Business

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Booster Breaks Apart During Landing

CBS News reports: After standing down from the piloted Polaris Dawn launch late Tuesday, SpaceX shifted gears and pressed ahead with plans for back-to-back launches of Starlink internet satellites early Wednesday, one from Florida and the other from California. But the second flight was called off after the first stage used in the Florida launch toppled into the Atlantic Ocean …

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Tucker Carlson’s Cybertruck Gets Stuck In The Mud

Tesla owners site Teslarati reports: Elon Musk sent a Tesla Cybertruck to former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, as detailed in a review of the electric vehicle (EV) from Carlson’s social media channels this week. Carlson released the video with the Cybertruck on his YouTube and X channels on Monday, saying that he had reached out to Musk to see …

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San Francisco Officials Say “Good Riddance” To Musk

The New York Times reports: San Francisco’s long relationship with X is nearly over — and city officials are far from heartbroken. Elon Musk is shuttering his social media company’s headquarters. New headquarters will be set up in Texas. But city officials are not lamenting the exit. X bears little resemblance to the company that San Francisco wooed with a …

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Jack Daniel’s Maker Caves To Anti-Diversity Campaign

Just Drinks reports: Brown-Forman has scrapped its diversity and inclusion policies and ended its participation in an LGBTQ corporate equality index. An email sent out by Brown-Forman’s executive leadership team was posted on X by US conservative activist Robby Starbuck, in which the group said it was making changes to its policies to “account for the ever-changing landscape”. The web …

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Musk’s Lawyers Subpoena Extremism Watchdog Groups

Mother Jones reports: Lawyers representing Elon Musk and X, previously known as Twitter, have quietly begun sending subpoenas to a host of public interest groups, Mother Jones has learned. Most of the targeted organizations have signed open letters to X’s advertisers expressing concerns about the platform’s direction under Musk’s leadership. The groups include the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the …

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Divers Find Body Of Missing British Tech Billionaire

NBC News reports: The body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch was recovered from the wreck of a superyacht that sank off the coast of Sicily, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC Thursday. Rescuers were still searching for Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah, the source said, the last person missing from the luxury boat that went down in what …

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WSJ: Elon Musk’s Twitter Buyout Is Disaster For Banks

The Wall Street Journal reports: The $13 billion that Elon Musk borrowed to buy Twitter has turned into the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-09 financial crisis. The seven banks involved in the deal, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, lent the money to the billionaire’s holding company to take the social-media platform, now named X, private …

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Harley-Davidson Caves To The Cult On Diversity Policies

Bloomberg News reports: Harley-Davidson Inc. dropped several diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives after weeks of sustained pressure from an anti-DEI crusader. The Milwaukee-based company on Monday said that it no longer has minority-owned supplier spending goals, will drop socially-motivated training for employees and make other changes to back away from diversity programs. Harley joins Tractor Supply Co., John Deere & …

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Tech Billionaire Missing After Yacht Sinks Off Sicily

The Guardian reports: The tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch is among those missing after a superyacht with 22 people onboard sank off the coast of Sicily during a violent storm, the Guardian understands. Lynch, 59, known for being the founder of Autonomy Corporation, is understood to be one of four Britons reported missing while his wife, Angela Bacares, has been rescued, …

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Musk: X Will Close Its Brazil Office Over “Censorship”

Reuters reports: Media platform X said on Saturday it would close its operations in Brazil “effective immediately” due to what it called “censorship orders” by Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes. X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, claims Moraes secretly threatened one of the company’s legal representatives in the South American country with arrest if it did not comply with legal …

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Meta Shuts Down Misinformation Tracking Tool

ABC News reports: Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms has shut down CrowdTangle, a tool widely used by researchers, watchdog organizations and journalists to monitor social media posts, notably to track how misinformation spreads on the company’s platforms. Wednesday’s shutdown, which Meta announced earlier this year, has been protested by researchers and nonprofits. In May, dozens of groups, including the …

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Texas Sues GM Over Driving Habits Data Collection

Reuters reports: General Motors has been sued by the state of Texas, which accused the automaker of installing technology on more than 14 million vehicles to collect data about drivers, which it then sold to insurers and other companies without drivers’ consent. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said GM’s data were used to compile “Driving Scores” assessing whether more than …

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WH Launches “Time Is Money” Corporate Crackdown

Via press release from the White House: Today, President Biden and Vice President Harris are launching “Time Is Money,” a new governmentwide effort to crack down on all the ways that corporations—through excessive paperwork, hold times, and general aggravation—add unnecessary headaches and hassles to people’s days and degrade their quality of life. Americans are tired of being played for suckers, …

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Tesla Continues To Lobby For Deals Backed By Dems

Reuters reports: When Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump for president last month, the Tesla founder and chief executive backed a candidate who vows to “drill, baby, drill,” “end the electric vehicle mandate” and reduce subsidies of the sort that helped Tesla become the U.S.’s dominant EV manufacturer. So instrumental have government loans, tax breaks and other EV policies been to …

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REPORT: More Brands To Flee X After Musk’s Lawsuit

British business newspaper City A.M. reports: Elon Musk’s antitrust lawsuit against brands that have boycotted X and his controversial activity on the platform during the recent spate of UK riots are set to exacerbate the long-held misgivings advertisers have with the site, leading industry figures have said. Rather than scare brands into submission, bosses in the media industry told City …

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Delta: CrowdStrike’s Apology Is “Vastly Inadequate”

CNN reports: The war of words over Delta’s massive service meltdown, set off by CrowdStrike’s disastrous software update, has grown ugly. In a letter sent Thursday to CrowdStrike’s attorneys written by Delta’s high-powered lawyer, David Boies, the airline lashed out at the cybersecurity company, which has apologized for introducing a bug that led to a global tech outage. Boies, hired …

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Elon Musk Sues Advertisers For Not Advertising On X

Axios reports: X on Tuesday filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against an advertising industry coalition and its members—including CVS Health, Mars, Orsted and Unilever—alleging the group abused its influence over marketers and ad agencies to discriminate unfairly against X, prompting an ad boycott. GARM was created by members of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) in 2019 to set standards …

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DOJ Wins Massive Antitrust Case Against Google

Reuters reports: Alphabet’s Google broke the law with its monopoly over online searches and related ads, a federal judge ruled on Monday, in the U.S. Justice Department’s first victory against a monopoly in more than 20 years. The decision is a significant win for the Justice Department, which had sued the search engine giant over its control of about 90% …

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Tesla Sued Over Fatal “Full Self-Driving” Mode Crash

Reuters reports: The parents of a motorcyclist who was killed in a 2022 crash involving a Tesla Model 3 on Autopilot in Utah sued the electric carmaker and the vehicle’s driver, claiming that the driver assistant software and other safety features are “defective and inadequate.” Landon Embry, 34, died on the scene after the Model 3 put on Autopilot at …

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Musk Pitches Trump On Deregulation “Commission”

The business site Benzinga reports: Elon Musk said on Friday that he discussed the idea of a ‘government deficiency commission’ with Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump in case the former President reclaims the White House. The CEO also expressed his willingness to be part of it. “I have discussed with Trump the idea of a government deficiency commission,” Musk told …

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