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Elon Musk recently purchased 9.2% of Twitter stock, according to a filing Monday, making him the largest individual shareholder in the company.
News of the purchase sent shares of Twitter (TWTR) soaring 20% in premarket trading. Musk did not disclose what he paid for the shares, but his stake was worth $2.9 billion as of the close of trading Friday, and $3.5 billion after the spike early Monday. Musk's filing did not disclose the purpose of the purchase or any plans for the company. But he has been a high-profile critic of Twitter policies in the past. Last month he said he was giving "serious thought" to creating a new social media platform."Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy," Musk tweeted last month. "What should be done?" Any time an investor buys 5% or more of a company's shares, they must disclose the purchase in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although a stake of less than 10% in a company is considered "passive" in the eyes of Wall Street, it could signal an effort by Musk to take a more active role in how Twitter is run. That is one of the factors prompting other investors to buy shares and drive up the price early Monday."I think he intends to go active and force change at Twitter," said Dan Ives, tech analyst as Wedbush Securities. "This is a shot across the bow at Twitter's board and management team to start discussions."But Ives said it's probably not realistic for Musk or anyone else to try to start building a new, competing platform from scratch. Thus it makes more sense for him to try to change practices at Twitter itself. - CNN Jamal Edwards, British music entrepreneur who launched Ed Sheeran and Jessie J, dies at 312/21/2022 LONDON — Jamal Edwards, a British music entrepreneur who helped launch the careers of artists including Ed Sheeran, Jessie J and Stormzy, has died. He was 31. His mother, broadcaster Brenda Edwards, said Monday that her son died the day before after a sudden illness. She said the family was “completely devastated. He was the center of our world.” Edwards founded the online music channel SBTV as a teenager in 2006. Frustrated that he could not find the music he loved online, he began filming performances by friends in his west London neighborhood. SBTV now has more than 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube and has helped a generation of performers gain national and international attention. “It was a frustration of going to school and everyone talking about ‘How do we get our videos on MTV,’” Edwards later recalled. “YouTube was like a year old. I was like ‘I’ve got a camera for Christmas, I’m going to start filming people and uploading it.’
Actor Adam Deacon said he was “heartbroken.” “Jamal was one of the nicest, most down to earth and humble men I’ve met in this industry. He always gave me time even when no one else would. He was an inspiration and what he achieved in life was truly remarkable.” Rapper and producer Example, whose full name is Elliot Gleave, said: “Can’t believe you’re gone. 31 years old. Can’t find the words right now.” - USA Today
Gas prices in Orange County have reached a record high. The average price of self-serve regular is $4.70 a gallon, beating the previous record set in 2012, CBS Los Angeles reports.
That has given way to a shocking sight: $4.99 a gallon for regular gas at a Chevron station in Costa Mesa — the most expensive price for regular gas in Orange County. John Doidge says he was only there because he only needed a couple of gallons, and it was the closest station to home. "It's all about convenience. I just needed a couple of gallons for the lawnmower, get it here real quick," he said. For that convenience, he paid $25 for just five gallons. The weather is still cool and blustery, but gas prices are already approaching summer highs. In Los Angeles County, the average price of self-serve regular is at $4.72 — tying a record price set in November — while Ventura County prices are right up there with Orange County. In the Inland Empire, gas prices are up to $4.65. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, gas prices increased almost 50% from December 2020 to December 2021. "Today, really expensive," Ariana Garcia said. "I think with like having four kids, we're always driving to practices, and to school... It's just a lot of money that's going to gas." Experts say there are a number of factors pushing gas prices up so early in the year. "We see record oil prices that are contributing to this high price, and also, the local refineries started shipping their summer-blend of gasoline this week, and that always traditionally pushes up prices," Marie Montgomery of the Auto Club said. - CBS News US airlines have canceled more than 1,200 flights Monday as a powerful winter storm packing rain, sleet and snow slammed the East Coast on the holiday weekend and made travel difficult. On Sunday, roughly 3,000 flights were canceled. Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, an American Airlines (AAL) hub, continues to be the hardest hit. More than 400 flights were canceled there Monday and 85 delays were reported according to flight tracking site FlightAware. The airline preemptively canceled 1,100 flights Sunday across its mainline and regional operations after canceling 90 Saturday.
- CNN
Britney Spears has had a rocky relationship with her sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, that's become public in the past year as the "Toxic" singer sought to free herself from her controversial conservatorship. Britney kicked off 2022 by purging a lot of her followers on Instagram, including her famous sister. Now, she only follows about 46 people, including fiance Sam Asghari, Paris Hilton, Noah Cyrus, Will Smith, Billie Eilish, Elton John and Selena Gomez. Jamie Lynn, who has tried to remain cordial with her sister throughout her conservatorship battle in 2021, continues to follow Britney. The move marks the latest passive-aggressive move from Britney regarding both her sister and the rest of her family, who she has blamed publicly on multiple occasions for keeping her under the harmful legal deal until a judge finally terminated it in November. Jamie Lynn’s involvement with the conservatorship came to light in 2019. As revelations of Britney’s mental health treatment arose, it was revealed that Jamie Lynn was named as the trustee in Britney’s SJB Revocable Trust in 2020, which was amended by Britney’s then-co-conservators in 2018, according to legal documents. When Britney made her explosive 2021 court appearance and publicly called for her freedom from the deal for the first time, she also called out her family without naming her sister directly. She also laid out shocking allegations, like being forced to work long hours, being denied the right to remove her IUD and being completely removed from handling her own finances. Days later, Jamie Lynn released a statement after receiving backlash for not publicly supporting the #FreeBritney movement, which sought to end her sister’s conservatorship long before her 24-minute court testimony. In a video posted to her Instagram Stories, Jamie Lynn said that she stayed quiet about the situation because she believed her sister could speak for herself. However, now that she had spoken out, Jamie Lynn wanted the public to know that she supported her sister’s fight and wouldn’t benefit financially one way or the other if the conservatorship was terminated. "Since the day I was born, I've only loved adored and supported my sister. I mean this is my freaking big sister, before any of this bulls-. I don't care if she wants to run away to a rainforest and have zillion babies in the middle of nowhere, or if she wants to come back and dominate the world the way she has done so many times before, because I have nothing to gain or lose either way," she said at the time. "This situation does not affect me either way, because I'm only her sister who's only concerned about her happiness." However, tax documents obtained by Fox News Digital indicate that may not be entirely the case. Meanwhile, Britney took to her own social media in July to call out her sister and others for profiting off her during her conservatorship, whether it be through money or clout. Britney made a vague reference to the people "who never showed up" for her over the past 13 years as she had been dealing with a controlling legal conservatorship. This first post included what many believe was an indirect reference to her sister only speaking out now that she was getting public attention. In a follow-up post, Britney derided Jamie Lynn directly for performing her songs to remixes at awards shows. BRITNEY SPEARS SAYS SHE'S WRITING A BOOK ABOUT A GIRL'S GHOST 'STUCK IN LIMBO BECAUSE OF TRAUMA AND PAIN'"I don't like that my sister showed up at an awards show and performed MY SONGS to remixes !!!!!" Britney wrote in a post that was also critical of her father, Jamie, who controlled her conservatorship at the time. "My so-called support system hurt me deeply !!!! This conservatorship killed my dreams ... so all I have is hope and hope is the only thing in this world that is very hard to kill ... yet people still try !!!!" Britney added. From there on out, the former "Zoey 101" star avoided speaking too directly about her sister’s conservatorship. She noted that she was previously getting death threats over the situation. However, that all changed in October when Jamie Lynn announced that she was releasing a tell-all book about her life titled "Things I Should Have Said." Due out in January, the book promises to discuss things like her sister’s conservatorship, her first pregnancy when she was 16 and her daughter’s near-fatal ATV accident in 2017. BRITNEY SPEARS SLAMS PEOPLE 'WHO NEVER SHOWED UP FOR' HER: 'HOW DARE YOU'"I felt a strong conviction to share my story, but there was a lot of personal work and healing that had to happen before I could share my truth the proper way," the "Zoey 101" alum shared on Instagram. "I’ve spent my whole life believing that I had to pretend to be perfect, even when I wasn’t, so for the first time I am opening up about my own mental health, because this process challenged me to have to be painfully honest with myself, and face a lot of hard things, that I normally would have just glossed right over, like I was taught to," she continued. "I owe it to myself, my younger self, and to my daughters to be an example that you should never edit yourself or your truth to please anyone else," the 30-year-old concluded. She also announced that a portion of her book proceeds will be going to the mental health nonprofit This Is My Brave. However, the nonprofit eventually rejected that deal.
Days later, Britney shared a cheeky post on Instagram in which she seemingly jabbed at her sister for the decision to release a book by coming up with a list of potential titles that insinuated that Jamie Lynn shouldn’t tell these stories. "Psssssss also great news … I’m thinking of releasing a book next year," she revealed, "but I’m having issues coming up with a title so maybe my fans could help !!!!" Spears suggested either calling the book "S--t, I really don’t know" or "I really care what people think." This led many people to believe that she was taking a direct shot at her sister. Now, after months of barbing each other back and forth on social media, it seems that Britney, who is free of her conservatorship, is hoping to simply avoid seeing anything further from her sister on Instagram as well as many others who she believes contributed negativity to her life in 2021. She said as much in her latest Instagram Post following her New Year’s follower purge. "SYMBOLIC of my year this year," the singer wrote over a video of birds being freed from a truck. - Fox News New York (CNN Business)The word "metaverse" is popping up everywhere. Facebook (FB) recently changed its name to Meta Platforms. Nike (NKE) bought a virtual shoe company to help it expand to the metaverse. And other brands like Gucci and Ralph Lauren have been considering the future of fashion with digital personas. With all the attention, it can be difficult for general news consumers to parse through what is a marketing gimmick versus what really matters. It requires journalists to approach the tech industry's new favorite buzzword with an open mind and with nuance, something that the media hasn't always been consistent with in years past, according to Gideon Lichfield, global editorial director of Wired. "Every time the industry goes after a new name for something and tries to pivot, something new inevitably comes out of it. It's just not clear yet what it will be," Lichfield said. "I think one has to be really critical of this tendency and call out what is just marketing and hype, which is a large part of it, whilst remaining open-minded to the fact that something new does emerge."At Wired, Lichfield oversees how the preeminent tech magazine covers these topics and other new tech trends for its website and print magazine. The latest print issue, featuring actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II on the cover, focuses on the future of reality.Lichfield spoke with CNN Business about how tech journalism's evolution, diversity in media and his predictions of next year's biggest tech stories.This interview has been edited and condensed. You wrote in a recent editor's letter that the tech industry is at "an inflection point." What exactly do you mean by that, and where does the media fall into that turn of events?
The tech press is in the middle of covering two massive scandals right now: The Facebook Papers and the Congressional hearings about Facebook, and then there's the Elizabeth Holmes' trial. How do you see these two events being covered? What is the press getting right? What could they improve on?That's an interesting one. I think I actually can talk more about the Facebook one. I don't think I've followed the coverage of the Elizabeth Holmes trial as closely. That's okay. I just think with what you said [the Holmes trial] is a good example of someone who was lauded and changing the world and now she's on trial.What I can say about Elizabeth Holmes is I think that probably the early coverage of her — not talking about what's happening now — there was probably a bit of this tendency, which Wired has been guilty of too in the past, of going, "Oh, wow, here's this person doing this amazing thing, and it could be totally transformative." And either not being able to or not wanting to look a little harder and say, "Well, you know, just how likely is it that this will succeed?" And I think there's a certain style of tech coverage which has been this thing is really cool. It could be amazing, and we're going to completely suspend judgment on how plausible it actually is. I think it behooves us to have that critical lens. On Facebook, the thing that has struck me about it is we all, and Wired included, did a lot of coverage of the Facebook Papers and what came out of them. And that's important, and I think that it probably drives the conversation on Capitol Hill, which ultimately is where this matters. That's where the regulation is going to come out of. But part of me asked: How much does this actually talk to the general public? How much of this stuff are they reading? There was almost too much detail, too many revelations, too many little things. And as with other things in the past like the financial crisis or the health care reform, I think the public can get a certain amount of fatigue. There's all this detail, but what am I actually supposed to just think about this? I recently read a tweet from Sarah Watson, an analyst at Forrester, who wrote, "[T]he media cycle shift toward crypto, web3, metaverse etc. increasingly feels like tech has architected a successful pivot to redirect attention on to the next thing, rather than dealing with what they've already built and broken." Do you agree with that sentiment?When people are talking about the metaverse, they're appropriating a term from this novel that imagines the metaverse as a certain kind of thing and they're trying to bring the idealism or that idea to a very different and very disparate set of experiences. Web3 similarly feels like an attempt to put a new, easy to understand catchy label on a bunch of stuff that is happening. And that was true Web2 as well, and yet, in hindsight, you can say that having that label helped coalesce or crystallize some shifts that were happening on the web and on the internet in industry in general. That did mark a real trend, mark some changes. So here again, I'm trying to inject nuance. I'm saying yes, I agree. It's marketing. It's relabeling. The same problems exist, and the same problems that we have on social media spaces today will carry over into virtual spaces and metaverse spaces. And so one should approach it with a great deal of caution and at the same time open to the question: What new stuff might emerge? So good writing to you is making information easy to distill and nuance and also being very clear to the public?Nuance and clarity and not flooding people with stuff. The media and the tech industries have both suffered from a lack of diversity. The top leadership at Wired — you, the global editorial director, and your deputy Greg Williams — are white men. What effect do you think that has on your coverage?I don't know what effect directly it has on the coverage because the stories that we do on a day-to-day basis are being generated from all across the newsroom and at all levels. It's not like me and Greg are sitting there handing down assignments. What I do think it means though is that we have to absolutely make an even greater effort than we would otherwise to make sure that we're recruiting as diversely as possible and continuing to fill the ranks so that the next generation of Wired leadership can be not white men. And also so that everybody in the newsroom does feel like they can work in an environment where there are no biases, there are no assumptions, there are no things that are affecting the work or leading to exclusionary decisions and making sure that whenever there are important decisions to be taken that there are people in the room who are a mix. Do you keep an ongoing diversity report on your newsroom? Wired was doing this before I arrived. We've done a staff diversity audit, and we've a couple of times taken a month and done a contributor diversity audit. And we've talked about doing the source diversity audit as well. That's more intensive, but that's something that we want to keep on doing periodically and just try to keep track of who's writing for us. Are there any platforms that you want to grow for Wired?There's no one particular platform where I can tell you, "Yeah, this is somewhere that we're going to be." But I just want to have from the ground up honest conversation about let's say TikTok. What would it mean to be authentically Wired on TikTok, not to be a cringey form of Wired, right? Not to do something because it's cool or just because it's an audience grab but because we think this is a genuine way to express what Wired is about. What do you see as the biggest tech stories of 2022? How would you say that the media industry, Wired included, should be covering these stories?I think the crypto and NFT boom is going to continue to be a big one, and the way I want us to cover that is to try to, again, nuance. Sort the wheat from the chaff, sort the reality from the hype, but at least try to forge a path between these really polar opposites of discourse about the industry, which it's either it's all a scam or it's going to completely change the world. There's something in there that I don't know what it is yet that is going to emerge. I've not yet seen a long-term application of crypto that really convinces me that is transformative. But that doesn't mean that's not there, and I want us to keep looking for it. I think that the metaverse conversation will continue and at this point it feels to me it's almost like a terminological land grab. In other words, people are fighting for the definition of what the metaverse is. I don't think we're going to get the answer to that, at least not in the next year. But I think we should continue to cover the companies that are claiming to be building the metaverse and asking the serious questions about what are you actually building and how is it different? And continue to ask the same questions we were asking before which is how is it going to be safe for people? Who's benefiting from it? I think the regulation of Facebook and tech regulation more broadly story in the US is going to continue to be really interesting. I don't know whether it's going to get out of partisan deadlock. And there will be some sort of breakthrough before the midterm elections or whether it will just stay stuck there, but I think that'll really be interesting to watch.
Similarly, by contrast, the regulatory efforts that are going on in Europe. There's actually more happening on tech regulation in Europe and has been for a while than there is in the US and to some extent that's starting to set the agenda, I think, for US companies, and I think an interesting thing to watch. The China-US rivalry over technology and in general, whether it's on AI supremacy or export controls, trade barriers, intellectual property that I think is going to continue holding up and we have to keep covering that really closely.What if anything gets implemented from COP26, very important climate story. The continuing aftermath for the pandemic, both in terms of health, obviously, and how we manage the pandemic and whether or not we get vaccines to the places that need them, but also the continuing readjustment in work, how people work, the relation between employers and employees, the economic impact of people moving to different places, migrating, working remotely. - CNN New York — Kyle Rittenhouse, who was was found not guilty of charges stemming from killing two men and wounding another during the unrest that followed the shooting of a Black man by a white police officer, says in a new interview that he's "not a racist person" and supports the Black Lives Matter movement. "This case has nothing to do with race. It never had anything to do with race. It had to do with the right to self-defense," the 18-year-old tells Fox News host Tucker Carlson in an interview set to air Monday night. Rittenhouse is white, as were the men he shot. "I'm not a racist person. I support the BLM movement, I support peacefully demonstrating," Rittenhouse tells Carlson in excerpts of the interview released by Fox News ahead of its airing. "The jury reached the correct verdict -- self-defense is not illegal," Rittenhouse said, according to Agence France-Presse. "I'm glad that everything went well. ... We made it through the hard part." A spokesman for the Rittenhouse family, David Hancock, told CBS Milwaukee affiliate WDJT-TV Rittenhouse is ready to move on and be a free 18-year-old man. Hancock said Rittenhouse was "dragged through the mud" with lies this past year, adding that he's a caring, empathetic and civic-minded young man. "He's got some things to say and I think ... you're going to be even more surprised by who Kyle actually is, (the) more people get to know him better," Hancock said. Rittenhouse was 17 last year when he traveled 20 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha, Wisconsin, which had been racked with protests in the wake of the Aug. 23 shooting of Jacob Blake. That shooting and the response in Kenosha - protests that turned destructive - became part of the national reckoning over police use of force against Black people following George Floyd's death in Minneapolis the previous May at the hands of police.
Rittenhouse, armed with an AR-style semiautomatic rifle, joined others who said they were intent on protecting private property from potential damage on Aug. 25. During his trial, prosecutors argued that the teenager was a "wannabe soldier" who went looking for trouble that night. Rittenhouse countered that he fired in self-defense after he was attacked and was in fear for his life. The shootings quickly made Rittenhouse a rallying cry for supporters of Second Amendment rights and those angered by the sometimes violent protests seen in some American cities after Floyd's death. Rittenhouse was photographed in a bar before the trial with apparent members of the far-right Proud Boys. Rittenhouse's attorneys have said he is not a white supremacist. A jury last Friday found Rittenhouse not guilty on charges of homicide, attempted homicide and reckless endangering in the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz, now 28. In an interview on the CBS News broadcast "Face the Nation" Sunday, NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson said the trial was a "warning shot" for Black communities that "vigilante justice" can be allowed in this country or "in particular communities." "It's hard for African-Americans to reconcile what we witnessed in that trial. We have far too many individuals sitting in jail for crimes they didn't commit or overcharged for crimes that were committed," Johnson said. He said the "current political environment" and former President Trump's administration "opened the door" for the case to become politicized. - CBS News Poll garnered more than 3.5 million votes; sale would amount to close to $21B US based on Friday's closing Tesla, Inc. CEO Elon Musk should sell about 10 per cent of his company stock, according to 57.9 per cent of people who voted on his Twitter poll asking users of the social media network whether he should offload the stake.
"I was prepared to accept either outcome," Musk said, after the voting ended. The world's richest person tweeted on Saturday that he would offload 10 per cent of his stock if users approved the proposal. Musk has previously said he would have to exercise a large number of stock options in the next three months, which would create a big tax bill. Selling some of his stock could free up funds to pay the taxes. As of June 30, Musk's shareholding in Tesla came to about 170.5 million shares, and selling 10 per cent would amount to close to $21 billion US based on Friday's closing, according to Reuters calculations. The poll garnered more than 3.5 million votes. "Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock," Musk said on Saturday, adding that he does not take cash salary or bonus "from anywhere," and only has stock. U.S. Senate Democrats have unveiled a proposal to tax billionaires' stocks and other tradeable assets to help finance President Joe Biden's social spending agenda and fill a loophole that has allowed them to defer capital gains taxes indefinitely. Musk has criticized the proposal, saying, "Eventually, they run out of other people's money and then they come for you." U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who chairs the Senate's finance committee and floated the tax proposal, said on Saturday: "Whether or not the world's wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn't depend on the results of a Twitter poll." His brother, Kimbal Musk, on Friday sold 88,500 Tesla shares, becoming the latest board member to offload a large number of Tesla stock, which hit record highs. A week ago, Musk said on Twitter that he would sell $6 billion US in Tesla stock and donate it to the United Nations' World Food Programme, provided the organization disclosed more information about how it spent its money. Gary Black, a portfolio manager at The Future Fund who's bullish on Tesla, tweeted that Musk's potential stock sale would lead to "1-2 days of modest selling pressure" but that there would be solid institutional demand to snap up the shares at a discount. Musk has said he did not want to borrow against stock to pay taxes because stock value could go down. He has an option to buy 22.86 million shares at $6.24 US each, which expires on Aug. 13, 2022, according to a Tesla filing. The option exercise could lead to gains of roughly $28 billion US based on Tesla's Friday closing price of $1,222.09 US. In September, Musk said he is likely to pay taxes of over half the gains he would make from exercising options. Last year, he said he relocated from California to Texas, which should lead to a cut to the total tax bill because Texas has no income tax, experts say. "[It] seems crazy to borrow that much to pay taxes, so I have to assume he'd need to liquidate a substantial amount of the shares purchased from the option exercise to pay taxes," said Bryan Springmeyer, a lawyer at San Francisco-based law firm Springmeyer Law. - CBC News The Golden State Warriors look like legitimate title contenders this season. They have the best record in the NBA following a 120-107 win over the Houston Rockets. They have scored the second-most points per game (113.9) and allowed the second-fewest (100.2). Head coach Steve Kerr’s squad has been feasting on the back of dizzying ball movement and throttling defense. The Warriors left the Chase Center with another win Sunday despite running into some foul trouble in the first half. It was an offensive back-and-forth for much of the first half, but a 20-2 Warriors run in the third quarter sealed the victory. Guards Jordan Poole and Steph Curry led the way in scoring, with 45 combined points. Forward Otto Porter Jr. flashed his smooth shooting once again to chip in off the bench as well The Rockets were the first team to shoot better than 30% from three-point range in a game since Oct. 26 when the Oklahoma City Thunder hit 35% of their looks from deep. The Warriors have played five games since then, winning all but one – an overtime loss to the Memphis Grizzlies. The Warriors put up a solid shooting night, hitting 51.8% from the floor and 32.6% from deep. It was the ball movement that stole the show, though, as they assisted 31 baskets as a team Sunday. Here are some player grades from the win. Sporting a new haircut, star guard Steph Curry put up a respectable 20 points on 8-for-16 shooting with four threes. He found himself in foul trouble in the second quarter, but, like the rest of the team, he figured that out in the second half. His plus-16 was the highest among the starting unit as well. He didn’t play in the fourth quarter, likely due to the Warriors’ back-to-back. Overall a solid night for Curry. He has not had to shoulder as much of the scoring load with the rest of the lineup picking up the slack. He was also visibly engaged with teammates when he was on the bench. Forward Draymond Green has been an active participant in the Warriors’ passing game this season, hitting back-door cutters and kicking the ball to open shooters. He led the team in assists Sunday with nine to go alongside eight rebounds and six points. He also chipped in a block and a steal as well.
This type of stat-line is fairly normal for Green, but he also had six turnovers and four fouls on the night too. That’s where his grade suffers. He did, however, make some nice plays, including a full-court dash for a loose ball in the first quarter that got some of his teammates going. - USA TODAY |
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