The Full Belmonte, 10/28/2022
Elon Musk completes Twitter takeover and ‘fires top executives’
The $44bn deal will give world’s richest man control of social media platform with more than 230m users
Kari Paul in San Francisco and Dan MilmoGlobal technology editor
Fri 28 Oct 2022 04.40 EDT
“Elon Musk has completed his $44bn takeover of Twitter, taking control of the company and reportedly firing several top executives, including the chief executive, Parag Agrawal.
The world’s richest man tweeted ‘the bird is freed’, in a reference to Twitter’s corporate logo, just hours before a court-ordered deadline to buy the business expired.
Shortly after taking the helm of Twitter, Musk reportedly ousted several senior figures, including Agrawal; Ned Segal, the chief financial officer; and Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal policy, trust and safety.
Agrawal and Segal were in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters when the deal closed and were escorted out, Reuters reported.
Multiple outlets reported on Thursday evening that Musk had completed the deal, capping a chaotic saga that began when the billionaire first announced his plans to buy the company in April.
The reported firings followed news last week that Musk planned to eliminate nearly 75% of Twitter’s staff in an effort to pay down a debt burden that will have grown substantially since the acquisition, which is part-funded by borrowings of $13bn. Musk later dismissed those reports, telling employees he would not cut such a large portion of the staff.
A sense of confusion hung over the deal on Thursday night, however, with neither Twitter nor Musk immediately confirming the firings. Musk, who had earlier changed his Twitter bio to ‘Chief Twit’, did not mention the dismissals after the news broke.
Twitter now enters a new chapter, with questions hanging over what Musk plans to do with a platform that plays an outsized role in the political and media landscape due to its following among journalists, commentators, celebrities and politicians.
Musk visited the company’s San Francisco headquarters on Wednesday, carrying a sink and meeting staff. He has said he is buying the company ‘to try to help humanity’.
‘The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,’ he said in a tweet earlier on Thursday.
The purchase will give the world’s richest man control of an influential social media platform with more than 230m users.
Musk walked away from a deal to buy the company in July, beginning a months-long standoff that was scheduled to go to court before Musk made a dramatic U-turn and offered to buy the company after all.
Musk became embroiled in a row with the company over the number of spam accounts on its platform, leading him to announce in July that he was walking away from the transaction.
Twitter then sued Musk in Delaware, where the company is incorporated, to demand that he close the deal. After a surprise change of mind by Musk as a court date approached, a Delaware judge then gave both sides until 5pm on 28 October to close the deal.
Throughout the back and forth, Musk regularly clashed with senior figures at Twitter, including Agrawal and Gadde.
Musk is expected to speak to Twitter employees directly on Friday, according to an internal memo cited in several media outlets. Despite internal confusion and low morale tied to fears of redundancies or a dismantling of the company’s culture and operations, Twitter leaders this week have at least outwardly welcomed Musk’s arrival and messaging.” Read more at The Guardian
World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies
Key UN reports published in last two days warn urgent and collective action needed – as oil firms report astronomical profits
by Damian Carrington Environment editor
Thu 27 Oct 2022 13.37 EDT
“The climate crisis has reached a ‘really bleak moment’, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has said, after a slew of major reports laid bare how close the planet is to catastrophe.
Collective action is needed by the world’s nations more now than at any point since the second world war to avoid climate tipping points, Prof Johan Rockström said, but geopolitical tensions are at a high.
He said the world was coming ‘very, very close to irreversible changes … time is really running out very, very fast’.
Emissions must fall by about half by 2030 to meet the internationally agreed target of 1.5C of heating but are still rising, the reports showed – at a time when oil giants are making astronomical amounts of money.
On Thursday, Shell and TotalEnergies both doubled their quarterly profits to about $10bn. Oil and gas giants have enjoyed soaring profits as post-Covid demand jumps and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The sector is expected to amass $4tn in 2022, strengthening calls for heavy windfall taxes to address the cost of living crisis and fund the clean energy transition.
All three of the key UN agencies have produced damning reports in the last two days. The UN environment agency’s report found there was ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’ and that ‘woefully inadequate’ progress on cutting carbon emissions means the only way to limit the worst impacts of the climate crisis is a ‘rapid transformation of societies’.
Current pledges for action by 2030, even if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5C, a level that would condemn the world to catastrophic climate breakdown, according to the UN’s climate agency. Only a handful of countries have ramped up their plans in the last year, despite having promised to do so at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last November.
The UN’s meteorological agency reported that all the main heating gases hit record highs in 2021, with an alarming surge in emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Separately, the IEA’s world energy report offered a glimmer of progress, that CO2 from fossil fuels could peak by 2025 as high energy prices push nations towards clean energy, though it warned that it would not be enough to avoid severe climate impacts.” Read more at The Guardian
Midterm elections
“More than 13.8 million pre-election ballots have been cast in 44 states ahead of the 2022 midterms, according to data from election officials. With several competitive statewide races less than two weeks away, Florida has the largest number of pre-election ballots cast, at more than 1.9 million. Texas, California and Georgia each have also seen more than 1 million ballots cast. Senate control is still up for grabs while conditions are ripe for Republicans to win the House of Representatives. The GOP only needs a net gain of five seats to win the chamber and could get there by picking up seats in districts that former President Trump won in 2020, plus others that shifted closer toward the Republican party in redistricting.” Read more at CNN
Ballot threats across U.S.
Data: FBI. Chart: Axios Visuals
“Safety fears are making it hard to recruit election workers in some states,John Frank and Monica Eng write from Axios Local reports from across the map.
In Colorado, Pennsylvania and other states, officials report that election deniers are signing on as poll watchers, which could create tense situations at polling places.
Why it matters: Efforts to intimidate voters and spread misinformation can erode the public's trust in democracy.
Zoom out: As early voting began earlier this month, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued two warnings about voter intimidation and threats to election workers.
Most of the threats have come in seven states that experienced public disputes, recounts or audits in 2020 — Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Wisconsin, the FBI reports.
What's happening: Election officials are boosting security measures and training poll workers in de-escalation techniques.
In Chicago, officials recruited 400 active and retired law enforcement officers to work as ‘election investigators’ and visit polling places to ‘maintain a secure and orderly election process,’ Max Bever of the Chicago Board of Elections tells Axios.
Minnesota's election chief expanded an existing cybersecurity position to also focus on physical election security.
Georgia's secretary of state created a text-message system for poll workers and other election employees to report threats or safety concerns in real time.
Other jurisdictions — including Colorado and cities like Columbus, Ohio — increased penalties for election tampering, equipment breaches and harassing poll workers.
Reality check: Some local officials and voting advocates fear the response could overwhelm voters — and make elections seem less secure than they are.
What's next: More than 100 lawsuits have already been filed, largely by Republicans, to challenge aspects of the 2022 process, including states' handling of absentee ballots, AP reports.” Read more at Axios
An elementary-school classroom in Nesquehoning, Pa., in 2021. Photo: Matt Slocum/AP
“The average U.S. elementary-school student lost more than half a school year of learning in math — and nearly a quarter of a school year in reading — during the pandemic.
Some district averages slipped by more than double those amounts, or worse, AP reports.
The averages were calculated by Stanford's Sean Reardon and Harvard economist Thomas Kane — using this week's Nation's Report Card, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade scores from 2019 and 2022.” Read more at Axios
Trump's taxes
“An appeals court has cleared the way for the IRS to turn over Donald Trump's tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee. The case is one of several long-running lawsuits where the Democratic-led House is trying to access years of financial records related to Trump, especially his tax returns. ‘We've waited long enough -- we must begin our oversight of the IRS's mandatory presidential audit program as soon as possible,’ the committee chairman, Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Richard Neal, said in a statement, adding that Trump ‘tried to delay the inevitable.’ The Supreme Court could still intervene if Trump appeals.” Read more at CNN
Mortgage rates
“Mortgage rates in the US have topped 7% for the first time since 2002. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.08% in the week ending October 27, up from 6.94% the week before, according to Freddie Mac. A year ago, the 30-year fixed rate stood at 3.14%. Rates have risen almost every week since late August and have more than doubled since the beginning of the year. The rapid rise has been fueled by the Federal Reserve's unprecedented campaign of hiking interest rates in order to tame soaring inflation. Economists say rising rates are leading to stagnation in the housing market as many potential homebuyers are choosing to wait and see where the housing market will end up -- pushing demand and home prices further downward.” Read more at CNN
Republican senator Tom Cotton brags about ignoring Trump impeachment evidence in new book
The Arkansas senator, a Republican presidential hopeful, also suggests president did not know military procedures
“In January 2020, the rightwing Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton said he would vote to acquit Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial because despite senators having ‘heard from 17 witnesses … and received more than 28,000 pages of documents’, Democrats had not presented their case correctly.
According to Cotton, the senators who sat through so much evidence would ‘perform the role intended for us by the founders, of providing the ‘cool and deliberate sense of the community’, as it says in Federalist 63.’
In a new book, however, Cotton boasts that he spent his time refusing to pay attention – pretending to read materials relevant to the president’s trial – but hiding his real reading matter under a fake cover.
He writes: ‘My aides delivered a steady flow of papers and photocopied books, hidden underneath a fancy cover sheet labeled ‘Supplementary Impeachment Materials’, so nosy reporters sitting above us in the Senate gallery couldn’t see what I was reading.’
‘They probably would’ve reported that I wasn’t paying attention to the trial.’
Reporters did report that Republicans were not paying attention. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee named the book she chose to read instead of participating in only the third presidential trial in history: ‘It was Resistance (At All Costs) by Kim Strassel.’
Other Republicans fidgeted or doodled. But reporters noted that Blackburn violated decorum guidelines on relevant reading: “Reading materials should be confined to only those readings which pertain to the matter before the Senate.”
Admitting the same infraction, Cotton – a leading China hawk – says he was reading ‘about the science of coronaviruses, the methods of vaccine development and the history of pandemics’.
He adds: ‘I was paying attention – to the story that mattered most. The outcome of the impeachment trial was a foregone conclusion, and it wouldn’t impact the daily lives of normal Americans.’
Cotton’s book, Only the Strong: Reversing the Left’s Plot to Sabotage American Power, will be published next Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Cotton is now among senators, governors and former members of the Trump administration jostling for position in the developing contest for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Publishing a book is a traditional preparatory step.” Read more at The Guardian
Photo: Yuki Iwamura/AP
“New York Mayor Eric Adams yesterday swore in Laura Kavanagh as fire commissioner at FDNY Engine 33/Ladder 9 in Manhattan — the first woman to hold the job in the department's 157-year history.
FDNY, known as the ‘Bravest,’ is the country's largest fire department, with 17,000 employees and a $2 billion budget.
Kavanagh, 40, has a master's in public administration from Columbia. She had been first deputy commissioner, then acting commissioner, and previously worked at City Hall for Mayor Bill de Blasio.” Read more at Axios
“Starting next week, most companies in New York City will have to include salary ranges in job postings.” Read more at New York Times
Russia’s security service works to subvert Moldova’s pro-Western government
A trove of sensitive materials obtained by Ukrainian intelligence and reviewed by The Washington Post illustrates how Moscow continues to try to manipulate countries in Eastern Europe
“CHISINAU, Moldova — When thousands of protesters gathered last month outside Moldova’s presidential palace calling for the country’s pro-Western leader to step down, the man behind the demonstration — an opposition party leader in exile in Israel — soon received plaudits from Moscow.
One senior Russian politician praised the protest organizer, Ilan Shor, as ‘a worthy long-term partner’ and even offered the Moldovan region led by Shor’s party a cheap Russian gas deal, according to Shor’s press service. Referred to as ‘the young one’ by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the 35-year-old Shor is a leading figure in the Kremlin’s efforts to subvert this former Soviet republic, intelligence documents and interviews with Moldovan, Ukrainian and Western officials show.
The documents — part of a trove of sensitive materials obtained by Ukrainian intelligence and reviewed by The Washington Post — illustrate how Moscow continues to try to manipulate countries in Eastern Europe even as its military campaign in Ukraine falters. The FSB has funneled tens of millions of dollars from some of Russia’s biggest state companies to cultivate a network of Moldovan politicians and reorient the country toward Moscow, the documents and interviews indicate.” Read more at Washington Post
War in Ukraine
Prince Potemkin.Fine Art Images/Heritage Images, via Getty Images
“Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin persuaded Catherine the Great to annex Crimea in 1783. This week, Russian forces stole his bones from a Ukrainian cathedral.” Read more at New York Times
“Vladimir Putin said Russia’s battle was with ‘Western elites,’ apparently trying to win over political conservatives abroad.” Read more at New York Times
“The Biden administration outlined a program meant to keep the weapons it has sent Ukraine off the black market.” Read more at New York Times
October 28, 2022
By Li Yuan
Good morning. Xi Jinping might look triumphant as the most powerful leader of China since Mao. But some Chinese people are daring to criticize his rule.
Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
‘Standing mute’
“As Xi Jinping prepared to take the helm of the Chinese Communist Party a decade ago, many Chinese people were hopeful that he would make their country more open, just and prosperous.
Initially, he cultivated a humble image. At his first news conference as China’s leader, he started his speech with a timid smile and even offered a half apology for keeping journalists waiting. He was photographed waiting in line and paying for his steamed bun lunch at a cheap chain restaurant. Many Chinese people called him ‘Xi Dada,’ or ‘Uncle Xi.’
Today, Xi rules more like a stern authoritarian monarch. At a party congress that ended this past weekend, he secured a norm-breaking third term and stuffed the party’s leadership with loyalists. Some academics believe he has created a totalitarian state.
Now some Chinese people call Xi ‘emperor’ in private. In social media chat groups, where mentioning his name has become a dangerous thing to do, Xi is just ‘he.’
I’ve been a journalist for nearly three decades, mostly covering China, where I was born and raised. As Xi is poised to extend his rule indefinitely, I will explain today what it means for Chinese people and how they are responding.
A surveillance camera in Shanghai.Aly Song/Reuters
How Xi built power
Xi likes to talk about how much he cares about Chinese citizens. In a long speech at the party congress, he mentioned ‘people’ 177 times, possibly only second to the number of times he said ‘party.’ But the people haven’t been faring well under his rule.
Since taking office, Xi has taken control of China’s boisterous social media scene, silenced investigative journalists and sent his critics to jail.
He used an anti-corruption campaign to purge hundreds of senior party officials. He cracked down on the private sector, sending many of China’s top entrepreneurs into early retirement or self-imposed exiles. He sent about a million members of Muslim and other minority groups to re-education camps because of their religious beliefs and waged a brutal crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters.
He built a surveillance state with the state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technologies and numerous cameras. This week, the Dutch authorities said they were investigating reports that Chinese law enforcement agencies illegally operate in the Netherlands to police Chinese citizens overseas.
After Covid began to spread, Xi’s government applied its surveillance mechanisms to the lives of China’s 1.4 billion people in the name of protecting their health.
Even as the threat from Covid has eased, Xi has insisted on the harsh policy known as zero Covid. Under it, the government still keeps tens of millions of people locked down, preventing travel and forcing the public to organize their lives around testing schedules.
A business executive in Shenzhen to whom I spoke called day-to-day life the ‘Chinese roulette.’ You never know when your residential compound will be locked down for one infection. You never know whether you will be allowed to order grocery delivery or left hungry. You never know whether you will be allowed to go to the hospital when you’re sick with illnesses other than Covid. You never know whether you will be sent to a quarantine camp. All in the name of protecting your health.
Rising dissent
Xi has all but silenced nearly all opposition. Some dissenters have been sentenced to long jail terms. Censorship has grown so harsh that people use a Chinese expression, ‘ten thousand horses standing mute,’ to describe the fear of speaking out.
So few dare to criticize Xi publicly that days before the party congress, when a protester unfurled two banners on a highway overpass in central Beijing that denounced Xi as a ‘despotic traitor,’ some hailed him as a hero.
To be sure, many people support Xi’s rule, and others are apathetic about politics, itself a consequence of censorship, indoctrination and terror.
However, the zero Covid policy has prompted consistent, if mostly online, protests. During a two-month-long lockdown this year in Shanghai, a metropolis that is home to 25 million people, residents used social media to share protest texts, videos, songs and posters.
Some young Chinese, who grew up under heavy party indoctrination, are experiencing a quiet political awakening. In the past two weeks, in response to the Beijing protester, they’ve begun using creative ways to spread anti-Xi messages. They graffitied slogans on public toilets. They posted slogans on university campuses all over the world.
I wrote this week about these young protesters, and I interviewed a college student in the southern port city of Guangzhou, who used Apple’s AirDrop feature to send photos of protest messages to fellow subway passengers’ iPhones. He’s so young that when he said his age, my heart ached. (He asked to keep his name and his age private for fear of punishment by the Chinese authorities.) I asked why he risked so much to protest. He said he wanted to end the rule of the Communist Party and make China a democratic country.
I asked him why democracy was important. ‘In a dictatorship, the dictator doesn’t need to answer to anybody,’ he said. ‘If the Chinese have the votes, the government will have to think twice before implementing the zero Covid policy.’” Read more at New York Times
North Korea
“North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula today, increasing the already high tensions in the region, South Korean military officials said. The launch was North Korea's 28th this year, according to a CNN count, and is being viewed by South Korean officials as another ‘serious act of provocation’ that threatens peace and stability on the peninsula. The launch ‘does not pose an immediate threat to US personnel or territory, or to our allies,’ according to a statement from the US Indo-Pacific Command. However, it does spark alarm that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is deliberately showcasing his arsenal. South Korean and US officials have also been warning since May that North Korea may be preparing for a seventh nuclear test -- its first since 2017.” Read more at CNN
“Staying ahead | Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva slightly widened his lead over incumbent Jair Bolsonaro just three days before Brazilians vote in a presidential runoff, according to a Datafolha poll. That is in line with other polls this week that show Bolsonaro’s momentum fading in the wake of campaign gaffes and other incidents.
Lula pledged to combine fiscal and social priorities in a long letter highlighting his main campaign promises.
Telegram and a handful of niche social networks complicate a contentious debate about disinformation ahead of the country’s election.” Read more at Bloomberg
Bolsonaro and Lula. Photographer: Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images
“Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain married into wealth. Here’s a look inside his secretive $800 million fortune.” Read more at New York Times
“Same-sex marriage in Mexico. Same-sex marriage is now recognized in every state in Mexico after policymakers in the state of Tamaulipas—the country’s last holdout—legalized it Wednesday.
‘The whole country shines with a huge rainbow,’ tweeted Arturo Zaldívar, the president of the Supreme Court. ‘Live the dignity and rights of all people. Love is love.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Mexico’s Senate voted to end daylight saving time (meaning more sunlight in the morning, less in the evening).” Read more at New York Times
SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC
“Ravens upend Buccaneers: Tom Brady is two games under .500 for the first time in his career after last night’s 27-22 loss to the Ravens. Baltimore closed the game on a 24-12 run in the second half.” Read more at New York Times
“World Series begins: The Phillies will play the Astros in Houston tonight, the first game in a best-of-seven series. The Athletic explains how much moneyis on the line, and The Times’s Tyler Kepner argues that Philadelphia, seen as the underdog, might actually have an advantage.” Read more at New York Times
“Women’s pro soccer title: The Portland Thorns take on the Kansas City Current tomorrow in a championship match filled with stars and storylines.” Read more at New York Times
“Lives Lived: Lucianne Goldberg, a New York literary agent, advised Linda Tripp to record her conversations with Monica Lewinsky, producing crucial evidence in the investigation that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Goldberg died at 87.” Read more at New York Times
Prince Harry’s memoir, titled ‘Spare,’ to come out Jan. 10
By HILLEL ITALIE
“NEW YORK (AP) — Prince Harry’s memoir, an object of obsessive anticipation worldwide since it was first announced last year, is coming out Jan. 10.
The book will be called ‘Spare’ and is being billed by Penguin Random House as an account told with ‘raw, unflinching honesty’ and filled with ‘insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.’
In a statement released Thursday, Penguin Random House summoned memories of the stunning 1997 death of Prince Harry’s mother, Diana, and the subsequent image of Harry and his brother ‘walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow — and horror.’
‘As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling — and how their lives would play out from that point on,’ the statement reads in part.
‘For Harry, this is his story at last.’
The memoir’s title is an apparent reference to ‘the heir and the spare,’ a phrase often used to describe royal siblings. Harry’s brother, William, is now Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne. When Harry was born, he was right behind William in the line of succession but has since been pushed down. Their father , King Charles III, assumed the throne upon Queen Elizabeth II’s death last month.” Read more at AP News