Technology

In a (perhaps not so shocking) turn of events, the Walt Disney Company has reentered its tug-of-war with Comcast over the acquisition of Foxfilm and TV divisions with a new $71.3 billion bid today. This bid is not only $18.9 billion higher than itsoriginal bid in Decemberbut it has also changed its terms, which had originally offered only stock, to offer a 50/50 split between a cash and stock payout. Importantly, this also is $6.3 billion more than Comcastall-cash offer earlier this month.

This new bid puts Disney back on firm footing in its battle to acquire Foxfilm and television assets, including Twentieth Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures, FX Productions, National Geographic Partners and a majority stake in Hulu. But, if we&ve learned anything from these updates, itthat nothing should be set in stone just yet.

In case you&re not caught up on the twists and turns of this acquisition, herewhat you missed:

In December, Disney bid to buy Foxfilm and television assets — excludingFox News Channel, Fox Business Network and a few others that will branch off to form the &New Fox& channel — for an all-stock offer of $52.4 billion. According to Disneyrelease in December this was a &definitive agreement& between the companies, but that was shaken up this summer by an offer from Comcast.

In May, Comcast announced that it was considering a &superior& all-cash bid on the Fox assets and made good on that statement last weekwith a $65 billion offer.

Today, that scale tips once more in Disneyfavor. In response to the news, Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, told Variety &We remain convinced that the combination of 21CFiconic assets, brands and franchises with Disneywill create one of the greatest, most innovative companies in the world.&

However, despite this praise, Foxboard has stated that it retains the rights to weigh competing bids. So buckle-up, it looks like this ride isn&t over yet.

The race to develop autonomous and electric vehicles could be a race to the bottom for the automotive industry — at least in the near-term.

A new global study by consulting firm AlixPartners paints an ominous forecast for automakers in the next few years, a toxic cocktail of big spending and lots of competition mixed with softening sales in some markets and an unwillingness of consumers to fork over money for the tech. AlixPartners& Global Automotive Outlook is based onan analysis of data from public and proprietary sources and two online consumer surveys of Americans age 18 and older possessing driverlicenses.

Last year, automakers spent $226 million — a 47 percent increase from 2012 — on electrification and autonomous vehicle technology. And AlixPartners predicts companies will spend $255 billion in R-D and capital expenditures globally by 2023 on electric vehicles. Some 207 electric models are set to hit the market by 2022.

Thatgood news for prospective EV consumers. But AlixPartners predictsmany of those impending EVs will be unprofitable due to currently high systems costs, low volumes and intense competition. For instance, automakers will likely offer high incentives to buy EVs, which would depress used-vehicle residual values and allow the spiral of lower new-vehicle sales to continue.

The situation is just as tenuous on the AV front. Some 55 percent of the 175 mergers and acquisition deals in the past two years have been related to electric and autonomous vehicles, with another pileup in AVs coming.

&A pile-up of epic proportions awaits this industry as hundreds of players are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on electric and autonomous technologies as they rush to stake a claim on the biggest change to hit this industry in a hundred years,& saidJohn Hoffecker, global vice chairman at AlixPartners, adding that &billions will be lost by many.&

An additional $61 billion has been earmarked for autonomous-vehicle technologies, according to the study. However, a separate survey conducted by AlixPartners found consumers are only willing to pay $2,300 for autonomy, compared with the industry costs of around $22,900 to provide that technology in a vehicle. Thata 10-fold misalignment on cost.

Of course, there is evidence that consumers, such as Tesla fans, are willing to pay more than $2,300 for a system far short of fully autonomous. An enhanced version of TeslaAutopilot feature, which promises to match traffic speeds, keep within a lane, change lanes and exit the freeway, costs $5,000. For another $3,000, Tesla sells &full self-driving& packages for even more automation sometime in the future. This feature doesn&t yet exist for public use, although customers can — and have — purchased it in advance.

Meanwhile, theAlixPartners study predicts weakening vehicles sales. The studyforecasts that the global auto market will grow at an annual rate of 2.4 percent through 2025, lagging expected worldwide GDP growth of 3.3 percent. The U.S. market will continue its cyclical downturn this year, absorbing 16.8 million units, down from 17.2 million in 2017, the study predicts. U.S. sales will hit a trough of around 15.1 million in 2020. Autonomous ride-hailing fleets will start cutting into sales by 2030, the study forecasts.

Amid the chaos and lost billions, there are some rosier outlooks in theAlixPartners study. Full battery-electric vehicles will reach about 20 percent of the U.S. market, about 30 percent of the European market and about 35 percent of the Chinese market by 2030, the study predicts. A separate AlixPartners& consumer survey found 22.5 percent of Americans are &likely& to purchase a plug-in electric vehicle as their next car.And autonomous vehicles will account for 3 million in sales in the U.S. by 2030.

President Trump has signed an executive order to reverse a practice recently enacted by his own administration that resulted in the separation of children from their families at the border.

The language of the executive order, titled &Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation,& points blame at Congress, echoing Trumpprevious statements demanding that this issue be resolved through legislation, although it was not implemented through legislation.

The meat of the order:

Section 1. Policy. It is the policy of this Administration to rigorously enforce our immigration laws. Under our laws, the only legal way for an alien to enter this country is at a designated port of entry at an appropriate time. When an alien enters or attempts to enter the country anywhere else, that alien has committed at least the crime of improper entry and is subject to a fine or imprisonment under section 1325(a) of title 8, United States Code. This Administration will initiate proceedings to enforce this and other criminal provisions of the INA until and unless Congress directs otherwise. It is also the policy of this Administration to maintain family unity, including by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources. It is unfortunate that Congressfailure to act and court orders have put the Administration in the position of separating alien families to effectively enforce the law.

The executive order proposes a &temporary detention policy& that would allow the Department of Homeland Security to detain families attempting to enter the United States at the southern border &during the pendency of any criminal improper entry or immigration proceedings involving their members.&

That portion of the order suggests that DHS would indefinitely detain a family together while any of its members await prosecution and potential deportation, a policy that looks likely to violate an existing court decision,Flores v. Reno. Because that legal precedent forbids the indefinite detainment of children at the border, the administration is likely gearing up for a clash in the courts.

Through the executive order, the president makes plain his plan to challenge the decision, known as the Flores agreement:

The Attorney General shall promptly file a request with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to modify the Settlement Agreement in Flores v. Sessions, CV 85-4544 (&Flores settlement&), in a manner that would permit the Secretary, under present resource constraints, to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.

As controversy around the southern border erupted in recent days, many major tech companies weighed in with vocal opposition to the Trump administrationrecent practice of separating adults who enter the U.S. illegally from the children they bring with them. MicrosoftSatya Nadella also denounced the policy, though the company is facing both internal and external criticism over its previously announced intentions to supply deep learning and facial recognition software to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through a lucrative federal contract.