa. But across Africa itself, borders remain very much open on a continent that has little hope of getting enough vaccines for years to come. Special correspondent Chris Ocamringa reports.

Read more at PBS News.

An unprecedented winter storm and unprepared electrical grid has left millions of Texans without reliable power and water and has killed at least 20 people since Monday. Rolling blackouts stretched into days, with more than 400,000 households still without power Feb. 18 as another storm looms Thursday.

The incoming storm is expected to have devastating effects, particularly in counties southwest of San Antonio where COVID-19 cases are already spreading significantly. About seven million people were told to boil water or stop using it entirely as pipes and water mains burst in the frigid temperatures.

Read more at PBS News.

The pandemic's toll was highlighted in stark terms again Thursday as the expected life spans fell in the U.S. by a year on average in the first half of 2020. It is the largest drop since World War II, and gaps along racial lines are profound. Dr. Reed Tuckson, Washington, D.C.'s former public health commissioner and a leader in the Black coalition against Covid-19, joins Judy Woodruff to discuss.

Read more at PBS News.

In the past year, insurrectionists have breached the U.S. Capitol and armed protesters have forced their way into statehouses around the country. But the question of whether guns should be allowed in capitol buildings remains political, and states are going in opposite directions.

In Montana, a law signed Thursday allows anyone with a permit to bring a concealed firearm into the Statehouse, reversing a decadeslong ban and fulfilling a longtime hope of Republicans who took control of the governor’s mansion and the Legislature this year. GOP-dominated Utah passed a law this month allowing people to carry concealed weapons in its Capitol and elsewhere in the state without a permit.

Read more at Associated Press News.

World leaders welcomed the United States’ official return to the Paris climate accord Friday, but politically trickier steps lie just ahead for President Joe Biden, including setting a tough national target in coming months for cutting damaging fossil fuel emissions.

And even as Biden noted the country’s first day back in the climate pact, the globe’s dangerous warming was just one of a long list of urgent problems he raised in a video speech to European leaders on Friday, a month into his administration. Before bringing up climate issues, he touched on the global pandemic, sputtering national economies and tense relations with China, among other matters that threaten to impede and delay tackling the nation’s status as the world’s top carbon polluter after China.

Read more at Associated Press News.

Southern cities slammed by winter storms that left millions without power for days have traded one crisis for another: Busted water pipes ruptured by record-low temperatures have created a shortage of clean drinking water, shut down the Memphis airport on Friday and left hospitals struggling to maintain sanitary conditions.

Texas authorities ordered 7 million people — a quarter of the population in the nation’s second-largest state — to boil tap water before drinking it because low water pressure could have allowed bacteria to seep into the system. A man died at an Abilene health care facility when a lack of water pressure made medical treatment impossible.

Read more at Associated Press News.

We really mean it this time: Real ID becomes mandatory at U.S. airports on October 1, 2021.

We know. Americans have heard this warning before. A perennial victim of politics and pandemics since the formulation of the Real ID Act in 2005, the deadline has been announced, delayed, re-announced, and re-delayed. After all that folderol, you'd be forgiven if you thought it didn't matter.

Read more at Frommer's.

We've all been told about the importance of drinking an adequate amount of water. But is it possible to hit the tipping point, and overconsume this healthy substance? The truth is that, yes, there is a limit to how much water the body can process, and drinking too much water can put you at risk for certain health conditions.

For the average adult woman, about nine cups of water per day is recommended, and for an average adult man, about 13 cups is recommended, according to the National Institutes of Health. (Keep in mind, a cup is measured as eight fluid ounces.) But some people, particularly endurance athletes, are at danger of overconsuming in an effort to ward off dehydration.

Read more at Health Digest.

After you’re finished sipping your cup of tea do you toss your used tea bags in the trash? You might not know it, but if you do you’re wasting a multipurpose health tool that can be used to heal everything from chapped lips to bleeding gums. So don’t just toss your soggy tea bags in the trash can. Put them to work as the following 7 DIY health and wellness remedies…

Read more at Active Beat.