Musk to meet Twitter staff
Elon Musk will address Twitter employees Thursday for the first time since the billionaire and Tesla CEO offered $44 billion to buy the social media platform, the company said Tuesday.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced an all-hands meeting to employees in an email on Monday, saying they’d be able to submit questions in advance, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Musk reached a deal to acquire Twitter in April, but he has clashed with the company repeatedly since then over the number of bots, or fake accounts, that exist on the social media platform. Musk said he was putting the deal on hold on May 13, saying he needed more data from the company about those bot accounts.
It’s not clear if this week’s meeting means that the two sides have come closer together on resolving those issues. Shares of Twitter have been trading well below the $54.20 per share that Musk has offered.
Shares of Twitter Inc. rose almost 3 percent before the opening bell Tuesday to $38.02.
Judge grants Spears restraining order
Britney Spears has secured a restraining order against her ex-husband, Jason Alexander, after he attempted to crash her wedding in Thousand Oaks last week.
A judge ruled during an arraignment Monday that Alexander can’t contact or disturb his ex-wife for at least the next three years. He pleaded not guilty and was held on $100,000 bail.
On Thursday, Alexander showed up to Spears’ wedding unannounced and uninvited while streaming live on Instagram. Security apprehended him after a quick struggle, with police saying he was armed with a
knife.
Alexander was arrested that same day on suspicion of three misdemeanor charges: battery, trespassing and refusing to leave private property. He was also booked on an outstanding warrant for felony grand theft embezzlement and receiving stolen property, connected to an unrelated incident in North Carolina in which a woman says he stole her $2,000 bracelet.
Spears and Alexander were childhood friends and had an impromptu wedding in Las Vegas in 2004. Only 55 hours later, the marriage was annulled, however, with the singer later telling E! News she was being “silly and rebellious.”
During Monday’s arraignment at the Ventura County Courthouse, Judge Catherine Voelker ruled Alexander cannot contact Spears or come within 100 yards of her or
her husband for three years. Judge Voelker also added a felony stalking charge, setting bail at $100,000.
Alexander was released on bail and assigned a county probation officer.
Meanwhile, Spears is moving on with her new husband, Sam Asghari, and has packed her Instagram with wedding photos and words of affirmation even as TMZ reported that the singer and the model-actor signed an “ironclad” prenup ahead of the wedding, protecting her estimated $60-million fortune. Spears and Asghari dated for six years prior to the wedding.
Spacey charged with sexual assault
Actor Kevin Spacey has been formally charged with sexual offenses against three men in Britain and is expected to appear in a court in London this week, British police said Monday.
Spacey, 62, is accused of four counts of sexual assault and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
Spacey is due to appear at London’s Westminster
Magistrates Court on Thursday.
The alleged incidents took place in London between March 2005 and August 2008, and one in western England in April 2013. The victims are now in their 30s and 40s.
The Crown Prosecution Service authorized charges against Spacey last month.
Spacey, a double Academy Award winner, was questioned by British police in 2019 about claims by several men that he had assaulted them. The former “House of Cards” star ran London’s Old Vic theater between 2004 and 2015. Spacey won a best supporting actor Academy Award for the 1995 film “The Usual Suspects” and a lead actor Oscar for the 1999 movie “American Beauty.”
But his celebrated career came to an abrupt halt in 2017 when actor Anthony Rapp accused the star of assaulting him at a party in the 1980s.
Spacey denies the allegations.