Startup valuation, likely to go public at $800bn, will bolster Musk’s wealth to an estimated $677bn, according to Forbes
Elon Musk on Monday became the first person ever worth $600bn, according to Forbes. The news comes on the heels of reports that his SpaceX startup was likely to go public at a valuation of $800bn.
Musk, who was the first to surpass $500bn in net worth in October, owns an estimated 42% stake in SpaceX, which is preparing to go public next year. No other person has hit the $500bn mark.
Government says arrangement will bring in extra £400m on top of more than £15bn of existing annual trade with Korea
The UK has signed a new trade deal with South Korea designed to increase exports of cars, Scottish salmon and Guinness canned in Britain.
Keir Starmer described the deal, which replaces an existing agreement, as “a huge win for British business and working people”. It follows UK deals with India and the US, and the free trade agreement with the EU clinched this year.
Manager’s comments on Saturday have left Chelsea baffled and the Italian in danger
If Enzo Maresca was interested in ending speculation that he has a problem with elements of Chelsea’s hierarchy then he would have done so on Monday . Instead the Italian made no attempt to clear up a situation entirely of his own making.
He rebuffed questions about his cryptic response to beating Everton on Saturday and even reacted with exasperation when he was asked if he regretted saying a lack of support from unspecified people had put him through his “worst 48 hours” since joining the club.
From near-total control to collapse to late Bruno Fernandes and Matheus Cunha goals that seemed to put Manchester United on the right end of a 4-3 festive thriller. But then, yet more horrific defending allowed Eli Junior Kroupi, on as a substitute, to score Bournemouth’s third equaliser and the points were shared.
Fernandes’s strike was a pinpoint curled free-kick and Cunha’s finish came 120 seconds later when Benjamin Sesko’s cross from the left hit Adrien Truffert and diverted into the Brazilian’s path.
Federal officials charged four suspects who they allege were planning to bomb multiple sites across southern California
Federal authorities said Monday that they foiled a plot to bomb multiple sites of two US companies on New Year’s Eve in Southern California after arresting members of an extremist anti-capitalist and anti-government group.
The four suspects were arrested Friday in the Mojave Desert east of Los Angeles as they were rehearsing their plot, Bill Essayli, first assistant US attorney, said during a news conference. Officials showed reporters surveillance aerial footage of the suspects moving a large black object in the desert to a table. Officials said they were able to make the arrests before the suspects assembled a functional explosive device.
Company to scrap several electric models and focus on gas and hybrid as US president pulls support for EVs
Ford said on Monday it will take a $19.5bn writedown and is killing several electric-vehicle models, in the most dramatic example yet of the auto industry’s retreat from battery-powered models in response to the Trump administration’s policies and weakening EV demand.
Ford, based in Dearborn, Michigan, said it will stop making the F-150 Lightning in its electric vehicle form, but will pivot to producing an extended-range electric model, a version of a hybrid vehicle called an Erev, which uses a gas-powered generator to recharge the battery.
The Scotsman is a wry, slightly daft ex-plumber who wears his heart on his sleeve. So why does the Ally Pally crowd enjoy goading him?
By the time Cameron Menzies finally leaves the arena, the blood gushing from the gash on his right hand has trickled its way down the whole hand, down his wrist, part of his forearm and – somehow – up to his face. Smeared in crimson and regret, and already mouthing sheepish apologies to the crowd, he disappears down the steps, pursued by a stern-looking Matt Porter, the chief executive of the Professional Darts Corporation.
The physical scars from Menzies’s encounter with the Alexandra Palace drinks table after his 3-2 defeat against Charlie Manby will be gone within a few weeks. Most probably there will be a fine of some sort. What about the rest? Man loses game of darts, punches table three times in fury, goes to hospital, repents at leisure: simple cause and effect. But of course this is not, and this is never, the whole story. In a way this tale is a kind of parable for elite darts itself, a pub game elevated to the level of a prize-fight, even – very occasionally – a bloodsport.
Proposal is part of new package of security guarantees, backed by the White House, that could mark breakthrough in reaching agreement
Europe is ready to lead a “multinational force” in Ukraine as part of a US proposal for a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, European leaders have said.
In a statement, the leaders of the UK, France, Germany and eight other European countries said that troops from a “coalition of the willing” with US support could “assist in the regeneration of Ukraine’s forces, in securing Ukraine’s skies, and in supporting safer seas, including through operating inside Ukraine”.
Community mourns terror attack in Bondi beach, just months after two killed at site of event in Greater Manchester
Dark rain clouds hung above Heaton Park synagogue in Greater Manchester on Monday evening as worshippers gathered for the second day of Hanukah. It was the nightly menorah candle lighting, typically a festival of joy and celebration, but this year the atmosphere had a sombre tinge.
As well as celebrating the annual festival, members of the Manchester Jewish community are mourning those who were killed in a terrorist attack in Bondi beach, Sydney, where 15 people were shot dead and dozens injured during a religious gathering on Sunday.
Evacuation order comes after a levee failed following a week of heavy rain as NWS issues flash flood warning
Officials in Washington state ordered immediate evacuations in three south Seattle suburbs on Monday after a levee failed following a week of heavy rains.
The evacuation order from King county covered homes and businesses east of the Green River in parts of Kent, Auburn and Tukwila.
Queen’s University and Bell have signed a memorandum of understanding to build an artificial intelligence supercomputing facility, it was announced Monday. Read More
Wes Streeting and BMA urged to seek mediation as hospitals in England struggle amid flu outbreak
Hospitals are cancelling tens of thousands of appointments and operations after resident doctors voted overwhelmingly to reject a last-ditch government offer to avoid this week’s strike.
The health secretary, Wes Streeting, and the British Medical Association (BMA) are being urged to agree to see if an independent mediator can break the deadlock in the almost three-year-old pay and jobs dispute in England.
Etay Mayor, a cybersecurity strategist and professor, shares his journey, insights, and advice on breaking into the diverse and ever-evolving field of cybersecurity.
Sunday’s events in Bondi have stunned Australia and the watching world before a third Test that could be a decisive one for this England team’s legacy
Adelaide may be 1,300km to the west of Bondi but the sense of pain in the city has been no less for the distance. People are in shock here trying to make sense of the horrors that unfolded on Sunday evening – a day that was supposed to be one of celebration for Sydney’s Jewish community.
As the first national public event being staged in Australia since, the third Ashes Test that starts here on Wednesday will play out to a sombre backdrop. The flags at Adelaide Oval will fly at half-mast, a minute’s silence will be observed before the toss, while players are likely to wear black armbands throughout. Inevitably, security for the match has been increased.
It will doubtless be an emotional week for Australia’s players and not least given the number of links to New South Wales within their squad. Nathan Lyon summed up the helplessness many were feeling on Monday, offering thoughts and prayers to those affected before admitting: “Nothing I’m going to say right now is going to make anyone feel any better.”
Pledge to invest billions in UK paused, with Washington citing lack of progress on trade barriers across pond
The US has paused its promised multi-billion-pound investment into British tech over trade disagreements, marking a serious setback in US-UK relations.
The £31bn “tech prosperity deal”, hailed by Keir Starmer as “a generational stepchange in our relationship with the US” when it was announced during Donald Trump’s state visit, has been put on ice by Washington.
Guan Heng, who filmed at sites in China of alleged rights violations against Muslim group, detained by ICE in August
A Chinese man who left his country after filming at sites of alleged human rights violations against Uyghurs now faces the risk of removal from the United States, according to his lawyer and mother.
Guan Heng, 38, underwent an immigration hearing in New York on Monday after being detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in August, his mother said in an interview.
From the US to Hungary to Argentina, rightwing leaders are praising José Antonio Kast’s win in Chile’s presidential race
José Antonio Kast’s victory in Chile’s presidential election has been widely praised by leaders of the global right, with congratulations coming from the US secretary of state Marco Rubio, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Argentina’s Javier Milei and X’s Elon Musk.
The son of a Nazi party member, a father of nine and a staunch Catholic known for opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, Kast won 58.16% of the vote in the runoff – more than 2m votes than the leftist Jeannette Jara, a former labour minister under the current president, Gabriel Boric.
Our investigation of the Free Birth Society points to problems with maternity care and the role played by technology
Despite all the proven advances of modern medicine, some people are drawn to alternative or “natural” cures and practices. Many of these do no harm. As the cancer specialist Prof Chris Pyke noted last year, people undergoing cancer treatment will often try meditation or vitamins as well. When such a change is in addition to, and not instead of, evidence-based treatment, this is usually not a problem. If it reduces distress, it can help.
But the proliferation of online health influencers poses challenges that governments and regulators in many countries have yet to grasp. The Guardian’s investigation into the Free Birth Society (FBS), a business offering membership and advice to expectant mothers, and training for “birth keepers”, has exposed 48 cases of late-term stillbirths or other serious harm involving mothers or birth attendants who appear to be linked to FBS. While the company is based in North Carolina, its reach is international. In the UK, the NHS only recently removed a webpage linking to a charity “factsheet” that recommended FBS materials.
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As EU countries face multiple challenges in a new era, they must fight to preserve the continent’s social model. That means a new economic approach
More than a year after the election that handed Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic party has still not released its postmortem analysis. But last week, an influential progressive lobby group published its own. Kamala Harris’s campaign, its authors argued, failed to connect with core constituencies because it did not focus enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives neglected the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.
As the EU braces for a tumultuous period of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a lesson that needs to be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will soon replicate Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead the polls, backed by large swaths of blue-collar voters. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is adequate to troubling times.
President’s statement blaming acclaimed director’s death on his dislike of him described as ‘disgusting’ and ‘vile’
Celebrities and lawmakers from both of the US’s major political parties are condemning Donald Trump after the president blamed the death of Rob Reiner on what he described as the acclaimed Hollywood director’s dislike of him.
After the apparent killings of Reiner, 78, and his 68-year-old wife, Michele, who were found dead at their home Sunday in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, Trump took to social media to call the director “tortured and struggling”. Trump also claimed Reiner died “due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME”.
Efforts to get PM to spend more time with his MPs appear to be bearing fruit – more so than any macho briefing war
In the corner of one of Westminster’s endless Christmas receptions, a Conservative veteran of the Brexit years admits they are somewhat baffled by the frenzied leadership speculation among the new Labour ranks.
It was easy to forget, they said, given how many Tory leaders the party cycled through – but prime ministers were not that easy to dislodge.
Britain’s fifth-biggest grocer postpones goal by 15 years to 2050, saying revised plan will now cover entire supply chain
Morrisons has become the first UK supermarket chain to postpone its net zero carbon emission targets, delaying them by 15 years to 2050.
Britain’s fifth-biggest grocer said its new targets would cover the entire supply chain, as well as Morrisons stores, including emissions from agriculture and land-use sources.
The liaison super-committee has an unavoidable tri-annual encounter with the prime minister
An afternoon with Keir Starmer isn’t necessarily many people’s idea of fun. A period of time when every minute feels like five.
Sadly, for the select committee chairs who make up the liaison super-committee, they didn’t have the option of saying no. This was one of their unavoidable tri-annual encounters with the prime minister. Still, at least they all had the Xmas recess to look forward to at the end of the week. They would need a long lie down.
Newcastle player has left door open to allegiance switch
Scotland manager may seek to stay on after World Cup
Steve Clarke plans to check on the extent to which Harvey Barnes will commit to playing for Scotland before friendly matches in March. The manager wants to know Barnes is sufficiently keen on swapping international allegiance – he has a single cap for England – before considering the Newcastle player for a potential World Cup berth.
Scotland’s World Cup return after a 28-year wait has put Barnes’s international future back on the agenda. The feeling within the Scottish Football Association has thus far been that Barnes believes he can play for England again, but the player left the door open on a switch during an interview last month.
Blaise Metreweli says world ‘more dangerous and contested now than for decades’ as AI and new technologies emerge
Britain is caught in “a space between peace and war” complicated by the rise of artificial intelligence and other technologies dominated by powerful individuals and corporations, according to the new head of MI6.
Blaise Metreweli, giving her first speech in the job, accused Russia of being insincere about Ukraine peace negotiations but made minimal reference to China as the prime minister, Keir Starmer, seeks to arrange a visit to Beijing.
Britain’s biggest business groups have urged Conservative peers to stop blocking Labour’s workers’ rights bill in the House of Lords to avoid throwing away a compromise deal reached with trade unions.
With the clock ticking before Christmas, six of the country’s biggest employers’ groups warned that failure to pass the legislation before parliament rises on Thursday could put at risk a deal brokered with bosses and union leaders.
Merriam-Webster crowned "slop" its 2025 Word of the Year, reflecting growing public awareness and and fatigue around low-quality, AI-generated content flooding the internet. "It's such an illustrative word," said Greg Barlow, Merriam-Webster's president. "It's part of a transformative technology, AI, and it's something that people have found fascinating, annoying and a little bit ridiculous." The Associated Press reports: "Slop" was first used in the 1700s to mean soft mud, but it evolved more generally to mean something of little value. The definition has since expanded to mean "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence." In other words, "you know, absurd videos, weird advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks real, junky AI-written digital books," Barlow said. "Words like 'ubiquitous,' 'paradigm,' 'albeit,' 'irregardless,' these are always top lookups because they're words that are on the edge of our lexicon," Barlow said. "'Irregardless' is a word in the dictionary for one reason: It's used. It's been used for decades to mean 'regardless.'"
The announcement can be found here.
Ford Motor said the costs come from its decision to make fewer electric vehicles than it had planned and more hybrids that use both gasoline engines and batteries.
Ford has effectively pulled the plug on the all-electric F-150 Lightning, pivoting away from full-size BEV pickups toward hybrids, range-extended EVs (EREVs), and even data-center battery storage. Ars Technica reports: Ford's announcements today can't be said to have come out of the blue. Rumors of the F-150's demise have been circulating for more than a month, and last week SK On ended its joint venture with Ford that was building a pair of EV battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee. We learned then that Ford would keep the Kentucky plant and SK On gets the one in Tennessee, which would focus on the energy storage business instead. Now, we know that something similar will happen at the Kentucky plant -- Ford says it's spending $2 billion to convert the factory to make prismatic lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells.
Those aren't destined for EVs, but they are the preferred cell format for data centers, Ford says. The company says that it will bring the factory online in the next 18 months, reaching an annual output of 20 GWh. Other Ford plants are also being repurposed. With no full-size BEV pickup in the product plans, the assembly plant in Tennessee that was to produce it -- the one near the battery factory that SK On is keeping -- will instead build new gas-powered trucks, although not for another four years. Around that same time, its Ohio assembly plant will begin building new commercial vehicles.
All of this will impact Ford's bottom line, to the tune of $19.5 billion over the next few years, $5.5 billion of which will be in cash. Most of that will hit in the final quarter of 2025, but will extend until 2027, Ford said.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Several dozen people protested on Sunday in the Siberian city of Tomsk against Russia's ban on U.S. children's gaming platform Roblox, a rare show of public dissent as popular irritation over the ban gains some momentum. In wartime Russia, censorship is extensive: Moscow blocks or restricts social media platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and YouTube while distributing its own narrative through a network of social media and Russian media. Russia's communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said on December 3 it had blocked Roblox because it was "rife with inappropriate content that can negatively impact the spiritual and moral development of children."
In Tomsk, 2,900 km (1,800 miles) east of Moscow, several dozen people braved the snow to hold up hand-drawn placards reading "Hands off Roblox" and "Roblox is the victim of the digital Iron Curtain" in Vladimir Vysotsky Park, according to photographs provided by an organizer of the protest. "Bans and blocks are all you are able to do," read one placard. The photographs showed about 25 people standing in a circle in the snow, holding up placards. In Russia, the ban on Roblox has triggered a debate over censorship, child safety in relation to technology and even the effectiveness of censorship in a digitalized world where children can bypass many bans in a few clicks.
A Kansas man who sued Verizon in small claims court after the carrier refused to unlock his iPhone has won his case, scoring a small but meaningful victory against a company that retroactively applied a policy change to deny his unlock request.
Patrick Roach bought a discounted iPhone 16e from Verizon's Straight Talk brand in February 2025, intending to pay for one month of service before switching the device to US Mobile. Under FCC rules dating back to a 2019 waiver, Verizon must unlock phones 60 days after activation on its network. Verizon refused to unlock the phone, citing a new policy implemented on April 1, 2025 requiring "60 days of paid active service."
Roach had purchased his device over a month before that policy took effect. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Henry ruled in October 2025 that applying the changed terms to Roach's earlier purchase violated the Kansas Consumer Protection Act. The court ordered Verizon to refund Roach's $410.40 purchase price plus court costs. Roach had previously rejected a $600 settlement offer because it would have required him to sign a non-disclosure agreement. He estimated spending about 20 hours on the lawsuit but said "it wasn't about" the money.
One of the most water-scarce regions on Earth is now experiencing a dramatic atmospheric shift that's pushing moisture onto Oman's northern coast at rates more than 1.5 times the global average, according to a Washington Post investigation of global atmospheric data [non-paywalled source]. The change has turned extreme rainfall into a recurrent source of catastrophe across the Arabian Peninsula. In the 126 years between 1881 and 2007, just six hurricane-strength storms hit Oman or came within 60 miles of the country. At least four more have made landfall in the past 15 years alone.
Research from Sultan Qaboos University analyzing 8,000 storms across 69 rainfall stations found that half of all rain in Oman falls within the first 90 minutes of a 24-hour storm. These intense bursts quickly overwhelm the desert's ability to absorb water and send flash floods racing through wadis -- normally dry riverbeds where many communities are built. In response, Dubai is constructing an $8 billion underground stormwater network spanning more than 120 miles. Oman has agreements to build 58 new dams and is studying 14 major wadis that funnel to its al-Batinah coastline.
The U.S. Tech Force is aiming to hire about 1,000 top-level technical employees and supervisors to join federal agencies and work on projects related to artificial intelligence and modernization.
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