Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery isn’t quite a done deal yet. As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, the US Department of Justice has started its probe of Netflix’s proposed purchase, but is notably interested in whether the streaming giant was involved in any anticompetitive practices. According to the civil subpoena seen by WSJ, the Justice Department is looking into any “exclusionary conduct on the part of Netflix that would reasonably appear capable of entrenching market or monopoly power.”
While Netflix announced plans to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in December at a value of $82.7 billion, the deal was expected to close in 12 to 18 months, subject to required regulatory approvals. The DOJ has the power to block the transaction and this investigation could hint at the agency’s approach, which may involve proving that Netflix put its competition at an unfair advantage.
Netflix’s attorney, Steven Sunshine, told WSJ that this probe was standard practice and that, “we have not been given any notice or seen any other sign that the DOJ is conducting a separate monopolization investigation.” Netflix also said in a statement that it’s “constructively engaging with the Department of Justice as part of the standard review of our proposed acquisition of Warner Bros.” According to WSJ, the investigation is still in its early stages and could take up to a year to complete.
Meta has acquired an AI startup called Manus — known for its custom research and website-building agents — in a deal valued at more than $2 billion, according toThe Wall Street Journal. It’s reportedly one of the largest acquisitions yet involving a startup nurtured in China’s AI ecosystem.
Manus arrived in March 2025, shortly after another Chinese AI startup, DeepSeek appeared on the scene. The company (called Butterfly Effect at the time) originally described it as “the first general AI agent” to perform complex tasks autonomously, rather than just generating ideas. It draws from several third-party models, particularly Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet and versions of Alibaba’s Qwen.
Manus is designed to automate certain tasks, like market research, coding, sales data analysis and website cloning and creation. (However, one skeptic called it “a product devilishly optimized for influencers, which is why it exploded so much.”) The company claims that Manu is “already serving the daily needs of millions of users and businesses” and has an annualized average revenue of more than $100 million only eight months after launch.
Manus laid off most of its Beijing employees this summer before moving its headquarters to Singapore in an effort to expand globally.The company was reportedly seeking a funding round that would have valued it at $2 billion when it was approached by Meta. “Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made,” said Manus CEO Xiao Hong in a company news release.
Electronic Arts is close to reaching a $50 billion deal that will turn it into a privately held company, according to The Wall Street Journal. The video game company filed for an IPO way back in 1990 and has been public ever since, but now a group of investors are in talks with the company to take it private. Those investors reportedly include private equity firm Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, whose largest source of funding is also Saudi’s PIF.
It’s worth noting that EA’s shares are already tied to major financial organizations, even though it’s publicly traded, with Saudi’s PIF owning almost 10 percent of the company. As Reuters notes, analysts believe Saudi is interested in buying out EA due to its annual release of popular sports titles, including Madden and NHL, which makes for predictable earnings.
Saudi has made several major investments in the video gaming industry overall as part of its efforts to prepare for a post-oil economy. In addition to its investment in EA, it also purchased stakes in Take-Two Interactive, Activision Blizzard, Nintendo and the Embracer Group. In March, Pokémon Go maker Niantic sold its gaming division to a Saudi-owned company, as well. Unlike PIF and Kushner’s Affinity Partners, Silver Lake doesn’t have a huge stake in EA at the moment and doesn’t have notable gaming investments other than its stake in Unity.
Bloomberg and The Financial Times report that the company could announce the buyout as soon as next week, but details could change since nothing has been finalized yet. If the $50 billion deal does push through, it’ll become the biggest leveraged buyout of all time.
(Reuters) -The Trump administration has canceled the USDA’s annual food insecurity survey, ending a decades-long effort to track how many Americans struggle to access enough food, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said the report had become “overly politicized” and was no longer necessary, though the 2024 edition will still be released in October; the 2025 survey will not be conducted, the Journal added, citing a USDA spokesperson.
The report added that the cancellation comes amid rising food insecurity and recent cuts to federal food assistance programs, including tighter work requirements for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients.
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The White House did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
(Reporting by Rajveer Singh Pardesi in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
On Monday, the House Oversight Committee released a letter that depicted a line drawing of a naked woman, with what appeared to be Donald Trump’s signature in place of her pubic hair. The letter, which also included an imaginary dialogue between Trump and the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, had been included in a book compiled for Epstein’s fiftieth birthday, in 2003, and was handed over by Epstein’s estate following a congressional request. Its publication seemed to vindicate the Wall Street Journal, which reported on the existence of the letter in July. Back then, Trump had angrily denied that such a document was real and said that he personally asked Rupert Murdoch, the Journal’s owner, to intervene; per Trump, Murdoch said that he would “take care of it,” but the paper pressed ahead with the story, and Trump subsequently sued it, and Murdoch. Not that the release of the letter prompted Trump to back down. The White House reiterated its claim that Trump never signed it, suggesting that it would support a handwriting analysis to prove as much. Trump himself told NBC that the letter is a “dead issue.”
It likely isn’t. But, as I see it, there were more important stories on Monday alone—including one that involved Murdoch. For the past couple of years, he has been locked in a Hollywood-esque successionbattle involving four of his children—Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence—who between them held equal stakes in the trust that controls Murdoch’s global media business. Murdoch apparently became convinced that, after his death, James, whose politics are relatively liberal, would, with his sisters, gang up on Lachlan, a rock-ribbed conservative, and set about softening, or even ending, the empire’s right-wing orientation. Murdoch attempted to change the terms of the trust (even though it was supposed to be more or less irrevocable) to enshrine Lachlan’s control; the other children mounted a legal challenge. Following a secretive—and rococo—probate process, they won. So Murdoch and Lachlan bought them off. On Monday, it was announced that James, Elisabeth, and Prudence will each receive a little over a billion dollars to, essentially, go away. Veteran Murdochologists likened the news to a dramatic seasonfinale, and to Murdoch pulling “one final rabbit out of his hat.”
Taken together, these two stories appeared to present a contradiction. The publication of the Epstein birthday book was a significant development in a tense legal battle between Murdoch and Trump. And yet Murdoch securing Lachlan as his heir will doubtless rebound to Trump’s benefit by insuring the right-wing bona fides of Murdoch’s empire—and, in particular, Fox News, which has often propagandized on Trump’s behalf. There are various potential explanations for this discrepancy. The Journal and Fox may share an owner, but he has allowed them to cultivate different audiences and sensibilities; the Journal’s editorial board, although reliably conservative, isn’t afraid to give Trump a bloody nose, and its newsroom (although, perhaps, conservative in a subtler sense) has pursued rigorous reporting that has embarrassed the President. (Even before Trump took office for the first time, it was the Journal that broke the story of hush-money payments to the former Playboy model Karen McDougal.) Murdoch might simply love a salacious scoop above all else. And his relationship with Trump has long been contradictory, or, at least, love-hate.
I think that there’s truth in all of these theories. But, with talk of Murdoch’s legacy now swirling, none of them—nor the Epstein lawsuit itself—should obscure how much Trump has done to boost Murdoch and how much Murdoch has done to boost Trump. Their relationship, ultimately, deserves to be remembered not as one of occasional antagonism but one of persistent mutual benefit. Not that we’ve necessarily seen the season finale just yet.
The story of Murdoch and Trump’s relationship has certainly been peppered with colorful insults. Shortly after Trump announced that he would run for President, in 2015, the New York Timesdepicted them as a pair of clashing titans and reported that Murdoch viewed Trump as a “phony.” During that campaign, Murdoch was both privately skeptical of Trump’s odds and, on occasion, publicly disdainful of his policies, not least his nativist stance on immigration; at one point, Trump accused Murdoch of tweeting “evil” things about him. The author Michael Wolff would later write that, during the transition process after Trump won, Murdoch branded him a “fucking idiot.” (Murdoch denied this.) Four years later, after Trump’s efforts to stay in power culminated in an insurrection, Murdoch told a friend that he wanted to make Trump a “non person.” Ahead of the 2024 Republican primary, he appeared to support Ron DeSantis as a challenger; when that didn’t work, he reportedly lobbied Trump to pick anyone other than J. D. Vance as his running mate. (That didn’t work, either.) After Trump filed his Epstein lawsuit, he demanded that Murdoch testify promptly, on the indelicate grounds that he is ninety-four and might be “unavailable for in-person testimony at trial.” The Timesis talking of clashing titans once again.
During this same period, however, there was a lot more evidence of warmth between the pair. In 2016, Murdoch eventually got on board the Trump train; the following year, the Timesreported that they spoke often, that Murdoch would try to lift Trump when he was down, and that the relationship was “deeper and more enduring” than most in Trump’s life. Trump’s denialism in the wake of his 2020 election loss may have displeased Murdoch, but he later admitted that he didn’t prevent various Fox stars from endorsing Trump’s lies. (Murdoch made this acknowledgment under oath, as part of a libel suit brought by Dominion, a voting-technology company, that Fox would eventually settle for $787.5 million; a similar case filed by a separate company is ongoing, and recently threw up more embarrassing revelations of Trump sycophancy.) This year, Murdoch has been spotted at the Inauguration, in the Oval Office, and—just days before the Epstein story dropped—in Trump’s box at a soccer game. As of recently, they still talked.
This broader discrepancy, too, can be explained. I’ve written before that Murdoch both makes the weather and checks the forecast—strives to shape public opinion, in other words, while also anticipating or following it—and that these dual impulses are the key to understanding how he operates. He is hugely influential, but he has never been quite as omnipotent as some of his detractors believe. Murdoch himself has always seemed to recognize this; in his native Australia, and then in the U.K., he backed politicians that he perceived as friendly to his interests—and who, crucially, looked like winning horses—including liberals, such as the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. When Trump proved popular, Murdoch came around. As Jane Mayer wrote in this magazine, in 2019, he benefitted from several favorable regulatory maneuvers during Trump’s first term.
Last week, the Trump administration said it might take a stake in Intel in exchange for the $10.86 billion in federal grants the company is receiving from the Chips and Science (CHIPS) Act. However, not all companies receiving funds under the same program will need to give up equity, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Companies like TSMC and Micron that increased their US investments won’t have any additional obligations, according to a government official familiar with the matter.
Ealier, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick appeared to royally screw NVIDIA with comments about the company’s H20 AI chips, and may have also rubbed chip giant TSMC the wrong way. “The Biden administration literally was giving Intel [money] for free, and giving TSMC money for free, and all these companies, just giving them money for free,” he told CNBCon Tuesday. “Donald Trump turns that into saying, ‘Hey, we want equity for the money. If we’re going to give you the money, we want a piece of the action.'”
However, TSMC may have noticed the Intel equity kerfuffle and executives reportedly held preliminary discussions about handing back subsidies if the US government asks to become a shareholder, according to the WSJ‘s sources. TSMC was awarded $6.6 billion for its Arizona plant that started producing chips late last year for Apple and others. However, the company recently said it would invest another $100 billion over the next four years to build three more fabrication plants, two advanced packaging facilities and a major research and development center.
Because of that extra investment, the Trump administration won’t ask for a piece of TSMC or Micron (which also expanded its US facilities in Idaho, New York and Virginia). “The Commerce Department is not looking to take equity from TSMC and Micron,” an unnamed official said.
In any case, attempts by the US government to take equity in companies will likely face legal challenges due to language in the contracts. Companies are already required to share revenue with the US government if profits rise above a certain amount.
In another development, the US government may divert up to $2 billion in CHIPS Act funding toward critical minerals projects in the US, Reuters reported. The move aims to reduce US dependence on China for key minerals extensively used in the electronics and defense industries. “The administration is creatively trying to find ways to fund the critical minerals sector,” Reuters’ source said, adding that those plans could change.
Super Micro Computer(NASDAQ: SMCI) started the year off with a bang. The stock soared 188% in the first half, even surpassing the performance of market darling Nvidia, and was invited to join both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100. And for good reason. Earnings have soared at the equipment maker, thanks to demand from artificial intelligence (AI) customers.
The company sells workstations, servers, and other products essential for AI data centers. And considering forecasts for AI market growth — today’s $200 billion market is expected to reach $1 trillion by the end of the decade — the future looks bright too. But a few pieces of news in recent times have weighed on the company, and the stock has dropped nearly 30% since late August.
From a short report alleging troubles at the company to an article in The Wall Street Journal about a possible Justice Department probe, Supermicro has faced headwinds in recent times. So, if you’re a shareholder or potential shareholder, you may be wondering what to do. Before buying or selling, here’s what you need to know.
Image source: Getty Images.
The Hindenburg report
The Hindenburg Research short report was published on Aug. 27. Hindenburg, following a three-month investigation, alleges “accounting red flags,” “evidence of… export control failures,” and other troubles at Supermicro.
It’s important to note that Hindenburg has a short position in Supermicro stock, meaning it benefits from any declines in the share price. In short selling, an investor borrows shares of a particular company, sells them — then ideally buys them back at a lower price to return to their original owner. Because of this position, Hindenburg has a bias toward the stock’s decline, making it difficult to rely on the firm as a source of information.
Supermicro responded to the report, calling statements “false or inaccurate,” and saying it would address them “in due course.”
In unrelated news, but around the same time as the Hindenburg report, Supermicro informed the market that it was delaying the filing of its 10-K annual report — a move that made some investors worry about potential changes to earnings figures. But Supermicro followed up by saying it didn’t expect any significant adjustments to its fourth-quarter or full-year numbers.
A new element of uncertainty
The comments addressing both of these issues should ease investors’ minds. But a third piece of news, just this past week, offered another element of uncertainty. The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported the Justice Department had launched a probe into Supermicro following the Hindenburg report.
The probe still is in the early stages, the WSJ reported, with a prosecutor from the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco recently contacting people who may have “relevant information.” Supermicro and the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment, the Journal said.
Following this newspaper report, Supermicro shares fell 12% in one trading session.
So, now you may be wondering if this top AI equipment maker is really in trouble — and if you should stay away from the stock or sell. Or you may wonder, considering the recent decline in valuation, if this is an opportunity to get in on a recovery story at a good price.
Take a long-term view
Well, first, it’s important to remember that a Justice Department probe hasn’t been confirmed — and even if it is confirmed, this doesn’t mean Supermicro has done anything wrong. And, if we imagine a more difficult scenario, one in which a probe happens and potential problems are found, this wouldn’t necessarily spell disaster over the long term. So, it’s essential to follow the story and take a long-term view when considering any developments — positive or negative.
And if you’re a shareholder, avoid panic selling. Consider the facts, and again think of how they may impact the company over the coming five to 10 years. At the moment, from what we know, the future remains bright for Supermicro. The company has a solid track record of earnings growth, its products are in high demand, and growth of the AI market suggests Supermicro’s earnings growth could continue for quite some time.
Now, if you’re not yet a shareholder, should you buy the stock or wait? Very aggressive investors may see this as a good time to pick up a few shares of Supermicro, as it’s trading for about 11x forward earnings estimates, which is very cheap for a growth stock.
Still, most investors would be better off staying on the sidelines — temporarily — until we know more about the current issues. After all, Supermicro did say it would further address the statements in the Hindenburg report, and those words could ease investors’ minds.
All this means that, yes, there’s reason to be optimistic about Supermicro over the long term, but with some uncertainty weighing on the shares right now, it may be best to wait for some of those clouds to lift before buying.
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The Big Tech company previously objected to similar proposals. JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images
Google (GOOGL) has struck a rare partnership with California to support journalism across the state. The first-in-the-nation agreement, announced yesterday (Aug. 21), will see the Big Tech player invest around $170 million over the next five years to strengthen a struggling local media landscape and aid in experimentation with A.I. However, the seemingly well-intentioned deal met controversy from media industry members.
The deal comes as lawmakers push for Big Tech companies to compensate news organizations. In recent decades, news organizations have suffered from dwindling ad revenue as advertisers and readers transition away from print to social media platforms and search engines. The journalism industry in the U.S. has lost nearly two-thirds of its reporters since 2005, according to a 2023 study from Northwestern University. Each week, two and a half local newspapers closed down, the study found.
Under the new agreement, a total of $250 million in public and private funding will be funneled into initiatives encouraging the local sustainability of outlets. “This agreement represents a major breakthrough in ensuring the survival of newsrooms and bolstering local journalism across California—leveraging substantial tech industry resources without imposing new taxes on Californians,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom in a statement.
In addition to continuing to dole out annual grants of $10 million to existing journalism programs it supports, Google will give $55 million over the next five years to a new fund that will be administered by the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Known as the News Transformation Fund, it will distribute funding across California publications and emphasize underrepresented groups and news deserts.
The search engine giant is also expected to pour $12.5 million each year into a new National A.I. Innovation Accelerator, a program that will be administered with a private nonprofit and provide resources to experiment with A.I. across a variety of industries. Both of the agreement’s initiatives are expected to go live in 2025. “California lawmakers have worked with the tech and news sectors to develop a collaborative framework to accelerate A.I. innovation and support local and national businesses and non-profit organizations,” said Kent Walker, chief legal officer for Google’s parent company Alphabet (GOOGL), in a statement.
A questionable approach to saving journalism
Google has previously fought more comprehensive proposals in California urging Big Tech companies to support news outlets. In response to a proposed bill that would have seen Google forced to pay outlets for surfacing their content, the company earlier this year described the solution as the “wrong approach to supporting journalism” and one that would lead to “uncapped financial exposure,” with the company even temporarily removing links to California news outlets from its search engine.
Not everyone is pleased with the new agreement. The Media Guild of the West, which represents journalists across Southern California, described the partnership as an “undemocratic and secretive deal with one of the businesses destroying our industry” in a statement. In addition to taking issue with Google’s financial commitment, it described the A.I. accelerator project as embracing an initiative “that could very well destroy journalism jobs.”
The threat of A.I. has been a key worry in recent years for news outlets concerned about its misuse of content and potential to replace jobs. A.I. companies have attempted to dissuade such fears by entering into partnerships with media companies, such as those struck between OpenAI and brands like Vogue, Time Magazine and The Wall Street Journal that see the startup compensate outlets in order to use their content in A.I. tools and to train models. Perplexity AI, an A.I.-powered search engine, also recently launched a revenue-sharing model that will offer publishing partners a portion of ad revenue when their material is used in its A.I. tool’s responses.
Marine veteran Paul Whelan, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, all of whom were wrongfully detained in Russia, are back in the U.S. after being part of a complex swap involving a total of two dozen prisoners. When asked Friday about Pennsylvania teacher Marc Fogel, who in 2022 was sentenced to 14 years in a Russian penal colony for allegedly possessing medical marijuana, President Biden told reporters Friday that “we’re not giving up on that.” Weijia Jiang reports from the White House.
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As Vice President Kamala Harris’ allies rallied in Pennsylvania on Monday, President Biden made the case for Supreme Court reform in Austin, Texas. Pennsylvania Democratic State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta joins “America Decides” with his reaction. Then, Molly Ball, senior political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, and Josh Gerstein, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, join with further analysis.
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A new Wall Street Journal poll shows former President Donald Trump leading President Biden in several key battleground states. Robert Costa, CBS News chief election and campaign correspondent, and Jessica Taylor, Senate and governors editor for Cook Political Report, join “America Decides” to break down the numbers.
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Friday marks one year since Russian authorities arrested Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, an action the State Department calls a “wrongful detention.” Jeremy Berke, a close friend of Gershkovich, joins CBS News to discuss what the past year has been like, and the efforts to bring the imprisoned journalist home.
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Washington — President Biden pledged Friday to “continue working every day” to secure the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich from Russian detention, as the American journalist’s time imprisoned in Russia hit the one-year mark.
“We will continue to denounce and impose costs for Russia’s appalling attempts to use Americans as bargaining chips,” Mr. Biden said in a statement released Friday that also mentioned the case of Paul Whelan, another U.S. citizen who has been held in Russia since 2018.
Gershkovich — whom the U.S. State Department deemed “wrongfully detained” soon after his arrest — is still awaiting a trial on espionage charges that the White House, his family and his employer all insist are fabricated, but which could still see him sentenced to decades in prison.
The U.S.-born son of Soviet emigres covered Russia for six years, as the Kremlin made independent, on-the-ground reporting increasingly dangerous and illegal.
Journalist Evan Gershkovich, arrested on espionage charges, stands inside a defendants’ cage before a hearing to consider an appeal on his arrest at the Moscow City Court in Moscow, April 18, 2023.
NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP/Getty
His arrest in March 2023 on charges of spying — the first such charge against a Western journalist since the Soviet era — showed that the Kremlin was prepared to go further than ever before in what President Vladimir Putin has called a “hybrid war” with the West.
The Journal and the U.S. government dismiss the espionage allegations as a false pretext to keep Gershkovich locked up, likely to use him as a bargaining chip in a future prisoner exchange deal.
Putin said last month that he would like to see Gershkovich released as part of a prisoner swap, but the Biden administration has said Moscow rejected the most recent exchange offer presented to it.
The 32-year-old, who has been remanded in custody until at least the end of June, faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.
The Gershkovich family said in a letter published by the Wall Street Journal on Friday that they would pursue their campaign for his release.
“We never anticipated this situation happening to our son and brother, let alone a full year with no certainty or clear path forward,” they said. “But despite this long battle, we are still standing strong.”
Gershkovich reported extensively on how ordinary Russians experienced the Ukraine conflict, speaking to the families of dead soldiers and Putin critics. Breaking stories and getting people to talk was becoming increasingly hard, Gershkovich told friends before his arrest.
But as long as it was not impossible, he saw a reason to be there.
“He knew for some stories he was followed around and people he talked to would be pressured not to talk to him,” Guardian correspondent Pjotr Sauer, a close friend, told AFP. “But he was accredited by the foreign ministry. I don’t think any of us could see the Russians going as far as charging him with this fake espionage.”
Speaking to CBS News’ Leslie Stahl last week, the reporter’s sister Danielle said the family back in the U.S. was still worried, despite Gershkovich’s repeated assurances to them of his accreditation, which he thought would keep him safe, as it always had.
But as Stahl reported, what used to be unprecedented in Russia has become almost routine under Putin. Gershkovich is only the most recent American to inadvertently become a pawn on Putin’s geopolitical chessboard against the West.
Whelan, a U.S. Marine veteran, has been jailed in Russia for five years. Russian-American ballerina Ksenia Karelina was arrested in January, accused of treason for helping Ukraine. And basketball star Brittney Griner, imprisoned for nine months on drug charges, was finally freed in an exchange for a notorious arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich remains “defiant” six months after he was detained in Russia on spying charges, which he and the Journal strenuously deny, his mother told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Thursday night.
“He’s smiling. He understands what’s going on,” EllaMilman said. “And I have to say, under all the circumstances, he’s doing really well.”
Gershkovich’s parents have been able to go to Russia twice. They saw him in June and were able to talk to him, though Cooper noted he was essentially in a glass box.
“Being there, it was like having him back,” his father, Mikhail Gershkovich, said. “Just the physical presence and his voice made you very happy.”
Gershkovich was arrested in March during a reporting trip. The FSB, Russia’s main security service, accused him of trying to obtain state secrets — a charge Gershkovich and his employer have extensively denied.
If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.
Gershkovich’s parents left the Soviet Union to come to the United States. Evan’s initial reporting trips in the country didn’t worry the two of them.
“He came to Russia in 2017. Things were a lot different at the time,” Milman said.
The family keeps in touch with Gershkovich through letters, which are up to 10 pages long and include printed pictures. His sister, Danielle Gershkovich, says they can hear his voice through his writing — fitting, Cooper noted, as he’s a print journalist.
“It’s like sitting on the couch,” Milman said. “The only thing is that the answer comes the following week.”
Those who want to help need to keep the focus on Evan, Danielle said, whether it’s people posting on social media or reading his reporting.
From a young age, Gershkovich was curious and easily connected with people, Milman said.
“He always would come home after his fancy trips and wanted to have a hamburger and buffalo wings and watch baseball and watch American football,” Milman said. “He’s an American boy who has roots in Russian culture.”
The journalist’s detention is a source of tension between Washington and Moscow.
“The US position remains unwavering. The charges against Evan are baseless. The Russian government locked Evan up for simply doing his job. Journalism is not a crime,” US ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy said to reporters earlier this month.
In September, a Moscow court refused to hear an appeal against his pre-trial detention, leaving Gershkovich behind bars. His pre-trial detention has been extended twice since his arrest, once in May and again in August. An appeal against his first pre-trial detention was also denied.
A Moscow court has extended the pre-trial detention of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, who had been arrested on espionage charges, by three months.
His pretrial detention has been extended until November 30, the press service of the Lefortovo Court said Thursday. It had been due to end on August 30.
Gershkovich has been detained in Russia since March following his arrest on charges that he, the WSJ, and the US government vehemently deny.
The US State Department has officially designated Gershkovich as wrongfully detained in Russia. US President Joe Biden has also been blunt about Gershkovich’s arrest, urging Russia to “let him go.”
This is a breaking news story. More details to follow.
China has banned the use of iPhones for central government officials, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
The WSJ reports that managers have been notifying staff of the ban viachat groups or meetings.
CNN has reached out to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Apple (AAPL), but has not received a response.
A source who regularly deals with Chinese central government agencies told CNN that Chinese officials had already been following an unwritten rule of shunning iPhones for months despite the absence of a formal policy. The source asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject.
Last June, CNN reported that some Chinese government ministries had banned Teslas from entering their premises over security fears.
Apple CEO Tim Cook made a high profile visit to the country in March. China is a significant market and manufacturing center for the company, accounting for around 19% of its overall revenue.
The iPhone ban for government officials may be retaliation for similar moves made by the US against Chinese tech, and could have a chilling effect on Apple and other large foreign brands with an established China presence.
China’s Huawei and ZTE have long been subject to US restrictions. And in November 2022, the Biden administration banned approvals of new telecommunications equipment from both companies because they pose “an unacceptable risk” to US national security.
TikTok has also been banned from devices issued by multiple US institutions, including the House of Representatives, the City of New York, Montana, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas and Georgia, over concerns that the Chinese government could have access to users’ data through its Chinese parent company, Bytedance.
— CNN’s Beijing bureau contributed to this article.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who has been at the center of a number of ethics controversies at the court recently, told the Wall Street Journal lawmakers need to give up on the idea of imposing new rules on the justices.
Alito, who authored the opinion in the Dobbs case that overturned Roe v. Wade, has been unusually active for a sitting federal judge in fending off claims of impropriety.
In the interview published Friday, Alito said ordinarily, “the organized bar” of lawyers would defend the court against its critics. But he said that hasn’t been happening, “And, so at a certain point I’ve said to myself, nobody else is going to do this, so I have to defend myself.”
There’s been a lot to defend lately, as Alito and fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas have been accused of failing to properly report gifts on federal disclosure forms. Thomas, in particular, was reported by ProPublica to have accepted trips from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow for years.
The ethics disputes led Senate Democrats to consider requiring the Court to stick to stricter ethics standards, closer to those seen in the congressional and executive branches of the government.
On July 20, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) that would require the Supreme Court to adopt a code of conduct and create a process to investigate potential breaches.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) has been pushing the U.S. Supreme Court to adhere to stricter ethics standards in the wake of scandals about justices receiving lavish trips from people linked to cases before the court or big-time political donors.
Chief Justice John Roberts has said such changes aren’t needed, and the court could be trusted to self-regulate. But Alito’s comments appear to go much further, saying Congress cannot impose any requirements on the Supreme Court because it is part of an equal branch of government created by the U.S. Constitution.
Congress already controls one big aspect of the Supreme Court by setting how much it can spend annually, and the Constitution also notes its jurisdiction as a court of appeals is subject to “such regulations as the Congress may make.”
Whitehouse, in a post on social media, said one of two interviewers, who wrote that they sat with Alito for four hours in total over two sessions ending in early July, is part of an effort to block an investigation into Leonard Leo, co-chairman of the libertarian Federalist Society that has been influential in picking GOP nominees to the courts.
News site TPM said that lawyer David Rivkin regularly writes for the Opinion section but is also part of a team with law firm BakerHostetler LLP that has a big taxation case set to come before the court that could decide whether a wealth tax would be constitutional.
Whitehouse posted, “Shows how small and shallow the pool of operatives is around this captured Court — same folks keep popping up wearing new hats.”
A Kremlin spokesman said Tuesday there has been contact between the U.S. and Russia about a possible prisoner swap that could involve Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. The update comes after the U.S. ambassador to Russia met with Gershkovich in a Moscow prison Monday. CBS News correspondent Skyler Henry joins from the White House.
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Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued a fiery — and bizarre — rebuttal in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, defending himself against apparent ethics claims that have not been published yet.
The Journal published the op-ed under the headline “ProPublica Misleads its Readers,” which accuses the outlet of leveling false charges against the justice. The rebuttal addresses whether Alito should have recused himself in cases linked to a billionaire named Paul Singer and whether he failed to report gifts on his annual financial disclosure forms.
As of Tuesday evening, ProPublic had not yet published any story on Alito.
The Journal included an editor’s note saying two reporters at ProPublica had emailed the justice last Friday with a series of questions, asking for a response by noon on Tuesday, as is standard practice in the media.
Other journalists, however, quickly noted that publishing a rebuttal to a story that isn’t even public is not normal and questioned why the Journal would have done so.
it is a deep betrayal to their journalistic colleagues for WSJ to publish a preemptive response from a top government official to an unpublished ProPublica investigation. https://t.co/KOLrpHlc67
Still, Alito’s unusual response suggests that ProPublica has been delving into the justice’s relationship with Singer and a past trip in which he traveled in “what would have otherwise been an unoccupied seat on a private flight to Alaska.”
“ProPublica suggests that my failure to recuse in these cases created an appearance of impropriety, but that is incorrect,” Alito wrote. “My recollection is that I have spoken to Mr. Singer on no more than a handful of occasions … On no occasion have we discussed the activities of his businesses, and we have never talked about any case or issue before the Court.”
Alito later added that Singer’s name did not appear in any filings as a party to cases before the Supreme Court: “During my time on the Court, I have voted on approximately 100,000 certiorari petitions. The vast majority receive little personal attention from the justices because even a cursory examination reveals that they do not meet our requirements for review.”
The allegations are similar to those leveled against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Earlier this year, ProPublica detailed decades of lavish trips Thomas took with the billionaire Harlan Crow, including travel aboard private jets and a yacht and a real estate deal in which Crow bought property from the justice and his family. Thomas’ mother still lives rent-free in one of those homes.
Alito’s ethics have been scrutinized in the past. He was previously accused of leaking the outcome of the 2014 Hobby Lobby case, which involved the company’s religious objections to covering the cost of some contraceptives for female employees.
Russian investigators have formally charged Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich with espionage, Russian state media reported Friday, adding he denied the accusations.
“The FSB investigation charged Gershkovich with espionage in the interests of his country. He categorically denied all accusations and stated that he was engaged in journalistic activities in Russia,” an agency representative said, according to state news agency TASS.
The representative declined to comment further, as the journalist’s case was marked “top secret,” according to TASS.
Gershkovich was detained by Russian authorities last week, who accused him of spying, signaling a significant ratcheting of both Moscow’s tensions with the United States and its campaign against foreign news media.
A Moscow court on April 18 will hear an appeal filed by Gershkovich’s lawyers against his arrest, Russian state media said citing the court. The correspondent is currently held in the notorious Leftereovo pre-detention center until May 29.
Gershkovich’s arrest marks the first time an American journalist has been detained on accusations by Moscow of spying since the Cold War.
The arrest has been widely condemned by western officials and the Journal vehemently denied the espionage charge against Gershkovich, describing his arrest “a vicious affront to a free press” which “should spur outrage in all free people and governments throughout the world.”
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he urged Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to release Gershkovich immediately.
“In my own mind, there’s no doubt that he’s being wrongfully detained by Russia, which is exactly what I said to Foreign Minister Lavrov when I spoke to him over the weekend,” Blinken said during a press conference in Brussels. “But I want to make sure that as always, because there is a formal process, that we go through it and we will, and I expect that to be to be completed soon.”
CNN reported on Tuesday that the Biden administration is preparing to officially declare Gershkovich as wrongfully detained in Russia, two US officials told CNN, a move that will trigger new US government resources to work towards his release.
