Bird Statue Fetches $100,000 as Musk Auctions Twitter HQ Items

An image of Elon Musk is seen on a smartphone placed on printed Twitter logos in this picture illustration taken April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
An image of Elon Musk is seen on a smartphone placed on printed Twitter logos in this picture illustration taken April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Bird Statue Fetches $100,000 as Musk Auctions Twitter HQ Items

An image of Elon Musk is seen on a smartphone placed on printed Twitter logos in this picture illustration taken April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
An image of Elon Musk is seen on a smartphone placed on printed Twitter logos in this picture illustration taken April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

A Twitter bird statue fetched $100,000 on Wednesday as Elon Musk auctioned off furniture, decorations, kitchen equipment and more from the tech firm's downtown San Francisco headquarters, AFP reported.

An online auction of "surplus corporate office assets of Twitter" that lasted slightly more than 24 hours also featured a 10-foot neon light in the shape of Twitter's bird logo, which brought in a winning bid of $40,000, Heritage Global Partners auction service confirmed.

Among the 631 lots were espresso machines, ergonomically correct desks, televisions, bicycle-powered charging stations, pizza ovens and a decorative planter shaped like an "@" sign.

Musk in December said that severe cost cuts at Twitter had repaired the company's dire finances as he set out to find a new CEO for his troubled social media platform.

The mercurial billionaire told a live chat forum at the time that without the changes, including firing over half of Twitter's employees, the company would have bled $3 billion dollars a year.

Musk said he had been "cutting costs like crazy" at the platform he bought for $44 billion.

Just weeks into his ownership of Twitter, Musk fired about half of its 7,500-strong workforce, sparking concern that the company was insufficiently staffed to carry out content moderation and spooking governments and advertisers.

Musk said his strategy is to massively reduce costs while building up revenue, and that a new $8 subscription service called Twitter Blue would help with that goal.

Musk-led Twitter has been riven by chaos, with mass layoffs, the return of banned accounts and the suspension of journalists critical of the South African-born billionaire.

Musk's takeover also saw a surge in racist or hateful tweets, drawing in scrutiny from regulators and chasing away big advertisers, Twitter's main source of revenue.



Latest Tests Show Seine Water Quality Was Substandard When Paris Mayor Took a Dip

 Boats carrying members of delegations sail along the Seine during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
Boats carrying members of delegations sail along the Seine during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Latest Tests Show Seine Water Quality Was Substandard When Paris Mayor Took a Dip

 Boats carrying members of delegations sail along the Seine during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
Boats carrying members of delegations sail along the Seine during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Tests results released Friday showed the water quality in the River Seine was slightly below the standards needed to authorize swimming — just as the Paris Olympics start.

Heavy rain during the opening ceremony revived concerns over whether the long-polluted waterway will be clean enough to host swimming competitions, since water quality is deeply linked with the weather in the French capital.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo took a highly publicized dip last week in a bid to ease fears. The Seine will be used for marathon swimming and triathlon.

Daily water quality tests measure levels of fecal bacteria known as E. coli.

Tests by monitoring group Eau de Paris show that at the Bras Marie, E. coli levels were then above the safe limit of 900 colony-forming units per 100 milliliters determined by European rules on June 17, when the mayor took a dip.

The site reached a value of 985 on the day the mayor swam with Paris 2024 chief Tony Estanguet and the top government official for the Paris region, Marc Guillaume, joined her, along with swimmers from local swimming clubs.

At two other measuring points further downstream, the results were below the threshold.

The statement by Paris City Hall and the prefecture of the Paris region noted that water quality last week was in line with European rules six days out of seven on the site which is to host the Olympic swimming competitions.

It noted that "the flow of the Seine is highly unstable due to regular rainfall episodes and remains more than twice the usual flow in summer," explaining fluctuating test results.

Swimming in the Seine has been banned for over a century. Since 2015, organizers have invested $1.5 billion to prepare the Seine for the Olympics and to ensure Parisians have a cleaner river after the Games. The plan included constructing a giant underground water storage basin in central Paris, renovating sewer infrastructure, and upgrading wastewater treatment plants.