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from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education)
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, HIGH, non-profit organization
Elon Musk sealed the deal. On Monday, Twitter accepted Musk’s $44 billion offer to buy the company and take it private. Musk is putting down $21 billion in cash and financing the rest through new debt: a $13 billion buyout loan and a $12.5 billion margin loan against his stock in Tesla.
from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
The Biden administration is scrapping old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs, speeding an ongoing trend toward more efficient lighting that officials say will save households, schools and businesses billions of dollars a year. Rules finalized by the Energy Department will require manufacturers to sell energy-efficient light bulbs, accelerating a longtime industry practice to use compact fluorescent and LED bulbs that last 25 to 50 times longer than incandescent bulbs. The Trump administration had slowed an earlier phaseout of incandescents, saying it was targeting rules that burden businesses.
Delta Air Lines, which is facing another attempt to unionize its flight attendants, will begin paying cabin crews during boarding, a first for a major U.S. airline. Across the airline industry in the United States, hourly pay for flight attendants starts when all the passengers are seated and the plane’s doors close.
From small-business banker to small-business owner, Chris Pitotti’s journey has led him back to the Garland District.“ I managed a few U.S. Bank branches, and one of them was the Garland Branch,” he said. “It was my introduction to the neighborhood.” In 2014, he left banking behind and spent six years immersing himself in the coffee business. By 2020, he was selling Pitotti coffee to wholesalers, but he wanted a retail spot as well. When the pastor of The Gathering House church in the heart of the Garland District offered him space, Pitotti seized the opportunity.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has apparently succeeded in his attempt to acquire the social media platform Twitter and take it private. At first Musk announced that he owned 9% of the Company’s stock and seemed ready to join its board. Then he reversed course and in an all-or-nothing move said he wanted to buy it outright. At first observers questioned whether Musk could raise the cash to buy all Twitter’s stock for $54.20 per share, a purchase price of $44 billion for the firm – making it the biggest takeover of a public company in at least two decades. But Twitter’s board has now announced it will recommend that its stockholders accept the eccentric billionaire’s offer which will be 38% over the company’s share price. Given the directors’ duty to maximize value for their stockholders they probably believed they could no longer keep resisting Musk with defensive tactics like poison pills which make target companies prohibitively expensive for hostile bidders.
Lawmakers on Tuesday grilled officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs and executives with Cerner Corp. about problems with the company’s electronic health record system being piloted in Spokane, Walla Walla and other sites across the Inland Northwest. The hearing in a House VA subcommittee charged with oversight of the $16 billion program came after the VA Office of Inspector General released a trio of reports that corroborated dozens of unresolved problems with the computer system – which health care providers rely on to track patient data and coordinate care – and just days after The Spokesman-Review reported the system contributed to a veteran’s hospitalization with heart failure in March.
Southern California’s gigantic water supplier took the unprecedented step Tuesday of requiring about 6 million people to cut their outdoor watering to one day a week as drought continues to plague the state. The board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California declared a water shortage emergency and required the cities and water agencies it supplies to implement the cutback on June 1 and enforce it or face hefty fines.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned lower-court orders that have blocked the Biden administration from ending a controversial Trump-era immigration program for asylum-seekers.
Thirty-six years after the world’s worst nuclear disaster, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday that Russian troops risked causing an accident with their “very, very dangerous” seizure of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine. Wearing a blue IAEA jacket and standing under an orange umbrella during rainfall outside the damaged nuclear power plant, agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said that while the radiation levels are normal, the situation is still “not stable.” Nuclear authorities have to “keep on alert,” he said.
Russia pounded eastern and southern Ukraine on Tuesday as the U.S. promised to “keep moving heaven and earth” to get Kyiv the weapons it needs to repel the new offensive, despite Moscow’s warnings that such support could trigger a wider war.
The longer Ukraine’s army fends off the invading Russians, the more it absorbs the advantages of Western weaponry and training — exactly the transformation President Vladimir Putin wanted to prevent by invading in the first place.
Two explosions in a radio facility close to the Ukrainian border knocked a pair of powerful broadcast antennas out of service in Moldova’s separatist region of Trans-Dniester, local police said. Trans-Dniester, a strip of land with about 470,000 people, has been under the control of separatist authorities since a 1992 war with Moldova. Russia bases about 1,500 troops in the breakaway region, nominally as peacekeepers.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to accelerate the development of nuclear weapons and threatened to use them if provoked in a speech he delivered at a military parade that featured powerful missiles capable of targeting the country’s rivals, state media reported Tuesday. Kim’s remarks suggest he will continue provocative weapons tests in a pressure campaign aimed at wresting concessions from the United States and its allies. The parade Monday night marked the 90th anniversary of North Korea’s army – the backbone of the Kim family’s authoritarian rule – and was held as the country’s economy is battered by pandemic-related difficulties, punishing U.S.-led sanctions and its own mismanagement.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is spending $44 billion to acquire Twitter with the stated aim of turning it into a haven for “free speech.” There’s just one problem: The social platform has been down this road before, and it didn’t end well.
Donald Remy, deputy secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, visited Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center on Monday amid the continued troubled rollout of the electronic health records system and proposed modernization plans that could alter how care is delivered to veterans in the Inland Northwest. His visit comes a year after VA Secretary Denis McDonough visited Spokane after pausing the rollout of the electronic health records system, which continues to occasionally crash and disrupt patient care.
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