New York
JetBlue, Spirit ending $3.8B deal to combine after court ruling blocked merger
JetBlue and Spirit Airlines are ending their proposed $3.8 billion combination after a court ruling blocked their merger.
JetBlue said Monday that even though both companies still believe in the benefits of a combination, they felt they were unlikely to meet the required closing conditions before the July 24 deadline and mutually agreed that terminating the deal was the best decision for both.
“We are proud of the work we did with Spirit to lay out a vision to challenge the status quo, but given the hurdles to closing that remain, we decided together that both airlines’ interests are better served by moving forward independently,” JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty said in a statement.
JetBlue will pay Spirit a $69 million termination fee.
The Justice Department sued to block the merger last year, saying it would reduce competition and drive up fares, especially for travelers who depend on low-fare Spirit.
In January, a federal district judge in Boston sided with the government and blocked the deal, saying it violated antitrust law.
The airlines had appealed the ruling. The appeal hearing had been set for June.
New York-based JetBlue had argued that the merger would help it compete more effectively against bigger airlines. But there were continuing losses and other problems at Spirit, which is based in Miramar, Florida. Last week JetBlue had previously warned that it might terminate the agreement.
Shares of JetBlue Airways Corp. rose more than 5% before the market open, while Spirit’s stock slipped more than 13%.
Connecticut
Former MIT researcher pleads guilty to 2021 killing of Yale grad student
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A former researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has pleaded guilty to the 2021 killing of a Yale University graduate student found shot outside his car in Connecticut.
Qinxuan Pan faces 35 years in prison following his guilty plea Thursday in a New Haven court. The 32-year-old will be sentenced April 25.
Pan’s lawyer William Gerace said Friday that it was “prudent to take this reasonable plea bargain” as his client was facing 60 years if convicted.
Prosecutors say that on the morning of Feb. 6, 2021, Pan shot Kevin Jiang multiple times on a street in New Haven, which is home to Yale University. He fled, leaving Jiang lying by his car with gunshot wounds to his head, chest and extremities.
Pan had eluded authorities for three months following the shooting death and was apprehended in Alabama, where officials said he was caught living under a fake name with $19,000 in cash, a passport and several cellphones.
A graduate student at Yale’s School of the Environment, Jiang grew up in Chicago and was an Army veteran.
Thursday’s statement from prosecutors didn’t mention a motive for the killing, but court documents show Pan knew Jiang’s fiancée, Zion Perry, from when they both attended MIT.
But Perry told authorities “they never had a romantic or sexual relationship, they were just friends, but she did get a feeling that he was interested in her during that time.”
Jiang had just left Perry’s apartment after a day of fishing when Pan shot him. Jiang and Perry had been engaged just days earlier.
Maine
Witness implores politicians to drop partisanship to address shootings
LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — An emotional mother described freezing when she heard gunfire and then becoming separated from her daughter, not knowing whether she was alive, during the deadliest shooting in Maine history.
Tammy Asselin also had a message for lawmakers dealing with legislation in the aftermath, telling them to “put down your partisan lines and try to approach this like a parent would with simple common sense.”
“Enough is enough. It truly angers me to know that we are so close to preventing this but we failed,” she said.
Police were aware that the gunman, Army reservist Robert Card, was suffering from deteriorating mental health ahead of the Oct. 25 shootings that killed 18 people in a bowling alley and a bar and restaurant in Lewiston. The commission, established by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, is reviewing the facts surrounding shootings, including the police response.
Victims who spoke at a previous hearing held by the panel last month said authorities had a chance to remove guns from Card before the rampage and did not. Kathleen Walker, whose husband Jason was killed while rushing at Card to try to stop him, said: “The system failed, and we can’t allow this to happen again.”
Asselin was the first of additional victims to speak Monday at the hearing in Lewiston. Her 11-year-old daughter Toni joined her briefly in front of the commission members. “I thought it was important for me to provide the face of a child who was there that evening,” she told the commissioners.
The commission is expected to produce a comprehensive report about the shootings. The purpose of Monday’s meeting is “to hear from victims and others impacted by the shootings,” said Kevin Kelley, a spokesperson for the commission.
Relatives of the 40-year-old Card, of Bowdoin, warned police that he was displaying paranoid behavior and they were concerned about his access to guns. He was hospitalized for two weeks in July after he shoved a fellow reservist and locked himself in a motel room during training. Then, in September, a fellow reservist told an Army superior he was concerned Card was going to “snap and do a mass shooting.”
The commission is scheduled to hold another hearing on Thursday in Augusta to hear from members of the U.S. Army Reserves. The hearing with Army officials will be the seventh held by the commission and is the final hearing currently scheduled.
In previous hearings, law enforcement officials have defended the approach they took with Card in the months before the shootings. Members of the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office testified that the state’s yellow flag law makes it difficult to remove guns from a potentially dangerous person.
Democrats in Maine are looking to make changes to the state’s gun laws in the wake of the shootings. Mills wants to change state law to allow law enforcement to seek a protective custody warrant to take a dangerous person into custody to remove weapons.
Other Democrats in Maine have proposed a 72-hour waiting period for most gun purchases. The proposals will likely give rise to a robust debate in Maine, where gun ownership is higher than most of the Northeast.
JetBlue, Spirit ending $3.8B deal to combine after court ruling blocked merger
JetBlue and Spirit Airlines are ending their proposed $3.8 billion combination after a court ruling blocked their merger.
JetBlue said Monday that even though both companies still believe in the benefits of a combination, they felt they were unlikely to meet the required closing conditions before the July 24 deadline and mutually agreed that terminating the deal was the best decision for both.
“We are proud of the work we did with Spirit to lay out a vision to challenge the status quo, but given the hurdles to closing that remain, we decided together that both airlines’ interests are better served by moving forward independently,” JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty said in a statement.
JetBlue will pay Spirit a $69 million termination fee.
The Justice Department sued to block the merger last year, saying it would reduce competition and drive up fares, especially for travelers who depend on low-fare Spirit.
In January, a federal district judge in Boston sided with the government and blocked the deal, saying it violated antitrust law.
The airlines had appealed the ruling. The appeal hearing had been set for June.
New York-based JetBlue had argued that the merger would help it compete more effectively against bigger airlines. But there were continuing losses and other problems at Spirit, which is based in Miramar, Florida. Last week JetBlue had previously warned that it might terminate the agreement.
Shares of JetBlue Airways Corp. rose more than 5% before the market open, while Spirit’s stock slipped more than 13%.
Connecticut
Former MIT researcher pleads guilty to 2021 killing of Yale grad student
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A former researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has pleaded guilty to the 2021 killing of a Yale University graduate student found shot outside his car in Connecticut.
Qinxuan Pan faces 35 years in prison following his guilty plea Thursday in a New Haven court. The 32-year-old will be sentenced April 25.
Pan’s lawyer William Gerace said Friday that it was “prudent to take this reasonable plea bargain” as his client was facing 60 years if convicted.
Prosecutors say that on the morning of Feb. 6, 2021, Pan shot Kevin Jiang multiple times on a street in New Haven, which is home to Yale University. He fled, leaving Jiang lying by his car with gunshot wounds to his head, chest and extremities.
Pan had eluded authorities for three months following the shooting death and was apprehended in Alabama, where officials said he was caught living under a fake name with $19,000 in cash, a passport and several cellphones.
A graduate student at Yale’s School of the Environment, Jiang grew up in Chicago and was an Army veteran.
Thursday’s statement from prosecutors didn’t mention a motive for the killing, but court documents show Pan knew Jiang’s fiancée, Zion Perry, from when they both attended MIT.
But Perry told authorities “they never had a romantic or sexual relationship, they were just friends, but she did get a feeling that he was interested in her during that time.”
Jiang had just left Perry’s apartment after a day of fishing when Pan shot him. Jiang and Perry had been engaged just days earlier.
Maine
Witness implores politicians to drop partisanship to address shootings
LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — An emotional mother described freezing when she heard gunfire and then becoming separated from her daughter, not knowing whether she was alive, during the deadliest shooting in Maine history.
Tammy Asselin also had a message for lawmakers dealing with legislation in the aftermath, telling them to “put down your partisan lines and try to approach this like a parent would with simple common sense.”
“Enough is enough. It truly angers me to know that we are so close to preventing this but we failed,” she said.
Police were aware that the gunman, Army reservist Robert Card, was suffering from deteriorating mental health ahead of the Oct. 25 shootings that killed 18 people in a bowling alley and a bar and restaurant in Lewiston. The commission, established by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, is reviewing the facts surrounding shootings, including the police response.
Victims who spoke at a previous hearing held by the panel last month said authorities had a chance to remove guns from Card before the rampage and did not. Kathleen Walker, whose husband Jason was killed while rushing at Card to try to stop him, said: “The system failed, and we can’t allow this to happen again.”
Asselin was the first of additional victims to speak Monday at the hearing in Lewiston. Her 11-year-old daughter Toni joined her briefly in front of the commission members. “I thought it was important for me to provide the face of a child who was there that evening,” she told the commissioners.
The commission is expected to produce a comprehensive report about the shootings. The purpose of Monday’s meeting is “to hear from victims and others impacted by the shootings,” said Kevin Kelley, a spokesperson for the commission.
Relatives of the 40-year-old Card, of Bowdoin, warned police that he was displaying paranoid behavior and they were concerned about his access to guns. He was hospitalized for two weeks in July after he shoved a fellow reservist and locked himself in a motel room during training. Then, in September, a fellow reservist told an Army superior he was concerned Card was going to “snap and do a mass shooting.”
The commission is scheduled to hold another hearing on Thursday in Augusta to hear from members of the U.S. Army Reserves. The hearing with Army officials will be the seventh held by the commission and is the final hearing currently scheduled.
In previous hearings, law enforcement officials have defended the approach they took with Card in the months before the shootings. Members of the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office testified that the state’s yellow flag law makes it difficult to remove guns from a potentially dangerous person.
Democrats in Maine are looking to make changes to the state’s gun laws in the wake of the shootings. Mills wants to change state law to allow law enforcement to seek a protective custody warrant to take a dangerous person into custody to remove weapons.
Other Democrats in Maine have proposed a 72-hour waiting period for most gun purchases. The proposals will likely give rise to a robust debate in Maine, where gun ownership is higher than most of the Northeast.
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