FILE – Adnan Syed, center right, leaves the courthouse after a hearing on Sept. 19, 2022, in Baltimore. Hae Min Lee’s brother, Young Lee, has asked the Maryland Court of Special Appeals to halt court proceedings for Syed, whose conviction in Lee’s 1999 killing was reversed by Baltimore Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn in September 2022. Now, the office of Maryland’s attorney general is supporting the brother’s appeal. (Jerry Jackson/The Baltimore Sun via AP, File)
Tag: Online media
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To buy Twitter, Musk has to keep banks, investors on board
If the squabbling ever stops over Elon Musk’s renewed bid to buy Twitter, experts say he still faces a huge obstacle to closing the $44 billion deal: Keeping his financing in place.
Earlier this week, Musk reversed course and said he’d go through with acquiring the social media company under the same terms he agreed to in April. But after months of tweetstorms and legal barbs, there are scars and suspicions on both sides.
Experts say that behind the scenes, banks could be scrambling to find buyers for $12.5 billion in debt from the deal, and Musk is trying to hold together a group of equity investors that is pitching in billions more. The erratic billionaire is on the hook for the rest.
The fighting continued Thursday, when Musk’s attorneys said Twitter is refusing to accept his revived bid to buy the company. They sought to delay an upcoming trial on Twitter’s lawsuit that could force him to complete the deal.
But Twitter’s attorneys said it’s Musk who is holding everything up, and his effort to put the trial on hold “is an invitation to further mischief and delay.”
In the end, a judge agreed to give Musk more time to close the deal but said the trial will go ahead in November if he doesn’t.
It’s still possible the sale could close. But with so much at play, here’s what could throw the deal off track, again:
BANK FINANCING
A group of banks, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, signed on to loan $12.5 billion of the money Musk needs for the deal. In Thursday’s court motion, Musk alleges that Twitter doesn’t want to set the lawsuit aside because of a “baseless” fear that Musk could fail to get the bank financing.
“No such failure has occurred to date,” the motion said. “Counsel for the debt financing parties has advised that each of their clients is prepared to honor its obligations.”
The banks are “essentially cemented” to the deal by solid contracts, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said. But the debt market has changed dramatically since April. The stock market has tumbled, inflation is high, and interest rates are up as the Federal Reserve tries to slow the economy.
Banks would sell the debt to institutional investors, but there’s not much appetite now to take part in takeovers that saddle companies with big debts. Banks could be on the hook to make loans themselves.
“The banks would be really happy to not to have to take the risk of funding these loans,” said Erik Gordon, a law and business professor at the University of Michigan. “The agreements seem to be very strong, but I think the banks have their lawyers pulling all-nighters trying to get them out of it if they can.”
EQUITY INVESTORS
Investors who would get equity in Twitter are supposed to kick in billions. Ives estimates they had agreed to $15 billion to $16 billion. But some investors may be skittish about staying in given the market changes and Musk’s repeated accusations against Twitter about the number of bots on the platform.
Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund declined comment this week on the $375 million its subsidiary pledged in May. Several other investors didn’t respond to requests for comment on whether they were still chipping in.
Musk’s equity commitments — including $1 billion from Musk’s friend and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison — are on shakier ground if any in that diverse group of backers have changed their minds, said Kevin Kaiser, an adjunct finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
“Nobody knows — I don’t know anyway — what their commitment is,” Kaiser said. “So are they able to back out? Because if they’re able to back out, he is on the hook.”
MUSK MONEY
Musk, the world’s richest person with a net worth of $231 billion according to Forbes, has to kick in his own money, but just how much depends on how many equity investors stay in.
Most of his wealth is tied up in stock of the electric car company that he runs, Tesla Inc. Since April, he has sold more than $15 billion worth of Tesla stock, presumably to pay his share.
If any equity investors drop out, though, Musk will either have to replace them or throw in more money, fueling speculation that he might have to sell more Tesla shares. Musk’s share of the original deal was about $15.5 billion, Ives estimated.
THE GUARANTEE
It’s clear that Twitter’s board is very suspect of Musk because he has trashed the company for months now, alleging that it has far fewer daily users than it reports to investors, said Gordon.
That has diminished Twitter’s value and made investing in the deal less attractive, he says. And because Musk already tried to back out of the deal once, Twitter will want a guarantee of some sort that he won’t back out again.
That, Ives said, is likely to be a large chunk of money held in a non-refundable escrow account that would go to Twitter if Musk doesn’t deliver.
SIGNS OF PROGRESS
There are some signs that the deal will yet go through. Twitter says it looks forward to closing the deal by Oct. 28. Musk’s deposition in the lawsuit, scheduled for Thursday in Austin, Texas, was postponed. Musk’s motion says the bankers are still in. And the original group of investors is not talking publicly about bailing out.
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Krisher reported from Detroit, O’Brien from Providence, Rhode Island.
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Judge delays Twitter trial, gives Musk time to seal buyout
NEW YORK — A judge has delayed a looming trial between Twitter and Elon Musk, giving the Tesla CEO more time to close his $44 billion deal to buy the company after months spent fighting to get out of it.
Musk had asked to halt the upcoming Delaware court trial, where the Tesla billionaire was expected to fare poorly against Twitter’s lawsuit to force him to complete his April merger agreement. Musk revived the takeover offer on Monday but said he needed time to get the financing in order.
Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, head of the Delaware Chancery Court, said Thursday that Musk and Twitter now have until Oct. 28 to close the deal. A trial originally set for Oct. 17 will happen in November if they don’t, she said.
Twitter had asked McCormick earlier Thursday to proceed with the trial, saying the billionaire refuses to accept the “contractual obligations” of his April agreement to buy the social media company and take it private.
Twitter disputed Musk’s claim that the San Francisco-based company is refusing to accept his renewed bid. Musk told Twitter earlier this week he’s ready to buy the company once again after trying to back out of the deal over the summer, accusing it of refusing to give him information about “spam bot” accounts on the service.
Twitter described Musk’s move to delay the trial as “an invitation to further mischief and delay” after his arguments for terminating the agreement haven’t had merit.
But after the judge’s ruling, Twitter reiterated in a statement that it was ready to close the deal on the share price agreed upon in April: “We look forward to closing the transaction at $54.20 by October 28th,” referring to the price Musk originally offered for each Twitter share.
Brooklyn Law School professor Andrew Jennings said Twitter wants to be certain that the deal will get done and not allow “wiggle room for Musk to walk away again.”
Musk attorneys argued that Twitter was disagreeing with the trial delay “based on the theoretical possibility” of Musk not coming up with the financing, which they called “baseless speculation.”
They said Musk’s financial backers “have indicated that they are prepared to honor their commitments” and are working to close the deal by Oct. 28.
Musk attorney Alex Spiro said in a statement Thursday that “Twitter offered Mr. Musk billions off the transaction price” but Musk “refused because Twitter attempted to put certain self-serving conditions on the deal.” He didn’t elaborate on what those conditions were. Twitter hasn’t described the talks beyond what its attorneys have said in court.
Twitter’s shares fell $1.91, or 3.7%, to close at $49.39 on Thursday. It was the stock’s second day of declines following a surge of more than 22% on Tuesday after Musk made his renewed offer to buy the company.
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Judge delays Twitter trial, gives Musk time to seal buyout
NEW YORK — A judge has delayed a looming trial between Twitter and Elon Musk, giving Musk more time to close his $44 billion deal to buy the company after months spent fighting to get out of it.
Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, head of the Delaware Chancery Court, said Thursday that Musk has until Oct. 28 to close the deal. A trial set for Oct. 17 will happen in November if he doesn’t, she said.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
Twitter is asking a Delaware court to proceed with an upcoming trial against Elon Musk, saying the billionaire refuses to accept the “contractual obligations” of his April agreement to buy the social media company for $44 billion.
Twitter attorneys sent a letter Thursday to the Delaware Chancery Court’s head judge, not long after Musk’s legal team asked her to call off the trial while he works on a renewed bid to buy the company.
Twitter disputed Musk’s claim that the San Francisco-based company is refusing to accept the new bid, which Musk told the company about earlier this week after trying to terminate the deal over the summer.
The company has been seeking a court order to force the completion of the merger and said it intends to close the deal at the agreed-upon price, but described Musk’s move to delay the trial as “an invitation to further mischief and delay.”
Twitter said Musk should be aiming to close the deal by Monday, ahead of a trial set to begin a week later on Oct. 17.
“But they aren’t. Instead they refuse to commit to any closing date,” said the letter from Twitter lawyer Kevin Shannon. “They ask for an open-ended out, at the expense of Twitter’s stockholders (who are owed $44 billion plus interest), all the while remaining free to change their minds again or to invent new grounds to avoid the contract.”
Brooklyn Law School professor Andrew Jennings said Twitter wants to be certain that the deal will get done and not allow “wiggle room for Musk to walk away again.”
Twitter apparently hasn’t got the certainty it wants.
“Otherwise, we would’ve seen a joint filing to the court on how the two sides want to proceed,” Jennings said. “As of right now, the trial train keeps rolling until both parties or the court apply the brakes.”
Musk’s attorneys said earlier Thursday that the trial should be adjourned to leave more time for Musk to secure the financing.
“Twitter will not take yes for an answer,” said the court filing signed by Musk attorney Edward Micheletti. “Astonishingly, they have insisted on proceeding with this litigation, recklessly putting the deal at risk and gambling with their stockholders’ interests.”
Eric Talley, a Columbia University law professor, tweeted Thursday that Twitter “is absolutely right not to take ‘yes’ for an answer, and everyone knows why. (They tried that in April and it didn’t go so well).” He added that Twitter would, however, take a “certified bank transfer” from Musk.
Musk attorneys argue that Twitter is disagreeing with the trial delay “based on the theoretical possibility” of Musk not coming up with the financing, which they call “baseless speculation.”
They said Musk’s financial backers “have indicated that they are prepared to honor their commitments” and are working to close the deal by Oct. 28, roughly a week after the trial was set to conclude.
Twitter’s shares fell $1.91, or 3.7%, to close at $49.39 on Thursday. It was the stock’s second day of declines following a surge of more than 22% on Tuesday after Musk made his renewed offer to buy the company.
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Judge delays trial between Twitter and Elon Musk, giving Musk more time to close $44B deal to buy company
Judge delays trial between Twitter and Elon Musk, giving Musk more time to close $44B deal to buy company
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Twitter tells Delaware court it opposes Elon Musk’s attempt to halt trial
Twitter tells Delaware court it opposes Elon Musk’s attempt to halt trial
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Musk lawyers say Twitter won’t accept renewed $44 billion bid for the company, ask Delaware court to halt upcoming trial
Musk lawyers say Twitter won’t accept renewed $44 billion bid for the company, ask Delaware court to halt upcoming trial
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Twitter under Musk? Most of the plans are a mystery
SAN FRANCISCO — A super app called X? A bot-free free speech haven? These are some of Elon Musk’s mysterious plans for Twitter, now that he may be buying the company after all.
After months of squabbling over the fate of their bombshell $44 billion deal, the billionaire and the bird app are essentially back to square one — if a bit worse for wear as trust and goodwill has seemed to erode on both sides.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX and Twitter’s most high-profile user since former President Donald Trump was booted from it, has shared few concrete details about his plans for the social media platform. While he’s touted free speech and derided spam bots since agreeing to buy the company in April, what he actually wants to do about either is shrouded in mystery.
He could own one of the world’s most powerful communications platforms with 237 million daily users in a matter of weeks, though the deal is not final. The lack of clear plans for the platform are raising concern among Twitter’s constituencies, ranging from users in conflict regions where it offers an information lifeline to the company’s own employees.
“Both users and advertisers are — understandably — anxious about whether the move will fundamentally change the culture of the platform,” said Brooke Erin Duffy, a professor at Cornell University who studies social media. “And so, Musk will need to decide whether he wants to quash their concerns by retaining core features (the content moderation system, for instance) and keeping the company public — or whether he will undertake a full-scale overhaul.”
Muddling things further, on Tuesday Musk tweeted that “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” without further explanation.
Although Musk’s tweets and statements have been cryptic, technology analysts have speculated that Musk wants to re-create a version of China’s WeChat app that can do video chats, messaging, streaming, scan bar codes and make payments.
He gave a little more detail during Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in August, telling the crowd at a factory near Austin, Texas, that he uses Twitter frequently and knows the product well. “I think I’ve got a good sense of where to point the engineering team with Twitter to make it radically better,” he said.
Handling payments for goods could be a key part of the app. Musk said he has a “grander vision” for what X.com, an online bank he started early in his career that eventually became part of PayPal, could have been.
“Obviously that could be started from scratch, but I think Twitter would help accelerate that by three-to-five years,” Musk said at the August meeting. “So it’s kind of something that I thought would be quite useful for a long time. I know what to do.”
For now, Twitter has immediate and pressing problems Musk will need to deal with if he takes ownership of the company. Its social media rivals are struggling with declining stock prices and some, like Snap, even announced layoffs. Government regulation and attracting younger users away from TikTok are also challenges. And Musk’s vision of a free speech haven has social media and content moderation experts, as well as digital and human rights advocates, concerned.
“When this all started in the spring, we had indicators and a strong sense of what Musk might do with the platform,” said Angelo Carusone of Media Matters, a watchdog group that opposes the takeover. “Because of the lawsuit, we know who he’s been talking to, what he’s been saying and the types of far-right ideological decision makers he wants to put in place. To put it bluntly, the worst fears have been confirmed.”
Twitter employees, under former CEO Jack Dorsey and his predecessors, have spent years working to tame the platform once called the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party” where hate and harassment abound into something where all are welcome and safe. While it’s far from perfect, critics worry Musk’s ownership will mean turning back the clock on years of this work.
“Musk made it clear that he would roll back Twitter’s community standards and safety guidelines, reinstate Donald Trump along with scores of other accounts suspended for violence and abuse, and open the floodgates of disinformation,” Carusone said.
The company, for instance, was an early adopter of the “report abuse” button in 2013, after U.K. member of parliament Stella Creasy received a barrage of rape and death threats on the platform, echoing the experiences of other women over the years.
In subsequent years, Twitter continued to craft rules and invest in staff and technology to detect violent threats, harassment and misinformation that violates its policies. After evidence emerged that Russia used their platforms to try to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, social media companies also stepped up their efforts against political misinformation.
The big question now is how far Musk, who describes himself as a “free-speech absolutist,” wants to ratchet back these systems — and whether users and advertisers will stick around if he does.
Aiming to tamp down such worries, Musk said in May he wants Twitter to be “as broadly inclusive as possible ” where ideally, most of America is on it and talking — a far cry from the far-right playground his critics are warning against.
And while Musk has hinted he’d consider reinstating Trump’s account, it’s not clear the former president, who has since launched his own social media platform, would return.
Then there’s the matter of Twitter’s employees, who’ve been living with uncertainty, high- (and low-) profile departures and a potential owner who’s publicly derided them on their own platform. Musk has also targeted Twitter’s work-from home policy, having once called for the company’s headquarters to be turned into a “homeless shelter” because, he said, so few employees actually worked there.
As a hyper-frequent Twitter user with over 100 million followers, Musk does know how to use the platform. During an all-hands staff meeting Musk attended in June, he said his goal was to make it “so compelling that you can’t live without it.” If he’s able to realize this, it could finally put Twitter in the big leagues of social media, with TikTok and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, where users are counted in the billions, not mere millions.
Of course, Musk is also well known for predictions that are delayed or may not come true, such as colonizing Mars or deploying a fleet of autonomous robotaxis.
“This is not a car manufacturer where, good enough, all you have to do is beat General Motors. Sorry, that isn’t really that hard,” said David Kirsch, a professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland who’s studied Twitter bots’ effect on Tesla’s stock price. “You are dealing here with all of these other companies (that) also have very sophisticated AI programs, very sophisticated PhD programmers…everyone is trying to crack this nut.”
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Krisher reported from Detroit.
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Fan who caught Judge’s 62nd HR unsure what he’ll do with it
ARLINGTON, Texas — As he walked through a concourse in the outfield at Globe Life Field, high-fiving with fans and surrounded by a sea of cameras, it was almost as if Cory Youmans had hit a huge home run.
Instead, he hit the jackpot.
Youmans made the catch of a lifetime Tuesday night, snagging the ball New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge launched for his American League-record 62nd homer.
The historic souvenir came sailing into the front row of section 31 in left field, a drive Judge hit to lead off the second game of a day-night doubleheader against the Texas Rangers. Youmans snared it on the fly.
Youmans, from Dallas, works in the financial world and there’s no telling yet what the ball could be worth. With security personnel around him as he took the ball to be authenticated, he was asked what he planned to do with the prize.
“Good question. I haven’t thought about it,” he said.
After the Yankees lost 3-2, Judge said he didn’t have possession of the home-run ball.
“I don’t know where it’s at,” he said. “We’ll see what happens with that. It would be great to get it back, but that’s a souvenir for a fan. He made a great catch out there, and they’ve got every right to it.”
Soon after a local TV station posted a brief interview with Youmans in a walkway, Bri Amaranthus tweeted: “THIS IS MY HUSBAND.”
Amaranthus works in local media and is an alum of ABC’s “The Bachelor.”
Youmans was among the crowd of 38,832, the largest to watch a baseball game at the 3-year-old ballpark.
Many fans came clad in Yankees caps, T-shirts and pinstripe jerseys.
Some came to watch Judge make history. Some came just for the history. Some traveled a long way.
The latter two categories included Jimmy Bennicaso of Norwalk, Connecticut.
“I’m a Met fan, actually,” Bennicaso confessed. “Cowboy and Met fan — a rough combo.”
Bennicaso was home in Connecticut on Monday night having watched Judge fail to homer in the first of four games against the Rangers in three days. He ran an idea past his girlfriend — what if he headed to Texas to take in Judge’s chase in person?
“She said, ‘Yeah, go for it,’” he said.
Bennicaso caught a morning flight to Texas. Being self-employed in real estate investments helped, he said.
Bennicaso stationed himself in the lower deck of the right-field stands in hopes of grabbing an opposite-field homer, certainly a possibility given Judge’s spray chart.
Instead, Judge pulled a home run that broke the AL record set by Roger Maris in 1961.
Empty-handed, Bennicaso planned to return home Wednesday morning.
“It was worth it,” he said. “I gave it my best shot.”
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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports
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EXPLAINER: What’s next in Musk’s epic battle with Twitter?
Elon Musk’s monthslong tussle with Twitter took another twist Tuesday when the Tesla billionaire seemed to return to where he started in April — offering to buy the company for $44 billion.
But it’s not over yet. Twitter says it intends to close the deal at the agreed-upon price, but the two sides are still booked for an Oct. 17 trial in Delaware over Musk’s earlier attempts to terminate the deal.
DOES ELON MUSK OWN TWITTER YET?
No, he doesn’t own Twitter and it’s still not clear if or when he would take it over. What happened this week is that his lawyer sent a letter to Twitter saying Musk will complete the deal as long as he lines up the promised debt financing and provided that the Delaware Chancery Court drops Twitter’s lawsuit against him. But Twitter is unlikely to give up on its legal proceedings unless it confirms that the deal is for real this time and not a tactical gambit.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The judge presiding over the Delaware case hasn’t yet publicly weighed in on Musk’s new proposal, but what she says could determine the next steps.
Twitter’s deposition of Musk — set to begin Thursday — and even the Oct. 17 trial itself could still go forward if Twitter isn’t assured that the deal is closing, said Ann Lipton, an associate law professor at Tulane University.
“Twitter is not going to let that proceeding stop until it gets that 100% reassurance,” she said.
But if the deal does go through, Lipton said Musk could be in charge of Twitter in a matter of days — however long it takes him and his co-investors to line up the cash.
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The Onion and the Supreme Court. Not a parody
WASHINGTON — The Onion has some serious things to say in defense of parody.
The satirical site that manages to persuade people to believe the absurd has filed a Supreme Court brief in support of a man who was arrested and prosecuted for making fun of police on social media.
“As the globe’s premier parodists, The Onion’s writers also have a self-serving interest in preventing political authorities from imprisoning humorists,” lawyers for the Onion wrote in a brief filed Monday. “This brief is submitted in the interest of at least mitigating their future punishment.”
The court filing doesn’t entirely keep a straight face, calling the federal judiciary “total Latin dorks.”
The Onion said it employs 350,000 people, is read by 4.3 trillion people and “has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.”
The Supreme Court case involves Anthony Novak, who was arrested after he spoofed the Parma, Ohio, police force in Facebook posts.
The posts were published over 12 hours and included an announcement of new police hiring “strongly encouraging minorities to not apply.” Another post promoted a fake event in which child sex offenders could be “removed from the sex offender registry and accepted as an honorary police officer.”
After being acquitted of criminal charges, the man sued the police for violating his constitutional rights. But a federal appeals court ruled the officers have “qualified immunity” and threw out the lawsuit.
One issue is whether people might reasonably have believed that what they saw on Novak’s site was real.
But the Onion said Novak had no obligation to post a disclaimer. “Put simply, for parody to work, it has to plausibly mimic the original,” the Onion said, noting its own tendency to mimic “the dry tone of an Associated Press news story.”
More than once, people have republished the Onion’s claims as true, including when it reported in 2012 that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was the sexiest man alive.
The brief concludes with a familiar call for the court to hear the case and a twist.
“The petition for certiorari should be granted, the rights of the people vindicated, and various historical wrongs remedied. The Onion would welcome any one of the three, particularly the first,” lawyers for the Onion wrote.
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Photographer rides out Ian to capture the storm for others
Chuck Larsen has lived on Sanibel Island for 12 years and until last week had never experienced a major hurricane. The 76-year-old who moved from California decided to ride out Hurricane Ian in his condominium with little idea of the horror he was about to go through.
He filled his bathtub with water, stocked up on food and water, and made sure batteries were charged and his windows were rated to withstand 150 mph (240 kph) winds. He followed the forecast thinking the island would get strong wind and rain, and trees would fall, but areas to the north would take the hardest hit.
“I have to tell you, I felt fairly safe going into this, but when the glass blew out and started shattering inside … I realized this was a problem,” said Larsen, who has since “retreated to Orlando.”
There was another reason Larsen wanted to stay. He is the part owner and photographer for the local news website santivachronicle.com.
“I stayed behind to record the event and record the aftermath for publication without realizing exactly how bad this storm was going to be,” Larsen said in a Zoom interview. “I tried to photograph the storm as it was happening. The high winds, the rain, the surge from the Gulf. After the storm I tried to document what was left, what damage was done, and it was horrific.”
But with no internet or cell phone connectivity, he wasn’t able to publish any material until several days later when he was safely evacuated.
Larsen has spent a career in television and continues to run a television distribution consulting company. His first television job was as a reporter and anchor at an Indianapolis station. One of his co-workers was weatherman David Letterman.
Larsen was attracted to Sanibel because of its old Florida charm and the community of residents who want to preserve it. The barrier island off Fort Myers has no buildings taller than three stories, no chain restaurants or stores, no traffic lights and is home to locally owned shops. It’s famous for the thousands of shells that wash up on the beaches and is a quaint, picturesque island for tourists.
He and his wife vacationed there a few years before deciding to move to the island of about 6,500 full-time residents. Sanibel attracts retirees — about 57% of the population is 65 years old or older — and while not an enclave for the mega-rich, the median value of owner-occupied homes tops $700,000 and its per capita income is more than $90,000, both well above state averages.
“At the moment, it looks like nothing you would remember if you had ever visited Sanibel. It’s devastated,” Larsen said.
While he, his wife and two dogs took shelter in an interior room during the storm, he ventured out the next morning with his camera hoping to get images for his news website, which covers community events, human interest stories and features on residents of Sanibel and nearby Captiva Island.
“It was like living in a war zone — just decimated property and condominiums, trees gone, I don’t think there was a car that survived. It was pretty dramatic, much worse than I’ve ever experienced,” Larsen said.
He and his wife eventually found a boat to take them to the mainland. They’re staying with a daughter in Orlando, not sure when they’ll be able to get back to their island home. But Larsen is sure they will.
“Sanibel is a very cohesive community. It will rebuild. It won’t happen immediately. It will probably happen faster than most people might think, but it will need a complete rebuild — electric grid, water systems — it’s going to take a lot of work, but it will come back. I have no doubt about that.”
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What if Musk loses the Twitter case but defies the court?
Twitter wants a Delaware court to order Elon Musk to buy the social media service for $44 billion, as he promised back in April. But what if a judge makes that ruling and Musk balks?
The Tesla billionaire’s reputation for dismissing government pronouncements has some worried that he might flout an unfavorable ruling of the Delaware Court of Chancery, known for its handling of high-profile business disputes.
Musk hopes to win the case that’s headed for an October trial. He’s scheduled to be deposed by Twitter attorneys starting Thursday.
But the consequences of him losing badly — either by an order of “specific performance” that forces him to complete the deal, or by walking away from Twitter but still coughing up a billion dollars or more for breach of contract — has raised concerns about how the Delaware court would enforce its final ruling.
“The problem with specific performance, especially with Elon Musk, is that it’s unclear whether the order of the court would be obeyed,” retired Delaware Supreme Court Justice Carolyn Berger told CNBC in July. “And the courts in Delaware — courts all over — are very concerned about issuing a decision or issuing an order that then is ignored, flouted.”
Berger, who was also a vice chancellor of the Chancery Court in the 1980s and 1990s, stood by those concerns in an interview with The Associated Press but said she doubted the Delaware institution would go so far as to make him complete the deal.
“The court can impose sanctions and the court can kind of coerce Musk into taking over the company,” she said. “But why would the court do that when what really is at stake is money?”
Berger said she expects San Francisco-based Twitter to prevail, but said a less tumultuous remedy for the company and its shareholders would make Musk pay monetary damages. “The court doesn’t want to be in a position to step in and essentially run this company,” she said.
Musk and his lawyers didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Other legal observers say such defiance is almost impossible to imagine, even from a famously combative personality such as Musk. He acknowledged he might lose in August in explaining why he suddenly sold nearly $7 billion worth of Tesla shares.
“I take him at his word,” said Ann Lipton, an associate law professor at Tulane University. “He wants to win. Maybe he’s got his own judgment as to what the odds are. But he’s also being sort of practical about this. He’s getting some cash ready so he doesn’t have to dump his Tesla shares if it turns out he is ordered to buy the company.”
A ruling of specific performance could force Musk to pay up his $33.5 billion personal stake in the deal; the price increases to $44 billion with promised financing from backers such as Morgan Stanley.
The Delaware court has powers to enforce its orders, and could appoint a receivership to seize some of Musk’s assets, namely Tesla stock, if he doesn’t comply, according to Tom Lin, a law professor at Temple University.
In a precedent set just this week involving contempt for noncompliance with a court order, a judge affirmed that shares of a company incorporated in Delaware are personal property subject to the Court of Chancery’s jurisdiction. The judge noted in his Monday ruling that it might be the first time the court has invoked its authority to address ownership of shares in a contempt proceeding, as he divested an entity of its shares and transferred title to another party in the lawsuit.
Speculation that Musk could be threatened with jail time for failing to comply with a ruling is unrealistic, said Berger. “At least, not for the Court of Chancery,” said the former judge. “That’s not the way the court operates.”
But more important, Lin said Musk’s legal advisers will strongly urge him to comply with the rulings of a court that routinely takes cases involving Tesla and other firms incorporated in the state of Delaware.
“If you are an executive at a major American corporation incorporated in Delaware, it’s very hard for you to do business and defy the chancery court’s orders,” Lin said.
Concerns about Musk’s compliance derive from his past behavior dealing with various arms of the government. In a long-running dispute with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, he was accused of defying a securities fraud settlement that required that his tweets be approved by a Tesla attorney before being published. He publicly feuded with California officials over whether Tesla’s electric car factory should remain shut down during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He’s also taken a combative approach in Delaware Chancery Court, calling an opposing attorney a “bad human being” while defending Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity against a lawsuit that blamed Musk for a deal rife with conflicts of interest and broken promises. He and his lawyers have other Delaware cases still pending, including one involving his compensation package at Tesla.
“I think we’ve got a whole lot of players who, as loose a cannon as Elon Musk is, rely on the goodwill of the Delaware courts on an ongoing basis for their businesses,” Lipton said.
Musk’s argument for winning his latest Delaware case largely rests on his allegation that Twitter misrepresented how it measures the magnitude of “spam bot” accounts that are useless to advertisers. But most legal experts believe he faces an uphill battle in convincing Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the court’s head judge who is presiding over the case, that something changed since the April merger agreement that justifies terminating the deal.
The trial begins Oct. 17 and whichever side loses can appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court, which is expected to act swiftly. Musk and Twitter could also settle the case before, during or after the trial, lawyers said.
Delaware’s courts are well-respected in the business world and any move to flout them would be “shocking and unexpected,” said Paul Regan, associate professor of Widener University’s Delaware Law School who has practiced in Delaware courts since the 1980s. “If there was some kind of crisis like that, I think the reputational harm would be all on Musk, not the court.”
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AP reporter Randall Chase in Dover, Delaware, contributed to this report.
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Kim Kardashian settles with SEC over crypto promotion
Kim Kardashian has agreed to pay $1.26 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that she promoted a cryptocurrency on Instagram without disclosing she’d been paid $250,000 to do so
Kim Kardashian has agreed to pay $1.26 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that she promoted a cryptocurrency on Instagram without disclosing she’d been paid $250,000 to do so.
The SEC said Monday that the reality TV star and entrepreneur has agreed to cooperate with its ongoing investigation.
The SEC said Kardashian failed to disclose that she was paid to publish a post on her Instagram account about EMAX tokens, a crypto asset security being offered by EthereumMax.
Kardashian’s post contained a link to the EthereumMax website, which provided instructions for potential investors to purchase EMAX tokens.
“The federal securities laws are clear that any celebrity or other individual who promotes a crypto asset security must disclose the nature, source, and amount of compensation they received in exchange for the promotion,” Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, said in a prepared statement.
Kardashian has agreed to not promote any crypto asset securities for three years.
The Associated Press was not immediately able to reach Kardashian for comment.
While Kardashian is well known for reality TV, currently appearing on “The Kardashians” on hulu, she is also a successful businesswoman. Her brands include SKIMS, which has shapewear, loungewear and other products, and a skincare line called SKKN.
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What if Musk loses the Twitter case but defies the court?
Twitter wants a Delaware court to order Elon Musk to buy the social media service for $44 billion, as he promised back in April. But what if a judge makes that ruling and Musk balks?
The Tesla billionaire’s reputation for dismissing government pronouncements has some worried that he might flout an unfavorable ruling of the Delaware Court of Chancery, known for its handling of high-profile business disputes.
Musk hopes to win the case that’s headed for an October trial. He’s scheduled to be deposed by Twitter attorneys starting Thursday.
But the consequences of him losing badly — either by an order of “specific performance” that forces him to complete the deal, or by walking away from Twitter but still coughing up a billion dollars or more for breach of contract — has raised concerns about how the Delaware court would enforce its final ruling.
“The problem with specific performance, especially with Elon Musk, is that it’s unclear whether the order of the court would be obeyed,” retired Delaware Supreme Court Justice Carolyn Berger told CNBC in July. “And the courts in Delaware — courts all over — are very concerned about issuing a decision or issuing an order that then is ignored, flouted.”
Berger, who was also a vice chancellor of the Chancery Court in the 1980s and 1990s, stood by those concerns in an interview with The Associated Press but said she doubted the Delaware institution would go so far as to make him complete the deal.
“The court can impose sanctions and the court can kind of coerce Musk into taking over the company,” she said. “But why would the court do that when what really is at stake is money?”
Berger said she expects Twitter to prevail, but said a less tumultuous remedy for the company and its shareholders would make Musk pay monetary damages. “The court doesn’t want to be in a position to step in and essentially run this company,” she said.
Musk and his lawyers didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Other legal observers say such defiance is almost impossible to imagine, even from a famously combative personality such as Musk. He acknowledged he might lose in August in explaining why he suddenly sold nearly $7 billion worth of Tesla shares.
“I take him at his word,” said Ann Lipton, an associate law professor at Tulane University. “He wants to win. Maybe he’s got his own judgment as to what the odds are. But he’s also being sort of practical about this. He’s getting some cash ready so he doesn’t have to dump his Tesla shares if it turns out he is ordered to buy the company.”
A ruling of specific performance could force Musk to pay up his $33.5 billion personal stake in the deal; the price increases to $44 billion with promised financing from backers such as Morgan Stanley.
The Delaware court has powers to enforce its orders, and could appoint a receivership to seize some of Musk’s assets, namely Tesla stock, if he doesn’t comply, according to Tom Lin, a law professor at Temple University.
The court has made such moves before, such as in 2013 when it held Chinese company ZTS Digital Networks in contempt and appointed a receiver with power to seize its assets. But after coercive sanctions didn’t work, the receiver asked the court five years later to issue bench warrants calling for the arrest of two senior executives the next time they visited the U.S.
Speculation that Musk could be threatened with jail time for failing to comply with a ruling is unrealistic, said Berger. “At least, not for the Court of Chancery,” said the former judge. “That’s not the way the court operates.”
But more important, Lin said Musk’s legal advisers will strongly urge him to comply with the rulings of a court that routinely takes cases involving Tesla and other firms incorporated in the state of Delaware.
“If you are an executive at a major American corporation incorporated in Delaware, it’s very hard for you to do business and defy the chancery court’s orders,” Lin said.
Concerns about Musk’s compliance derive from his past behavior dealing with various arms of the government. In a long-running dispute with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, he was accused of defying a securities fraud settlement that required that his tweets be approved by a Tesla attorney before being published. He publicly feuded with California officials over whether Tesla’s electric car factory should remain shut down during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He’s also taken a combative approach in Delaware Chancery Court, calling an opposing attorney a “bad human being” while defending Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity against a lawsuit that blamed Musk for a deal rife with conflicts of interest and broken promises. He and his lawyers have other Delaware cases still pending, including one involving his compensation package at Tesla.
“I think we’ve got a whole lot of players who, as loose a cannon as Elon Musk is, rely on the goodwill of the Delaware courts on an ongoing basis for their businesses,” Lipton said.
Musk’s argument for winning his latest Delaware case largely rests on his allegation that Twitter misrepresented how it measures the magnitude of “spam bot” accounts that are useless to advertisers. But most legal experts believe he faces an uphill battle in convincing Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the court’s head judge who is presiding over the case, that something changed since the April merger agreement that justifies terminating the deal.
The trial begins Oct. 17 and whichever side loses can appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court, which is expected to act swiftly. Musk and Twitter could also settle the case before, during or after the trial, lawyers said.
Delaware’s courts are well-respected in the business world and any move to flout them would be “shocking and unexpected,” said Paul Regan, associate professor of Widener University’s Delaware Law School who has practiced in Delaware courts since the 1980s. “If there was some kind of crisis like that, I think the reputational harm would be all on Musk, not the court.”
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Hurricane Ian ‘street shark’ video defies belief
Photos and videos of sharks and other marine life swimming in suburban floodwaters make for popular hoaxes during massive storms. But a cellphone video filmed during Hurricane Ian’s assault on southwest Florida isn’t just another fish story.
The eye-popping video, which showed a large, dark fish with sharp dorsal fins thrashing around an inundated Fort Myers backyard, racked up more than 12 million views on Twitter within a day, as users responded with disbelief and comparisons to the “Sharknado” film series.
Dominic Cameratta, a local real estate developer, confirmed he filmed the clip from his back patio Wednesday morning when he saw something “flopping around” in his neighbor’s flooded yard.
“I didn’t know what it was — it just looked like a fish or something,” he told The Associated Press. “I zoomed in, and all my friends are like, ‘It’s like a shark, man!’ ”
He guessed the fish was about 4 feet in length.
Experts were of mixed opinion on whether the clip showed a shark or another large fish. George Burgess, former director of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s shark program, said in an email that it “appears to be a juvenile shark,” while Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, director of the University of Miami’s shark conservation program, wrote that “it’s pretty hard to tell.”
Nevertheless, some Twitter users dubbed the hapless fish the “street shark.”
The surge worsened in Fort Myers as the day went on. Cameratta said the flooding had only just begun when the clip was taken, but that the waters were “all the way up to our house” by the time the AP reached him by phone Wednesday evening.
He said the fish may have made its way up from nearby Hendry Creek into a retention pond, which then overflowed, spilling the creature into his neighbor’s backyard. A visual analysis of nearby property confirmed it matches the physical landmarks in the video.
Leslie Guelcher, a professor of intelligence studies at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania, was among the online sleuths who initially thought the video was fake.
“Don’t think this is real. According to the index on the video it was created in June 2010. Someone else posted it at 10 AM as in Fort Myers, but the storm surge wasn’t like that at 10 AM,” she tweeted Wednesday.
Guelcher acknowledged later, though, that online tools she and others were using to establish the video’s origins didn’t actually show when the video itself was created, merely when the social media profile of the user was created.
The AP confirmed through the original clip’s metadata that it was captured Wednesday morning.
“It makes a bit more sense from a flooding standpoint,” she said by email, when informed the fish was spotted near an overflowing pond. “But how on earth would a shark go from the Gulf of Mexico to a retention pond?”
Yannis Papastamatiou, a marine biologist who studies shark behavior at Florida International University, said that most sharks flee shallow bays ahead of hurricanes, possibly tipped off to their arrival by a change in barometric pressure. A shark could have accidentally swum up into the creek, he said, or been washed into it.
“Young bull sharks are common inhabitants of low salinity waters — rivers, estuaries, subtropical embayments — and often appear in similar videos in FL water bodies connected to the sea such as coastal canals and ponds,” Burgess said. “Assuming the location and date attributes are correct, it is likely this shark was swept shoreward with the rising seas.”
Cameratta sent the video to a group chat on WhatsApp on Wednesday morning, according to his friend John Paul Murray, who sent the AP a timestamped screenshot.
“Amazing content,” Murray wrote in reply.
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Associated Press writers Philip Marcelo and Arijeta Lajka in New York contributed to this report.
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‘Serial’ case: Victim’s family wants to redo Syed hearing
BALTIMORE — The family of a young woman who was killed in 1999 will appeal a Baltimore judge’s recent order overturning the conviction of Adnan Syed, the man imprisoned for decades for Hae Min Lee’s death, according to an attorney for the family.
Attorney Steve Kelly said Lee’s family is not challenging Syed’s release, but instead wants the judge to hold another hearing that the family can attend in-person and address the court — Lee’s brother Young Lee appeared via videoconference on short notice during the previous hearing.
“We’re not challenging the ruling, but asking for the hearing to be redone in accordance with the law,” Kelly told The Associated Press.
Syed, whose case was examined in the popular true-crime podcast “Serial,” was released earlier this month after prosecutors told a judge they had uncovered doubts about the fairness of the investigation. Syed has always maintained that he never killed Hae Min Lee, his ex-girlfriend.
On Wednesday, Young Lee filed a notice of appeal, alleging violations of the family’s right to meaningfully participate in the Sept. 19 hearing in which Syed secured his release, according to Kelly. It’s the first step in seeking the Maryland Court of Special Appeals’ review of the potential violations of victim’s rights statutes, Kelly said.
Syed was serving a life sentence after he was convicted of strangling Lee, whose body was found buried in a Baltimore park. He was 17 at the time of her death.
Circuit Court Judge Melissa Phinn’s order to release Syed and vacate his murder conviction came after State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby asked the judge to vacate the conviction, saying a lengthy investigation conducted with the defense had uncovered new evidence that could undermine the conviction.
During the hearing, Young Lee spoke via videoconference, saying he felt betrayed by prosecutors since he thought the case was settled.
“This is not a podcast for me. This is real life,” he said.
Prosecutor Becky Feldman told the judge in the hearing that she contacted Young Lee before the motion was filed, and went over the motion with him. A day before the hearing, Young Lee indicated by text message that he would attend virtually, Feldman said. But that evening the Lee family hired Kelly, who filed a motion to postpone the hearing for seven days so Young Lee could attend in person. Phinn denied that motion, but paused the hearing by more than 30 minutes so that Lee, who was at work, could join the call.
Kelly said at the time that prosecutors shut the family out of the legal process, calling it “inexcusable” and a violation of Maryland law. The family is interested in the truth and might have supported Syed’s release if they had understood the basis, he said.
“The family is disappointed with the way that they were treated. They’re disappointed with the process. They want more than anybody to have the person who killed Hae Min Lee brought to justice,” Kelly said. “If that is not Mr. Syed then they’re open to the possibility of anybody else who actually did it being prosecuted.”
The Office of the Public Defender declined Thursday to comment on the notice of appeal. Syed’s case captured the attention of millions in 2014 when the debut season of “Serial” focused on Lee’s killing and raised doubts about some of the evidence prosecutors had used.
Mosby, who entered office in 2015, has applauded the judge’s decision and has said investigators are awaiting the results of “DNA analysis” before determining whether to seek a new trial date or throw out the case against Syed and “certify his innocence.”
State’s Attorney’s Office spokesperson Zy Richardson said in a statement that they empathize with Lee’s family, “who believed they had resolution and are now being re-traumatized by the misdeeds of the prior prosecutors,” but they must ensure that the right person is held accountable, news outlets reported.
“We refuse to be distracted from this fundamental obligation and will never give up in our fight for the Lee family,” she said.
Feldman, who led a unit reexamining cases in which juvenile defendants were given life sentences, found notes written by a predecessor describing two phone calls in which people gave them information before Syed’s trial about someone with a motive to harm Lee. That information wasn’t given to the defense at the time, according prosecutors, an omission that Phinn said violated Syed’s rights.
In a new “Serial” episode released a day after Syed was freed, host Sarah Koenig noted that most or all of the evidence cited in prosecutors’ motion to overturn the conviction was available since 1999. The case against Syed involved “just about every chronic problem” in the system, Koenig said, including unreliable witness testimony and evidence that was never shared with Syed’s defense team.