Month: July 2022

On Monday, the value of public Twitter stock sank at the start of trading, due to billionaire Elon Musk announcing he’s backing out of an agreement to buy the social platform. Shares peaked at $51.70 in April after Twitter’s board agreed to Musk’s buyout offer of $44 million. But by early Monday afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange, shares of Twitter had fallen by about 9.5%, after they declined by about 5% in premarket trading.

Musk announced on Friday that he wanted out of the Twitter deal, which was agreed to in April. However in May, Musk said the deal was on hold while the company determined how many of its daily monetizable users were phony or spam accounts. Musk said that same issue is the reason he’s abandoning the deal. In a letter to Twitter’s top legal officer, Musk said that Twitter officials have “not complied with contractual obligations” to assess the number of phony accounts. An attorney for Musk wrote in the letter: “Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.”  Twitter has rejected Musk’s claim that it has refused to provide information about the phony accounts — and says it will attempt to force Musk to abide by the agreement in court.

On Monday, Musk mocked Twitter in two tweets. The first was a meme showing various facial expressions by Musk laughing at Twitter’s failing to disclose the number of “bot” accounts. The second was a photo of meme-popular actor and martial arts expert Chuck Norris sitting at a chess board with the caption: “Chuckmate.”

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The Biden administration said Monday that hospitals must ensure patients can receive abortions when deemed medically necessary in emergency situations, despite bans in many states on the procedure.  The Department of Health and Human Services said a federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, stipulates that physicians must perform an abortion in an emergency regardless of state law.

In a news release Monday, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said: “Under the law, no matter where you live, women have the right to emergency care — including abortion care. Today, in no uncertain terms, we are reinforcing that we expect providers to continue offering these services, and that federal law preempts state abortion bans when needed for emergency care.”  In a letter to the nation’s health care providers on Monday, Becerra said a federal statute called the ‘Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act’ —  also known as EMTALA — protects providers’ clinical judgment and the actions they take to provide stabilizing treatment to pregnant patients who are under emergency medical conditions, regardless of restrictions in any given state. It specifically requires all patients get appropriate medical screening, examination, stabilizing treatment and facility transfer.  The statute applies to emergency departments and other specific clinical settings. Providers also will not have to wait for a patient’s condition to worsen to be protected.

The Biden administration said examples of emergency medical conditions include, but are not limited to, ectopic pregnancy, and complications of miscarriages. Stabilizing treatment could include abortion. Becerra said that if a state law bans abortion and does not include an exception for the life or health of the pregnant person, that law is preempted by the federal statute. A senior adviser with HHS said in a briefing: “We heard a lot from physicians that we needed to be clearer on these points because people were still too scared to treat people,” and the new guidance is “meant to try to provide that reassurance here on the clinical judgment of these physicians and hospitals.” HHS said it will do everything within its authority to ensure that patients get the care they need.

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