Elon Musk to ‘summon MPs to US to explain threats to American citizens’
Elon Musk has said UK MPs “will be summoned to the United States of America to explain their censorship and threats to American citizens” in a fresh escalation of tensions between the world’s richest man and Labour.Musk, who has been a fixture at the side of Donald Trump since his re-election as US president, was responding to a Guardian report on Wednesday that the Commons’ science and technology select committee would call him to give evidence in the new year in its inquiry into the spread of harmful content on social media after the August riots.The committee’s chair, Chi Onwurah, a Labour MP, said she wanted to see how Musk, who owns the X social media platform, “reconciles his promotion of freedom of expression with his promotion of pure disinformation”.X hosts accounts by figures including Tommy Robinson and Andrew Tate, who were accused of inciting people to join Islamophobic protests.Musk, who has more than 205 million followers on X, responded by saying the MPs would be summoned to the US.
He has previously complained that prison sentences handed down to people who stoked the riots on X are a breach of free speech rights and said: “I don’t think anyone should go to the UK when they’re releasing convicted paedophiles in order to imprison people for social media posts.”He has labelled the British prime minister “two-tier Kier”, alleging that not all communities were equally protected by police in the UK, while Jess Philips, a government minister, has labelled X “a place of misery”.Musk weighed in on changes to inheritance tax on farms by saying on Monday that “Britain is going full Stalin”.Peter Mandelson, who is tipped to become the next UK ambassador to Washington, then called for an end to the “feud” between Musk and the UK government, calling him “a sort of technological, industrial, commercial phenomenon” with whom the UK must build bridges.Sign up to First EditionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotionIn an interview with the Guardian on Thursday, Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science and technology, denied there was a feud and called Musk “an innovator of extraordinary proportions, the like of which our globe, our humanity, very rarely sees”.
He said he was ready to have “a frank conversation where we disagree, but also strive to find common ground”,However, Kyle added: “The way that he has characterised British society is wrong,I would love to have a conversation with him about how, with his view of free speech, we can keep people safe,Free speech, in my view, doesn’t include the right to sow either misinformation or hatred to a degree that damages either people or communities … as happened in August and that led to arrests because that was criminal activity,”Kyle said he was “in touch with X” and has had “many conversations with them about the nature of free speech and how it should be applied”.
He also said he had “no plans to go off X, simply because I respect so much of the audience that’s there and I do want to communicate with”.It was not immediately clear to what “threats to American citizens” Musk was referring in his call for British MPs to be summoned to Washington, but one of his US-based online followers claimed, without providing evidence, he was called by British police and threatened with charges if he did not take down certain posts during the riots.Another follower described the MPs’ wish to call Musk to give evidence as a trap, saying: “They’ll detain him at the border, demand to see the contents of his phone, and charge him under counter-terrorism laws when he refuses.”Asked about Musk’s response, Onwurah said: “X is one of the most relevant social media platforms to our inquiry.We want to hear from senior figures at the company so that we can gather the best evidence possible.
And Mr Musk is the most senior representative of X, with strong views on misinformation as well as freedom of expression, an important subject in its own right.”Musk has started calling himself “first buddy” in relation to the president-elect and has been given the job of reforming US government efficiency.It appears he will have considerable influence on the regulation of artificial intelligence, especially considering he owns an AI startup, xAI, which has attracted billions of dollars in investment from the Qatar sovereign wealth fund and Silicon Valley private equity giants.
Warren Gatland is turning into the fall guy for all the failings of Welsh rugby | Andy Bull
Coach isn’t making the best out of Wales, but his troubled reign could force the country to confront the state it is inTwo years, four months and a lifetime ago, a Wales team not so very different from the one that will be on the field on Saturday beat the Springboks 13-12 in Bloemfontein. A lot of good Welsh sides have tried and failed to win in South Africa in the 60 years they have been touring. That team, coached by Wayne Pivac, and captained by Dan Biggar, were the first and only one to do it. They might even have won the series except the ifs and buts went against them in the first Test at Loftus Versfeld the previous week, when they lost 32-29 after Damian Willemse kicked a penalty in the final minute.Wales have fallen a long way in very little time
In Las Vegas, winning is what matters and Verstappen is awfully good at that
Beating Norris in Sin City will deliver a fourth successive title to the Red Bull driver and prove he makes his own luckMax Verstappen may have been dismissive in his opening assessment of last year’s inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix but by the time he victoriously crossed the line under the neon glow of the Strip he had, as so many before, fallen to the wiles of Sin City. On the floors of the casinos amid the miasma of smoke and bellows of adulation at the roll of a dice, Verstappen is recognised as a man who makes his own luck and no city in the world is better placed to acknowledge that.As he stands ready to claim his fourth consecutive Formula One world championship, Las Vegas is the perfect backdrop for this singular driver. F1, which promotes the race, has spent a fortune on establishing it perhaps as the most striking example of turning a race weekend into an event. Each one a Super Bowl was the grand ambition when Liberty Media took over the sport in 2017 with races in “destination cities” and in Las Vegas it has that and the potential spectacle to match with a world champion ready to cash out again in Nevada
Festival of fast bowling leaves India on top after Australia collapse
More than any pitch in the world, people talk about Perth. In our collective memory, it was always the Waca, fast and furious enough for decades of sequels.These days the city’s cricket venue has hopped from the western bank of the Swan to the east at Perth Stadium, but in our collective contemporary consciousness the pitch is still essentially the Waca, spiritually the Waca. It was literally formed from the same clay, and as per the story about beings created that way, one half of the pair might as well have been made from the body of the other.So if you look at the scorecard for the first day of the Australia-India Test at Perth, you would very reasonably have one question first
Australia v India: first men’s Test, day one – as it happened
Thanks for your company on a pulsating opening day. Geoff’s hastily rewritten feature will be here soon, and we’ll be back for the second – maybe even the final – day in the morning. Goodnight!At the time, with Australia on top, Nathan Lyon’s spell of 5-1-23-0 seemed like a minor detail. Now it feels like a waste of 23 precious runs.Australia aren’t out of this but they surely need Alex Carey to get them to at least 100
Champion Ding and challenger Gukesh prepare for world title battle
China’s world champion, Ding Liren, 32, and his Indian rival Gukesh Dommaraju, at 18 the youngest ever title challenger, meet for the opening ceremony of their $2.6m 14-game title match in Singapore on Saturday, with the first game scheduled to start at 9am GMT (17.00 local time) on Monday.This will be the 50th contest for the crown since 1886, and the first where both contestants are Asian. The No 1 player of the time was almost always a participant, but not in 2023 or 2024
Sport may be a blunt tool of social change, but it’s time to take a stand against Israel | Jonathan Liew
Probably you already know what this is. Probably before you read a word of it, you decided what it was, where you stand on it, how you’re going to feel about it. The headline, there’s your first clue. Maybe you recognised the name of the writer and drew your own conclusions. And of course there’s the Guardian masthead at the top, the world’s leading bat‑signal for wet liberals, so already there’s a self‑selecting audience there
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