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Bill Gates on Elon Musk feud and Jeffrey Epstein meetings
Bill Gates used to be the world’s richest person. That title is now held by Elon Musk. The two men, however, don’t get on.
Last week Mr Musk accused Mr Gates of “shorting” Tesla stock – a way of making money by betting that a company will lose value. Mr Musk has also tweeted puerile insults towards Mr Gates on Twitter.
“There’s no need for him to be nice to me,” Mr Gates says.
Mr Musk has argued that shorting Tesla, a company that makes electric cars, undermines Mr Gates’ environmental philanthropy.
Asked specifically about whether he had bet against Tesla, Mr Gates replied: “That has nothing to do with climate change. I have ways of diversifying.”
He pushed back against the idea that shorting Tesla was environmentally damaging.
“The popularity of electric cars will lead to more competition for selling those cars. So there’s a difference between electric cars being adopted, and companies becoming infinitely valuable.”
Mr Musk has recently had a bid to buy Twitter accepted by the company’s board.
Asked what he made of the deal, Mr Gates said: “You know, Elon, I guess it’s possible Twitter could be worse. But it also could be better… So I have a wait and see attitude.”
Mr Gates has a particular interest in social media, not because that’s how he made his billions, but because he has become a focus of conspiracy theories.
He has long been an advocate of vaccines – and has pumped billions into inoculation programmes around the world.
That prominence has made him the subject of bizarre and unfounded claims that he is trying to track people through the jabs. Many of the theories have been promoted on social media platforms, and took off during the pandemic.
“In some ways, you almost have to laugh because it’s so crazy,” he says.
“I mean, do I really want to track people? You know, I spend billions on vaccines, I don’t make money on vaccines, vaccines save lives.”
Mr Gates also said he’d been shouted at by conspiracy theorists on the street.
“Only recently I’ve been out in public, [and] some people yell at me that I’m tracking them. And that, that’s an awful thing.”
Mr Gates and his wife Melinda French Gates announced that they were getting a divorce last year. The couple set up the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – one of the largest charitable organisations in the world – and had been married for 27 years.
“My life is very different. My kids are gone from the house, the last one left for college a year ago. The divorce is very hard. It was a tough year,” he says.
The marriage ended with reports that Mr Gates had had an extra-marital affair. In March Melinda Gates also said that she questioned why he had held meetings with disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no. I made that clear to him”, she told CBS in March.
Asked about the meetings, Mr Gates described talking with Epstein as a “mistake”.
“I made a mistake ever meeting with Jeffrey Epstein. You know, maybe her [Melinda’s] instincts on that were keener than mine.
“Any meeting I had with him could be viewed as almost condoning his evil behaviour. So, that was a mistake.”
Source: bbc
The Member of Parliament for Nsawam Adoagyiri, Frank Annoh Dompreh, has expressed concern over delays in the release of the District Assemblies Common Fund, warning that the situation is stalling development across the country.
On his facebook page, he described as a matter of urgent national importance, the Minority Chief Whip pointed to what he sees as a growing crisis of unpaid contractors, abandoned projects, and halted infrastructure works in many districts.
He noted that several communities are grappling with half completed schools, unfinished health facilities, abandoned markets, deteriorating roads, and stalled sanitation projects.
According to him, many contractors who have executed projects for district assemblies have not been paid, forcing some construction firms to demobilise from sites while workers lose their jobs.
He stressed that the District Assemblies Common Fund is not a discretionary allocation but a constitutional requirement under Article 252 of the 1992 Constitution, intended to support development at the local level.
In his view, years of delayed releases and accumulated arrears have weakened district development financing and disrupted projects meant to improve living conditions in communities.
He further argued that some payments made in recent years were largely the settlement of old debts rather than funding for new or ongoing projects, a situation he believes has affected contractor confidence and local economic activity.
He described the issue as more than a budgetary challenge, characterising it as a development emergency and a governance concern.
He therefore urged the appropriate authorities to pay outstanding DACF arrears, settle contractors who have completed their work, and ensure that transfers to districts are automatic and predictable.
He maintained that decentralisation can only succeed when district assemblies receive adequate and timely funding to carry out development projects.
He emphasised that stalled projects directly affect ordinary citizens, since they rely on such infrastructure for education, healthcare, transportation, sanitation, and economic activities.
He called for renewed attention to grassroots development, insisting that national progress should not be concentrated only in major cities but extended to all communities.
By: Jacob Aggrey
Richard Appiah, the footballer who killed two children and stored part of their bodies in a fridge at Abesim in the Bono Region in 2021 has been handed a lifetime sentence.
This was after a five member panel of judges at the Accra High Court returned a verdict of guilty against the convict.
Appiah, 32, also a draughtsman would spend the rest of his life in prison after he was convicted of murder.
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BY MALIK SULLEMANA
