Twitter sues Musk to force him to complete his $44B acquisition
Twitter said Tuesday it has sued Elon Musk to force him to complete the $44 billion acquisition of the social media company.
Musk and Twitter have been bracing for a legal fight since the billionaire said Friday he was backing off of his April agreement to buy the company.
Twitter’s lawsuit opens with an accusation that “Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
“Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a sellerfriendly merger agreement, Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away,” the suit says.
Twitter filed its lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery, which frequently handles business disputes among the many corporations, including Twitter, that are incorporated there.
Musk alleged Friday that Twitter has failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts on its service. Twitter said last month that it was making available to Musk a “firehose” of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets.
The company has said for years in regulatory filings that it believes about 5% of the accounts on the platform are fake. Musk is also alleging that Twitter broke the acquisition agreement when it fired two top managers and laid off a third of its talent-acquisition team.
When Musk offered to buy the company and take it private in mid-April, the board initially tried to block him by deploying a financial maneuver that would have made the acquisition prohibitively expensive.
By April 25, though, Twitter had reconsidered the offer, concluding that selling the company to Musk for $54.20 a share was in the best interest of shareholders. Twitter’s stock closed at $34.06 a share on Tuesday.
Superbug infections: The toll of drug-resistant superbug infections worsened during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. health officials said Tuesday.
After years of decline, 2020 saw a 15% increase in hospital infections and deaths caused by some of the most worrisome bacterial infections, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. CDC officials think several factors may have caused the rise, including how COVID-19 was treated when it first hit the U.S. two years ago.
Before the pandemic, health officials said U.S. superbug infections appeared to be going down. Deaths fell 18% between 2012 and 2017, when about 36,000 Americans died from drug-resistant infections. The government credited hospitals for using antibiotics more judiciously, and for isolating patients who might spread the germs.
The CDC doesn’t have 2020 data on all superbugs, partly because health officials had to focus on COVID19. But it has data from seven kinds of bacterial and fungal infections detected in hospital patients, including MRSA and a bug called CRE that’s known as “the nightmare bacteria.”
The CDC saw increases of 15% or more in infections and deaths from that group of germs.
Virus variant warning: President Joe Biden’s coronavirus response team warned Americans on Tuesday that they must do more to protect themselves against COVID19 as the highly transmissible BA.5 subvariant of the coronavirus fuels new infections, reinfections and hospitalizations across the country.
BA.5, an offshoot of the omicron variant, is dominant among new U.S. cases. The White House has seen it march across Europe and South Africa.
The response team outlined its strategy to fight BA.5, which appears to be able to evade vaccines, as well as immune system defenses built up through prior infection.
Federal officials are considering expanding eligibility for second coronavirus booster shots to adults younger than 50, according to several people familiar with the thinking.
Calif. gun sales block: Gun makers and dealers in California will be required to block firearms sales to anyone they have “reasonable cause to believe is at substantial risk” of using a gun illegally or of harming themselves or others, under a new law Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday that he had signed.
The bill was one of more than a dozen adding to California’s already strict gun regulations that were sent to Newsom, a Democrat, by state lawmakers before they left for their monthlong summer recess.
Starting in July 2023, the state’s firearm industry standard of conduct will require those making, importing or selling guns to “take reasonable precautions” to make sure the weapons don’t fall into the wrong hands.
That includes having “reasonable controls” to prevent sales to arms traffickers, straw buyers, those prohibited from owning guns, and anyone deemed to be at “substantial risk” of
using the gun improperly.
The National Rifle Association said the requirements are vague and represent an attempt to hold gun dealers and makers liable for the actions of others.
The new law, the group said, “seeks to frustrate law-abiding gun owners” with the goal of driving gun makers and dealers “out of business with frivolous litigation.”
Pope Francis’ future: Pope Francis said he would not live in the Vatican or return to his native Argentina if and when he ever retires, but would like to find a church in Rome where he could continue hearing confessions.
“I’m the bishop of Rome, in this case the emeritus bishop of Rome,” Francis said in an interview with Spanish-language broadcaster TelevisaUnivision that aired Tuesday.
Francis, 85, denied he was retiring soon but noted that “the door is open” after Pope Benedict XVI in 2013 became the first pope in 600
years to step down.
Ala. inmate charged: A prisoner who prompted a nationwide manhunt when he disappeared in April from an Alabama jail has been charged with killing the corrections official authorities said helped him escape.
Casey White, 38, has been indicted on a murder charge for the shooting death of Vicky White, Lauderdale County District Attorney Chris Connolly announced Tuesday.
The pair’s disappearance sparked the manhunt that ended in Indiana where Casey White was captured and Vicky White died. The indictment alleges that during the escape, “White caused the death of Vicky White, who died from a gunshot to the head.”
The indictment does not specify who pulled the trigger. Authorities have said Vicky White, 56, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Casey White was serving a 75-year prison sentence for attempted murder and other crimes when he escaped.