Category: Tech

• A collection of photos and mementos from Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend sold for over $165,000.
• Jennifer Gwynne and the billionaire dated from 1994 to 1995 when they were in college.
• Gwynne told Fox 29 she was selling the items to fund her stepson’s college education.

A collection of photos and mementos from Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend sold for over $165,000 at auctions that closed Thursday.

Jennifer Gwynne and Musk dated the fall semester of 1994 to 1995 at the University of Pennsylvania. They broke up when Musk graduated and moved to California, Gwynne told Fox 29. “He was not good on the phone. He was not good long distance,” she told the TV station, describing the split as a “mutual” one.

Gwynne described Musk, who is now the CEO of Tesla, as being passionate about the future of electric vehicles when they were dating. “He talked about it even back then,” she told Fox 29.

Among the items sold was a 14-karat gold necklace with a small green emerald, which went for $51,008. A signed birthday card from Musk to Gwynne, in which he called her “Boo-Boo,” sold for $16,643. She also sold photos she took of Musk at the time.

 

—RR Auction (@RRAuction) September 15, 2022

Gwynne said she was selling the items to fund her stepson’s college education.

“Elon Musk is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the 21st century,” said Bobby Livingston, executive at Boston-based RR Auction, which handled Gwynne’s sale. “There is very little Musk-related material that has come up for auction, and we will no doubt be seeing more soon with the success of this sale.” 

“We are always thrilled and honored when one of our auctions can impact the lives of our consignors as this sale has done,” added Livingston in a statement.

RR Auction previously sold college assignments Musk had graded back in 1995. The lot of two assignments went for over $7,700 in December.

The auction house has also sold items from other well-known personalities. Last month, RR Auction sold Steve Jobs’ Apple-1 computer prototype for over $677,000. It also sold a box of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s personal cigars for nearly $20,000 last month.

Musk hasn’t publicly commented on the auction but appeared to be aware of the sale, as he changed his Twitter account profile picture to one of the photos sold at auction.

—RR Auction (@RRAuction) September 14, 2022

 

Musk did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

• Two people in Lebanon staged bank holdups Wednesday, demanding money from their own bank accounts.
• One of them said she needed to withdraw money for her sister’s cancer treatment.
• Banks in crisis-hit Lebanon have been limiting the amount of money depositors can withdraw.

Two people in Lebanon held up two different banks on Wednesday as they demanded withdrawals of their own money.

In the first incident, a woman armed with a gun held up a branch of the BLOM Bank in the capital of Beirut, according to various media reports. She was accompanied by activists and said her gun was a toy, according to the Associated Press, citing the local Al-Jadeed TV.

The woman managed to get $13,000 from her deposits, which she said totaled $20,000, per the AP. She said she needed the funds for her sister’s cancer treatment and had gone to the bank repeatedly to withdraw her own money, only to be told she could only get $200 a month.

“I had begged the branch manager before for my money, and I told him my sister was dying, didn’t have much time left,” she said in the interview, per the AP. “I reached a point where I had nothing else to lose.”

She said she had even considered selling her kidney so her sister could get treated.

Shortly after the first incident, an armed man held up a Bankmed branch in Aley, a mountain city in southeast Lebanon, Reuters reported, citing a depositors’ advocacy group and a security source. The man got some of his savings out of his account.

Lebanon has been in an economic crisis since 2019 as result of government mismanagement. To prevent capital flight, the country’s banks have been limiting the amount of money people can withdraw from their bank accounts, severely impacting the everyday lives of ordinary citizens.

In August, an armed man held employees and customers at a Lebanese bank hostage after he was told he couldn’t withdraw $200,000 from his bank account for his sick father’s treatment. The man was cheered on by a crowd outside the bank.

A senior Lebanese banker told Reuters the incidents may prompt copycat actions.

“I think this is an invitation for other people to do the same. As long as people get away with it, they will continue,” the banker told the news agency on condition of anonymity.

• Peltola is the first Alaska Native elected to Congress and was sworn in on Tuesday.
• Rep. Kaiali’i Kahele and Rep. Sharice Davids welcomed Mary Peltola to Congress in a tweet.
• “It has taken 233 years for the US Congress to be fully represented,” said Kahele.

It was a historic day as Rep. Kaiali’i Kahele and Rep. Sharice Davids welcomed Mary Peltola to the US House of Representatives. 

Peltola is the first Alaska Native elected to Congress and was sworn in on Tuesday. She defeated Sarah Palin in a special election in August. Peltola is also the first woman to ever represent Alaska and the first Democrat to do so since 1972.

Hawaii Rep. Kahele tweeted, “it has taken 233 years for the U.S. Congress to be fully represented by this country’s Indigenous peoples.”

—Congressman Kaiali‘i Kahele (@RepKahele) September 14, 2022

 

Kahele is the second Native Hawaiian to be elected to Congress. Davids — a Democrat from Kansas — is the first openly LGBT Native American elected to the House of Representatives. 

• A Blue Origin rocket with no crew onboard failed just over a minute after liftoff on Monday. 
• The New Shepard rocket, launched from Blue Origin’s West Texas facility, carried cargo for research.
• A livestream of the launch showed the rocket bursting into flames around 29,000 feet above ground.

A Blue Origin rocket with no crew onboard failed just over a minute after lifting off on Monday. 

The New Shepard rocket that took off from Blue Origin’s West Texas facility on Monday was carrying cargo for research that it was going to send to the edge of space.

A livestream of the launch showed the New Shepard bursting into flames around 29,000 feet above ground. The capsule above the booster rocket then detached itself and parachuted back to the ground.

 

Blue Origin said on Twitter there was a “booster failure” on the flight, triggering the escape system. The capsule “successfully separated” from the rocket, the spaceflight company added.

It was the first major incident for billionaire Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company since it opened commercial services to the public in 2021.

The Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, is investigating the incident, which it called a “mishap” in a statement sent to Insider.

“The capsule landed safely and the booster impacted within the designated hazard area. No injuries or public property damage have been reported,” said the FAA.

“Before the New Shepard vehicle can return to flight, the FAA will determine whether any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap affected public safety. This is standard practice for all mishap investigations,” the FAA added.

• Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance is openly feuding with actress Jennifer Lawrence.
• Last week, Lawrence called Vance a “rich twat” and accused him of faking his “hillbilly” persona.
• Vance said she “should leave politics to the people who actually vote and try to run in elections.”

Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance is openly feuding with Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence. 

In a Vogue interview published September 6, Lawrence said she was disgusted by the idea of Vance running in Ohio.

In the same interview, she said she used to think she was a Republican but later became solidly anti-Trump, and that she had recurring nightmares about Fox News host Tucker Carlson after the Supreme Court gutted Roe.

“He’s not a hillbilly if he wrote a huge book. Rich twat,” Lawrence said of Vance. “I mean, I’m a rich twat, but I’m not running for office pretending that I’m not.”

Lawrence, who grew up in a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky, was referring to Vance’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy.” The best-selling memoir about Vance’s life in the rust belt, published in 2016, was picked up by Netflix, which said in 2019 that it was spending $45 million to turn it into a movie.

Lawrence told Vogue she felt compelled to speak up about politics: “You have to be political. It’s too dire. Politics are killing people.”

On Saturday, Vance made an appearance on Fox News, where host Brian Kilmeade asked him if Lawrence was implying that “people in rural America can’t read.” Vance said he thought Lawrence’s comments were a “classic example of Hollywood getting involved in politics.” 

“That’s sort of the implication is that those of us who actually do buy books and read out here in the heartland are somehow not representative. I think that’s ridiculous,” Vance said. “I know a lot of people, a lot of friends and family who do like to read books, including mine.”

He added that he thought people have “tuned out the politics of Hollywood.”

“They’re there for entertainment,” Vance said of Hollywood figures like Lawrence. “I think when they do it well, great, but at the end of the day, they should leave politics to the people who actually vote and try to run in elections in this country.”

Vance, once known to be anti-Trump, is now a supporter of the former president. In 2016, Vance suggested to a law school friend that Trump could be “America’s Hitler.” By 2022, he had switched allegiances, telling Vanity Fair he was “wrong about Trump” in the past. For his part, Trump has acknowledged that Vance used to disapprove of him, but said he has “put that aside.”

In April, Ohio Republicans urged Trump not to back Vance for the Senate, asking that he pick a less risky candidate to endorse. However, Trump persisted in backing Vance and announced his endorsement on April 15. Vance won his primary in May and is now narrowly ahead of Democratic candidate Tim Ryan.

According to reporting from Insider’s Madison Hall, the Yale-educated Vance made $347,752 in royalties in 2020 from “Hillbilly Elegy.” In 2021, his earnings from the book grew to $475,380. Vance, a venture capitalist, also made $327,083 from his job at Narya Capital Management in Ohio in 2021.

Representatives for Lawrence and Vance did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.

• President Donald Trump posted a long tribute to the Queen after her death on Thursday.
• Biden said he’ll attend the funeral, but CNN reported it’s up to him to invite former US presidents.
• Around 2,000 people are expected to attend The Queen’s funeral, which is set for September 19.

The Royal Family announced on Saturday that the funeral for Queen Elizabeth II will take place on September 19, but who exactly will make the guest list is still up in the air.

The Queen died on Thursday at age 96 after a historic 70-year reign. Buckingham Palace has long planned for her death, upon which her son, now King Charles III, immediately ascended to the throne.

The Queen’s coffin is being prepared to lie in state in Westminster Hall for four days prior to the funeral to allow the public to pay their respects. Officials anticipate more than one million people will attend.

An official funeral service is expected to be held at Westminster Abbey, where the Queen was crowned and where she married Prince Philip in 1947. Around 2,000 people are expected, including Europe’s royal families and leaders from around the world.

President Joe Biden said Friday that although he did not yet have details about the service, he would be attending. Whether former US presidents will make the guest list is unclear.

CNN reported Friday that the UK was leaving that decision to Biden.

“I am told by a couple diplomatic officials that Buckingham Palace is leaving it up to every country individually,” Jeff Zeleny, CNN’s chief national affairs correspondent, said, noting that former President Barack Obama invited George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter to go with him to the funeral of Nelson Mandela in 2013.

“So there is protocol for having US presidents invite other presidents,” he continued. “Who knows, maybe in the spirit of forgiving and giving President Biden will invite Donald Trump on Air Force One. I doubt that will happen, but I do expect some type of a bipartisan delegation.”

Former President Donald Trump, for his part, was a vocal fan of the Queen, whom he met on several official state visits during his presidency. After the news of her death, Trump shared a long tribute to the Queen in a series of posts on Truth Social.

“Melania and I will always cherish our time together with the Queen, and never forget Her Majesty’s generous friendship, great wisdom, and wonderful sense of humor. What a grand and beautiful lady she was—there was nobody like her!” he wrote, adding: “May God bless the Queen, may she reign forever in our hearts, and may God hold her and Prince Philip in abiding care.”

Trump also shared several photos of him and the Queen smiling together during their visits.

Trump and Biden, on the other hand, may be on more hostile terms than ever after the president’s address on September 1 in which he said “MAGA Republicans” represented a danger to American democracy.

While discussing whether or not Biden would invite Trump to the funeral, CNN’s Jake Tapper said he thought it would be a “clever” move for the president to invite him and see if he goes.

“I don’t think former President Trump would want to be subordinate on Air Force One, and I think probably he prefers his own plane anyway,” Tapper said.

• An Air Canada passenger says her independence was stripped after the airline damaged her wheelchair. 
• Maayan Ziv was flying from Toronto to Israel to attend an accessibility conference.
• “Too many disabled people have faced this trauma,” she said.

An Air Canada passenger said her independence was stripped from her when she got off a 10.5-hour flight, only to discover her wheelchair had been damaged. 

Maayan Ziv, the CEO of AccessNow, an accessibility app, was flying from Toronto to Israel for an accessibility conference and outlined what happened on Twitter.

“No one told me that the wheelchair was damaged. No one told me that anything had happened,” Ziv told The CBC.

“Imagine someone basically chopping off your legs when you arrive somewhere — that’s the equivalent of what it feels like,” she said.

—Maayan Ziv (@maayanziv) September 8, 2022

 

The CBC reported the wheelchair was valued at around $23,000.

In a statement to the news outlet, Air Canada said the company did not meet their “normal service levels” in this incident and offered the 32-year-old a voucher. Ziv said the voucher was a $300 e-coupon. 

After the incident, Ziv posted a video on Instagram, saying she feels like people with disabilities aren’t seen.

A post shared by Maayan Ziv (@maayanziv_)

“Too many disabled people have faced this trauma. Our stories, and our lives matter and this cannot continue to happen!,” she said.

Air Canada and Ziv did not respond to Insider’s requests for comment. 

• Michael Cohen, Trump’s former longtime lawyer, predicted the former president will be indicted soon.
• Cohen also believes Trump will be subpoenaed to face congressional hearings.
• He appeared exasperated with the Justice Department, saying it was “tiptoeing” around Trump.

Michael Cohen, once former President Donald Trump’s lawyer, said he believes Trump will be indicted by the Department of Justice “relatively soon” over his handling of the classified documents found at the Mar-a-Lago resort.

“I think that there is going to be an indictment, and relatively soon,” Cohen said Thursday while speaking on MSNBC’s “The Reidout” hosted by Joy Reid. “I believe there will also be congressional hearings with Donald in the hot seat, you know, either he’ll come in willingly, which you know I don’t think he will, or via subpoena.”

“The real questions they have to be asking right now is, you know, ‘Where are the documents that were in these empty top-secret files that were found at Mar-a-Lago?’” Cohen continued. “I mean, that’s really the big question, and who did Donald give them to or show them to?”

Cohen, who worked as Trump’s personal lawyer from 2006 to 2018, has become one of the former president’s most vocal critics after leaving Trump’s service. In 2018, he was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to a range of felonies, including tax evasion, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations. Cohen was disbarred by the New York Supreme Court in February 2019.

During his MSNBC appearance on Thursday, Cohen appeared to express his frustration at the DOJ, saying that it had been “tiptoeing” around Trump as though he were a “supreme leader or a monarch.”

“I’ve been saying it from day number one, Joy. Donald is a clear and present danger to the national security and safety of this country. And if this doesn’t prove it, I’m not sure anything will,” Cohen told Reid.

Responding to a comment by Reid that Trump appeared to be “un-bloody-touchable,” Cohen said he disagreed with the description.

“I don’t agree with you in the fact that he’s not going to be held accountable for this,” Cohen said. “This is too big at this point in time.”

A spokesperson for Trump’s post-presidential office did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

The FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home under a search warrant on August 8 and recovered 11 sets of classified documents. Per The Washington Post, some of these documents included nuclear secrets. On September 2, the FBI revealed that its agents had also found 48 empty boxes marked “CLASSIFIED.”

Department of Justice

Since the raid, Trump has said that he declassified the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago via “standing order,” although there has been no evidence to show that such an order was given while he was in the White House. In addition, 18 aides from the Trump administration also told CNN they had never heard of such an order.

Notably, the classification level of the Mar-a-Lago documents is not a factor in the DOJ’s probe into whether Trump broke any of three federal laws — including the Espionage Act — with his handling of sensitive files.

On Monday, District Judge Aileen Cannon granted Trump’s request for a special master to review the documents seized by the FBI, which could delay the DOJ’s investigation. The department is appealing Cannon’s ruling.

In the meantime, several former top-ranking officials and high-profile observers have speculated that Trump may have intended to sell or barter the classified documents for his gain.

Former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi said any top-secret information about a country’s nuclear weapons would have fetched the “highest price tag” for Trump. Meanwhile, Peter Srzok, another former FBI official, said “any competent foreign intelligence service” — such as those from Cuba, Iran, Russia, or China — would have tried to gain access to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

A week after the Mar-a-Lago raid, Fox News host Eric Shawn also asked on a live show if Trump may have tried selling the documents to “the Russians or to the Saudis.”

Cohen has also suggested that Trump may have tried to keep the documents as “bargaining chips” that he could use if he were ever at risk of being imprisoned, Insider’s Cheryl Teh reported.

• Disney’s former CEO said the company estimated that many Twitter users were “not real” in 2016.
• The entertainment giant was considering acquiring the social media platform at the time.
• Bob Iger’s comments came as Twitter and Elon Musk are set to head to trial in October.

Former Disney CEO Bob Iger said on Wednesday that the company estimated a “substantial portion” of Twitter users were “not real” back in 2016 when the entertainment giant was considering buying the social media platform.

“I don’t remember the number but we discounted the value heavily,” Iger said at Vox Media’s Code conference, as reported by the outlet. Iger did not state specifically what he meant by “substantial” but added that it was “not a majority” of the platform’s users.

Twitter has long maintained that fewer than 5% of the accounts on its platform are bots. 

In 2016, Disney was thinking about acquiring Twitter but pulled out partly due to concerns about bullying and other abusive behavior on the platform, Bloomberg reported at the time. Twitter then had a market value of $20 billion.

Iger said on Wednesday that Disney was looking at Twitter as a global distribution platform, but he had second thoughts about the purchase. Among the concerns were the presence of “hate speech” on the platform and the “potential to do as much harm as good,” he added, per Vox.

“We’re in the business of manufacturing fun at Disney — of doing nothing but good, even though there are others today that criticize Disney for the opposite, which is wrong,” Iger said. “This was just something that we were not ready to take on, and I was not ready to take on as the CEO of a company, and I thought it would have been irresponsible.”

Iger’s comments come just as Twitter and Elon Musk are set to head to a trial in October.

Twitter and Musk have been caught in a legal battle over the latter’s $44 billion acquisition offer for the social media platform that was made public in April.

In May, the billionaire said he was putting the deal “on hold” until Twitter proved that fewer than 5% of its accounts were fake, as his bid was based on the company’s SEC filing being accurate.

In July, Musk said he was terminating the deal. Twitter then sued him to enforce the contract. Musk countersued, saying the company misled him.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

• United Airlines said it would halt operations at JFK Airport if it doesn’t get more flights.
• It had leased many of its slots to Delta Air Lines when leaving JFK in 2015, but returned in 2021.
• Now, it runs four daily flights involving JFK and is asking authorities to allow it more slots.

United Airlines said on Tuesday that it would drop its flying service at New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport if authorities don’t grant the air carrier more slots to take off and land, per multiple media reports.

Its warning comes after United left JFK in 2015 to run flights at its hub in Newark, New Jersey, but later decided to return in 2021. It now runs far fewer daily takeoffs and landings because it had leased the rights for some of the slots to Delta Air Lines on its way out from JFK.

“If we are not able to get additional allocations for multiple seasons, we will need to suspend service at JFK, effective at the end of October,” said an email sent by the airline to its employees on Tuesday, per Reuters.

The email stated that United has been urging the Federal Aviation Administration to allow it more runway slots “so that we can grow to be more competitive,” the outlet reported.

Without that boost, United said it could not serve JFK “effectively compared to the larger schedules and more attractive flight times flown by our competitors,” citing Jetblue Airways and American Airlines as examples, per Reuters.

The FAA uses flight slots to limit air traffic in major hubs toprevent and reduce congestion.

United currently runs two daily flights between Los Angeles and JFK and another two daily flights between JFK and San Francisco. 

The airline wrote in its memo that ceasing these services would “obviously be a tough and frustrating step to take and one that we have worked really hard to prevent,” according to Bloomberg.

United said in the email that JFK’s total flight capacity hasn’t changed since 2008, even though the airport has since widened its runways and built multi-entrance taxiways, the outlet reported.

In 2015, the air carrier leased at least 24 permanent flight slots at JFK to Delta when it shifted most of its operations from the airport to its hub in Newark, where it contributes to the vast majority of air traffic. 

United had also attempted to obtain 24 takeoff and landing rights from Delta at the Newark airport, but federal authorities blocked the trade out of concern that it would allow the air carrier to establish a monopoly on flights there.

Last year, United returned to JFK, with CEO Scott Kirby calling the 2015 decision to leave the New York airport a “mistake.”

However, since many of its takeoff and landing rights at JFK are leased to Delta, the air carrier has no access to these slots, United said in its email, per Bloomberg. 

Delta and United did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment after business hours.

The FAA told Bloomberg in a statement that new flights added at JFK would be distributed “fairly” among various airlines. “The agency must consider airspace capacity and runway capacity to assess how changes would affect flights at nearby airports,” the statement read, according to the outlet.

The FAA did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment after business hours.