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It’s Official! Forbes declares Elon Musk world’s richest person, now worth $219bn after acquiring Twitter shares

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Billionaire Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, is now the richest man on earth with a net worth of $219 billion, according to the latest Forbes Billionaires List released on Wednesday.

With the net worth of the world’s wealthiest people slipping to $12.7tn due to the Russia-Ukraine crisis, Covid-19 and volatile stock markets caused wealth erosion, leading to 329 billionaires dropping out of the Forbes’ 2022 rich list, Musk’s recent acquisition of 73.4 million shares of Twitter, worth about $3 billion, making him the largest shareholder in the social media company, has shot him up the world billionaire list.

According to Forbes in its annual report, the present world billionaire listing of 2,668, is an all time-down from 2,755 last year.

Using stock prices and exchange rates from March 11 to calculate the net worth of the world’s richest people, it said it was not surprising that 329 people fell off the list.

“In all, 329 people fell off the billionaires list this year – the most since the 2009 financial crisis,” Forbes said in the report.

Musk, who has been appointed to Twitter’s board with his purchase of 9.2 percent stake in the microblogging platform, topped the Forbes list for the first time with a net worth of $219 billion, according to the report.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, fell to number two for the first time in four years due to a 3 percent drop in Amazon stock and increased charitable giving, which wiped $6bn from his net worth, the Forbes report said.

French luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault, who added $8bn to his fortune over the past year, remains the world’s third-richest person and rounding out the top five are Bill Gates and Warren Buffett with personal fortunes of $129bn and $118bn, respectively.

There were 236 newcomers added to the billionaire ranks this year, including pop star Rihanna, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and venture capitalist Josh Kushner.

Though this is the first time Musk will be making the top of the Forbes’ list, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index had named him the world’s richest person at the end of 2021 with a personal fortune of $273.5bn.

These are the top 10 richest people in 2022, and their net worth

1. Elon Musk: $219bn

2. Jeff Bezos: $171bn

3. Bernard Arnault: $158bn

4. Bill Gates: $129bn

5. Warren Buffett: $118bn

6. Larry Page: $111bn

7. Sergey Brin: $107bn

8. Larry Ellison: $106bn

9. Steve Ballmer: $91.4bn

10. Mukesh Ambani: $90.7bn

Musings From Abroad

WHO ‘very worried’ over spread of Mpox varieties in Congo DR 

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A senior official of the World Health Organization (WHO), Rosamund Lewis, has said that the body is “very worried” about the spread of a variety of Mpox that has killed nearly 600 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo this year.

This year alone, Congo DR has reported 13,000 cases, which is more than twice as many as during the last peak in 2020, with the disease occurring in almost every province. The WHO is working with the authorities on the response and a risk assessment.

The dangerous clade mpox outbreak was the subject of a warning released by the U.S. Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday.

“The virus variant is known to be more virulent. If it adapts better to human-to-human transmission, that presents a risk,” Lewis, WHO’s mpox lead, told journalists.

WHO in May announced that the disease was no longer a global health emergency after which its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declared the end of the emergency status for the disease.

Most reported cases of the disease were identified through sexual health or other health services in primary or secondary healthcare facilities, and involved mainly, but not exclusively, men who have sex with men.

A less severe form known as clade II started to spread around the world last year, mostly through male-to-male sexual contact, prompting WHO to declare a public health emergency.

Lewis expressed concern over new evidence suggesting that clade I can also spread through sexual contact. According to her, mumps can also infect humans through contaminated animals or family members living together in a home. Children and those with weakened immune systems are particularly vulnerable; in up to 10% of cases of clade I, illness results in death.

“We have very little information of who is dying of mpox [in DRC] other than age,” said Lewis, adding more data was needed.

The viral infection known as mpox spreads by intimate contact and results in lesions filled with pus and flu-like symptoms. Although most cases are mild and can be fatal.

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Musings From Abroad

Sudan Conflict: US insists all warring parties guilty of war crimes

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The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has maintained that neither party in the ongoing conflict in Sudan can be exonerated from war crimes.

The position was made known on Wednesday as the US continues pressure on the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to end fighting that has caused a humanitarian crisis. The US also insisted that the RSF and allied militias committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

“The expansion of the needless conflict between the RSF and the SAF has caused grievous human suffering,” Blinken said, referring to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). In West Darfur, the RSF has also been charged with spearheading an ethnic massacre; in the capital city of Khartoum, locals have accused the paramilitary group of raping, stealing, and detaining civilians.

“Masalit civilians have been hunted down and left for dead in the streets, their homes set on fire, and told that there is no place in Sudan for them,” Blinken said. The Masalit are a non-Arab tribe.

“Detainees have been abused, and some have been killed at SAF and RSF detention sites,” Blinken added.

A war broke out in mid-April between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) over plans for a political transition and the integration of the RSF into the military, four years after longtime ruler, Omar al-Bashir, was overthrown in an uprising.

Blinken, however, maintained that the position did not rule out the possibility of other determinations in the future as more information became available.

“The United States is committed to building on this determination and using available tools to end this conflict and cease committing the atrocities and other abuses that are depriving the Sudanese people of freedom, peace, and justice,” Blinken said.

Over 6 million people have fled their homes as a result of the conflict, and about 1.2 million of them have entered neighbouring countries, severely straining the resources of Sudan and its neighbours.

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