Elon Musk reportedly took out a $1bn loan from his company SpaceX the same month that he acquired Twitter, now known as X, according to theWall Street Journal. SpaceX approved the loan – which was secured by some of his stock in the company – in October 2022, according to the Journal. That same month, Mr Musk drew all of it down. The SpaceX founder returned the $1bn – with interest – to the company one month later, the Journal reported. It’s unclear why the richest person in the world now and in October 2022, when he took over the social media giant, took out the loan. He bought the social media company for $44bn, which seemed to contribute to him losing that top slot, until he was renamed the world’s richest person in June 2023. The publication also noted that in November 2022, when he repaid the loan, Mr Musk sold $3.95bn in shares in another one of his companies, Tesla. The following month, he sold another $3.58bn in Tesla stock. That year in total, Mr Musk had sold nearly $23bn worth of Tesla stock since April – fuelling speculation that the funds were likely going toward his social media platform acquisition. This isn’t the first time that Mr Musk has taken out money from one of his ventures to aid another. In 2009, Mr Musk reportedly borrowed $20m from SpaceX to support Tesla. More recently, in 2015 and 2016, SpaceX poured $330m in bonds into his solar panel company SolarCity. Tesla ended up acquiring SolarCity in 2016. SpaceX has recently come under fire, as the Justice Department sued the company last month for alleged hiring discrimination practices. SpaceX’s “discriminatory hiring practices were routine, widespread, and longstanding, and harmed asylees and refugees,” the filing stated. The Independent has reached out to SpaceX for comment. Read More Starship ‘ready to launch’, Elon Musk says Elon Musk calls Burning Man ‘best art on Earth’ amid chaos that saw thousands stranded and one dead Elon Musk vows to sue ADL for calling him antisemitic after he promoted antisemitic campaign on X

OpenAI may have discovered “something dangerous” that caused chaos at the company, Elon Musk has said. Recent days have seen ChatGPT creator OpenAI fire and then re-hire its chief executive, Sam Altman. Many of the circumstances of that decision still remain entirely mysterious, and it is not clear why OpenAI’s board removed Mr Altman. Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI, as part of his response to concerns that artificial intelligence could prove dangerous to humanity. But he has been critical of its recent direction, including its turn towards operating for a profit and no longer open sourcing its work. During the New York Times’s Dealbook conference, Mr Musk said that he had attempted to find out what happened behind the scenes at OpenAI, but had failed to do so. He had reached out to numerous people working at the company, including Ilya Sutskever, the OpenAI chief scientist and board member who is believed to have led the rebellion against Mr Altman, but had not heard anything. But he suggested that the company had found “something dangerous” that had caused Mr Sutskever to be concerned. He said that the most likely scenario was a worrying breakthrough that had led the company to try and avoid the danger. He was asked by journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin whether he meant that he thought something dangerous had been discovered within the company. Mr Musk said that would be his guess. In the same interview, Mr Musk once again criticised OpenAI’s move away from the open source and non-profit principles that it had been founded with. He also suggested that artificial intelligence companies were lying if they claimed their artificial intelligence systems were not trained on people’s data. But he said that any lawsuits over the issue will not be settled before we have a “digital god”, and would therefore be irrelevant. Earlier, he had told advertisers that left the company over antisemitic content to “go f*** yourself”. His profanity-laced remarks followed a moment of contrition in a New York Times DealBook Summit interview, as he first said “I’m sorry” for a tweet that agreed with an anti-Jewish post on X on Nov. 15. Musk has faced a torrent of criticism since he on Nov. 15 agreed with a user who falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people, saying the user who referenced the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory was speaking “the actual truth.” On Wednesday Musk said he had “handed a loaded gun” to detractors, describing his post as possibly the worst he had made during a history of messages that included many “foolish” ones. The Tesla CEO bristled at the idea that he was antisemitic and said that advertisers who left X, formerly known as Twitter, should not think they could blackmail him, saying “fuck you” numerous times. At one point he added the words “Hey Bob,” an apparent reference to Robert Iger, chief executive of Walt Disney, which pulled ads on X. The “Great Replacement” theory holds that Jewish people and leftists are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations with non-white immigrants that will lead to a “white genocide.” Musk‘s post drew condemnation from the White House for what it called an “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.” Following the post, major U.S. companies including Walt Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and NBCUniversal parent Comcast suspended their ads on X. A report from liberal watchdog group Media Matters precipitated the advertiser exit, which said it found ads next to posts that supported Nazism. The platform filed a lawsuit last week against Media Matters for defamation. Additional reporting by Reuters Read More Elon Musk publicly tells advertisers to ‘go f*** yourselves’ Elon Musk mocked for trying to resurrect QAnon Pizzagate conspiracy Elon Musk set to meet Netanyahu and hostage families in Israel Elon Musk weighs in on Dublin riots claiming country’s PM ‘hates the Irish people’ Elon Musk’s antisemitic comments have pushed X advertisers over the edge Democrats accuse Elon Musk and X of profiting from Hamas propaganda

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YouTube has stopped Russell Brand making money on its platform because of the rape and sexual assault allegations made against him. The Google-owned company said it has suspended the monetisation of the 48-year-old’s channel because he was “violating” its “creator responsibility policy”. The BBC has also announced it was removing some content from its iPlayer and Sounds apps which “now falls below public expectations”. An episode of QI and a Joe Wicks podcast, both featuring Brand as a guest, have been removed, the PA news agency understands. It comes as the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee chairwoman Dame Caroline Dinenage has written to the BBC, Channel 4 and TikTok to request for further details on what actions they are taking in response to the allegations and to GB News in relation to their coverage of the claims. Brand’s YouTube account, which has 6.6 million subscribers, has been suspended from YouTube’s Partner account “following serious allegations against the creator”, meaning the channel is no longer able to make money from advertising on the platform. In a statement, YouTube said the decision applied to all channels that may be “owned or operated” by Brand, adding: “If a creator’s off-platform behaviour harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community.” The news comes after the remaining shows of Brand’s Bipolarisation tour were postponed and the Metropolitan Police said they had received a report of an alleged sexual assault in the wake of media allegations about the comedian and actor. A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC does not ban or remove content when it is a matter of public record, unless we have justification for doing so. “There is limited content featuring Russell Brand on iPlayer and Sounds. We’ve reviewed that content and made a considered decision to remove some of it, having assessed that it now falls below public expectations.” Dame Caroline has said: “This weekend we have seen some very serious and disturbing accusations about Russell Brand’s behaviour and we understand that the police are now looking into some of these allegations. “As a first step, our committee has decided that we will today write to media outlets, including the BBC and Channel 4, to understand the actions they are taking as we consider some of the issues around these allegations.” In separate letters to Channel 4 chief executive Alex Mahon and BBC director-general Tim Davie, the committee chairwoman asked for a timescale and regular updates on their internal investigation. The letters also requested updates on the investigation being conducted by Banijay UK, which bought Endemol, the company commissioned by Channel 4 to produce the Big Brother spin-off shows Brand hosted, into his behaviour while he was working on their programmes. She added: “We urge both the BBC and Channel 4 to do everything possible not only to ensure that employees, contributors and suppliers feel safe at work, but also create an environment whereby people can speak out when procedures are breached.” Meanwhile, TikTok’s director of Government relations, Theo Bertram, was asked whether Brand could monetise his posts on the video sharing platform, where he has 2.3 million followers. Dame Caroline also asked “what the platform is doing to ensure that creators are not able to use the platform to undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate and potentially illegal behaviour”. Brand still has a presence on video platform Rumble, where his channel has 1.4 million followers and he hosts a weekly live show at 5pm BST, but there was no new episode on Monday. His most recent video on Rumble is the short clip from Friday when he denied the allegations against him, which were published the following day. His Rumble channel description reads: “Everybody knows that the old ideas won’t help us. Religion is dead. Capitalism is dead. Communism is dead. Where will the answers of the next century lie? Particularly, when we’re facing a mental health epidemic and ecological meltdown.” He also has a dedicated subscribers’ area on the online community platform Locals, where members can sign up for a minimum 60 US dollars (£48) a year – or enter a higher amount if they wish to donate more – in order to access special bonus content from Brand, as well as the opportunity to interact with him directly. Brand has been accused of rape, assault and emotional abuse between 2006 and 2013, when he was at the height of his fame and working for the BBC, Channel 4 and starring in Hollywood films, following a joint investigation by The Times, Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches. He has strongly denied the allegations, which also include claims of controlling, abusive and predatory behaviour. His YouTube channel includes coverage of news stories, including alleged misinformation surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic and being an outspoken sceptic of the vaccine. Last year, one of his videos was taken down on YouTube over the site’s policy on Covid-19 disinformation, which prompted Brand to move his channel to Rumble. On Tuesday, The Times reported that several other women have since come forward with fresh claims about Brand. One woman, using the fake name Lisa, told the paper the comedian had sung about Soham killer Ian Huntley during a consensual sexual encounter in 2008. Another woman, known as Esme, told The Times that Brand had been threatening and verbally abusive towards her when she refused to have sex with him. In a now deleted YouTube video, Brand can be heard joking about raping a woman during a recording of Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast in 2013. Before the first allegations were published, Brand posted a video on Friday saying he has been “promiscuous” but that all of his relationships have been “consensual”.

A new carbon offsets registry focused on Asia launched Tuesday, seeking to tap into the world’s biggest market

A woman has gone viral on TikTok after another passenger asked her to move seats on a flight so she could be closer to her child. Sabra, a pharmacist and content creator based in Seattle, posted a short clip from a recent flight she took where she flew from the Pacific Northwest to Paris. In the 6-second video posted to Sabra's TikTok, she films herself in her first class seat with the text overlay reading: "POV: Flight agent asks me if I want to give up my 1A seat so a child sits with their family." In the popular audio used in the TikTok you hear the phrase "girl, f**k them kids and f**k you too". Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The TikTok has been viewed over 9 million times, and has over 800,000 likes. @lifewithdrsabra That’s a no from me dawg ? would you have given up your seat? Also they ended up finding a solution so no, i am not a terrible human being. Also the child was like 13. In the caption of the video, Sabra asked her viewers if they would have given up their seat, but many agreed with Sabra. "Good for you! If they wanted their kid next to them they should've booked adjacent seats," one user commented. Even parents were agreeing with Sabra with one mum commenting "as a parent that's up to me to make sure my family sit together not at the expense of someone else, I would never dare ask someone to move." "Nope, cause, as a mom, it's a parents responsibility to plan ahead. Just travelled to Europe for 1.5 moths with my toddler and no one had to move," added another. One user suggested that passengers do it deliberately: "I wonder if some families actually on purpose buy the cheapest tickets, to plan to ask someone for their seat 'I got kids, pls move'". Sabra also added that the family "ended up finding a solution so no, I am not a terrible human being. Also the child was like 13." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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