Jan 6 (Reuters) – Twitter Inc CEO Elon Musk said in an email to Reuters on Friday that hiring law firm Perkins Coie to defend the company in a California federal lawsuit this week was a mistake it would not make again.
Reuters reported earlier that lawyers from Perkins Coie entered court appearances for Twitter in the case on Wednesday even though Musk has denounced the firm on the social media platform, including in a tweet last month related to its past work for former Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Musk’s email said hiring Perkins Coie was “an error on the part of a member of the Twitter team.”
“Perkins will not be representing Twitter on future cases,” he said.
He did not immediately respond to follow-up questions on Friday, including whether Perkins Coie will stay on as counsel for Twitter in at least six other lawsuits predating Musk’s ownership. A Perkins Coie spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk’s finger-pointing follows months of internal tensions over Twitter’s legal staffing and priorities since he acquired the company for $44 billion and took over as CEO in October.
Musk has fired Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal affairs and policy officer, and other senior employees as he seeks to undo what he has criticized as past censorship and partisan bias at the company.
Twitter has also shaken up its outside legal teams, with attorneys from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan stepping in for other firms in several cases.
Musk tweeted on Dec. 8 that Twitter “isn’t using Perkins Coie” as outside counsel and urged other companies to boycott the firm. He singled out a former Perkins Coie lawyer, Michael Sussmann, who advised Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign while at the firm.
Sussmann was acquitted in May after denying federal charges that he falsely told the FBI he was not working on Clinton’s behalf when he gave the agency purported evidence of cyber links between the Trump Organization and a Russia-based bank.
“No company should use them until they make amends for Sussmann’s attempt to corrupt a Presidential election,” Musk wrote in December, referring to Perkins Coie.
In May, Musk tweeted that Perkins Coie and another large law firm were made up of “white-shoe lawyers” who “thrive on corruption.”
The case that Perkins Coie signed on to for Twitter this week was brought last year by Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who was banned from the site in 2018.
The San Francisco lawsuit claims social media giants, corporations and the U.S. government conspired to “unlawfully censor conservative voices and interfere with American elections.” Twitter and its former CEO Jack Dorsey have denied the claims.
Reporting by David Thomas in Chicago
Editing by David Bario and Leslie Adler
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David Thomas
Thomson Reuters
David Thomas reports on the business of law, including law firm strategy, hiring, mergers and litigation. He is based out of Chicago. He can be reached at d.thomas@thomsonreuters.com and on Twitter @DaveThomas5150.
Dec 12 (Reuters) – Microsoft (MSFT.O) is to take a 4% equity stake in London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG.L) as part of a 10-year commercial deal to migrate the exchange operator’s data platform into the cloud, the British company said on Monday.
It is the latest sign of deepening ties between financial services providers and a handful of big global cloud companies such as Microsoft, Google (GOOGL.O), Amazon (AMZN.O) and IBM (IBM.N), which have prompted regulators to scrutinise the ties more closely.
Microsoft has longstanding links with LSEG, but the exchange group’s Chief Executive David Schwimmer said that about a year ago they began talks on closer ties.
“It’s a long term partnership. In terms of the products we will be building together, I would expect our customers to start to see the benefits of that 18 to 24 months out and we will continue building from there,” Schwimmer told Reuters.
Regulators have expressed concern about the over-reliance of financial firms on too few cloud providers, given the disruption this could cause across the sector if a provider went down.
The European Union has just approved a law introducing safeguards on cloud providers in financial services, with Britain set to follow suit.
“You should assume we do not like to surprise our regulators,” Schwimmer said, when asked if LSEG has ensured that regulators were on board.
LSEG said the link with Microsoft was a partnership to reap the benefits of “consumption-based pricing”, and not a traditional cloud deal.
“We will continue to maintain our multi-cloud strategy and working with other cloud providers,” Schwimmer said.
The deal was not about savings by outsourcing activities to the cloud, but about meaningful incremental revenue growth as new products come on stream over time.
“This feels like a key milestone in LSEG’s journey towards being information solutions-centric, even if ‘meaningful’ revenue growth specifics are lacking,” analysts at Jefferies said.
As part of the deal, LSEG has made a contractual commitment for minimum cloud-related spend with Microsoft of $2.8 billion over the term of the partnership.
Microsoft said the basis of the partnership will be the digital transformation of LSEG’s technology infrastructure and Refinitiv platforms on to the Microsoft Cloud.
“The initial focus will be on delivering interoperability between LSEG Workspace and Microsoft Teams, Excel and PowerPoint with other Microsoft applications and a new version of LSEG’s Workspace,” the U.S. company said.
LSEG shares were up 4% in early trade.
LSEG bought Refinitiv for $27 billion from a Blackstone and Thomson Reuters’ consortium, which turned the exchange into the second largest financial data company after Bloomberg LP.
LSEG has made “good progress” on its programme for the delivery of its cloud-based data platform since the completion of its Refinitiv acquisition in January 2021, it said in a statement.
Microsoft will buy LSEG shares from the Blackstone (BX.N)/Thomson Reuters (TRI.TO), Consortium, the exchange operator said.
Thomson Reuters, which owns Reuters News, has a minority shareholding in LSEG following the Refinitiv deal.
Microsoft’s purchase is expected to complete in the first quarter of 2023.
Reporting by Yadarisa Shabong in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee, Jane Merriman and Louise Heavens
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BEIJING, Nov 20 (Reuters) – Michael Bloomberg apologised last week at a business forum hosted by the news agency he founded for remarks by British former Prime Minister Boris Johnson criticising China as autocratic.
The controversy highlights China’s influence in Asia and sensitivities about overt criticism of Beijing.
Bloomberg, a former New York mayor who ran for president in 2020, apologised on Thursday at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, a business gathering whose speakers included Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan and whose delegates included Chinese businessmen.
“Some may have been insulted or offended last night by parts of the speaker’s remarks referencing certain countries and their duly elected leaders,” Bloomberg said in remarks posted on Twitter.
Referring to Johnson, Bloomberg said: “Those were his thoughts and his thoughts alone, not cleared in advance by anyone or shared with me personally… To those of you who were upset and concerned by what the speaker said, you have my apologies.”
A spokesman for Bloomberg LP, which includes Bloomberg News and where Michael Bloomberg is the CEO, declined to comment to Reuters.
Johnson, who stepped down as Britain’s leader in September, had sharply criticised China’s and Russia’s political system and leaders in his Wednesday speech.
“Let’s look at Russia and China, the two former communist tyrannies in which power has once again been concentrated in the hands of a single ruler, two monocultural states that have been traditionally hostile to immigration and that are becoming increasingly nationalist in their attitudes,” Johnson said, according to his spokesman.
Johnson said Beijing and Moscow were “willing to show a candid disregard for the rule of international law and had over the past year “demonstrated the immense limitations of their political systems by the disastrous mistakes they have made”.
China’s foreign ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Johnson’s spokesman said the former leader had been invited to speak by Bloomberg himself and that his criticism was aimed at the Chinese government, not the nation or its people.
“Mr Johnson is robust in his criticism of authoritarianism and autocracy – including in Russia and China – and will continue to be so,” the spokesman said. “He will continue to make the case for freedom and democracy on the world stage.”
Bloomberg did not specify whether his apology was aimed at Chinese or Russian people. But he sported a small Ukrainian flag badge on his suit, criticised President Vladimir Putin’s “brutal invasion” of Russia’s neighbour and announced that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would address the forum remotely.
There were no Russian government speakers listed on the forum’s programme.
Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard in Beijing; Additional reporting by Chen Lin in Singapore; Editing by William Mallard
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Nov 14 (Reuters) – Kari Lake, one of the most high-profile Republican candidates in the midterm elections to embrace former President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in 2020, lost her bid to become the next governor of Arizona, Edison Research projected on Monday.
The closely fought governor’s race between Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs was one of the most significant in the general election because Arizona is a battleground state and will likely play a pivotal role in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Lake’s loss is the latest defeat for a series of candidates endorsed by Trump, who on Tuesday is expected to announce another White House bid.
After the Arizona governor race was called, Hobbs wrote on Twitter: “Democracy is worth the wait.” Lake expressed disdain for the election calls, tweeting that “Arizonans know BS when they see it.”
Lake had vowed to ban the state’s mail-in voting, which conspiracy theorists falsely claim is vulnerable to fraud, fueling distrust among voters about the safety of a voting method used by hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Her defeat capped a triumphant week for Democrats, who defied Republicans’ hopes for a “red wave” in the midterm elections.
Democrats retained their control of the U.S. Senate after keeping seats in the swing states of Arizona and Nevada, with Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaking vote. The party could win outright majority control if Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock beats Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a Georgia runoff on Dec. 6, bolstering Democratic sway over committees, bills and judicial picks.
The Democratic victories in a swath of gubernatorial, congressional and statehouse elections defied expectations that voters would punish them for record inflation, including high gas and food prices. Instead, Democrats were able to curb their losses, in part by mobilizing voters angry over the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
Still, Republicans continued to edge toward control of the House of Representatives. As of Monday, Republicans had won 214 seats and the Democrats 207, with 218 needed for a majority. Control of the House would allow Republicans to stymie President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.
It could take several days before the outcome of enough House races is known to determine which party will control the 435-seat chamber.
Lake, a former television news anchor, was one of a string of Trump-aligned Republican candidates who lost battleground state races. Voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin also rejected election deniers in races for governor and other statewide election posts.
Biden narrowly beat Trump in Arizona in the 2020 election. Hobbs, Arizona’s current secretary of state, rose to national prominence when she defended the state’s election results against Trump’s claims of voter fraud.
On Monday, she won the seat currently held by Republican Governor Doug Ducey, who could not seek re-election because of term limits.
Vote-counting in Arizona continued for nearly a week after the Nov. 8 election. Arizona requires voters’ signatures on early ballots to be verified before they are processed. The counting was delayed this year because hundreds of thousands of early ballots were cast at drop boxes on Election Day, officials said.
Lake and Trump had pointed to temporary Election Day problems with electronic vote-counting machines in Maricopa County as evidence that Republican votes were being suppressed.
A judge denied a request to extend polling place hours, saying Republicans had provided no evidence that voters were disenfranchised by the issue.
In a Sunday appearance on Fox News, Lake said the lengthy counting process was “trampling” voters’ rights, and was further evidence of why election administration in Arizona needed to be reformed.
“We can’t be the laughing stock of elections any more here in Arizona, and when I’m governor, I will not allow it,” she said.
Reporting by Julia Harte and Brad Brooks; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Alistair Bell and Edmund Klamann
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Oct 25 – Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) is under criminal investigation in the United States over claims that the company’s electric vehicles can drive themselves, three people familiar with the matter said.
The U.S. Department of Justice launched the previously undisclosed probe last year following more than a dozen crashes, some of them fatal, involving Tesla’s driver assistance system Autopilot, which was activated during the accidents, the people said.
As early as 2016, Tesla’s marketing materials have touted Autopilot’s capabilities. On a conference call that year, Elon Musk, the Silicon Valley automaker’s chief executive, described it as “probably better” than a human driver.
Last week, Musk said on another call Tesla would soon release an upgraded version of “Full Self-Driving” software allowing customers to travel “to your work, your friend’s house, to the grocery store without you touching the wheel.”
A video currently on the company’s website says: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”
However, the company also has explicitly warned drivers that they must keep their hands on the wheel and maintain control of their vehicles while using Autopilot.
The Tesla technology is designed to assist with steering, braking, speed and lane changes but its features “do not make the vehicle autonomous,” the company says on its website.
Such warnings could complicate any case the Justice Department might wish to bring, the sources said.
Tesla, which disbanded its media relations department in 2020, did not respond to written questions from Reuters on Wednesday. Musk also did not respond to written questions seeking comment. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.
Musk said in an interview with Automotive News in 2020 that Autopilot problems stem from customers using the system in ways contrary to Tesla’s instructions.
Federal and California safety regulators are already scrutinizing whether claims about Autopilot’s capabilities and the system’s design imbue customers with a false sense of security, inducing them to treat Teslas as truly driverless cars and become complacent behind the wheel with potentially deadly consequences.
The Justice Department investigation potentially represents a more serious level of scrutiny because of the possibility of criminal charges against the company or individual executives, the people familiar with the inquiry said.
As part of the latest probe, Justice Department prosecutors in Washington and San Francisco are examining whether Tesla misled consumers, investors and regulators by making unsupported claims about its driver assistance technology’s capabilities, the sources said.
Officials conducting their inquiry could ultimately pursue criminal charges, seek civil sanctions or close the probe without taking any action, they said.
The Justice Department’s Autopilot probe is far from recommending any action partly because it is competing with two other DOJ investigations involving Tesla, one of the sources said. Investigators still have much work to do and no decision on charges is imminent, this source said.
The Justice Department may also face challenges in building its case, said the sources, because of Tesla’s warnings about overreliance on Autopilot.
For instance, after telling the investor call last week that Teslas would soon travel without customers touching controls, Musk added that the vehicles still needed someone in the driver’s seat. “Like we’re not saying that that’s quite ready to have no one behind the wheel,” he said.
The Tesla website also cautions that, before enabling Autopilot, the driver first needs to agree to “keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times” and to always “maintain control and responsibility for your vehicle.”
Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney in Detroit who prosecuted automotive companies and employees in fraud cases and is not involved in the current probe, said investigators likely would need to uncover evidence such as emails or other internal communications showing that Tesla and Musk made misleading statements about Autopilot’s capabilities on purpose.
SEVERAL PROBES
The criminal Autopilot investigation adds to the other probes and legal issues involving Musk, who became locked in a court battle earlier this year after abandoning a $44 billion takeover of social media giant Twitter Inc, only to reverse course and proclaim excitement for the looming acquisition.
In August 2021, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into a series of crashes, one of them fatal, involving Teslas equipped with Autopilot slamming into parked emergency vehicles.
NHTSA officials in June intensified their probe, which covers 830,000 Teslas with Autopilot, identifying 16 crashes involving the company’s electric cars and stationary first-responder and road maintenance vehicles. The move is a step that regulators must take before requesting a recall. The agency had no immediate comment.
In July this year, the California Department of Motor Vehicles accused Tesla of falsely advertising its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving capability as providing autonomous vehicle control. Tesla filed paperwork with the agency seeking a hearing on the allegations and indicated it intends to defend against them. The DMV said in a statement it is currently in the discovery stage of the proceeding and declined further comment.
Additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and David Shepardson; Editing by Deepa Babington
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WASHINGTON, Sept 13 (Reuters) – Three medical journals recently launched independent investigations of possible data manipulation in heart studies led by Temple University researchers, Reuters has learned, adding new scrutiny to a misconduct inquiry by the university and the U.S. government.
The Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology and the Journal of Biological Chemistry are investigating five papers authored by Temple scientists, the journals told Reuters.
A third journal owned by the Journal of American College of Cardiology (JACC), last month retracted a paper by Temple researchers on its website after determining that there was evidence of data manipulation. The retracted paper had originally concluded that the widely-used blood thinner, Xarelto, could have a healing effect on hearts.
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“We are committed to preserving the integrity of the scholarly record,” Elsevier, which owns the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology and publishes the two other journals on behalf of medical societies, said in a statement to Reuters.
Philadelphia-based Temple began its own inquiry in September 2020 at the request of the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI), which oversees misconduct investigations into federally funded research, according to a lawsuit filed by one of the researchers.
The Temple investigation involves 15 papers published between 2008 and 2020 and supported by grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, according to the court records. Nine of the studies were supervised by Abdel Karim Sabri, a professor at Temple’s Cardiovascular Research Center.
His colleague Steven Houser, senior associate dean of research at Temple and former president of the American Heart Association, is listed as an author on five studies supervised by Sabri. Houser was also involved in four additional papers under scrutiny.
Houser sued in federal court last year to stop the university’s inquiry, saying Temple sought to discredit him and steal his discoveries.
Houser “has not engaged in scientific or other misconduct, has not falsified data, and has not participated in any bad acts with any other scientist or academic,” Houser’s lawyer, Christopher Ezold, said in a statement to Reuters. Houser helped review and edit the text portions of the Sabri-supervised studies and did not provide or analyze the data, Ezold said.
A Temple spokesperson said the university is “aware of the allegations and is reviewing them.” He would not comment further or discuss interactions with medical journals. ORI also declined comment. Sabri and Houser did not respond to questions.
Several research experts said that Houser, as one of multiple co-authors, cannot be assumed to be involved in potential misconduct. The ultimate responsibility for a study usually lies with the supervising scientist and any researcher who contributed the specific data under scrutiny.
EXPRESSION OF CONCERN
The probes highlight concerns over potential fabrication in medical research and the federal funds supporting it. A Reuters investigation published in June found that the NIH spent hundreds of millions of dollars on heart stem cell research despite fraud allegations against several leading scientists in the field.
The Temple inquiry also reveals a lack of consensus within the scientific community over how such concerns should be communicated, to prevent potentially bad science from informing future work and funding, according to half a dozen research experts interviewed by Reuters.
Temple did not notify the medical journals that it was conducting an inquiry at the request of the U.S. government agency, the journals told Reuters. They said that they began their inquiries independently.
Xarelto’s manufacturer, the Janssen Pharmaceuticals division of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N), also told Reuters the supervising researchers at Temple did not notify the company about the investigation or the retraction by the JACC journal, though two of its employees were listed as co-authors on the paper. Janssen said their contribution to the paper was not questioned in the retraction.
In some misconduct inquiries, universities have notified scientific journals that an investigation is underway. That has allowed journals to issue an “expression of concern” about specific studies, telling readers that there may be reason to question the results. If there is a finding of data manipulation, the journals would be expected to retract the paper.
None of the journals that published the papers under scrutiny by Temple have issued expressions of concern. They would not comment to Reuters as to why they decided not to.
“It’s murky because of a lack of resources for these investigations, there’s no standardization worldwide,” said Arthur Caplan, head of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.
Other journals are not scrutinizing the Temple researchers’ work. Five papers flagged by ORI were published in the AHA journals Circulation, Circulation: Heart Failure, and Circulation Research, where Houser is a senior advisory editor.
The AHA said it had not been notified by the U.S. agency or by Temple about their inquiry, and that it does not view itself as responsible for investigating further. The AHA said it had issued a correction of data on one paper at the authors’ request. The paper was the sole study under scrutiny that listed Houser as supervising researcher.
“The American Heart Association is not a regulatory body or agency,” the AHA said in a statement to Reuters.
FEDERAL FUNDING
Researchers and their institutions can be forced to return federal funding that supported work tainted by data manipulation.
Houser has received nearly $40 million in NIH funding and Sabri has received nearly $10 million since 2000, according to a Reuters analysis of NIH grants. Houser’s lawyer said that none of his NIH funding supported the papers supervised by Sabri.
The JACC journal said in its retraction of the Xarelto research that it launched its investigation after receiving a complaint from a reader. In response, the researchers issued a correction of some image data in the paper, which was supervised by Sabri and which listed Houser as an author.
However, the journal said that the correction raised further concerns, prompting it to hire an unidentified outside expert to review them.
According to the retraction notice, the expert evaluation found evidence of manipulation in seven images using a technique known as Western blot, which determines concentrations of a specific protein in cells or tissues under different experimental conditions. As a result, the journal said its ethics board voted to retract the paper.
NIH, ORI and Temple declined to comment on whether Temple would be required to return any federal funding of the work retracted by the JACC publication.
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Reporting by Marisa Taylor and Brad Heath; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Edward Tobin
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Brad Heath
Thomson Reuters
Washington-based reporter covering criminal justice, law and more and a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and member of the Virginia bar.
An aerial view of the Gulf of Suez and the Suez Canal are pictured through the window of an airplane on a flight between Cairo and Doha, Egypt, November 27, 2021. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
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CAIRO, Sept 1 (Reuters) – Tug boats refloated a ship that briefly ran aground in Egypt’s Suez Canal late on Wednesday, a source from the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) andstate TV reported.
The vessel had been blocking the southern section of the canal, two navigational sources said, but the SCA source said shortly afterwards that traffic had returned to normal.
There was no immediate statement about the incident from the SCA.
According to ship monitoring service TankerTrackers, the Aframax tanker Affinity V seemed to have lost control in the Suez Canal while heading southbound.
“She temporarily clogged up traffic and is now facing south again, but moving slowly by tugboat assistance,” TankerTrackers said on Twitter.
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Reporting by Yousri Mohamed and Yasmin Hussein; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Mark Porter and Christian Schmollinger
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June 26 (Reuters) – The largest U.S. law firms did not take a public stance following the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade on Friday, diverging from the approach of some major companies that have made statements on the closely watched abortion case.
The high court’s 6-3 Dobbs decision upheld a Republican-backed Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Many states are expected to further restrict or ban abortions following the ruling.
Reuters on Friday asked more than 30 U.S. law firms, including the 20 largest by total number of lawyers, for comments on the Dobbs ruling and whether they would cover travel costs for employees seeking an abortion.
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The vast majority did not respond by Saturday afternoon, and only two, Ropes & Gray and Morrison & Foerster, said they would implement such a travel policy.
Morrison & Foerster, with nearly 1,000 attorneys, was the only large firm to issue a public statement by Saturday afternoon.
The firm’s chair, Larren Nashelsky, said Morrison & Foerster would “redouble our efforts to protect abortion and other reproductive rights.”
The Dobbs decision has been expected since a draft opinion was leaked in May.
Several major U.S. corporations, including The Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) and Meta Platforms (META.O) said on Friday they will cover travel costs for employees seeking abortions. read more
Industry experts say law firms could speak out on Dobbs in the future if employees and clients push them to take a public stance. For now, firm leaders appear to be carefully weighing the advantages and disadvantages of commenting, including the possibility of alienating clients, experts said.
“This is a tightrope to walk for firms,” said Kent Zimmermann, a law firm consultant with the Zeughauser Group. “They have a diversity of views among their talent and clients.”
Some firms have issued internal communications to employees about the decision. Ropes & Gray Chair Julie Jones said in an internal memo viewed by Reuters that the firm will hold several community gatherings to discuss the ruling and offer “comfort.”
“As a leader of Ropes & Gray, I am concerned about the effect of this decision on our community,” Jones wrote, while acknowledging that her memo may cause “offense to portions of our community.”
A Ropes & Gray spokesperson told Reuters Friday that employees enrolled in its medical plan are eligible for financial assistance to travel out of state for an abortion.
Another large U.S. law firm, Steptoe & Johnson, offered its U.S. workforce the day off on Friday, a spokesperson confirmed. The spokesperson did not immediately respond to further requests for comment.
Despite a dearth of public statements, a number of law firms publicly signaled ahead of the ruling that they planned to provide free legal support to women seeking abortions if Roe was overturned.
Both the New York Attorney General Leticia James and the San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, with the Bar Association of San Francisco, have convened pro bono initiatives that rely on law firm volunteers. Paul Weiss, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and O’Melveny & Myers are among the participants.
Paul Weiss Chair Brad Karp called the Dobbs decision a “crushing loss” in an internal message to the firm on Friday provided to Reuters. Paul Weiss and O’Melveny, which both represented Jackson Women’s Health Organization, respondents in the Dobbs case, deferred comment on the ruling to their co-counsel, the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The center said in a statement that the court had “hit a new low by taking away – for the first time ever – a constitutionally guaranteed personal liberty.”
Gibson Dunn did not respond to request for comment.
Robert Kamins, a consultant with Vertex Advisors who works with law firms, said firms will be “very cautious” about taking early positions on the ruling.
“They have to make sure that they are being thoughtful about it,” he said. “What is the business impact? What is the client impact? What is the recruiting impact? There are lots of things to think about.”
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Reporting by Karen Sloan in Sacramento, California, and Jacqueline Thomsen in Swampscott, Massachusetts; Additional reporting by Mike Scarcella in Silver Spring, Maryland; Editing by Rebekah Mintzer, Noeleen Walder and Leslie Adler
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June 10 (Reuters) – Russia and China opened a new cross-border bridge in the far east on Friday which they hope will further boost trade as Moscow reels from sweeping Western sanctions imposed over its actions in Ukraine.
The bridge linking the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk to the Chinese city of Heihe across the Amur river – known in China as Heilongjiang – is just over one kilometre long and cost 19 billion roubles ($342 million), the RIA news agency reported.
Amid a firework display, freight trucks from both ends crossed the two-lane bridge that was festooned with flags in the colours of both countries, video footage of the opening showed.
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Russian authorities said the bridge would bring Moscow and Beijing closer together by boosting trade after they announced a “no limits” partnership in February, shortly before President Vladimir Putin sent his forces into Ukraine.
“In today’s divided world, the Blagoveshchensk-Heihe bridge between Russia and China carries a special symbolic meaning,” said Yuri Trutnev, the Kremlin representative in the Russian Far East.
China wants to deepen practical cooperation with Russia in all areas, Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua said at the opening.
Russia’s Transport Minister Vitaly Savelyev said the bridge would help boost bilateral annual trade to more than 1 million tonnes of goods.
Flags of China and Russia are displayed in this illustration picture taken March 24, 2022. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration
CUTTING JOURNEY TIME
The bridge had been under construction since 2016 and was completed in May 2020 but its opening was delayed by cross-border COVID-19 restrictions, said BTS-MOST, the firm building the bridge on the Russian side.
BTS-MOST said freight traffic on the bridge would shorten the travel distance of Chinese goods to western Russia by 1,500 kilometres (930 miles). Vehicles crossing the bridge must pay a toll of 8,700 roubles ($150), a price that is expected to drop as toll fees begin to offset the cost of construction.
Russia said in April it expected commodity flows with China to grow, and trade with Beijing to reach $200 billion by 2024.
China is a major buyer of Russian natural resources and agricultural products.
China has declined to condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine and has criticised the Western sanctions on Moscow.
($1 = 57.8000 roubles)
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Editing by Gareth Jones
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May 18 (Reuters) – S&P Dow Jones Indices has removed electric carmaker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) from its widely-followed S&P 500 ESG Index (.SPXESUP), citing issues including racial discrimination claims and crashes linked to its autopilot vehicles, a move that prompted critical tweets from Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday.
Other contributing factors to the changes, effective May 2, included Tesla’s lack of published details related to its low carbon strategy or business conduct codes, said Margaret Dorn, the organization’s head of ESG indices for North America, in an interview.
Even though Tesla is contributing to reducing emissions with its electric cars, Dorn said, its issues and lack of disclosures relative to industry peers should raise concerns for investors looking to judge the company across environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria.
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“You can’t just take a company’s mission statement at face value, you have to look at their practices across all those key dimensions,” she said.
Tesla representatives did not immediately respond to questions. But after the index changes, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday that “ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”
The back-and-forth underscores a growing controversy about how to judge corporate ESG performance. Investors concerned about issues like diversity and climate change have poured money into funds using ESG criteria to pick stocks, prompting questions about how effectively the funds promote change or whether they have become too involved in setting policy. read more
S&P Dow Jones Indices is majority-owned by S&P Global Inc. (SPGI.N).
The removal Tesla was among a group of changes made to the S&P 500 ESG Index dating from April 22, according to an announcement. Among the additions to the index at the same time was Twitter Inc (TWTR.N), the social media platform Musk has under agreement to purchase.
Dorn and others did not immediately describe the reasons Twitter was added.
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Reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by Aurora Ellis
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