Author: DW

Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire on Friday after his SpaceX aerospace and artificial intelligence (AI) firm made its stock market debut on Friday. Shares pushed well past their opening price of $135 (roughly €117) in the hours after the initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq. The shares closed up just over 19% at around $161 at the end of their first day of trading, valuing SpaceX at around $2.1 trillion and giving Musk an estimated net worth of around $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes magazine. At one point shortly after 1 p.m. in New York (1700 GMT/UTC), the shares had been hovering around the $173 mark,…

With a population of just 150,000, Curacao has smashed Iceland’s record as the country with the fewest inhabitants (350,000) to reach a World Cup.  Curacao covers an area of ​​roughly 440 square kilometers (171 square miles), making it about six times smaller than Rhode Island, the smallest US state. Curacao is best known for its beaches and diving spots as well as a liqueur named after it. Baseball, not football, is the top sport on the island, which has sent around 15 players to the Major Leagues in the United States. Probably their most famous is Andruw Jones, who after spending 17 seasons…

Earlier this year, the Artis Zoo Museum in Amsterdam unveiled a handbag alongside a massive dinosaur skeleton — one made of “lab-grown T. rex leather.” The highly publicized item was up for auction on Thursday. But it failed to sell. The Paris auction house Drouot noted that bids were well below expected. Auctioneers Giquello had touted the “one-of-a-kind” piece to sell for more than $500,000, but bids barely broke the $150,000 mark, according to the auction house.  With no precedent to go on, Alexandre Giquello, whose auction house organized the sale, told press agency AFP that they had to “come up with a price” that…

Swiss voters will soon have the chance to have their say in a referendum on the Civilian Service Act, asking whether the number of people moving from the army to civilian service should be reduced, as well as on a far-right initiative to cap the population at 10 million dubbed the “No to 10 million” initiative. The question at the heart of the populist initiative, to be voted upon on June 14, is how many people should live in Switzerland. The far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which proposed it, wants to ensure that the permanent population does not exceed 10…

Ghanaian international footballer Thomas Partey, who is currently facing rape and sexual assault charges in the United Kingdom, has been refused entry to Canada and will be unable to take part in his team’s World Cup opener against Panama in Toronto on Wednesday. “FIFA ​can confirm that player Thomas Partey will be unable travel from Ghana’s ​Base Camp in Boston, USA, to Canada for their first ​match against Panama on Wednesday, 17 June, as ⁠his ​visa application ​has been refused by the ​Canadian government,” said world football’s governing body in a statement to media outlets including ​Reuters and The New York…

David Hockney, who was one of Britain’s favorite artists, a global celebrity, a world citizen and a bohemian, has “passed away peacefully at home” in London on Thursday, a month before his 89th birthday, his publicist Erica Bolton said in a statement to the press. Considered one of the most important figures in contemporary art in both the 20th and 21st centuries, Hockney first gained acclaim as an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s.Hockney was renowned for his colorful paintingsImage: David Hockney Always wanting ‘to see more’ Born in Bradford in 1937, David Hockney was the fourth of five…

The list of uses for GLP-1 agonist drugs keeps growing: It started as a treatment for type 2 diabetes, then got hyped as a weight-loss jab.  There’s also evidence that GLP-1 agonists, like semaglutide and tirzepatide — sold as Mounjaro, Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepound —  lower the risk of cardiovascular diseases  protect the kidney and the liver,  reduce inflammation and pain,  prevent addiction and substance abuse,  help people with arthritis and those with sleep apnea.    Take a 30,000ft view, and you will see a classic case of what’s known in the trade as drug repurposing. That’s one drug with multiple…

The World Cup opening ceremony took off at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on Thursday, marking the countdown to the opening group game between Mexico and South Africa.  Latin music and dance numbers gravitated around a massive model of the World Cup trophy in the center of the pitch, ahead of 104 matches over the next 39 days, building to the final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19.  The Estadio Azteca, or technically ‘Mexico City Stadium’ for this competition, has a rich World Cup history, as the venue for the 1970 and 1986 World Cup finalsImage:…

Why is a sex doll in the German president’s primary official seat? Set in a suggestive pose, the green bronze cast reproducing the torso of a Japanese sex doll has made headlines and grabbed attention on social media. The sculpture by Alexandra Bircken, titled “Eva,” is just one exhibit among many more contemporary artworks that are on show in the highly symbolic political space associated with the German presidency and state ceremonies, Bellevue Palace. The two-week pop-up exhibition, titled “Freiraum Kunst” (Art as Free Space), runs from June 13-28. ‘Eva’ by Alexandra Bircken has sparked a conversation on how intimate themes…

SpaceX will be at the center of attention on financial markets this Friday as the company makes its stock-market debut.    The Elon Musk-led rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company plans to raise as much as $75 billion (€65 billion) by selling nearly 555.6 million shares at $135 apiece. That would make it the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history, breaking the previous record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019, when the oil giant went public and raised $26 billion. The listing would instantly turn SpaceX into the seventh-biggest publicly traded US company. Because only 4% of its equity will be on offer, the…