SAN FRANCISCO: Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk have agreed to pay a total of $40 million and make a series of concessions to settle a government lawsuit alleging Musk duped investors with misleading statements about a proposed buyout of the company.
The settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission allows Musk to remain CEO of the electric car company but requires him to relinquish his role as chairman for at least three years.
Tesla must hire an independent chairman to oversee the company, something that should please a number of shareholders who have criticized Tesla’s board for being too beholden to Musk.
The deal was announced Saturday, just two days after SEC filed its case seeking to oust Musk as CEO.
Musk, who has an estimated $20 billion fortune, and Tesla, a company that ended June with $2.2 billion in cash, each are paying $20 million to resolve the case, which stemmed from a tweet Musk sent on Aug. 7 indicating he had the financing in place to take Tesla private at a price of $420 per share.
“A reckless tweet cost a lot of money — the $20-million tweet,” said Michelle Krebs, executive analyst at Autotrader.
The deal could remove one cloud that hangs over Tesla. Investors fretted about the company’s ability to cope without Musk, a charismatic entrepreneur whose penchant for coming up with revolutionary ideas has drawn comparisons to one of Silicon Valley’s most revered visionaries, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Tesla’s stock plummeted 14 percent Friday after the SEC filed its lawsuit, erasing more than $7 billion in shareholder wealth. Many analysts predicted the shares were bound to fall even further if Musk had been forced to step down. Tesla’s stock has dropped 30 percent since Aug. 7, closing Friday at $264.77.
The steep downturn in Tesla’s market value may have influenced Musk to have an apparent change of heart and negotiate a settlement. Musk had rejected a similar settlement offer before the SEC sued Thursday, maintaining he had done nothing wrong when he posted a tweet declaring that he had secured the financing to lead a buyout of Tesla.
The SEC alleged Musk wasn’t close to locking up the estimated $25 billion to $50 billion needed to pull off the buyout.
Musk and Tesla reached their settlement without admitting to or denying the SEC’s allegations.
The resolution “is in the best interests of our markets and our investors, including the shareholders of Tesla,” SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said in a statement.
A Tesla spokeswoman said the company and Musk had no comment Saturday.
Besides paying a fine and stripping Musk of his chairman’s title, Tesla also must appoint two more directors who have no ties to the company or its management. Musk will be allowed to remain on the board.
The company also must clamp down on Musk’s communications with investors, a requirement that might make its colorful CEO’s Twitter posts slightly less interesting.
“Considering the drastic punishment the SEC had announced, Musk and Tesla got lucky,” said Krebs, the Autotrader analyst. “Musk at least remains at the helm of the company, and adding a couple of board members is a good thing.”
The SEC also got what it wanted by bringing the combative Musk down a notch and taking steps to tone down his off-the-cuff remarks while forcing Tesla to expand its board to counterbalance its CEO’s power, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. Besides being CEO, Musk owns a roughly 20 percent stake in Tesla.
“Maybe this will make Musk stop acting so crazy and fly right,” Tobias said.
Besides tweeting about a deal that the SEC alleged he didn’t have money to pay for, Musk had been engaging in other erratic behavior that had been raising questions about whether he should remain CEO.
Musk had raised hackles by ridiculing stock market analysts for posing fairly standard questions about Tesla’s shaky finances, and calling a diver who helped rescue 12 boys on a Thai soccer team from a flooded cave a pedophile, triggering a defamation lawsuit. He was also recently caught on a widely circulated video apparently smoking marijuana , a legal drug in Tesla’s home state of California.
The erratic behavior has convinced more analysts that Tesla needs to find a replacement for Musk, but the SEC settlement will allow the company to do so on its own timetable, if it decides to hire a new leader.
Tesla is also under mounting pressure to overcome its past manufacturing problems and produce enough vehicles to become consistently profitable after years of huge losses.
A gauge of the company’s progress should come within the next few days when Tesla is expected to release its vehicle production numbers for the July-September period.
Musk has pledged Tesla would manufacture an average of 7,000 vehicles per week, enough to turn a profit.
Tesla needs to turn the financial corner because it has $1.3 billion in debt coming due during the next six months. If it keeps burning through its cash, Tesla will likely have to raise more money to pay its bills — something that analysts say will be easier to do without any lingering doubt who will be running the company.
Musk out as Tesla chair, remains CEO in $40M SEC settlement
Musk out as Tesla chair, remains CEO in $40M SEC settlement

- The settlement allows Musk to remain CEO of the electric car company but requires him to relinquish his role as chairman for at least three years
- The deal was announced Saturday, just two days after SEC filed its case seeking to oust Musk as CEO
More than 17 million people in Yemen are going hungry, including over 1 million children, UN says

- Number of children with acute malnutrition could surge to 1.2 million early next year, says humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher
- Plummeting global funding for humanitarian aid in Yemen has resulted in drastic reductions or cuts in food, he said
UNITED NATIONS: More than 17 million people in conflict-torn Yemen are going hungry, including over a million children under the age of 5 who are suffering from “life-threatening acute malnutrition,” the United Nations humanitarian chief said Wednesday.
Tom Fletcher told the UN Security Council that the food security crisis in the Arab world’s poorest country, which is beset by civil war, has been accelerating since late 2023.
The number of people going hungry could climb to over 18 million by September, he warned, and the number of children with acute malnutrition could surge to 1.2 million early next year, “leaving many at risk of permanent physical and cognitive damage.”
According to experts who produce the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority that ranks the severity of hunger, more than 17,000 Yemenis are in the three worst categories of food insecurity — crisis stage or worse.
Fletcher said the UN hasn’t seen the current level of deprivation since before a UN-brokered truce in early 2022. He noted that it is unfolding as global funding for humanitarian aid is plummeting, which means reductions or cuts in food. According to the UN, as of mid-May, the UN’s $2.5 billion humanitarian appeal for Yemen this year had received just $222 million, just 9 percent.
Yemen has been embroiled in civil war since 2014, when Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital of Sanaa, forcing the internationally recognized government into exile in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition intervened months later and has been battling the rebels since 2015 to try and restore the government.
The war has devastated Yemen, created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, and turned into a stalemated proxy conflict. More than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, have been killed.
Hans Grundberg, the UN special envoy for Yemen, told the council in a video briefing that two Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea this week – the first in over seven months – and Israeli airstrikes on the capital and key ports are escalating the conflict.
The Houthis have vowed to keep targeting vessels in the key waterway until the war in Gaza ends.
Grundberg said freedom of navigation in the Red Sea must be safeguarded and stressed that “Yemen must not be drawn deeper into regional crises that threaten to unravel the already extremely fragile situation in the country.”
“The stakes for Yemen are simply too high,” he said. “Yemen’s future depends on our collective resolve to shield it from further suffering and to give its people the hope and dignity they so deeply deserve.”
Grundberg warned that a military solution to the civil war “remains a dangerous illusion that risks deepening Yemen’s suffering.”
Negotiations offer the best hope to address the complex conflict, he said, and the longer it is drawn out “there is a risk that divisions could deepen further.”
Grundberg said both sides must signal a willingness to explore peaceful avenues — and an important signal would be the release of all conflict-related detainees. The parties have agreed to an all-for-all release, he said, but the process has stagnated for over a year.
Houses made from rice: Kyrgyzstan’s eco-friendly revolution

KYZYL-KIYA, Kyrgyzstan : It may look like an ordinary building site but Akmatbek Uraimov’s new house in Kyrgyzstan is being built with blocks of rice.
The eco-friendly alternative to conventional construction materials is booming in the Central Asian country, which is vulnerable to global warming and grapples with water shortages.
Before selecting the unorthodox material, Uraimov had researched other options, but concluded that the relatively cheap blocks made from rice husks were his best option.
“In terms of insulation, cost, as well as for builders, it turned out to be convenient,” said Uraimov, who lives in the village of Kyzyl-Kiya in southern Kyrgyzstan.
“People didn’t know about it. Now they see it, they are interested, they call,” he told AFP.
Nursultan Taabaldyev is one of the pioneers of the technology in Central Asia hailed as an environmentally friendly alternative to water-intensive concrete.
In a workshop in his home region of Batken, rice dust was billowing into the air from the husks, the rough outer shell of rice which is normally thrown away or burned.
Workers with protective masks over their faces were compressing the bricks before rushing to dry them, and helping clients load the finished blocks onto trucks.
They are “made of 60 percent rice husks. The rest is clay, cement and a chemical-free glue,” Taabaldyev told AFP.
When dry, they are as strong as cement thanks to silica naturally present inside the husks.
“This idea came to me as a child, while doing carpentry with my father,” said Taabaldyev.
The 27-year-old has already built “300 houses” in five years — first with sawdust, then with rice.
When he started, there was little robust research into the technology.
That is starting to change.
Several initial studies from various countries have highlighted the potential economic and environmental benefits of using rice blocks in construction.
Crucially, they require less cement, which is responsible for approximately eight percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to 2023 figures from the World Economic Forum.
In her village in a mountainous and arid region, Ykhval Boriyeva has also opted for rice blocks, praising their insulating qualities.
Her house remains “warm in winter and cool in spring” thanks to its low thermal conductivity.
“We save on coal. The walls retain heat and coolness well,” she said.
The material is also well within reach, with the Batken region producing a third of Kyrgyzstan’s rice crop.
“Rice waste is thrown into the fields, slowly burns, harms the environment, and is not used as fertilizer. So we decided to recycle it,” Taabaldyev said.
The problem of dealing with rice waste is even more acute in large rice producers like India.
There “31.4 million tons of rice husks fill landfills and cause environmental problems,” according to a study late last year published by Springer Nature.
“Farmers are happy for us to remove rice waste because its accumulation creates a fire risk” in barns if ventilation is poor, said Taabaldyev.
But as for the fire hazard to buildings made of rice, a regional official from Kyrgyzstan’s emergency situations ministry said there was “no particular danger.”
Farmer Abdimamat Saparov is another who has welcomed Taabaldyev’s innovative approach, pointing at the mounds of rice waste.
“After harvesting and drying the rice, about 40 percent of waste remains, which we have no way of processing,” said Saparov.
Such abundance makes the blocks cheaper than ordinary building bricks — another crucial factor in southern Kyrgyzstan, where the average monthly salary is around $230.
Cement is more expensive in Kyrgyzstan than anywhere else in Central Asia and the government is mulling adding it to a list of socially sensitive products, alongside bread and oil, that would allow it to dampen surging prices.
Having proved the concept in the mountainous region, Taabaldyev dreams of industrialising production, expanding internationally and eyeing up even more potential materials.
“I want to go to Kazakhstan to make bricks from crushed reed and straw,” he said.
Pogacar plays down yellow jersey after Evenepoel wins Tour time trial

- Pogacar: The most important (jersey) is yellow, and the most important time to have it is on the Champs-Elysees at the finish line
- It was Evenepoel’s second stage win on the Tour de France, having triumphed in the time trial in Gevrey-Chambertin last year on his debut in the Grande Boucle
CAEN, France: Three-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar played down the importance of taking over the yellow jersey after Belgian rider Remco Evenepoel stormed his way to an impressive victory in the fifth-stage time trial on Wednesday.
Pogacar, who started the day in second place on the same time as leader Mathieu van der Poel, produced one of his best time trials on the 33km route around Caen to finish just 16 seconds behind the world and Olympic champion to leave Van der Poel and fellow challenger Jonas Vingegaard struggling in his wake.
The Slovenian, who now holds a 42sec lead over Evenepoel with Vingegaard over a minute behind, is the first rider since Eddie Merckx in the 1970s to hold all three of the main jerseys — the general classification, points and king of the mountains.
“I’m super happy with how I rode today, to be 16 seconds behind the world champion, the Olympic champion, the best time triallist in the world right now,” Pogacar said after the stage.
“It’s a very good day and I’m happy, but I’m just happy this day is over and we can keep the ball rolling in this Tour de France.
“The most important (jersey) is yellow, and the most important time to have it is on the Champs-Elysees at the finish line.
“Now, it’s not that important. It feels good, but the important thing is to have it in Paris.”
Evenepoel completed the course in 36min 42sec at a blistering average speed of 54 km/h. Italian Edoardo Affini finished third, 33sec behind.
It was Evenepoel’s second stage win on the Tour de France, having triumphed in the time trial in Gevrey-Chambertin last year on his debut in the Grande Boucle.
“I knew I had a good chance but, of course, the legs still have to be there and everything has to go to plan,” said Evenepoel whose Soudal Quick-Step teammate Tim Merlier won stage three two days ago.
“In the end I think it was pretty good. I didn’t really feel like I could go any faster, so I think in general I’m happy with the result.
“It’s a second stage win for our team, it’s super nice.
“As for me, I’ve taken a step toward the podium but there’s still a long way to go.”
Two-time winner Vingegaard, who began the day just 8sec behind Van der Poel, had a poor day as the Dane could only finish 13th in the stage — 1min 21sec behind Evenepoel — to slip to 1min 13sec behind Pogacar in the new standings.
He drops to fourth overall with local rider Kevin Vauquelin moving up to third after a hugely impressive ride that saw him finish fifth on the day.
“I’m over the moon, really,” said an emotional Vauquelin.
“I think I can only experience this once in my life. To see everyone looking at me, cheering me on, it’s incredible.
“For a 24-year-old just starting out in the professional world, it’s just incredible.”
Dutchman Van der Poel also struggled to maintain the pace, coming in 18th, 1min 44sec behind the winner, dropping him down to sixth overall.
Evenepoel was the nailed-on favorite to win the stage given his astonishing record in time trials.
The Flemish rider, who has been wearing a golden helmet since his Olympic double, is virtually invincible in this exercise.
He has won the last six time trial stages in which he has taken part, and nine out of 12 since the start of 2024. This was his 64th career victory, of which 21 have come in time trials.
Evenepoel was also impressed by the performance of Pogacar who was a distant third to the Belgian and Vingegaard in the time trial in the recent Criterium du Dauphine.
“Compared to the Dauphine, he took a big step forward. He showed that he’s in great form and that he’s the man to beat in this Tour.”
Thursday serves up the second longest stage of this year’s Tour with 3,500 meters of elevation over a 201.5km route through Normandy which starts in Vauquelin’s home town of Bayeux and ends with a short, steep climb to the finish in Vire Normandie.
UK, France to enable ‘co-ordinated’ nuclear deterrent

- Western Europe's two nuclear powers agree to “refresh” their defense ties
- Vow to jointly respond to any “extreme threat to Europe”
LONDON: The UK and France will declare that the two nations’ nuclear deterrents, while independent, can be co-ordinated and that they will jointly respond to any “extreme threat to Europe,” both countries said Wednesday.
The declaration, to be signed Thursday, will state that the respective deterrents of both countries remain under national control “but can be co-ordinated, and that there is no extreme threat to Europe that would not prompt a response by both nations,” the UK’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the French presidency said in an overnight statement.
French President Emmanuel Macron will sign the agreement Thursday as he wraps up his three-day state visit to the UK with a bilateral summit, where the allies will “reboot” defense ties with a focus on joint missile development and nuclear co-operation.
France’s leader and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer will co-host the London summit, with the two sides also expected to discuss maintaining support for Ukraine and curbing undocumented cross-Channel immigration.
Ahead of the gathering, which follows two days of varied events spanning pomp and politics, trade and culture, France and Britain announced their “defense relationship” will be “refreshed.”
It will see London and Paris order more Storm Shadow cruise missiles — long-range, air-launched weapons jointly developed by the two countries and called SCALP by the French — while stepping up work on a replacement system.
The missiles have been shipped to Ukraine in significant numbers in recent years to help Kyiv in its war with Russia.
The new partnerships herald a new “Entente Industrielle” making “defense an engine for growth,” said the MoD.
“As close partners and NATO allies, the UK and France have a deep history of defense collaboration and today’s agreements take our partnership to the next level,” Starmer said in the statement.
Starmer and Macron will also on Thursday dial into a meeting of the so-called “coalition of the willing” on Ukraine, a group of countries backing the embattled nation.
AI giant Nvidia becomes first company to reach $4 tn in value

- Nvidia now has a market value greater than the GDP of France, Britain or India
- The California chip company’s latest surge is helping drive a recovery in the broader stock market
NEW YORK: Nvidia became the first company to touch $4 trillion in market value on Wednesday, a new milestone in Wall Street’s bet that artificial intelligence will transform the economy.
Shortly after the stock market opened, Nvidia vaulted as high as $164.42, giving it a valuation above $4 trillion. The stock subsequently edged lower, ending just under the record threshold.
“The market has an incredible certainty that AI is the future,” said Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers. “Nvidia is certainly the company most positioned to benefit from that gold rush.”
Nvidia, led by electrical engineer Jensen Huang, now has a market value greater than the GDP of France, Britain or India, a testament to investor confidence that AI will spur a new era of robotics and automation.
The California chip company’s latest surge is helping drive a recovery in the broader stock market, as Nvidia itself outperforms major indices.
Part of this is due to relief that President Donald Trump has walked back his most draconian tariffs, which pummeled global markets in early April.
Even as Trump announced new tariff actions in recent days, US stocks have stayed at lofty levels, with the tech-centered Nasdaq ending at a fresh record on Wednesday.
“You’ve seen the markets walk us back from a worst-case scenario in terms of tariffs,” said Angelo Zino, technology analyst at CFRA Research.
While Nvidia still faces US export controls to China as well as broader tariff uncertainty, the company’s deal to build AI infrastructure in Saudi Arabia during a Trump state visit in May showed a potential upside in the US president’s trade policy.
“We’ve seen the administration using Nvidia chips as a bargaining chip,” Zino said.
Challenged by DeepSeek
Nvidia’s surge to $4 trillion marks a new benchmark in a fairly consistent rise over the last two years as AI enthusiasm has built.
In 2025 so far, the company’s shares have risen more than 21 percent, whereas the Nasdaq has gained 6.7 percent.
Taiwan-born Huang has wowed investors with a series of advances, including its core product: graphics processing units (GPUs), key to many of the generative AI programs behind autonomous driving, robotics and other cutting-edge domains.
The company has also unveiled its Blackwell next-generation technology allowing more super processing capacity. One of its advances is “real-time digital twins,” significantly speeding production development time in manufacturing, aerospace and myriad other sectors.
However, Nvidia’s winning streak was challenged early in 2025 when China-based DeepSeek shook up the world of generative AI with a low-cost, high-performance model that challenged the hegemony of OpenAI and other big-spending behemoths.
Nvidia’s lost some $600 billion in market valuation in a single session during this period.
Huang has welcomed DeepSeek’s presence, while arguing against US export constraints.
At the forefront of “AI agents”
In the most recent quarter, Nvidia reported earnings of nearly $19 billion despite a $4.5 billion hit from US export controls limiting sales of cutting-edge technology to China.
The first-quarter earnings period also revealed that momentum for AI remained strong. Many of the biggest tech companies — Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta — are jostling to come out on top in the multi-billion-dollar AI race.
A recent UBS survey of technology executives showed Nvidia widening its lead over rivals.
Zino said Nvidia’s latest surge reflected a fuller understanding of DeepSeek, which has ultimately stimulated investment in complex reasoning models but not threatened Nvidia’s business.
Nvidia is at the forefront of “AI agents,” the current focus in generative AI in which machines are able to reason and infer more than in the past, he said.
“Overall the demand landscape has improved for 2026 for these more complex reasoning models,” Zino said.
But the speedy growth of AI will also be a source of disruption.
Executives at Ford, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon are among those who have begun to say the “quiet part out loud,” according to a Wall Street Journal report recounting recent public acknowledgment of white-collar job loss due to AI.
Shares of Nvidia closed the day at $162.88, up 1.8 percent, finishing at just under $4 trillion in market value.