Musk abandons deal to buy Twitter
Elon Musk announced Friday that he will abandon his tumultuous $44 billion offer to buy Twitter after the company failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts. Twitter immediately fired back, saying it would sue the Tesla CEO to uphold the deal. The likely unraveling of the acquisition was just the latest twist in a saga between the world’s richest man and one of the most influential social media platforms, and it may portend a titanic legal battle ahead. The chair of Twitter’s board, Bret Taylor, tweeted that the board is committed to closing the transaction.
Wisconsin Supreme Court prohibits the use of most drop boxes for voting
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday prohibited the use of most drop boxes for voters returning absentee ballots, giving the state’s Republicans a major victory in their efforts to limit voting access in urban areas. The 4-3 ruling by the court’s conservative majority will take effect in time for Wisconsin’s primary elections next month, although its true impact most likely will not be felt until November. The court adopted a literal interpretation of state law, finding that returning an absentee ballot to a municipal clerk “does not mean nor has it been historically understood to mean delivery to an unattended ballot drop box,” Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote for the majority.
US may be losing fight against monkeypox, scientists say
As epidemics go, the monkeypox outbreak should have been relatively easy to snuff out. The virus does not spread efficiently except through intimate contact, and tests and vaccines were at hand even before the current outbreak. Yet the response in the United States has been sluggish and timid, reminiscent of the early days of the COVID pandemic, experts say, raising troubling questions about the nation’s preparedness for pandemic threats. “Why is it so hard for something that’s even a known pathogen?” asked Anne Rimoin, a public health researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who first warned of monkeypox outbreaks more than a decade ago.
In era of transparency, Arizona law limits filming police
Arizona’s governor has signed a law that restricts how the public can video police at a time when there’s growing pressure around the country for greater law enforcement transparency. Gov. Doug Ducey approved a measure that makes it illegal to knowingly film police officers 8 feet or closer without an officer’s permission. Civil rights and media groups say the law is unconstitutional and simply cannot be applied in real-world scenarios. The bill’s advocates say the law allows for filming while keeping everyone safe. The move comes nearly a year after the U.S. Department of Justice launched a probe into the Phoenix police force. Similar investigations are ongoing in Minneapolis and Louisville.
BA.4 and BA.5 power a surge of known infections in Europe, officials say
The rapidly spreading omicron subvariants known as BA.4 and BA.5 are driving a summertime surge of the coronavirus in Europe, health officials say, after most COVID-19 policies were removed in spring and a more relaxed approach to the pandemic has become the norm during the warmer months. Known cases in Europe rose to 57 cases per 100,000 as of Wednesday from 33 cases per day per 100,000 just two weeks earlier, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. That is the sharpest increase — a rise of about 70% — of any region of the world over the same period.
Russia votes to shut down last UN aid route into Syria
Russia vetoed a measure Friday that would have allowed the last U.N. aid route into Syria to remain open for another year, in a vote that diplomats and critics said endangered the lives of millions of people already suffering after more than a decade of war. Foreign officials and international aid workers had implored Russia to approve a one-year extension for the humanitarian corridor. The U.N. mission, which started in 2014, expires Sunday. But with its veto Friday, Moscow maintained its long-held insistence that the route violated Syrian sovereignty — and that it should be up to President Bashar Assad of Syria to decide how foreign support is distributed.
‘Sopranos’ actor Tony Sirico, ‘Paulie Walnuts,’ dies at 79
The actor who played mobster Paulie Walnuts on “The Sopranos” and other tough-guy roles in movies has died. Tony Sirico’s longtime manager says the 79-year-old actor died Friday at an assisted living facility in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The cause of death wasn’t immediately released. Sirico was born in 1942 in New York City. He told the Los Angeles Times in 1990 that he became interested in acting in prison in the 1970s after he saw a performance by a group of ex-convicts. Among his other film credits are Woody Allen’s “Bullets over Broadway” and “Mighty Aphrodite.” Sirico appeared on TV series including “Miami Vice” and voiced roles on “Family Guy” and “American Dad!”
By wire sources