Elon Musk Briefly Loses Title as World’s Richest Person to LVMH's Arnault  

Elon Musk arrives at the In America: An Anthology of Fashion themed Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York, US, May 2, 2022. (Reuters)
Elon Musk arrives at the In America: An Anthology of Fashion themed Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York, US, May 2, 2022. (Reuters)
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Elon Musk Briefly Loses Title as World’s Richest Person to LVMH's Arnault  

Elon Musk arrives at the In America: An Anthology of Fashion themed Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York, US, May 2, 2022. (Reuters)
Elon Musk arrives at the In America: An Anthology of Fashion themed Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York, US, May 2, 2022. (Reuters)

Twitter owner and Tesla boss Elon Musk briefly lost his title as the world's richest person on Wednesday, according to Forbes, following a steep drop in the value of his stake in the electric-car maker and a $44 billion bet on the social media firm. 

Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of luxury brand Louis Vuitton's parent company LVMH, and his family briefly took the title as the world's richest, but were back at No. 2 with a personal wealth of $185.3 billion, according to Forbes. 

Musk, who has held the top spot on the Forbes list since September 2021, has a net worth of $185.7 billion. Musk took over the title from Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. 

Tesla shares, which have lost more than 47% in value since Musk made his offer to buy Twitter earlier this year, were down 2.7%. 

Musk's net worth dropped below $200 billion earlier on Nov. 8 as investors dumped Tesla's shares on worries the top executive and largest shareholder of the world's most valuable electric-vehicle maker is more preoccupied with Twitter. 

Tesla has lost nearly half its market value and Musk's net worth has dropped by about $70 billion since he bid for Twitter in April. Musk closed the deal for Twitter in October with $13 billion in loans and a $33.5 billion equity commitment. 

Besides Tesla, Musk also heads rocket company SpaceX and Neuralink, a startup that is developing ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect the human brain to computers. 



Evacuations as Tail of Storm Boris Floods Northeast Italy

Floods in Italy due to Storm Boris pummeled the same area affected in May 2023 that killed 17 people. Andreas SOLARO / AFP
Floods in Italy due to Storm Boris pummeled the same area affected in May 2023 that killed 17 people. Andreas SOLARO / AFP
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Evacuations as Tail of Storm Boris Floods Northeast Italy

Floods in Italy due to Storm Boris pummeled the same area affected in May 2023 that killed 17 people. Andreas SOLARO / AFP
Floods in Italy due to Storm Boris pummeled the same area affected in May 2023 that killed 17 people. Andreas SOLARO / AFP

Italian authorities have evacuated some 1,000 people from homes as the tail end of Storm Boris pummeled a northeastern region that was devastated by deadly flooding last year, regional authorities said on Thursday.
The strong winds and rains which have swept across central and eastern Europe, killing 24 people, lashed the Emilia-Romagna and Marche regions on Wednesday, leaving some towns under water, said AFP.
Schools closed and trains were canceled Thursday as the rains lashed the same area hit by two floods in May 2023, which killed 17 people and caused billions of euros in damage.
Locals in Faenza told Local Team journalists they blamed authorities for fresh damage to their homes.
"There's one and a half meters of water in my house, again, after I'd just finished refurbishing it," one unnamed resident told them.
Over 1,000 people had been evacuated, regional Emilia-Romagna authorities told AFP Thursday.
"We are in a full emergency," Ravenna mayor Michele De Pascale told Radio 24, saying the situation was "very similar to what we had last May (2023)".
"The population is on high alert," said Emilia-Romagna's acting president, Irene Priolo, told Radio Rai 1, adding that last year 45,000 people were evacuated but that the damage this time was not expected to be as extensive.
Priolo defended her administration saying "so many construction works have been carried out" since the flooding last year.
Storm Boris has brought widespread flooding and torrential rain, with victims in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania.
Experts say climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activities is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as torrential rains and floods.