Archives for September 2021

DEERFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Medical products company Baxter International will acquire medical technology firm Hillrom for $10.5 billion in cash, the companies announced Thursday. Baxter will also absorb Hillrom’s debt and cash, bringing the total value of the deal to $12.4 billion.

Baxter will pay Hillrom shareholders $156 per share, a 26% premium on its closing price on July 27, when speculation about a deal began to spread. Hillrom shares closed at $145.06 on Thursday and were up more than 3% in premarket trading, to $149.75.

Deerfield, Illinois-based Baxter, which offers essential hospital products including dialysis, IV solutions and other therapies and devices, had sales of $11.7 billion in 2020, with projected sales of $12.6 billion this year.

Hillrom, headquartered in Chicago, is focused on medical technology products and services such as smart beds, patient monitoring and diagnostic technologies and advanced surgical equipment. It has sales approaching $3 billion annually.

The deal has been agreed upon by both companies’ boards and is expected to close in early 2022, pending regulatory approval and a vote by Hillrom shareholders.

Baxter shares rose about 1% in premarket trading, to $78.40.

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MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s state communications watchdog warned Apple and Google on Thursday that they could face fines if they fail to remove an app created by allies of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny from their stores.

The agency, Roskomnadzor, warned Apple and Google that their failure to remove Navalny’s app could be interpreted as interference in Russian elections.

Navalny’s app promotes his Smart Voting strategy — a project designed to support candidates who are most likely to defeat those from the Kremlin’s main United Russia party.

Russian opposition supporters, independent media and human rights activists have face increased government pressure in the run-up to the Sept. 19 parliamentary election. Navalny’s allies have linked the crackdown to the Kremlin’s effort to steamroll the opposition and try to preserve a dominant position for United Russia.

In June, a Russian court outlawed Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and a network of his regional offices as extremist organizations, a ruling that barred people associated with the groups from seeking public office and exposed them to lengthy prison terms. Even those who occasionally mention Navalny’s projects could face reprisals for spreading extremist materials.

On Thursday, police in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don detained an activist who posted a Smart Voting sticker on her Instagram account, and a local court quickly handed her a five-day jail sentence on charges of propagating extremist symbols. The activist, Bella Nasibyan, was detained after she took her 3-year-old son to a kindergarten.

Russian authorities also blocked around 50 websites run by his team or supporters for allegedly disseminating extremist group propaganda, and targeted his top associates.

Over the past few weeks, police across Russia visited hundreds of people whose names figured in a leaked database from websites set by Navalny’s allies to push for his release and promote his Smart Voting strategy. The police action appeared to be part of authorities’ efforts to intimidate opposition supporters before the election.

The Sept. 19 vote is widely seen as an important part of President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to cement his rule before Russia’s 2024 presidential election. The 68-year-old Russian leader, who has been in power for more than two decades, pushed through a constitutional reform last year that would potentially allow him to hold onto power until 2036.

The 45-year-old Navalny is Putin’s most determined political foe. He was arrested in January upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin — an accusation rejected by Russian officials.

In February, Navalny was ordered to serve 2½ years in prison for violating the terms of a suspended sentence from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that he dismissed as politically motivated.

Russian authorities have increased pressure on major social media platforms after criticizing them for acting as a tool to help bring tens of thousands of people into the streets to demand Navalny’s release in a wave of protests early this year.

Facebook and Twitter have been fined repeatedly for failing to remove content that Russian authorities deemed unlawful, and Roskomnadzor early this year slowed down the speed at which Twitter can operate.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that Moscow wouldn’t tolerate the IT-giants refusal to abide by the Russian law and remove the banned content.

“Such arrogant and selective behavior and demonstrative ignoring of repeated requests from the relevant Russian agencies regarding the content designated as extremist is particularly unacceptable in the context of the current electoral processes,” Zakharova said. “It would be legitimate to interpret further connivance of U.S. IT-giants to the publication of the banned materials as an interference in domestic affairs of the Russian state.”

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Locast, a service that streamed local TV for free in about three dozen U.S. cities, suspended its operations Thursday after losses in court against the broadcast industry.

The owners of the country’s major broadcast TV networks — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox — had sued Locast in 2019, saying it violated their copyrights, and asked for the service to be shut down.

Locast has held that because it is a nonprofit, it found a legal loophole in copyright law — it can stream the networks of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox without paying them. The companies that own the networks make billions annually in fees from cable companies that pay to include them in TV packages.

But a federal judge in New York ruled on Tuesday that Locast isn’t protected by that exemption from copyright law. He said Locast is effectively charging users and using that money to expand its service, which he said isn’t allowed under the law.

While Locast was free, users who didn’t pay $5 a month would get an ad every 15 minutes asking for a donation.

The digital rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has defended Locast in court, said the judge “interpreted the law in an artificially narrow way” and that Locast was fulfilling Congress’ mission to make sure Americans had access to their local broadcast stations.

Locast has been around for years but flew under the radar as new streaming services emerged that grabbed people’s attention. It had more than 3 million users, EFF said.

“As a nonprofit, Locast was designed from the very beginning to operate in accordance with the strict letter of the law, but in response to the court’s recent rulings, with which we respectfully disagree, we are hereby suspending operations, effective immediately,” a the company said Thursday.

The legal case will continue, including an appeal, to resolve the remaining issues, said EFF attorney Mitch Stoltz. He did not specify what those issues are.

An attorney for the TV networks, Gerson Zweifach, declined to comment on Locast’s shutdown Thursday. On Wednesday, he issued a statement on behalf of ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC saying the court ruling was “a victory for copyright law.” The networks filed for a permanent injunction to stop Locast operations Wednesday night.

Disney owns ABC, ViacomCBS owns CBS, Comcast’s NBCUniversal owns NBC and Fox Corp. owns Fox.

The major broadcast networks are available free with a TV antenna, which you can buy for less than $10.

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IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday ordered a prominent participant in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to return to jail after he was caught accessing the internet to watch false conspiracy theories about the presidential election.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly said that Doug Jensen, 42, of Des Moines, Iowa, had violated the strict conditions that were set when he released Jensen from jail on July 13, including prohibitions on accessing the internet and using a cellphone.

Kelly ordered marshals at the federal courthouse in Des Moines, where Jensen attended Thursday’s hearing, to immediately take him into custody as he awaits trial.

Prosecutors had moved to revoke Jensen’s pretrial release on Aug. 19, days after a federal officer found Jensen in his garage using an iPhone to watch news from Rumble, a streaming platform popular with conservatives.

Jensen acknowledged that he had earlier watched two days of the cyber symposium sponsored by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an ally of former President Donald Trump who used the event to push false theories that the presidential election’s outcome was changed by Chinese hackers.

Kelly noted that he had released Jensen from jail on July 13 after Jensen claimed he had an awakening behind bars and realized the QAnon conspiracy theory to which he adhered was a “pack of lies.” The judge said he put in place the strict conditions, including the internet ban, because Jensen had previously spent years following online conspiracies and acknowledged he had become a “true believer” and “digital soldier.”

Kelly said it was significant that Jensen’s violations were caught during the first unannounced visit to his home by pretrial services officers.

“It’s now clear that he has not experienced a transformation and that he continues to seek out those conspiracy theories that led to his dangerous conduct on Jan. 6,” Kelly said. “I don’t see any reason to believe that he has had the wake-up call that he needs.”

Kelly said it was unlikely that Jensen would be able to follow any other conditions of release barring internet use and that he had lost confidence in Jensen’s wife to serve as his third-party custodian. Prosecutors contended that she had facilitated his violations by leaving the phone on when she left for work.

Jensen’s attorney, Christopher Davis, had asked the court to give his client another chance, likening Jensen’s internet use to an addiction. He argued that Jensen had complied with other release conditions, including staying home on electronic monitoring and avoiding drug use, and that his violations in no way endangered public safety.

He said his client acknowledged the violations but said that it was “Orwellian” for the government to seek to jail a man who was sitting in his garage listening to the news.

Jensen was among the first people to enter the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack, crawling through a broken window. On Thursday, prosecutors cited new video evidence to claim he was also among the last to leave over an hour later, scuffling with officers on his way out.

He told investigators he positioned himself as one of the riot leaders because he was wearing a shirt promoting QAnon and he wanted the theory to get the credit. Jensen was widely photographed during the attack.

Jensen had a knife in his pocket when he led a crowd of people toward Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, who was by himself and had only a baton. The crowd chased Goodman up a flight of stairs toward the Senate chamber as Jensen ignored Goodman’s orders to stop and put his hands up.

Before his July release, Jensen had spent six months in jail after he was arrested Jan. 8. He faces the prospect of years in prison, and lawyers on both sides said Thursday they were unsure if the case could be resolved in a plea or would go to trial.

Jensen is charged with seven counts, including aggravated assault, obstruction of a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder, unlawfully entering a restricted building while carrying a dangerous weapon and disorderly conduct.

Another Jan. 6 defendant who subscribed to the QAnon conspiracy theory has agreed to plead guilty, according to court documents filed Thursday.

Jacob Chansley, the Arizona man who sported face paint, no shirt and a furry hat with horns during the riot, is scheduled to plead guilty on Friday.

The charge to which he intends to plead guilty hasn’t been publicly revealed. He faces felony charges of civil disorder and obstructing an official proceeding, as well as four misdemeanor counts.

Chansley, who called himself “QAnon Shaman,” has since repudiated the QAnon movement and asked that there be no more references to his past affiliations with the movement, his lawyer, Albert Watkins, said Thursday.

____

Associated Press reporter Jacques Billeaud contributed to this report from Phoenix.

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The auto industry has raced ahead on an electric wave with more manufacturers joining the race seemingly every day.

The boating industry has sputtered far behind, bogged down by low-horsepower engines and batteries that take up nearly half the boat.

That’s in the process of changing.

Bolstered by new technology, the electric boats are now faster, have smaller batteries with longer ranges and are still zero emission.

“Electric boats used to be good for just cruising around,” said Alex Mongeon, CEO of Montreal-based Vision Marine Technologies. “Now they have more power and last a long longer.”

Vision Marine has helped lead the charge in more powerful electric boats. Other companies riding the electric motor wave include Swedish luxury boat builder X Shore and Arc, started by former SpaceX employees.

An avid boat racer and electrician by trade, Mongeon and Vision Marine began working in 2015 on developing a more powerful yet still efficient electric outboard motor.

They created the E-Motion 180, the first electric boat engine to use lithium batteries.

The electric outboard boasts 180 horsepower and can reach speeds of 60 mph, a first in electric boating. The E-motion 180, which costs about $5,000 more than a standard internal combustion engine, can be used with any boats that use a 180 HP outboard gas engine, typically between 18 to 26 feet.

The engines can fully charge overnight and all that’s needed is a 220-volt outlet — a boating version of plug and play. Maintenance is far less than ICE engines because there are fewer moving parts.

The electric engines are noiseless, odorless and smokeless, so there’s no more yelling at each other while onboard or leaving a layer of smoke in your wake.

Sales of the E-Motion 180 started in May with delivery expected later this year.

“It is so cool because nobody has gone to this comparable horsepower,” said Randy Truesdale, chief operating officer of SBX Marine, a Florida-based custom boat builder and brokerage company. “You see some of the electric motors, you might get one that says it’s, you know, 50 to 70 horsepower equivalent, but nobody’s done what we’re doing with the new 180.”

Electric boating has been embraced by celebrities like Drake, Robert De Niro and Greta Thunberg, according to Vision Marine. Many tour operators have turned to electric boats, and so have cities for rental and water taxis.

Many waters have been designated marine protected areas — 26% in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — which ban motorized boats. Many allow electric boats because they are cleaner and emit no sound.

“The only sound you’ll hear is the water hitting the hull and people enjoying themselves,” Mongeon said.

And a lot more people have been enjoying themselves on the water during the pandemic.

According to National Marine Manufacturers Association, sales of powerboats were up 12% in 2020 with more than 310,000 new sales, the highest numbers since before the recession of 2008.

Boat rental companies have seen their numbers soar as well, including a 700% growth year-over-year growth for GetMyBoat, the world’s largest boat rental company.

“In the rental cycle, it has become hugely popular because of the great activity for people who don’t necessarily want to buy a boat,” Truesdale said. ”You can kind of relate to what’s going on with COVID and allowing people to get outside. Boats are kind of like the perfect tool for social distancing.”

The new era of electric boats, with the added power and limited environmental impact, are making it even more enjoyable.

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