- Miami police launch crackdown on supercar street takeover as they flood street and shut down huge ‘wheels up, Daily Mail
- Police prevent ‘street takeover’ near MIA as they enforce safety initiative on MLK weekend; 61 arrested WSVN 7News | Miami News, Weather, Sports | Fort Lauderdale
- Nearly 100 arrested over ATV riding, multiple weapons impounded during MLK weekend NBC 6 South Florida
- MDPD: 61 arrested after groups of ATV, dirt bike riders illegally swarm South Florida roadways WPLG Local 10
- Authorities monitoring roadways for illegal Wheels Up, Guns Down riders WPLG Local 10
Tag Archives: Takeover
Iranians march for Gaza on anniversary of US embassy takeover – Al Jazeera English
- Iranians march for Gaza on anniversary of US embassy takeover Al Jazeera English
- Iranians mark the anniversary of the 1979 US Embassy takeover while calling for a cease-fire in Gaza ABC News
- Iran Celebrates US Embassy Attack, Hostage Crisis Of 1979; ‘Death To Israel’ Protest Amid Hamas War Hindustan Times
- ‘Death to Israel, death to America’: Iran marks anniversary of 1979 embassy takeover The Times of Israel
- Iranian hostage crisis anniversary: Students held 52 Americans hostage in US embassy Al Jazeera English
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Shelling kills civilians in Ukraine’s northeast as fears grow of a second Russian takeover – Yahoo! Voices
- Shelling kills civilians in Ukraine’s northeast as fears grow of a second Russian takeover Yahoo! Voices
- Ukraine’s hi-tech naval attack drones have paralyzed Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, spy chief says Business Insider India
- Moscow Airports Again Restrict Flights Amid Claims Of Ukrainian Drones Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
- Russia Destroys 42 Ukrainian Drones Over Crimea After Kyiv’s ‘Special Operation’ Boast | Watch Hindustan Times
- Moscow was again forced to shut down its major airports after Ukraine drones again targeted Russia’s capital Business Insider India
- View Full Coverage on Google News
US Steel (X) Stock Spkes After Esmark’s Takeover Offer Trumps Cliffs (CLF) – Bloomberg
- US Steel (X) Stock Spkes After Esmark’s Takeover Offer Trumps Cliffs (CLF) Bloomberg
- Cleveland Cliffs CEO on U.S. Steel rejecting $7.3 billion buyout offer CNBC Television
- The Elon Musk of steel? Meet the Brazilian mogul who just bid $7.2 billion to bring two Fortune 500 giants together Fortune
- Cleveland-Cliffs, U.S. Steel combination would dominate steel industry: The Wake Up for Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023 cleveland.com
- Esmark makes offer for US Steel at $35 per share after company rejects buyout offer from Cleveland-Cliffs CNN
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Manchester United Takeover: Qatari Royal Sheikh Jassim Confirms Bid – Bloomberg
- Manchester United Takeover: Qatari Royal Sheikh Jassim Confirms Bid Bloomberg
- Sheikh Jassim’s Manchester United takeover bid, the Qatar issue and what it means for Ratcliffe The Athletic
- Let the bidding commence! Qatari investors table substantial debt-free offer to buy Man Utd in attempt to ‘return the club to its former glories’ Goal.com
- Qatar-based bid for Manchester United confirmed on deadline day Al Jazeera English
- Sir Jim Ratcliffe makes official bid to complete full takeover of Manchester United The Athletic
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Elon Musk expected to testify in Tesla takeover trial | Elon Musk
Elon Musk is expected to testify as early as Friday in a jury trial over his 2018 Twitter post that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private, which shareholders allege cost them millions in trading losses.
The class action trial in San Francisco federal court centers on allegations that the Tesla CEO lied when he sent the tweet, costing investors. It resumed on Friday morning with investor Timothy Fries telling the jury how he lost $5,000 buying Tesla stock after Musk sent the tweet at the center of the lawsuit.
Musk, known for combative testimony, is expected to address why he has insisted he had Saudi investor backing for the deal, which never came together, and whether he knowingly made a materially misleading statement with his tweet.
The case is a rare securities class-action trial and the plaintiffs have already cleared high legal hurdles, with the US judge Edward Chen ruling last year that Musk’s post was untruthful and reckless.
Fries told the jury that funding secured meant to him that “there had been some vetting, some critical review of those funding sources”.
Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, told the jury in his opening statement on Wednesday that Musk believed he had financing from Saudi backers and was taking steps to make the deal happen. Fearing leaks to the media, Musk tried to protect the “everyday shareholder” by sending the tweet, which contained “technical inaccuracies”, Spiro said.
Guhan Subramanian, a Harvard Law School professor, told the jury that Musk’s behavior in 2018 lacked the hallmarks of traditional corporate dealmaking by tweeting his interest in Tesla without proper financial or legal analysis.
“Compared to the standard template it’s an extreme outlier,” said Subramanian, who called Musk’s approach “unprecedented” and “incoherent”.
A jury of nine will decide whether the tweet artificially inflated Tesla’s share price by playing up the status of funding for the deal, and if so, by how much.
The defendants include current and former Tesla directors, whom Spiro said had “pure” motives in their response to Musk’s plan.
Reuters contributed to this report
Twitter sued over $136,260 in unpaid rent after Elon Musk takeover | Twitter
Elon Musk is trying to slash expenses at Twitter as close to zero as possible while his personal wealth shrinks – and this apparently has included falling behind on rent payments at the company’s offices.
Twitter owes $136,260 (£113,601) in overdue rent on its offices on the 30th floor of a building in downtown San Francisco, according to a lawsuit filed by the building’s landlord last week.
The landlord at 650 California Street, which is not Twitter’s main San Francisco headquarters, served a notice to the social media company on 16 December informing it that it would be in default if it didn’t pay within five days. The five days elapsed without payment, according to the lawsuit.
The landlord, Columbia REIT 650 California LLC, is seeking damages totaling the back rent, as well as attorney’s fees and other expenses. Twitter signed a seven-year lease for the offices in 2017. The monthly rent was $107,526.50 (£89,646) in the first full year and increased gradually to $128,397 (£107,045) in the seventh year.
Twitter did not respond to a message for comment. The company no longer has a media relations department.
Musk bought Twitter for $44bn (£37bn) in October 2022 and the company is on the hook for about $1bn a year in interest payments from the deal. Most of Musk’s wealth is tied to his ownership of Tesla shares, which have lost more than half of their value since he took ownership of Twitter. He has sold nearly $23bn (£19bn) worth of the electric vehicle company’s stock to fund the purchase since April, when he started building a position in Twitter. He’s even lost the top spot for the world’s wealthiest person, according to Forbes.
Musk defended his extreme cost-cutting measures last month in a late night Twitter Spaces call.
“This company is like, basically, you’re in a plane that is headed towards the ground at high speed with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work,” Musk said on 21 December.
The company’s headquarters are located at another San Francisco address, 1355 Market Street, where Twitter has also reportedly fallen behind on rent, according to the New York Times.
In addition to not paying rent and laying off workers, Musk’s Twitter is also auctioning off high-end office furniture, kitchen equipment and other relics from the past, when Twitter had over 7,500 full-time workers around the world and free lunch and other office perks were common. Some three-quarters of Twitter’s employee base is estimated to have left the company, either because they were laid off, fired or quit.
Among the items Twitter is auctioning off are a pizza oven, a 40-quart commercial kitchen floor mixer (retails for around $18,000; bidding starts at $25), and high-end designer furniture such as Eames chairs from Herman Miller and Knoll Diamond chairs that retail in the thousands.
Even a Twitter bird statue (bidding starts at $25) and a neon Twitter bird light display (bidding starts at $50) are up for grabs in this fire sale-style auction reminiscent of the dotcom bust of the early 2000s when failed tech startups were selling off their decadent office wares.
Twitter sued for not paying rent on San Francisco HQ since Elon Musk takeover
Twitter is being sued by its landlord for ducking out on rent for its downtown San Francisco headquarters, where the platform reportedly went through heavy cost-cutting under new CEO Elon Musk.
The company owes $136,260 in unpaid rent, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday by Columbia Property Trust.
Twitter’s freeloading was reported early last month by the New York Times, which wrote Musk and his advisors hoped to renegotiate terms of lease agreements after mass layoffs.
The downsizing has already begun.
Twitter closed its Seattle offices, The Times reported Friday — cutting janitorial and security services. Employees were left bringing their own toilet paper to work, according to the report.
Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October and has been cutting costs ever since, amid what Musk admitted was a “massive drop” in revenue.
Cleaning and security staff were also laid off from the company’s New York and San Francisco offices, where workers struck for higher pay. In San Francisco, Musk condensed the company’s footprint at 650 California Street from four floors to two, the Times reported.
On Christmas Eve, Musk ordered staff out to a data center in Sacramento to shutdown key servers as a cost-cutting measuring, the Times reported.
Meanwhile, layoffs have continued, with cuts to the company’s infrastructure and public policy divisions last week, the report said.
Employees have been directed to delay paying contractors or vendors — including accountants and consultants working on key regulatory projects, the Times reported.
The company is also being sued for failing to pay almost $200,000 for private charter flights made the week Musk took over.
Employees expect more layoffs to come, the report revealed.
Twitter did not return a request for comment regarding the new lawsuit.
Musk has pledged to step down from leading the company after conducting a poll on whether he should step down. A successor has yet to be chosen.
The multi-billionaire’s purchase of the social media company made him the first person ever to lose $200 billion, a report found.
Video gamers sue Microsoft in U.S. court to stop Activision takeover
Dec 20 (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) was hit on Tuesday in U.S. court with a private consumer lawsuit claiming the technology company’s $69 billion bid to purchase “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard Inc (ATVI.O) will unlawfully squelch competition in the video game industry.
The complaint filed in federal court in California comes about two weeks after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a case with an administrative law judge seeking to stop Microsoft, owner of the Xbox console, from completing the largest-ever acquisition in the video-gaming market.
The private lawsuit also seeks an order blocking Microsoft from acquiring Activision. It was filed on behalf of 10 video game players in California, New Mexico and New Jersey.
The proposed acquisition would give Microsoft “far-outsized market power in the video game industry,” the complaint alleged, “with the ability to foreclose rivals, limit output, reduce consumer choice, raise prices, and further inhibit competition.”
A Microsoft representative on Tuesday defended the deal, saying in a statement that it “will expand competition and create more opportunities for gamers and game developers.” After the FTC sued, Microsoft President Brad Smith said, “We have complete confidence in our case and welcome the opportunity to present our case in court.”
In a statement, plaintiffs’ attorney Joseph Saveri in San Francisco said, “As the video game industry continues to grow and evolve, it’s critical that we protect the market from monopolistic mergers that will harm consumers in the long run.”
Private plaintiffs can pursue antitrust claims in U.S. court, even while a related U.S. agency case is pending. The takeover, announced in January, also faces antitrust scrutiny in the European Union.
The FTC previously said it sued to stop “Microsoft from gaining control over a leading independent game studio.” The agency said the merger would harm competition among rival gaming platforms from Nintendo Co Ltd (7974.T) and Sony Group Corp (6758.T).
Reporting by Mike Scarcella; editing by Leigh Jones, Cynthia Osterman and Jonathan Oatis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
NASA confident in SpaceX after Twitter takeover by Elon Musk: report
Upheaval on Twitter under its new owner, SpaceX founder Elon Musk, is not distracting SpaceX from delivering on NASA’s needs, the agency administrator said.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that the tumultuous Twitter takeover has not affected SpaceX’s work to date. He also received personal assurances about billionaire Elon Musk from one of SpaceX’s senior officials, according to NBC News (opens in new tab). Nelson spoke with Gwynne Shotwell, a long-time employee of SpaceX who is also the company’s president and chief operating officer, on Dec. 5, the report noted. The two were attending the Kennedy Center Honors, an American culture celebration, in Washington, D.C.
When he asked whether Twitter was a distraction, Shotwell told Nelson, “I assure you, it is not,” Nelson said in the NBC report published Sunday (Dec. 11).
“As you know, she has been designated as the person to lead SpaceX,” Nelson said. “So I take it straight from what we in the south say: the horse’s mouth. And she’s the horse that’s running SpaceX.”
In photos: See the evolution of SpaceX rockets
SpaceX received its first contract from NASA in 2014 and is responsible for sending astronauts to the International Space Station, along with a large share of its cargo, on variants of the Dragon spacecraft. Starting in 2025 or 2026, SpaceX has also been tasked with landing NASA astronauts on the moon on Artemis 3 and Artemis 4 using Starship, a new spaceship that has yet to achieve orbit despite recently targeting a Dec. 1 flight.
Even before Musk took over Twitter on Oct. 28, his behavior has caused consternation for some. On Twitter before the takeover, various media reports indicated, he used crude jokes (opens in new tab) and insults (opens in new tab) and even called a rescuer of Thai children a pedophile (opens in new tab). Musk, who was Time Magazine’s 2021 person of the year, was in recent months accused of sexual misconduct with a flight attendant in 2016; his behavior of “distraction and embarrassment” was also the subject of an open letter by numerous anonymous employees of SpaceX.
In photos: The 20 most memorable SpaceX missions from its 1st 20 years
Musk’s new ownership has changed the landscape of Twitter’s culture considerably, numerous media reports have said. He removed its board and most of its senior executive team, suddenly laid off more than half (opens in new tab) of the company’s then-7,500 employees, insisted that those who remain commit to “hardcore” work (opens in new tab) with “long hours at high intensity,” forced the previously remote workforce back into the office (opens in new tab) with a few days’ notice, and reportedly installed sleeping quarters on site (opens in new tab), among numerous other changes.
Musk also reinstituted numerous controversial Twitter accounts, including the Twitter account of President Donald Trump (opens in new tab). Trump had been banned from the platform after playing a crucial role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riots on Capitol Hill; Trump had falsely declared the federal election results were counterfeit and asked the U.S. people to take action on that.
Advertisers have been fleeing the platform (opens in new tab) in the meantime, lessening Twitter’s revenues considerably. Musk’s first attempt to institute “verified” $8 subscription accounts (opens in new tab) last month created a slew of parody accounts spreading disinformation in mere hours, until the venture was shut down.
Long-time NASA contractor Lockheed Martin was among the companies that may have lost billions (opens in new tab) in the stock market after a “verified” fake Lockheed account tweeted (opens in new tab) that the aerospace giant would stop its military sales to the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why Am I Taller (opens in new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).