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Netflix was ordered by a federal judge to face a defamation lawsuit by former Manhattan prosecutor Linda Fairstein over her portrayal in a 2019 crime drama about the Central Park Five case, reports Reuters (21 September, Stempel). US District Judge Kevin Castel on Tuesday said Fairstein plausibly alleged that Netflix, director Ava DuVernay, and writer-producer Attica Locke acted with actual malice as to five scenes in "When They See Us." The series dramatized the story of five Black and Hispanic teenagers who spent five to 13 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted in the April 1989 rape of a white jogger in Central Park in New York City. Castel found evidence that in depicting Fairstein as a villain emblematic of broader problems in criminal justice, the defendants "reverse-engineered plot points to attribute actions, responsibilities, and viewpoints to Fairstein that were not hers and are unsupported in defendants' substantial body of research materials." The Manhattan judge said jurors should decide whether there was "clear and convincing evidence that defendants were recklessly indifferent to the truth." Fairstein had been running the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office when the jogger was attacked. Backlash from the series caused Fairstein to lose her publisher, resign under pressure from several boards, and be attacked on social media. The defendants said Fairstein offered no evidence that their portrayal of her was protected by the First Amendment. They also said that the lawsuit threatened filmmakers' ability to dramatize controversial, real-life events when told from "different and often marginalized perspectives."

From "Netflix Can Be Sued by Ex-Central Park Five Prosecutor for Defamation"
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UK interest rates were unexpectedly left unchanged Thursday after the Bank of England said price rises were slowing faster than expected, reports BBC News (21 September, Thomas, Islam). Interest rates were held at 5.25 percent, already their highest for 15 years. It comes after figures on Wednesday revealed an unexpected slowdown in inflation in August.

From "UK Interest Rate Freeze Ends Run of 14 Straight Increases"
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A subsidiary of Barrick Gold lost as much as US$31 million annually at one of its Tanzanian gold mines as a result of organized criminal activities that sometimes involved the local police, reports the Toronto Globe and Mail (21 September, York). An internal report says that the North Mara gold mine in Tanzania was “fully infiltrated” by at least one criminal syndicate that stole millions of dollars in fuel, equipment, and high-grade gold-bearing rock, with the collusion of police. It also warned that there was widespread corruption, fraud, and misappropriation in the mine’s contracts and land compensation payments. The report was cited in a case now under way in the High Court of Justice in London, where Tanzanian villagers are claiming that Barrick co-operated with local police who caused deaths and injuries in the local community.

From "Criminal Syndicate at Barrick Subsidiary’s Mine Was Pocketing up to US$31 Million"
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Rio Tinto Group has halted some work on an iron ore mine in Western Australia after an Indigenous rock shelter was damaged, reports Bloomberg (22 September, Gross). The incident comes three years after the company faced executive exits and public anger over the destruction of the Juukan Gorge caves. Operations were paused last month at the Nammuldi site 150 meters from the cave, after a large rock and scrub tree fell from an overhang above its entrance, Rio said in a statement. The latest incident in the Pilbara region comes after enormous backlash over the company’s actions at the Juukan Gorge ancient Aboriginal site in 2020, which culminated in the departure of both its chief executive officer and chair. In recent years, Rio has also come under pressure to tackle wider issues of company culture, after accusations of sexual harassment, racism, and bullying.

From "Rio Tinto Halts Mine Work as Second Indigenous Site Damaged"
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Microsoft’s £54 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard looks set to be cleared after the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said a revised deal addresses its concerns, reports the UK's Guardian (22 September, Sweney). The CMA moved to block the biggest tech deal in history in April, citing concerns that Microsoft would dominate the nascent cloud gaming market. A revised proposal was submitted that included selling cloud gaming rights outside Europe to the French rival Ubisoft. On Friday, the CMA said that the sale of the rights “substantially addresses previous concerns and opens the door to the deal being cleared."

From "UK Set to Clear Microsoft’s Deal to Buy Activision Blizzard"
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A federal judge in Texas on Thursday rejected a bid by 25 US states to block a Biden administration rule allowing employee retirement plans to consider environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues in investment decisions, reports Reuters (21 September, Wiessner, Whitcomb). US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo declined to block the rule, which took effect January 30, granting a petition by President Joe Biden's administration to dismiss the states' lawsuit claiming the rule will jeopardize millions of Americans' retirement savings. Kacsmaryk rejected the states' claim that the rule violates the federal law governing retirement plans. The rule still requires that financial considerations come first, and does not create "an overarching regulatory bias in favor of ESG strategies," the judge wrote.

From "US Judge Will Not Block Biden Rule on Socially Conscious Investing"
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Two Black ex-employees are accusing TikTok owner ByteDance of retaliating against them after they complained about racial discrimination in the workplace, reports the Washington Post (21 September, Nix). The two filed a complaint against ByteDance on Thursday with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging in their complaint that their direct managers routinely sabotaged their work performance while simultaneously disparaging them with negative stereotypes. But when they formally complained to the company, they allege, the discrimination they experienced only got worse. The complaint, which is seeking class-action status, alleges it was ByteDance’s “standard operating procedure” to “brazenly” retaliate against workers who complain about discrimination.

From "Ex-workers Allege TikTok’s Owner Retaliated After Racism Complaints"
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US energy giant Chevron and workers at two of its large natural-gas operations have agreed on a deal recommended by Australia’s workplace arbiter to end strikes affecting plants that account for roughly seven percent of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply, reports the Wall Street Journal (21 September, Hoyle). The labor dispute at the Gorgon and Wheatstone liquefied-natural-gas facilities in Australia rattled global gas markets in recent weeks, at times jolting prices sharply higher, as representatives of Chevron and local unions struggled to find common ground. On Thursday, a recommendation from Australia’s Fair Work Commission was put to both Chevron and its workers. The oil company said later that day it had accepted the recommendation and, on Friday morning in Australia, Offshore Alliance union representatives said workers had also endorsed it. Brad Gandy, a spokesman for the union coalition, said the recommended deal includes substantial improvements in terms and conditions, including higher pay and improved rosters and job security.

From "Chevron, Workers Back Brokered Deal to End LNG Strikes"
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Rupert Murdoch announced Thursday that he will step down as chair of Fox Corporation and News Corp., reports CNN (21 September, Darcy). Murdoch’s eldest son, Lachlan, who already serves as chief executive of Fox Corporation, will become sole chair of both companies. Fox earlier this year settled a defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems for a historic US$787.5 million. A similar suit from Smartmatic continues to make its way through the court system.

From "Rupert Murdoch Steps Down as Fox and News Corp. Chair"
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Cisco announced Thursday that it is acquiring cybersecurity software company Splunk in a cash deal worth about US$28 billion, reports CNBC (21 September, Goswami), its largest acquisition ever. The deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter of 2024, continues a months-long buying spree to build out Cisco’s cybersecurity offerings. In 2023 alone, Cisco has acquired four companies: Armorblox, a threat detection platform; Oort, which does identity management; and Valtix and Lightspin, both cloud security companies. Cisco’s largest acquisition prior to the Splunk deal was the purchase of Scientific Atlanta for nearly US$7 billion. If Cisco backs out of the current deal or is forced to do so because of regulatory intervention, it will pay Splunk a termination fee of US$1.48 billion, according to a regulatory filing. If Splunk backs out of the deal for any reason, it will pay a US$1 billion breakup fee to Cisco.

From "Cisco Acquires Cybersecurity Company Splunk in Cash Deal Worth US$28 Billion"
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AstraZeneca Plc was sued by a former senior director who claims the drugmaker refused to pay her more than US$125,000 in bonuses because she worked from home last year, reports Bloomberg (21 September, Boyle). Elmarie Bodes, who was AstraZeneca’s senior director of business transformation until January, said in the lawsuit filed in the US state of South Carolina on Tuesday that the company owed her a US$124,443 performance bonus and stock options valued at US$65,000 for her work last year. The criteria for each bonus had been “clearly set out,” the suit said, but early this year the company told Bodes that because she worked entirely from her home in 2022 and did not come into an office at least three days a week, her performance bonus would be cut in half and she would not get the options. Bodes alleged that the company retroactively changed the bonus criteria without giving her “any notice at all,” which she said amounts to breach of contract and a violation of South Carolina law. The allegations show how companies are cracking down to enforce return-to-office policies, shifting from incentives to more punitive measures. Still, those efforts have not moved the needle much on office attendance, which barely crept past 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels last week in 10 big US cities tracked by Kastle Systems.

From "AstraZeneca Sued by Staffer Whose Bonus Was Cut for Working at Home"
Abstract News © 2023 SmithBucklin

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has brought its first antitrust lawsuit under Chair Lina Khan challenging serial acquisitions by private equity firms, reports the Financial Times (21 September, Palma), accusing Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe of a “multiyear anti-competitive scheme” targeting anesthesiology practices. The defendants are Welsh Carson, a New York-based buyout group, and US Anesthesia Partners (USAP), a business it created in 2012 that has acquired more than a dozen anesthesiology practices in Texas. The FTC alleged they carried out a “roll-up scheme, systematically buying up nearly every large anesthesia practice in the state to create a single dominant provider with the power to demand higher prices." The agency also accused the companies of raising anesthesia prices via “price-setting agreements” with independent practices, and said USAP inked a deal that kept out a “significant competitor." “What happened in Texas is happening across the US,” Khan wrote in an opinion piece, for the Financial Times, highlighting private equity firms’ serial acquisitions in nursing homes, apartment buildings, emergency medicine clinics, and opioid treatment centers. The regulator is seeking a permanent injunction for alleged violations including unlawful monopolization and acquisitions, conspiracy to monopolize, unfair methods of competition, and unlawful restraints on trade.

From "FTC Lawsuit Targets Serial Acquisitions by Private Equity"
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France-based Pernod Ricard, the second-largest wine and spirits producer globally, has instructed investment banks JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley to evaluate its Australia and New Zealand business, reports the Australian Financial Review (20 September, Thompson, Sood, Rapaport), which could potentially result in a change of oversight of the unit before the end of the year. Pernod Ricard's Australian portfolio includes the Jacob's Creek, St Hugo, and George Wyndham brands. The portfolio also includes Brancott Estate and Stoneleigh in New Zealand.

From "Global Giant Pernod Ricard Ready to Uncork ANZ Wine Brands"
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Jet engine maker CFM International said on Wednesday up to 96 airliners may be taken out of service for checks as the fallout from a probe into suspected supplies of engine components with false paperwork by a British distributor, reports Reuters (20 September, Tobin, Hepher). In front of a UK court, Matthew Reeve, a lawyer representing CFM and its co-owners General Electric and Safran, said AOG Technics had engaged in a "deliberate, dishonest, and sophisticated scheme to deceive the market with falsified documents on an industrial scale." He told London's High Court that 86 "falsified release certificates" had been found and that, by Monday, the number of engines suspected to have parts with forged documents had risen to 96, compared with a previously published tally of 68. GE, Safran, and CFM are suing London-based AOG Technics Limited and its sole director, Jose Zamora Yrala, after regulators said they were investigating reports that it had supplied parts for widely used CFM56 jet engines supported by forged documents.

From "Engine Maker CFM Says Up to 96 Planes Affected by Fake Parts Probe"
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Venezuela’s state-controlled oil company cannot use US sanctions as an excuse for not paying what it owes on US$348 million in defaulted debt, reports Bloomberg (20 September, Van Voris). A three-judge panel of a federal appeals court in New York on Wednesday upheld lower court rulings that Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) had to make good on a set of promissory notes. The ruling is a win for the debt holders, Houston-based Dresser-Rand Co., a unit of Siemens AG, and Contrarian Capital Management. PDVSA had argued that payment was made impossible by the sanctions against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, which the US government began imposing in 2017. The sanctions restricted Venezuela from exporting oil and from engaging in business and financial transactions in the United States. Separately, PDVSA officials are bracing for the upcoming auction of Citgo Petroleum Corp., Venezuela’s main foreign asset, to satisfy claims tied to the country’s nationalization of foreign business interests more than a decade ago. The parent of the US-based refiner is a PDVSA unit. A US judge ordered the shares of Citgo’s parent put up for sale to pay off at least US$5 billion in judgments over foreign-owned mining, oil, and agricultural assets by former President Hugo Chavez. But some of Venezuela’s creditors accuse PDVSA and Citgo’s parent of seeking to delay or scuttle the auction over the loss of the parent’s official stock certificates.

From "Venezuela’s PDVSA Ordered by US Court to Pay Defaulted Notes"
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A group of prominent novelists, including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, and Elin Hilderbrand, are joining the legal battle against OpenAI over its chatbot technology, reports the New York Times (20 September, Alter, Harris). More than a dozen authors filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on Tuesday, accusing the company of infringing on their copyrights by using their books to train its popular ChatGPT chatbot. The complaint, which was filed along with the Authors Guild, said that OpenAI’s chatbots can now produce “derivative works” that can mimic and summarize the authors’ books, potentially harming the market for authors’ work, and that the writers were neither compensated nor notified by the company. “The success and profitability of OpenAI are predicated on mass copyright infringement without a word of permission from or a nickel of compensation to copyright owners,” the complaint stated. The complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

From "Prominent Authors Sue OpenAI"
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Air Canada said Wednesday that an unauthorized group of people obtained access to its internal system, reports the Toronto Globe and Mail (20 September, Durrani), compromising the personal information of an unknown number of employees working for the country’s largest airline. The flagship carrier would not say when the hack happened or when it first learned about the cybersecurity incident. Companies across Canada – public and private – have been glutted by data breaches and cyberattacks, which the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Communications Security Establishment said in late August will continue to pose a significant threat to national security and economic prosperity over the next two years. Last week, The Weather Network’s website and app was taken down by a hack, forcing its parent company Pelmorex Corp. to call in the RCMP as it probed the incident. Over the past year, grocery giant Empire Co. Ltd., Indigo Books & Music Inc., and many others have been struck by hackers.

From "Air Canada Says Unauthorized Group Breached Employee Data, Hacked Internal System"
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The Wall Street Journal (21 September, Mattioli) reports that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has disclosed new details of its lawsuit against Amazon.com, publicly naming three executives who the agency alleges were a major part of a scheme to enroll customers unwittingly in the company’s Prime program and make it hard for them to cancel. The agency on Wednesday amended a lawsuit it filed earlier this summer. FTC officials say Neil Lindsay, who was a senior vice president overseeing Prime during the period, Russell Grandinetti, the company’s senior vice president of international consumers, and Jamil Ghani, a company vice president who oversees the Prime subscription program, were all aware of the company’s misconduct and opted not to take action. The FTC further alleges that Amazon had a purposefully complicated cancellation system for Prime members that was internally code-named “Iliad” after the ancient Greek poem that is notoriously hard to read.

From "FTC Names Three Amazon Executives in Suit over Prime"
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The US Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a new rule aimed at preventing investment companies from using misleading names to market their funds to investors, reports MarketWatch (20 September, Matthews). The rule was proposed in response to a growing trend of investment funds labeling themselves as environmental, social, or governance (ESG)-focused, suggesting that they invest in companies that meet certain criteria. The rule requires investment advisors to make sure that a fund with a name that implies a focus on companies with a particular set of characteristics has 80 percent of its investments reflect the plain English meaning or established industry use of a term in question. Fund managers will also have to add disclosures to their prospectuses to define the terms in their fund names and the criteria used to determine which investments meet those criteria.

From "SEC Cracks Down on Misleading Fund Names and ‘Greenwashing’"
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French Apple Stores are calling for a strike on Friday and Saturday, when the new iPhone 15 is due to be released, over salary demands, reports Euronews (20 September). "As management has decided to ignore our demands and concerns, despite the fact that they are perfectly legitimate, the four Apple Retail France unions (as well as representatives of the Barcelona and corporate teams) are calling for strike action on September 22 and 23," the CGT Apple Retail union said on X on Wednesday. This call to strike, which is expected to affect the majority of the 20 Apple Stores in France, will also be marked by a demonstration outside the Opéra Apple Store in Paris, one of the Apple brand's flagship store, according to the unions. The strike and demonstrations follow a breakdown in negotiations between French unions and company management, particularly on the context of wage increases in a time of heightened inflation. The unions are demanding a seven percent pay rise, while management is proposing 4.5 percent on average. The launch of the iPhone 15 in France comes at a time when Apple has been forced to update all its iPhone 12s sold on the French market to comply with European standards on electromagnetic radiation levels and lift their marketing ban.

From "French Apple Stores Call for Strike on iPhone 15 Launch Day"
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