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18 of Trump’s most wealthy backers

As former President Donald Trump seeks a second term in the White House, he’s increasingly turning to billionaires to power his campaign.

Some of them are longtime associates and supporters — true believers who know the former president from his days in the business world — while others are relative newcomers, such as longtime GOP megadonors who backed his 2024 rivals or even previously supported Democrats.

The backers represent diverse industries, from traditional red-state oil titans to formerly left-leaning Silicon Valley elite.

Each lists different reasons for their choice: Some take issue with Joe Biden’s proposed “billionaire tax,” while others prefer Trump’s tough stance on immigration.

“I share the concern of most Americans that our economic, immigration and foreign policies are taking the country in the wrong direction. For these reasons, I am planning to vote for change and support Donald Trump for President,” Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman said in a statement to Axios.

In 2022, the finance billionaire had said he would not support Trump in the primary and called on “the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders.”

Here are some of the most notable billionaires who are contributing to Trump’s 2024 campaign, including to his “Trump 47” joint fundraising committee, which splits proceeds between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, and the MAGA Inc. super PAC.


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Russia’s latest naval mission is a flex to cover for its embarrassing losses in the Black Sea, US official says

Russia sending warships to Cuba next week is an attempt to show its navy is still a global power after losses in the Black Sea, an unnamed US official told reporters, according to the Associated Press.

On Thursday, Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Russia was deploying four warships to Cuba, including a nuclear-powered submarine, with the vessels expected to be in Havana between June 12 and 17.

“Russia has sailed the Black Sea since 1783 but is now forced to constrain its fleet to port,” UK Defence Minister Grant Shapps wrote. “And even there Putin’s ships are sinking!”

This week, it was reported that Ukraine was using its exploding naval drones to go after smaller Russian vessels after Moscow pulled back its larger warships to reduce their vulnerability to attacks.

Not everyone agreed on Russia’s motive.

The visit of the ships, none of which will carry nuclear missiles, does not represent a threat to the region, the Cuban statement read, but was instead part of the historically cordial relations between the two countries.

But according to the US official, the deployment is an effort by Russia’s navy to flex its muscles on the world stage, after suffering losses in the Black Sea.

“This is about Russia showing that it’s still capable of some level of global power projection,” they said, per Reuters.

Russia’s navy has suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks in the Black Sea, where Ukraine claims to have destroyed a third of its fleet.

Ukraine has used drones, missiles, and other weaponry to take out many Russian warships, and has forced its fleet to seek safer ports further away from Crimea.

In March, the UK’s defense ministry declared Russia’s Black Sea Fleet “functionally inactive” after Ukraine claimed to have struck another two of its vessels.

Russia also shuffled its naval leadership earlier this year.

According to the unnamed US official, while the US expects “heightened” Russian naval and air activity this summer, and more going forward, deployments like those to Cuba incur costs for the Russian navy, which is “struggling to maintain readiness and conduct deployments with an aged fleet.”

In a military assessment on Thursday, the Washington DC-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War said it was likely part of an effort to bring back memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and dissuade the US from offering further support to Ukraine.

The deployment also comes after Putin threatened to send long-range weapons to “regions around the world” that want to strike Western targets.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its goal was to keep a Russian naval presence in operationally important areas of the “far ocean zone,” RBC-Russia reported.


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A US pilot school has banned solo flights for trainees at one of the world’s top airlines after a spate of incidents

An Arizona pilot school has stopped Cathay Pacific trainees from solo flights after several incidents that went unreported, Bloomberg first reported.

Cathay Pacific, the Hong Kong flag carrier, is one of the world’s best airlines — one of just 10 globally to be ranked five stars by Skytrax.

In an internal memo, the AeroGuard Flight Training Center in Phoenix said it saw “an alarming increase in solo incidents during cadet training,” per Bloomberg.

It added that the incidents involved a wingtip colliding with a fixed object, a “bounced landing” leading to a “substantial” propellor strike, and a complete runway excursion.

“While each situation was unique, in each case the concern was the same — required consultation did not occur,” the memo reportedly said.

Bloomberg also reported that the students didn’t properly report the damage in two of the three incidents.

In a statement shared with Business Insider, Cathay Pacific acknowledged the events and added, “We are taking them seriously.”

“These incidents involve our sponsored students, who will become our employees upon successful graduation from the training course,” it said.

“They will then need to undergo additional structured training before being assigned any flying duty.”

A source familiar with the situation told Bloomberg that the decision would affect around 150 of the 250 to 300 Cathay cadets training at the school.

The decision hinders Cathay’s ongoing plans to increase its number of pilots after the pandemic, when the airline instituted steep pay cuts.

Several pilots quit during that time, with some telling Reuters that strict COVID measures in Hong Kong were affecting their mental health.

In the statement, Cathay Pacific said, “Safety guides every decision we make, and we fully support the decision of the training school.”

“We will continue to prioritize the safety and well-being of our cadet pilots and crew members, and we remain dedicated to upholding the highest standards in our training programs,” it added.


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Meta’s plan to train its AI on all your old Facebook data is raising eyebrows among privacy advocates

Meta is scrambling to compete in the red-hot AI arms race, but an advocacy group is demanding nearly a dozen European countries force Meta to pump the breaks.

The European advocacy group announced complaints in 11 European countries over an upcoming Meta policy change that would allow it to scrape old user data from Facebook to train its artificial intelligence models.

Meta “plans to use years of personal posts, private images, or online tracking data for an undefined ‘AI technology’ that can ingest personal data from any source and share any information with undefined ‘third parties,'” the group, aptly named None of Your Business, or NOYB, said in a press announcement asking authorities to step in and suspend the policy.

Meta’s updated privacy policy is scheduled to go live in late June. It would impact some 400 million European users, NOYB said. The group said it was concerning that users would have to manually opt out of providing data in the future.

“Instead of asking users for their consent (opt-in), Meta argues that it has a legitimate interest that overrides the fundamental right to data protection and privacy of European users,” NOYB said. Europe has strict data privacy laws outlined in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which went into effect in 2018 and has had a profound effect on Big Tech’s operations in Europe.

NOYB filed complaints in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Spain.

A Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, but the company previously told Reuters that its new policy followed the law.

“We are confident that our approach complies with privacy laws, and our approach is consistent with how other tech companies are developing and improving their AI experiences in Europe (including Google and Open AI),” a Meta spokesperson said, according to Reuters.

In the United States, Meta AI has already had access to public user data and private chat conversations on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and there is no way to fully opt out of sharing your information, The Washington Post reported.


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The woman who says she’s the real-life version of Martha on ‘Baby Reindeer’ just sued Netflix for $170 million

Fiona Harvey, the woman who says she’s the real version of the semi-fictionalized stalker on Netflix hit “Baby Reindeer,” is suing the streaming giant.

Harvey, a 58-year-old Scot, filed a lawsuit on Thursday in California, seeking more than $170 million and a jury trial. She’s suing over defamation and intentional affliction of emotional distress, among other points.

She did not sue creator and star Richard Gadd, who plays a fictional version of himself called Donny Dunn. “Baby Reindeer” is based on his experiences with being stalked by a woman earlier in his career, when he was trying to make it as a comedian.

In the complaint, Harvey’s lawyers said the show was a “brutal lie” that brought her unwanted attention, including death threats.

“Netflix and Gadd destroyed her reputation, her character and her life,” the attorneys wrote.

On- and off-screen, Netflix has repeatedly said “Baby Reindeer” is a true story.

“We intend to defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gadd’s right to tell his story,” a Netflix spokesperson told Business Insider.

The company has not yet filed a response to the lawsuit.

The real Martha Scott

As the show picked up viewers, armchair sleuths raced to find the “real” stalker, named Martha Scott in the show, and the man who Gadd said abused him.

In late April, Gadd asked fans not to speculate about who the real people were behind the show’s characters. He told GQ he disguised the stalker’s identity in the show.

“What’s been borrowed is an emotional truth, not a fact-by-fact profile of someone,” Gadd said.

In the lawsuit, Harvey said she was identified days after the show’s April debut. Her attorneys said people found a public 2014 tweet she sent to Gadd that used a phrase repeated in the show.

Harvey’s court filing outlined similarities between the stalker character and herself: a Scottish woman about 20 years older than Gadd living in London, with similar appearance and speaking patterns. Both the character and Harvey were accused of stalking a lawyer. It’s unclear if that reference is to an old colleague of Harvey’s, who told BI on Thursday that Harvey harassed her from 1997 to 2002.

But unlike the fictional Martha Scott, Harvey said she is not a convicted stalker, nor has she pled guilty to any crime. Her complaint said Netflix did not check any facts central to the show, including that the stalker sexually assaulted Gadd. She said she did not have any sexual encounters with the comedian.

In an interview with Piers Morgan in early May, Harvey said that while she may have emailed Gadd, it was nowhere near the 40,000 messages he said the stalker sent him. She denied harassing Gadd and said she knew him from when she was bartending in London.


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Steve Bannon has to actually go to prison by July 1, Trump-appointed judge says

Steve Bannon, a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, must start serving his four-month prison sentence by July 1, a district judge in Washington DC has ruled.

The former Trump chief strategist was found guilty in 2022 of two charges of contempt of Congress after he failed to appear for a January 6 House Committee hearing and refused to hand over documents related to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Bannon, 70, was initially given a stay of his prison term by US District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, as the Breitbart veteran appealed his conviction.

But a federal appeals court upheld the original sentence in early May, and now Nichols says it’s time for Bannon to serve his time.

“I do not believe the original basis for my stay exists any longer,” Nichols said on Thursday, per The Associated Press.

Bannon told reporters outside the courthouse that he plans to bring his appeal to a higher court.

“I’ve got great lawyers, and we’re going to go all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to,” he said.

The right-wing podcaster slammed the “entire Justice Department,” saying the institution would not be able to “shut up Trump” and his allies.

“There’s not a prison built or a jail built that will ever shut me up,” Bannon added.

His looming prison sentence comes as Peter Navarro, another close Trump ally, surrendered in March to serve his four months in prison for also refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena.

Bannon, who was for about seven months Trump’s chief strategist and senior counsel at the White House, previously declared he would be willing to go to jail for the former president.

If he starts serving his sentence on July 1, his four-month sentence would last until just before the presidential elections on November 5.


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Some Tesla shareholders say diverting Nvidia chips is further proof that Elon Musk doesn’t deserve a multibillion-dollar pay package

Several institutional shareholders of Tesla told Business Insider that Elon Musk’s decision to redirect a shipment of valuable Nvidia chips away from the EV company is further proof the CEO doesn’t deserve a multibillion-dollar pay package.

In May, a group of eight Tesla shareholders wrote a letter urging other investors to vote against Musk’s compensation package. The group is just one faction of a growing number of investors who said they plan to vote against the deal.

This package, now roughly worth $46 billion, was struck down in January by Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, who said that the process to reach this “unfair price” for Musk was “deeply flawed.”

Tesla shareholders will vote on June 13 on whether to reinstate Musk’s deal.

But less than two weeks ahead of the shareholder vote, CNBC reported that Musk diverted a $500 million shipment of Nvidia chips, which are essential for powering artificial intelligence technology, away from Tesla and to his social media platform X instead.

The internal memo from Nvidia indicating Musk’s delay of the Nvidia chips procurement was from December, CNBC reported — months before the April earnings call in which the Tesla CEO insisted the automaker is an AI company. He also stated in the call that he would aggressively expand the number of Nvidia chips at Tesla from 35,000 to 85,000 units by the end of 2024.

In response to the CNBC report, Musk said on X that “Tesla had no place to send the Nvidia chips to turn them on, so they would have just sat in a warehouse.”

“The south extension of Giga Texas is almost complete. This will house 50k H100s (Nvidia chips) for FSD training,” Musk added, referring to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving feature — a key component of the company’s promise to deliver autonomous taxis.

But some of the shareholders behind the effort to strike down Musk’s big payday are not convinced.

“The diversion of Nvidia’s processors to X and xAI is just another example of Tesla’s CEO reallocating Tesla’s resources in favor of his other businesses and treating Tesla as though it is his own coffer as a result of the lack of oversight by Tesla’s board,” Tejal Patel, the executive director of SOC Investment Group, wrote in an email to BI.

Patel added: “The key questions are why were these valuable processors ‘just sitting there’ in the first place, and if it was an operational issue, why was that not foreseen by management? Whatever decision-making there was for the processors to go unused by Tesla would have been up to CEO Musk.”

Musk did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

SOC Investment Group is one of the eight shareholders that co-signed a letter urging investors to vote against the ratification of Musk’s stock options package and against the reelection of Musk’s brother, Kimbal, and James Murdoch for seats on Tesla’s board.

The group — made up of pension fund managers, an asset management firm, and a bank — also includes Amalgamated Bank, AkademikerPension, Nordea Asset Management, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, SHARE, Unison, and United Church Funds.

In a statement to BI, Lander wrote that Musk’s decision to divert Nvidia chips away from Tesla “should be a “red flag to investors.”

“This sudden move adds to the growing concerns about Musk’s commitment to Tesla and highlights his glaring conflicts of interest,” he wrote. “There is a pressing need at Tesla for a genuinely independent board that will ensure Musk prioritizes company interests.”

Matthew Illian, the director of responsible investing for United Church Funds, similarly criticized Musk’s move to delay the shipment of Nvidia chips, stating that it was “further evidence” that the pay package “never achieved its purpose of maintaining the attention of Tesla’s CEO.”

“This is all about Elon building an empire for himself with investor money and we can’t let this happen,” he wrote in an email to BI.

It’s not immediately clear how much Tesla stock the eight shareholders own altogether.

Five of the eight shareholders, including Amalgamated Bank, Unison, Nordea, the New York City Retirement System, and United Church Funds, represent more than 4.9 million shares of Tesla stock.

As of Thursday, those shares are worth more than $878 million.

Spokespersons for SHARE, Nordea, and Unison could not be reached for comment or did not immediately respond for comment.

In addition to the eight shareholders, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), which owns about 9.5 million shares of Tesla stock, signaled it would vote against Musk’s pay package.

“We do not believe that the compensation is commensurate with the performance of the company,” CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost told CNBC.

A CalPERS spokesperson declined to comment when asked about Musk’s decision to divert the shipment of Nvidia chips.


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Luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault just put one of his sons in charge of an LVMH holding company

Luxury goods mogul Bernard Arnault is the world’s richest person.



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Bernard Arnault’s fourth child has been named head of one of the family’s holding companies that control luxury giant LVMH.

Frédéric Arnault, a 29-year-old, was also appointed to the LVMH board alongside his brother Alexandre in April. Those additions mean four out of Arnault’s five children now sit on the LVMH board.

Arnault is currently the world’s richest person with a net worth of about $215 billion, according to estimates by Bloomberg. In 2023, he became only the third person to surpass the $200 billion mark, following tech moguls Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

Arnault cofounded LVMH in the 1980s and is its CEO and chair. The French luxury conglomerate owns a range of brands covering fashion, perfume, jewelry, watches, and alcohol, including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Marc Jacobs, Givenchy, Moët & Chandon, Fenty Beauty, and Tiffany & Co.

In February 2023, Arnault’s daughter, Delphine Arnault, became CEO of Dior. But it’s not just Delphine who has risen up LVMH’s ranks. All four of Bernard’s sons work at LVMH and its brands, too.

Bernard, 75, has not said who he wants to take over from him, but it’s a topic that gets discussed every time he gives one of his offspring a new role. In 2022 LVMH raised the age limit of its CEO from 75 to 80, extending Bernard’s possible tenure.

“The best person inside the family or outside the family should be one day my successor,” Bernard told The New York Times in September. “But it’s not something that I hope is a duel for the near future.”

Bernard has primed his children for leadership roles at the company since birth, though they say he never forced them to join LVMH. His offspring were sent to the best schools and as children would get quizzed on their math skills nearly every night, The Times reported.

“I didn’t want them to start going to big parties,” Bernard said of his children. “I made them work.”

The Arnault family has been compared to HBO series “Succession,” which sees the children of media mogul Logan Roy vying to take over as CEO.

“I know it’s disappointing for a lot of people,” Antoine Arnault, Bernard’s oldest son, told The Times, “but we actually get on well.”

Delphine and Antoine already sit on LVMH’s board, leaving only Jean — the youngest of the siblings — off the board.


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We gave our daughter $20,000 for a wedding, but she used it for a home down payment and paid for her own wedding. Everyone was happy.

When Mike’s daughter got engaged, he and his wife wanted to help pay for it.

Mike, who asked Business Insider to only use his first name for privacy reasons, estimated that a wedding in the Kansas City area would cost between $15,000 and $25,000 at the time, which was around 2015.

Mike and his wife decided they could put $20,000 towards the wedding, but they knew wedding spending can get out of hand and that emotions tend to run high during the planning process.

So instead of working closely with their daughter on her wedding plans and talking through each potential cost, they came up with a straightforward solution: give her and her fiancé a lump sum of $20,000 and let them do all the planning.

“I didn’t want to be telling my daughter what she could and couldn’t do,” he said. “She was an adult.”

Mike said the strategy took the pressure off him and his wife and helped avoid any wrestling over who was buying what or what his daughter could and could not have at her own wedding. He also said it helped him and his wife contribute the amount they wanted without going over budget by adding on things here and there.

In 2023, the national average cost of a wedding was $35,000, according to The Knot, while the average cost in Kansas was $25,000. Still, most couples end up going over their budget. A Real Weddings Study by The Knot found 56% of couple spent an average of $7,600 more on their wedding than they planned. Others exceeded their budget by more than $10,000.

While tradition typically has the bride’s family primarily paying for a wedding, those customs are changing, especially as Americans get married later in life and are more able to take on their own wedding costs. A 2023 study from The Knot found it’s more common for couples and their families to split the costs equally.

Mike, his wife, their daughter, and her fiancé were all happy with the lump-sum agreement.

“Then they kind of tricked me,” he said, laughing. “One day, they came home and said, ‘Hey, we bought a house.'”

The couple took the $20,000 and used it to put a down payment on their home — before they actually had their wedding, which they then planned to pay for out of their own pocket.

Initially, Mike was surprised, but ultimately, he thought it was a good thing that his daughter and her fiancé paid for their own wedding.

“If kids are not given carte blanche on wedding plans, if they’re forced to budget from their own standpoint, the whole thing just doesn’t get out of hand,” he said.

The couple held the wedding at the rose garden in Loose Park, a large public park in Kansas City, and at a popular reception hall. Mike said everything about the wedding seemed reasonable but that he never learned what they ended up spending.

“I never asked,” he said.

If the couple had used the money for a down payment and then eloped, Mike said that may have bothered him. But as long as he and his wife were still able to attend their daughter’s wedding, they were happy.

“I figured I got off for a reasonable amount of money for the wedding, and they got a down payment on a house out of the deal and a wedding,” he said.

Mike said he thinks too many people get caught up on the lavish weddings they see on TikTok, but that it can take away from the “whole point of having a wedding, which is to have a marriage.”

He also said that he thinks by helping them learn how to budget their money for a wedding, it was also a good step towards learning how to budget in a marriage.

Mike’s wife did end up giving their daughter a bit more money in the end, which he thinks was for something having to do with her dress.

“She snuck it in,” he said, laughing. “She couldn’t resist.”

Have a news tip or a story to share about the costs of throwing a wedding or being in a bridal party? Contact this reporter at kvlamis@businessinsider.com.


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