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Billionaire Musk likely to ‘double down’ on tweets after court victory

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Billionaire Musk likely to 'double down' on tweets after court victory

 Elon Musk may become even more emboldened in his Twitter use after a jury cleared the billionaire Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) chief executive over his missive that he had “funding secured” to take his electric car company private.

A San Francisco jury took just two hours to unanimously find the world’s second-richest person not liable for having allegedly tweeted fraudulently in August 2018 about a possible Tesla buyout.

Musk is likely to “double down” on his communication tactics after the verdict, said Minor Myers, a professor of corporate law at the University of Connecticut.

“This is only going to embolden him to act as he sees fit,” Myers said.

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Musk ultimately abandoned his effort to take Tesla private, but told jurors early in the three-week trial that he had believed what he wrote in tweets.
Karen Woody, an associate professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law, said she thought the case was “rock-solid” against Musk and she was shocked at the verdict.

“He pushed the boundaries, and won,” she said. “I expect Elon is going to write anything he wants,”

Musk himself thanked the jury on Twitter — which he bought in October for $44 billion.

“Thank goodness, the wisdom of the people has prevailed,” he wrote.

The Tesla shareholders who sued Musk had sought billions of dollars in damages.

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Musk’s raw tweeting style has made him a hero for many, and burnished the Tesla brand.

He fought hard against accusations that he had not told the truth, with his lawyer, Alex Spiro, telling the jury that the “funding secured” tweet was only technically inaccurate.

“Who cares about bad word choice?” Spiro said during closing arguments.

The tweets led to Musk and Tesla paying $40 million to resolve U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil charges under a consent agreement that Musk has fought unsuccessfully to lift.

“He doesn’t want to play by SEC rules as the SEC understands them, and the SEC doesn’t want to be perceived as backing down,” said Adam Pritchard, a University of Michigan law professor. “I expect them to continue having their difficulties.”

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Still, many analysts said Musk, who has tweeted more than 22,000 times and has about 128 million Twitter followers, has no reason to slow down now.

“Many people, when confronted by a lawsuit of this type would have dialed back tweeting,” said Kim Forrest, chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital Partners. “But that wasn’t the case in the Twitter deal, was it?

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Kretinsky and Layani face off in battle for distressed IT firm Atos

Kretinsky and Layani face off in battle for distressed IT firm Atos

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Kretinsky and Layani face off in battle for distressed IT firm Atos

 Shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust jumped 2.4% on Monday after the exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the price of bitcoin saw its first day of inflow since January.

The move marks a major milestone for GBTC, which has seen $17.46 billion in withdrawals since it converted from a trust to an easily tradable ETF in January, due to the higher fees it charges compared with rivals.

Some of the outflows were also tied to the wave of bankruptcies in the crypto industry, as companies that collapsed in the last two years pulled money out of the fund to repay their creditors.

GBTC saw inflows of $63 million on Friday, according to investment management firm Farside Investors. It currently manages $18.08 billion in assets, according to its website.

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However, its position as the biggest spot bitcoin ETF by assets under management (AUM) has come under threat from BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, which manages $16.91 billion, according to its website.

Grayscale said in March that it would seek approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to spin off a portion of GBTC’s assets into a new, lower-fee Bitcoin Mini Trust. The company has yet to decide on the fees for the Mini Trust.

Spot bitcoin ETFs, which were approved by the SEC in January following a decade of rejection, provide investors with bitcoin exposure without the need to directly hold the cryptocurrency. 

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China to build 100-mile-long hyperloop train line by 2035

China to build 100-mile-long hyperloop train line by 2035

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China to build 100-mile-long hyperloop train line by 2035

China’s top engineering and rail design experts have exciting news: they’re planning to build the country’s very first hyperloop train line!

This futuristic project will connect two bustling cities, Shanghai and Hangzhou, spanning a distance of 150km (about 93 miles).

What makes this project so special? Well, it’s all about speed! The hyperloop train will travel inside a special vacuum tunnel, allowing it to reach mind-blowing speeds of up to 1,000km/h (that’s about 621mph!).

Before choosing the Shanghai-Hangzhou route, the experts carefully evaluated several options.

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They considered factors like economic potential, population density, and existing transport infrastructure. In the end, they decided that connecting Shanghai and Hangzhou would bring the most benefits to the region.

This project is a big deal for China, and it’s being led by some of the country’s top engineers and scientists.

They’re excited about the potential for this hyperloop train to revolutionize transportation and boost economic growth in the area.

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Scientists discover hidden planet buried under Earth’s surface

Scientists discover hidden planet buried under Earth’s surface

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Scientists discover hidden planet buried under Earth's surface

There’s all sorts of intriguing stuff hidden beneath the Earth’s surface, from massive oceans to water leaking directly into the planet’s core – the latest discovery, though, might be the most interesting of all.

New research has pointed to fascinating findings close to the Earth’s core which experts are claiming to be remains from an ancient planet.

The planet, named Theia, could have collided with our planet billions of years ago and evidence of this event is supposedly found within two blobs far beneath the surface.

These blobs have fascinated the scientific community since they were first discovered back in the 1980s. These structures are the size of entire continents and around twice the size of the moon.

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They’re located beneath Africa and the Pacific Ocean, and due to the high iron content of these structures, seismic waves pass through them at a slower rate – leading to them being labelled “large low-velocity provinces” (LLVPs).

A study into these LLVPs was published at the end of 2023 in the journal Nature and featured new findings from Caltech researchers.

Most significantly, the study argues that these structures, which have divided opinion for decades, are actually the remains of Theia, which collided with Earth billions of years ago.

This collision caused the creation of the moon, and the new study argues that the planet was absorbed into the Earth and formed the LLVPs.

“Seismic images of Earth’s interior have revealed two continent-sized anomalies with low seismic velocities, known as the large low-velocity provinces (LLVPs), in the lowermost mantle,” researchers wrote.

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“The LLVPs are often interpreted as intrinsically dense heterogeneities that are compositionally distinct from the surrounding mantle.”

They added: “Here we show that LLVPs may represent buried relics of Theia mantle material (TMM) that was preserved in proto-Earth’s mantle after the Moon-forming giant impact.

“Our canonical giant-impact simulations show that a fraction of Theia’s mantle could have been delivered to proto-Earth’s solid lower mantle.”

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