• A man drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year's Day, killing 14 people.
• Ruth Chavez, 40, was there celebrating with her 17-year-old son. They narrowly escaped harm.
• She told BI she hoped the horrific attack wouldn't ruin their beloved mom-and-son tradition.

This as-told-to essay is based on an interview with Ruth Chavez, 40, who, along with her 17-year-old son Jonathan, witnessed the New Year's Day terrorist attack that killed 14 people in New Orleans. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

As mom and son, we've made it a tradition to go to New Orleans every year.

We've been to the city for three years running, and after our first visit, we felt completely comfortable and safe.

We've never felt like we were in danger at any time, except for our most recent night there, when, of course, the attack happened.

A yearly tradition

We don't really go out in Albuquerque, New Mexico — our home.

Our city is not very safe. We have a very high crime rate, so that's always my biggest fear with my son, a high school senior.

I try to avoid him going out anywhere in Albuquerque because he's young, and I feel like I can't protect him.

That's why we always go out of town to have fun. I take him on these trips to New Orleans to have a good time without worrying.

This time, we planned the trip seven months in advance. We were in town for the New Orleans Saints and Las Vegas Raiders game.

My son, Jonathan, is a diehard Saints fan, and the Raiders are my team. We were just having the best time on our vacation.

New Year's Eve in the French Quarter

On our last night, we were hanging out on Bourbon Street, enjoying the music and the people, and having a great time.

But my son is 17, so he couldn't go to most places.

We were winding down for the night when we happened to walk into this one bar, which had its doors open all the way around. We were in there for probably a few minutes when we started hearing gunshots.

The bar's owners shut all the doors and told everybody to get down. We stayed in there, taking cover for about five minutes.

Then we walked out the door and saw the truck had crashed right in front of where we were.

Several people were on the ground. People were trying to save them, but there was no saving them.

We thought it was just a car crash — we didn't instantly know the magnitude of what had happened.

I was just watching this kid — a similar age to my son — die.

That could have easily been us if we had been on that street just a second longer.

A lucky escape

People were screaming, and nobody knew what was going on.

Then, weirdly, it got kind of quiet. Everything kind of settled down.

The police came and started putting up tape and making us leave.

Bourbon Street was very quiet — all you could hear was the sirens.

If that bar hadn't let us in, we would've been on that street, in the direct path of that truck. We would have been either run over or shot.

We were very, very lucky.

New Orleans, the city we love

Usually, on our last day, we do some shopping and take pictures. We're so pumped from having had so much fun.

This time, we didn't do any of that.

We just felt grief in our hearts, and it was just an awful feeling. We didn't even want to eat. We were just ready to go.

As bad as it was, I can't begin to say how thankful I am that we could leave New Orleans and get on that plane.

I got emotional thinking that these other people wouldn't get that chance. They won't be able to go home to their families the way we were able to.

Do we go back?

We were planning to go to a game next year in New Orleans, but now we're unsure about that.

I don't want to say we won't go for the game, but it's too soon to say we definitely will. We still haven't even processed everything.

Jonathan and I were talking about whether we would go back to the city again, and I said I would hate for that one person who was so evil and who did such a horrific act to ruin it for us.

So, we plan on returning to New Orleans at some point and not letting this deter us from the city we love.

• A plane crashed at an airport in South Korea on Sunday, killing nearly all of its passengers.
• An aviation expert told BI that the pilots were possibly overwhelmed after a bird strike.
• South Korea has transformed its air travel industry from a 'pariah' to one of the world's safest.

A plane crashed in South Korea, killing nearly all on board and surprising an industry that has come to view the nation as one of the world's safest for air travel.

Flight 7C2216, a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 operated by the Korean budget airline Jeju Air, crashed while landing at Muan International Airport just after 9 a.m. local time on Sunday. Of the 181 people on board, there were just two survivors, both crew members.

In recent years, South Korea has been considered among the safest for air travel, but it wasn't always that way.

"25 years ago, South Korea was a pariah in the aviation industry," Airline News editor and aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas told Business Insider. He said the nation's safety standards have since improved "dramatically."

Sunday's crash marks the first fatal accident for Jeju Air, founded in 2005 and named one of the best low-cost airlines in the world in 2024 by aviation ranking website AirlineRatings.com.

The airline was founded after decades of fatal crashes prompted the nation to rehabilitate its aviation safety culture.

Years of deadly crashes

South Korea had a decadeslong history of crashes due to pilot errors.

Before 2000, Korean Air and Asiana Airlines were the two main airlines operating in South Korea. In mid-December, Korean Air completed a $1.3 billion acquisition of Asiana Airlines, marking a new era in the country's aviation industry.

Korean Air — the country's flag carrier and its biggest — struggled with safety during the latter part of the 20th century. The airline had seven fatal passenger and cargo crashes between 1978 and 1999, according to data from the Aviation Safety Network.

Pilot error was cited as a contributing factor in each.

Some 75 passengers and crew, plus four people on the ground, died in 1989 when Korean Air Flight 803 crashed while attempting to land at Tripoli International Airport in Libya.

An Associated Press report published in 1990 said the Seoul Criminal Court sentenced the pilot, who cited poor visibility, to two years in prison for causing the crash.

One of the worst incidents happened in 1997 when Korean Air Flight 801 flew from Seoul to Guam. The Boeing 747 plane attempted to land at the A.B. Won Guam International Airport when it crashed, resulting in the deaths of over 200 passengers.

The National Transportation Safety Board published a report on Flight 801, which said the probable cause for the crash was the "captain's failure to adequately brief and execute" the approach, combined with the first officer and flight engineer's failure to monitor or challenge the captain.

Two fatal Korean cargo flights in 1999 also pointed to serious safety problems, including failed crew communication and cooperation.

Founded nearly 20 years after Korean Air, Asiana only had one fatal crash before 2000, when a Boeing 737 landed short of Mokpo's airport in South Korea in 1993. Reuters reported that an inquiry found that pilot error was the cause of the crash, which killed over 60 people.

The series of crashes made Korean Air a pariah in the aviation industry.

In 1999, Delta and Air France suspended their code-share partnerships with Korean Air, temporarily severing their airline alliances.

Around the same time, the US Department of Defense banned its employees from flying on Korean Air planes.

In 2001, the Federal Aviation Administration downgraded South Korea's safety rating, citing its failure to meet international standards — representing a particularly low point for the nation.

From unreliable to the gold standard

In the late 1990s, South Korea embarked on an effort to rehabilitate its air safety reputation. It hired a retired Delta executive to help overhaul training and hiring practices.

Investigations of several Korean Air crashes found that cultural issues in the cockpit — wherein first officers and flight engineers didn't communicate effectively with the captains or hesitated to challenge them — were partly to blame for the deadly accidents.

According to a 2006 report from The Wall Street Journal, the airline shored up its training by increasing shared responsibilities among pilots and reducing its hiring of Korean Air Force veterans who struggled to collaborate with others who they considered inferior in rank.

The cultural changes paid off in the years to come.

By 2002, Delta and Air France resumed their partnerships with Korean Air, and the FAA upgraded the airline's safety rating. Likewise, the US Department of Defense lifted the ban on employees flying on the airline.

By 2008, South Korea performed better than US airlines in the International Civil Aviation Organization's safety audit.

Korean Air is today considered among the world's safest airlines, and is part of the international SkyTeam Alliance — which requires strict high levels of safety to join.

"They certainly have cleaned up," Thomas, the editor from Airline News, told BI.

He added that Jeju Air had an "excellent" record since its founding and that the 737-800 is "the workhorse of the world."

"It is the most reliable aircraft out there, so everybody knows how it works," Thomas said.

In the case of Sunday's crash, Thomas said the pilots were likely overwhelmed as they were dealing with "a disaster."

"I think the issue is multiple bird strikes and then multiple failures resulting from that," Thomas said. "I would expect by the end of the week we will have critical information about exactly what went on, the multiple failures, and the cockpit discussion about what was going on."

But some information may not be immediately available to the public, he said.

"As a responsible country, any safety learnings from this would come out immediately so this information could be passed on to other operators of the 737 model of aircraft," Thomas said. "It may not necessarily be transmitted to the general public, but it would be transmitted to airline operators to alert them to a particular failure to check their own aircraft."

• AI data centers are consuming significant power, impacting the electricity supply.
• Proximity to data centers correlated with distorted power readings, a Bloomberg analysis found.
• Big Tech companies are turning to alternative sources of energy as they build more data centers.

Data centers in the United States are consuming so much power that they may be impacting the flow of electricity to millions of Americans.

AI data centers are sprouting up across the country to meet the increased demand for AI, but they're also sucking up the power on which millions of Americans rely.

The new tech is demanding massive amounts of energy from grids that are, in some areas, already stressed. Researchers have estimated that AI centers could need three to five times the power used by traditional facilities, Business Insider previously reported.

A Bloomberg analysis assessed readings from some 770,000 homes from February to October and found that over 75% of "highly distorted power readings across the country are within 50 miles of significant data center activity."

Stresses on the power grid can lead to inconsistent power quality, and as the power quality decreases, the risk increases, Bloomberg reported. Inconsistent energy flow can cause electronics to overheat, leading to sparks or even house fires.

A small handful of large tech companies own the vast majority of global data centers — and they show no signs of slowing down as they pour billions into building more powerful AI models.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft own about 65% of the cloud infrastructure market, which includes data centers, according to a 2023 report from market research firm Synergy Research Group.

Google announced in April that it's investing $3 billion to build and expand data centers in Virginia and Indiana. The search engine giant unveiled its latest AI model, Gemini 2.0, in December.

Amazon, which is a large investor in AI startup Anthropic, is investing another $10 billion in Ohio data centers, Gov. Mike DeWine announced on December 16.

Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, said in September that the company has partnered with other investors, including BlackRock, in a $100 billion energy infrastructure project. The project will include "new and expanded data centers," the company said.

To meet AI's increasing energy demands, companies like Google have also started turning to nuclear power to find more reliable and sustainable energy sources.

• Elon Musk again came out in support of Germany's far-right party, Alternative for Germany.
• In an op-ed in a German newspaper, Musk praised the party's stance on immigration and regulation.
• Germany is holding elections in February.

Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO and advisor to President-elect Donald Trump, has reaffirmed his support for Germany's far-right party.

In an op-ed for a major German newspaper, Musk called the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, the "last spark of hope for this country." He praised its stances on immigration and government regulation, among others.

"The AfD advocates a controlled immigration policy that gives priority to integration and the preservation of German culture and security. This is not about xenophobia, but about ensuring that Germany does not lose its identity in the pursuit of globalization," Musk wrote. "A nation must preserve its core values and cultural heritage to remain strong and united."

The Welt am Sonntag newspaper published the op-ed on Saturday alongside an opposing op-ed written by Welt's editor in chief for television. The newspaper's opinion editor resigned in response, citing the publication of Musk's piece. Welt am Sonntag and Business Insider are both owned by Axel Springer SE.

Germany is holding elections in February after Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a vote of confidence earlier this month, paving the way for snap elections. Long a fringe political party, the AfD has been gaining popularity in Germany with its anti-immigration platform.

Musk said in his opinion piece that the party "resonates with many Germans who feel their concerns are being ignored by the establishment," adding that the "portrayal of the AfD as right-wing extremist is clearly false."

He also praised the party for supporting tax cuts and economic deregulation, and he called for a more balanced energy approach that includes nuclear energy.

Tesla has a major gigafactory in Berlin that manufactures battery cells and Model Y cars.

"As someone who has made significant investments in Germany's industrial and technological landscape, I believe I have the right to speak openly about his political orientation," Musk wrote.

After publishing the op-ed, Musk reposted a series of comments on X, his social media platform, that also praised AfD. One post accused Europe and the United States of overusing the label "far-right."

Last week, Musk called Scholz an "incompetent fool," adding that the chancellor should resign following an attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg that left five people dead. Musk shared a post on X suggesting that the attack was a result of immigration. Police identified the suspect in custody as a Saudi citizen who sought political asylum in Germany.

"We have freedom of opinion — it also goes for multibillionaires, but freedom of opinion also means that you can say things that aren't right and don't contain good political advice," Scholz said in response, according to the Associated Press.

Editor's Note: Business Insider is owned by Axel Springer, which also owns the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

• A plane carrying 181 people crashed at an airport in South Korea on Sunday, killing 179.
• Photos and videos show the aircraft overrunning a runway before being engulfed in flames.
• It will likely take months or years to uncover why the plane crashed.

A commercial aircraft crashed at a South Korean airport on Sunday, killing 179 people.

Flight 7C2216, operated by the Korean budget airline Jeju Air, was carrying 181 passengers and crew when it tried to land at Muan International Airport at 9:03 a.m. local time but overran the runway.

A video broadcast by MBC News, a South Korean news network, showed the plane speeding down the runway, with smoke coming from its belly, before it crashed into what appeared to be a barrier and burst into flames.

The flight was traveling from Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok.

The aircraft was a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 that Ryanair, a budget Irish airline, operated before it was delivered to Jeju Air in 2017, according to the Planespotters.net flight tracking website. It was not a Max variant, which has been embroiled in quality and production problems.

Video footage shows the aircraft landed without its landing gear deployed.

Airline News editor and aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas told Business Insider that a bird strike could have caused a mechanical issue on the plane.

"It's possible that the bird strike prevented the standard landing gear operation," he said. "It's possible, however, the pilots could crank the landing gear down manually."

"But if they had multiple failures related to the engines, then they probably didn't have time to do it, and therefore they simply made a belly-up landing on the runway because they had no options," Thomas added.

Jeju Air CEO Kim Yi-bae told reporters on December 31 that the aircraft's pre-flight inspection found "no issues" and "nothing abnormal was noted with the landing gear," the BBC reported.

South Korea's transport ministry said on Sunday that it plans to conduct a safety inspection of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft in the country, per Yonhap News.

The Boeing 737-800 is a popular aircraft that is used widely around the world.

Cirium data sent to BI found about 4,400 737-800s are used by nearly 200 airlines, representing 15% of the 28,000 passenger planes in service globally.

In a statement to BI, Boeing gave its condolences to families who lost loved ones and said it was in contact with and "ready to support" Jeju Air.

Spokespeople for Jeju Air did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement posted online, Jeju Air said it was "bowing" its head in apology and would investigate the crash.

A total of 179 people died, including 85 women, 84 men, and 10 others whose gender was not immediately identifiable. Two of the plane's six crew members survived and were conscious, according to local health officials. They were rescued from the tail section of the jet.

On Sunday, South Korea's land ministry said that it had identified 141 out of the 170 bodies, Yonhap News reported.

This is the first fatal crash involving a Jeju plane since the airline was founded in 2005. The last major aviation accident involving a South Korean airline was in 1997 when a Korean Air jet crashed in Guam, killing 228 people.

Reports of birds striking the aircraft

In a televised briefing, Lee Jeong-hyeon, chief of the Muan fire station, said that workers were investigating what caused the crash, including whether birds struck the aircraft.

"It appears that the aircraft wasn't configured for a normal landing — the landing gear wasn't down, and it looks like the wing flaps weren't extended either," Keith Tonkin, the managing director of Aviation Projects, an aviation consulting company in Australia, told BI.

The plane was almost completely destroyed, with the tail assembly the most intact part of the wreckage. After landing, the plane hit a wall, which Thomas said was within international standards, but the plane landed fast and far down the runway.

"The airport complied with international standards," he said. "The landing was anything but international standard."

Officials said that air traffic controllers warned about bird strike risks minutes before the incident, and a surviving crew member mentioned a bird strike after being rescued, The Guardian reported.

Thomas told BI that the pilots reported "mayday" shortly after air traffic controllers issued a bird strike warning. The pilots were then given permission to land on the opposite side of the runway.

Thomas said flight tracking was lost at about 900 feet, suggesting a possible electrical failure.

"I think that could well be one of the pivotal factors in this investigation as to why did it fail," he said. "What does that tell us about what was going on in the cockpit?"

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported that Muan International Airport has the highest rate of bird strike incidents among 14 airports nationwide.

Black boxes recovered, but one damaged

The Independent reported that transport ministry officials said they recovered the aircraft's two black boxes: the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.

These provide investigators with information that helps string together the events before and during a crash.

However, Yonhap reported that officials said one of the black boxes, the flight data recorder, was partially damaged. The cockpit voice recorder — which will have information on what the crew said leading up to the crash — remained intact.

CNN reported South Korean investigators have extracted some data from the cockpit voice recorder — the full process will take two days — but the damaged black box will have to be sent to the US for the NTSB to analyze.

Air crash investigations can often take months or years to complete, meaning the cause of the crash likely won't be known for a long time. The damaged black box could further delay the investigation.

The investigation will be led by South Korea, where the crash occurred and Jeju was registered. The National Transportation Safety Board in the United States, where the Boeing jet was manufactured, along with Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration, will also be involved, the agency said in a post on X.

Crashes typically have more than one cause — known as the "Swiss Cheese Model" in aviation, a string of smaller errors often leads to an accident, not just one.

"The biggest risk is speculation because it obscures the actual causes of a near-miss, incident, or accident," Simon Bennett, an aviation safety expert at the University of Leicester in the UK, told BI.

"I appreciate that the relatives of the dead and injured will want answers. Understandably, they will want closure," he said. "However, rushing the investigation would do a huge disservice to the aviation community and airlines' customers."

The crash occurred amid a political crisis in South Korea and two days into the tenure of acting President Choi Sang-mok.

Choi took over from the country's previous acting president, Han Duck-soo, who was impeached two weeks after succeeding President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was himself impeached after trying to impose martial law.

• Homelessness hit a record high this year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development found.
• About 770,000 people were experiencing unsheltered homelessness in January.
• In a silver lining, homelessness among veterans decreased markedly.

This year, homelessness was the worst it has ever been — for everyone except veterans, that is.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development released the results from the annual point-in-time surveys of unsheltered homeless people, which cities nationwide conducted in January.

Overall, homelessness was the highest it has been since the government began keeping track, with about 770,000 experiencing unsheltered homelessness on a single night in January. That's an 18% increase from the same time in 2023, the HUD said in its report released on Friday.

"While this data is nearly a year old and no longer reflects the situation we are seeing, it is critical that we focus on evidence-based efforts to prevent and end homelessness," Adrianne Todman, HUD's acting secretary, said in a press release.

Veterans were the sole group that saw a positive change. According to the survey, homelessness among veterans dropped to 32,882, the lowest number on record and about an 8% decrease from 2023. Unsheltered homelessness among veterans also dropped to 13,851, an 11% decrease from 2023.

"This year, HUD has helped connect nearly 90,000 veteran households to stable, rental homes," the department said in the press release. The Department of Veterans Affairs permanently housed 47,925 vets in 2024.

Researchers at the Brookings Institution found that homeless people in many major cities rely on temporary and emergency shelters. Building paths to permanent housing, on the other hand, improved housing access overall, leading to declines in homelessness in some cities, the researchers found.

• Prosecutors accused luxury real-estate agents Oren and Tal Alexander of sex trafficking this month.
• They are the latest in a series of top figures in real estate accused of sexual abuse or harassment.
• Some in the industry say its structure, partying, and cult of personality are all partly to blame.

The Alexander brothers, luxury brokers who New York prosecutors accused of sex trafficking this month, are the latest in a series of top figures in real estate accused of sexual abuse or harassment.

The brothers, Oren and Tal, have denied the allegations.

Still, the accusations have made some in the industry — which is dominated by women but mostly led by men — reflect on its permissive, decentralized culture that parties hard and, too often, multiple people told Business Insider, puts women into uncomfortable or dangerous situations.

While it's far from a mass reckoning like Hollywood's #MeToo movement, the series of accusations against major real estate players over the past year and a half has prompted some in the industry to look inward and consider whether its traditional practices and lack of uniform safety precautions may have contributed.

Sue Yannaccone, the president and CEO of Anywhere Real Estate Inc., which owns multiple real-estate-brokerage chains, including Century21, Coldwell Banker, and Corcoran, told Business Insider that real estate has more to do to address some of these issues.

"Real estate is not unlike other industries that have had to, unfortunately, reckon with a pattern of discrimination and harassment of women," Yannaccone said. "Holding offenders accountable is an important and effective step in our progress, and there is still more work to be done across all sectors to ensure women can always thrive in safe, supportive, and equitable work environments."

The lax structure and low barrier to entry in real estate often mean careers are built largely on an individual agent's personality and charisma. It can also create opportunities for bad behavior to go unchecked, said Brian Boero, the cofounder of 1000watt, a real-estate branding and marketing company.

With over 1.5 million agents or brokers in the United States, it's similar to "the Wild West," he said. He added that many of them operate as independent contractors, acting as free agents.

"You have really good people, and you have really bad people. It's hard to paint this industry as a whole with a broad brush," Boero said. "The employee relationship does not exist, and people can, more or less, do whatever they want with very little supervision."

A series of accusations

Oren and Tal Alexander first rose to prominence as real-estate agents at Douglas Elliman before splitting off to found their own brokerage, Official Partners.

The Alexander Team, as they were commonly known, sold over $260 million in real estate in New York in 2023, the real-estate industry trade publication The Real Deal reported.

The Alexanders "used their prominent positions in the industry to induce other women to attend events and parties" where they later sexually assaulted them, prosecutors said in an indictment earlier this month.

Prosecutors accused Oren, Tal, and a third brother Alon, who works at the family's security firm, of operating a sex-trafficking scheme in which the brothers — and others — victimized dozens of women dating back to 2010. The brothers obtained drugs to "surreptitiously" give the women and planned the assaults in advance, prosecutors said in the indictment.

Attorneys for the three brothers, whom police arrested in Florida earlier this month, did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. The twins denied the allegations when they were first reported.

James Cinque, a New York attorney representing the Alexander brothers, told BI in response to a story published before their arrest outlining four women's claims of assault and sexual misconduct that he and his colleagues had "asked them not to comment while these matters work their way through the legal system." Cinque added they're "comfortable that they will ultimately be vindicated."

Meanwhile, the success of eXp, an emerging real-estate brokerage that has a market cap of about $1.8 billion, has been overshadowed by complaints of sexual misconduct against some of its agents.

Five female eXp employees, in two separate lawsuits filed in 2023, accused agents Michael Bjorkman and David Golden of drugging them at work-related events. Four of the women said they were also sexually assaulted, according to the lawsuits. The New York Times first reported the cases against Bjorkman and Golden.

Richard Schonfeld, an attorney representing Bjorkman, told BI that the lawsuits are "one side of the story." Peter Levine, a lawyer for Golden, didn't return requests for comment from BI but told the Times the charges against Golden were "baseless and without merit." Trial dates for both cases are set for 2025.

Representatives for eXp, who didn't return requests for comment from BI, emailed a statement to the Times, highlighting the industry's decentralized nature.

"The claims in this case stem from alleged assaults by independent real estate agents who were never eXp employees — which we handled with speed, seriousness, and deep respect as soon as the accusers brought it to our attention, in line with our values and with the law," it read.

The National Association of Realtors, the largest trade association for real-estate agents in the United States with more than 1.5 million members, is also facing troubling allegations.

One of the most notable involves Kenny Parcell, a Utah real-estate agent and former NAR president who resigned in August 2023 after The New York Times published an exposé detailing multiple accusations against him and the organization.

The Times' report was based on interviews with 29 current and former employees from NAR and its affiliates who said Parcell and other NAR and affiliated company leaders repeatedly engaged in abusive and inappropriate behavior, often without facing consequences.

In June 2023, Janelle Brevard filed a lawsuit against NAR, accusing the organization of sexual harassment, retaliation, and racial discrimination. In the lawsuit, Brevard, a Black woman, said she was fired from her role in podcasts, video, and marketing after ending a consensual relationship with Parcell.

Brevard ultimately withdrew her lawsuit after entering into an agreement with the organization, the Times reported. Brevard did not respond to repeated requests for comment from BI, and her attorney declined to comment.

"The allegations are not true," Parcell said in a four-page statement in 2023. "Nothing has changed" since then, he wrote in an email to Bl on December 23. "My resignation from NAR was in no way an admission of guilt — it was a good faith effort to put NAR and its members first," he said.

In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for NAR said the organization's "new leadership has undertaken a comprehensive review of our policies and procedures and continues to work every day to help NAR employees feel respected and supported."

Parties, star-agent culture, and a long road ahead

The real-estate industry can feel unsafe at times, especially for women, as the job has inherent risks. Agents are commonly expected to meet with clients, who might be strangers, alone at homes that could be secluded or lack cell reception.

In a NAR survey of 1,423 licensed real-estate agents this year, women agents were twice as likely as men to report experiencing a situation at work that made them fear for their safety, and 54% of women carried a weapon or self-defense tool compared to 47% of men.

Still, Boero said the industry's internal culture — its hard-partying traditions and the "cult of the superstar" — also presented problems.

"The Alexander brothers were like that: high-profile, flashy, wealthy, did a ton of business. We tend to elevate, emulate, and worship those types of figures in this business. And they're not always men, but they frequently are," he said. "There is this cult of the top producer in the business that, I think, has maybe obscured bad behavior over the years."

Parties are also a central, sometimes problematic, component of real-estate culture. In an industry where success is often tied to how connected you are, brokers often frequent social events to meet and mingle with other brokers, current clients, and prospective clients.

"Parties and awards and all of that stuff is very big in this business, which means there's a lot of partying and drinking, sometimes at scale," Boero said, "which, again, sometimes creates the conditions within which bad people can do bad things."

Brooke Cohen, one of the attorneys representing all five plaintiffs in the eXp cases, told BI that socializing is often essential in real estate as an opportunity for making deals, networking, and advancing your career.

That means women can find themselves in uncomfortable environments. "It's important that in this industry some parameters are put in place," Cohen said. "We really would like it to be better for people who have to attend these events to do business."

Yannaccone said women's prevalence in the industry motivated her to create What Moves Her, a program that supports women in real-estate leadership.

"Our work is just one piece of a larger effort toward progress that includes not just the many brave voices of female agents and leaders, but many of our male counterparts as well," she said. "It's our hope that through our collective effort, we can help create an industry that truly operates on shared values of integrity, accountability, and good governance."

• Pro-Trump tech leaders and MAGA loyalists are feuding over how to overhaul the US immigration system.
• A debate over visas for high-skilled workers intensified between the two groups in recent days.
• Trump recently appointed an Indian-born tech leader as a senior policy advisor.

President-elect Donald Trump's backers in Silicon Valley are at odds with his MAGA loyalists over a key issue: immigration.

In recent days, Elon Musk and others in the tech sector have voiced support for H-1B visas, which allow US companies to hire highly skilled workers from overseas. Their comments angered Trump backers who favor stricter immigration rules.

Musk's latest response to the backlash came late Friday in an expletive-laden X post. He said an H-1B visa allowed him and others to build "SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong."

"I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend," he posted.

Trump appeared to side with Musk on Saturday, telling The New York Post that he has "always liked the visas."

"I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I've been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great program," he said.

In 2020, Trump authorized a freeze on visas, including the H-1B, in what his administration said was an attempt to reserve jobs for Americans amid the economic hardships brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The debate over H-1Bs began after Trump offered Sriram Krishnan, a Chennai-born, Indian American investor, a role as a senior policy advisor for artificial intelligence.

Krishnan, who recently lived in London while leading an expansion of the venture capital firm A16z, moved to the United States after graduating from college in India and worked at several tech firms, including Microsoft, Twitter, and Meta.

Criticism has largely come from anonymous social media accounts — one X post asked if anyone had voted "for this Indian to run America," prompting a defense from Trump's AI and crypto czar, David Sacks.

Krishnan's appointment has prompted a wider debate on the merits of H-1B visas.

Some tech leaders who have been deeply critical of illegal immigration have stepped up to defend immigration policies that allow high-skilled foreign workers to stay in the United States legally.

Musk said on Thursday his priority was bringing in top engineering talent legally — saying it is "essential for America to keep winning."

"Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct," he wrote on X.

"America rose to greatness over the past 150 years, because it was a meritocracy more than anywhere else on Earth. I will fight to my last drop of blood to ensure that it remains that land of freedom and opportunity," he added later.

Musk's co-lead at the Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy, also took to X on Thursday to argue that tech companies often hire foreign-born engineers to avoid what he called an American culture that has "venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long."

"A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers," he wrote in a nearly 400-word post.

In a later post, he said immigration rules should be reformed more effectively to funnel talent to the United States. The H-1B system was not effective, he said, and "should be replaced with one that focuses on selecting the very best of the best."

Marc Benioff, the boss of Salesforce, also weighed in, offering a solution to keep the "best and brightest" foreign students in the US after graduation: "Can we staple a US green card to every degree earned at an American university?"

The pro-immigration messages haven't gone down well with everyone in Trump's orbit.

Matt Gaetz, the former congressman who was Trump's initial pick for attorney general, wrote on X Thursday that tech leaders should butt out.

When Republicans embraced them, he said, "We did not ask them to engineer an immigration policy."

Meanwhile, the far-right activist and Trump supporter Laura Loomer expressed opposition to H-1B visas and concerns over the "replacement of American tech workers by Indian immigrants."

Where Trump will land on the issue remains to be seen. Immigration lawyers have warned tech workers that a "storm is coming" and suggested that foreign workers with visas who have left the US should get back before Trump takes office.

• Boeing is having a rough year.
• The company has faced mechanical problems, lawsuits, a leadership shake-up, and layoffs.
• Here's a breakdown of how Boeing's year has gone from bad to worse.

Boeing has been going through it this year.

From losing a door plug on an Alaska Airlines flight, causing a side panel to blow out in midair, to an exodus of corporate executives, the company has faced a litany of crises in 2024. The company's stock has fallen about 35% this year.

In a message to employees during the company's third-quarter earnings call, Boeing CEO Kely Ortberg said the company was at a "crossroads."

"My mission here is pretty straightforward," she said. "Turn this big ship in the right direction and restore Boeing to the leadership position that we all know and want."

Here's how Boeing's year went from bad to worse.

Emergency on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282

The problems began almost immediately this year when, on January 5, Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 lost a door plug midair, blowing a hole in the side of the plane. While no one died in the incident, several passengers were injured, and the pilots were forced to make an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon.

In the aftermath of the incident, the FAA temporarily grounded over 170 of Boeing's 737 Max 9 planes until they could complete safety inspections.

The Justice Department opened an investigation into Boeing shortly after, and the FBI told passengers aboard the flight that they might have been victims of a crime.

Ongoing litigation

Boeing was hit with multiple lawsuits this year.

Passengers from the Alaska Airlines flight filed a class action suit against the company just days after the incident.

"Passengers were shocked and confused, thrust into a waking nightmare unsure if these were their last seconds alive," the lawsuit said.

Boeing's shareholders filed a separate class action suit against the company in January, stating that it had prioritized profit over safety, Reuters reported.

Separately, in July, Boeing struck a plea deal related to two 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. If a judge had approved the deal, it would have allowed Boeing to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, avoid a trial, pay a fine of about $244 million, and invest at least $455 million in safety and compliance measures.

Boeing agreed to pay $2.5 billion in 2021 in a deal with the federal government to avoid prosecution for the crashes, but Justice Department officials said in May that Boeing had violated portions of the deal, putting a trial back on the table. Relatives of the deceased passengers asked a Texas judge in October to throw out the agreement, which they called a "sweetheart" deal. The families have previously called for the company to pay a fine amounting to nearly $25 billion.

In December, the judge rejected the deal. A lawyer representing families who lost people in the 2019 crash told BI that they "anticipate a significant renegotiation of the plea deal that incorporates terms truly commensurate with the gravity of Boeing's crimes."

FAA audit of Boeing's safety procedures

The Federal Aviation Administration commissioned a report into Boeing following the fatal 2018 and 2019 crashes — and the results published in February weren't good news for the company.

The FAA report found 27 insufficient areas in Boeing's safety procedures, including no clear system for employees to report safety concerns, confusing management structures, and poor communication with employees about safety procedures.

The latest statement from the FAA about Boeing's compliance to remedy the safety issues was published in August. It said the agency continues "actively monitoring Boeing's progress in a variety of ways," including regular reviews by FAA experts of Boeing's safety procedures and issuing airworthiness certificates for every newly produced Boeing 737 Max. 

The FAA itself has faced scrutiny for its oversight of Boeing. A report from the Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General in October found the agency's checks were insufficient.

Exodus of Boeing executives

In March, Boeing announced a leadership shake-up.

CEO Dan Calhoun said he would step down. Stan Deal, the CEO of the company's commercial airplanes division, said he would retire. In the same announcement, board chair Larry Kellner announced his plan not to seek reelection.

Stephanie Pope, the company's COO, was promoted to replace Deal shortly after his departure. At the end of July, Kelly Ortberg was named the company's new CEO.

Ted Colbert, who headed Boeing's defense, space, and security division, became the first prominent executive to leave the company after Ortberg took over. Colbert's departure was announced in September.

Stranded astronauts

The aerospace company faced another high-profile problem in June when NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams traveled to the International Space Station on Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spaceship. It marked the first time Boeing flew astronauts to space.

The astronauts left Earth on June 5 and were supposed to return after eight days, but issues with Starliner's thrusters and helium leaks caused delays. NASA and Boeing began troubleshooting the problems to bring Wilmore and Williams back home. However, in late July, the two astronauts were still stuck at the International Space Station.

NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, Steve Stich, said in a press briefing that month that Elon Musk's SpaceX could bring home the astronauts if needed. After working with Boeing to determine whether the two astronauts could safely return to Earth on Starliner, NASA announced in August that it chose SpaceX to do the job instead.

"Spaceflight is risky," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference. "Even at its safest. Even at its most routine. A test flight, by nature, is neither safe nor routine. So, the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station, and bring the Boeing Starliner home un-crewed, is a result of a commitment to safety."

The decision was a major blow to Boeing, which spent $4.2 billion developing Starliner. Wilmore and Williams' flight was the final step Boeing needed to clear for NASA to certify Starliner for human spaceflight. It highlighted just how far Boeing lags behind its competitor, SpaceX.

Wilmore and Williams are now expected to return to Earth in 2025 on SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship, which launched for the International Space Station in September. The astronauts were initially set to return home in February, but NASA announced they would be delayed until March as SpaceX readies its spaceship.

Union strike

Thousands of unionized Boeing employees walked out in September after contract negotiations broke down.

The strike began despite a promising pay package proposal, which would have raised wages by more than 25% over the contract period for more than 32,000 employees in the Pacific Northwest.

Ultimately, union workers denied the proposal and voted to initiate a strike, which is costing the company about $50 million a day.

Negotiations stalled, with both sides filing National Labor Relations Board violations accusing the other of negotiating in bad faith.

Boeing and union leaders reached a tentative deal on October 19 that included a 35% general wage increase spread over four years and a one-time ratification bonus of $7,000.

However, striking Boeing employees rejected the deal on October 24.

"After 10 years of sacrifice, we still have ground to make up. We hope to resume negotiations promptly," the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said on X.

The 53-day strike ended in early November when workers approved a new contract.

Layoffs

Boeing began furloughs of white-collar workers in mid-September after the strike began. Select employees were required to take one week off every four weeks on a rolling basis.

Ortberg, in a staff memo, also announced that executive leadership would take a "commensurate pay reduction for the duration of the strike," though details of the pay reduction remain unclear.

Layoffs began several weeks later. In mid-October, Boeing announced plans to lay off about 10% of its 170,000-member workforce.

In a memo to employees, Ortberg said Boeing was in a "difficult position" and that "restoring our company requires tough decisions."

The company also delayed production of its 777X twin-engine jet and discontinued production of its 767 cargo plane, the memo noted.

Production delays with the Boeing 777X plane

The experimental 777X is Boeing's newest widebody plane, banking 481 orders from more than a dozen global carriers even though regulators have not yet approved it to fly passengers.

But the aircraft has been riddled with production problems — like supply chain issues, design troubles, and now the ongoing strike — which have already put it five years behind schedule and set Boeing back $1.5 billion.

That hole will likely deepen with the latest entry delay to 2026, further eroding the industry's trust in Boeing's 777X program. It could also push carriers to choose Boeing's European rival Airbus and its already-in-service Airbus A350.

The aircraft is still uncertified but started certification flight testing in July. Testing was halted in August due to a problem with a key part that connects the engine to the aircraft, CNBC reported.

Production troubles with Boeing's 737 MAX aircraft

The FAA announced in January that it would not grant any production expansions of Boeing's MAX aircraft, including the 737 MAX 9, following the emergency on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.

"The Jan. 5 Boeing 737-9 MAX incident must never happen again," the FAA said in a press release said.

FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said Boeing would not be cleared to expand production or add additional production lines for the 737 MAX "until we are satisfied that the quality control issues uncovered during this process are resolved," according to the press release.

Boeing held a three-hour meeting with the FAA in June to address safety and quality concerns. Afterward, Whitaker spoke at a press conference, where he told a reporter that expanding production of 737 MAX planes was still up in the air.

The FAA told Business Insider, "This is about systemic change, and there's a lot of work to be done. Boeing must meet milestones, and the timing of our decisions will be driven by their ability to do so."

The agency added: "Boeing has delivered a roadmap to change its safety culture, and the FAA will make sure Boeing implements the changes they have outlined. We will not approve production increases beyond the current cap until we're satisfied they've followed through on implementing corrective actions and transforming their safety culture."

Boeing restarted production of the 737 Max in December following the strike's conclusion.

Whistleblowers report problems at Boeing

Sam Salehpour, a Boeing engineer, testified at an April Senate hearing that the company ignored his reports on safety concerns, that his boss retaliated against him, and that he received threats against his physical safety.

The Senate subcommittee investigating Boeing's safety and quality practices released a 204-page report in June. The report included accounts from several whistleblowers.

Sam Mohawk, a Boeing quality assurance inspector, said the company lost track of hundreds of bad 737 parts and instructed employees to conceal improperly stored plane parts from FAA inspectors.

Another whistleblower, Richard Cuevas, wrote in a June complaint to the FAA that holes were being incorrectly drilled on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner planes.

Money woes

In a sign of how Boeing's problems have hurt its bottom line, the company said in a regulatory filing to the SEC in October that it had entered a $10 billion credit agreement with four major banks: JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Citibank.

The company also filed a prospectus saying it might sell up to $25 billion in securities.

"These are two prudent steps to support the company's access to liquidity," Boeing said in a statement.

While workers were on strike, Bank of America analysts estimated that the work stoppage cost Boeing $50 million a day.

To save money, Ortberg, the company's CEO, instructed top executives to stop flying private jets and instead fly economy on commercial flights.

• Attorney Tony Buzbee accused Jay-Z's Roc Nation of trying to flip his clients to sue his firm.
• Buzbee is representing a woman who accused Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter and Sean "Diddy" Combs of rape.
• Roc Nation said Buzbee's lawsuit is a distraction and a "sham."

The legal fight between Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, and attorney Tony Buzbee is heating up.

In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, Buzbee, the attorney representing a woman who accused Carter and Sean "Diddy" Combs of rape, accused Carter's Roc Nation of using "shadowy operatives" to solicit Buzbee's former clients to flip and sue him.

"These folks have stooped to a new low to try to intimidate the lawyers of the Buzbee Law Firm from doing their important work. This conduct was specifically targeted at our firm so we would not pursue cases related to the Diddy litigation," Buzbee said in a statement to Business Insider. "But, we will not be bullied or intimidated."

Buzbee's lawsuit — which was filed in Harris County, Texas, on behalf of a former client of Buzbee's firm and includes allegations of barratry and conspiracy — accused Roc Nation of financing the scheme, and other defendants, including two legal firms, an attorney, and an investigator, of orchestrating and executing it.

"Unfortunately for the Defendants, their agents are not very smart, or careful," Buzbee's lawsuit said.

Buzbee's lawsuit said the defendants impersonated Texas state officials and "flashed fake badges."

In one case, he said they "offered as much as $10,000 to a former client of the Buzbee Law Firm to sue the firm."

A spokesperson for Roc Nation said in a statement that Buzbee's suit was merely a distraction.

"Tony Buzbee's baloney lawsuit against ROCNATION is nothing but another sham. It's a pathetic attempt to distract and deflect attention. This sideshow won't change the ultimate outcome and true justice will be served soon," the spokesperson said.

Buzbee's accusations come after a woman identified in court papers only as Jane Doe filed a civil case against Carter and Sean "Diddy" Combs, accusing the two of raping her at a party following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards when she was 13 years old. Buzbee is representing her.

Carter vehemently denied Doe's allegations, which come while Combs faces sex trafficking and racketeering charges, along with lawsuits accusing him of sexual misconduct. Combs remains in jail while he awaits his trial.

In Carter's denial, he called Buzbee a "deplorable human."

"I promise you I have seen your kind many times over. I'm more than prepared to deal with your type," Carter wrote in a statement on his company Roc Nation's X account, addressing Buzbee directly.

The initial lawsuit didn't name Carter, referring to him instead as "Celebrity A."

Before naming Carter, Buzbee reached out to him to propose Doe and Carter mediate the case, the lawyer previously told Business Insider. Buzbee said Carter responded with "an utterly frivolous lawsuit" and by "orchestrating a conspiracy of harassment, bullying and intimidation" against Buzbee and his legal team.

Since Doe's lawsuit was filed, critical questions have emerged about some of her allegations. Following an interview with the woman and her father, who she said drove her home on the night of her alleged assault, NBC News reported inconsistencies in the story.

Her father, for example, told the outlet that he didn't remember picking her up that night.

When asked about other inconsistencies, she told the outlet she had made "mistakes" but stood by the brunt of her allegations.

In a court filing Wednesday, an attorney for Carter argued that the "allegations are baseless and fatally contradicted" by the woman and her father's statements to NBC. Carter's attorney is seeking an order to show cause — which seeks an explanation as to why the inconsistencies aren't enough for Carter to be "dismissed" from the lawsuit accusing him of rape.

If you are a survivor of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-4673) or visit its website to receive confidential support.

• Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI researcher, died by suicide late last month.
• After he left the company, Balaji raised questions about OpenAI possibly violating copyright law.
• His name appears in a New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI that could have far-reaching implications.

Eight days before the former OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji was found dead in a San Francisco apartment, the 26-year-old's name appeared in a lawsuit against his former employer that could have significant implications for the future of AI and the internet.

The lawsuit — filed by The New York Times last December — accused OpenAI and Microsoft of using "millions" of articles published by the newspaper without permission to train the AI startup's popular ChatGPT model. The companies have denied that they violated copyright law.

On November 18, the Times' attorneys asked a judge to add Balaji as a "custodian" in the lawsuit, according to court documents viewed by Business Insider. The attorneys' letter described Balaji as someone with "unique and relevant documents" that could support their copyright infringement case against OpenAI and Microsoft.

Other custodians proposed by the Times include former OpenAI employees such as cofounder Ilya Sutskever. Sutskever's potential contribution to the lawsuit is redacted in the court documents.

The Times' legal case is one of several copyright lawsuits filed against the AI startup after ChatGPT was released in 2022.

If the courts were to side with the Times or other news outlets and authors who have filed a lawsuit, the result could be costly for AI companies and limit the already finite data used to train models.

The Times' lawsuit doesn't demand an exact monetary figure but says OpenAI and Microsoft are responsible for "billions of dollars" in damages.

Spokespeople for OpenAI, Microsoft, and The New York Times did not respond to requests for comment.

Balaji raised concerns over OpenAI's use of copyrighted data

Balaji joined OpenAI in 2020 and worked on training the ChatGPT and GPT-4 models, court documents and reporting from The New York Times show. The researcher, who said OpenAI's work violated copyright law, left the company in August "because he no longer wanted to contribute to technologies that he believed would bring society more harm than benefit," the Times reported.

On October 23, he published an essay on his personal website raising questions about whether OpenAI's use of copyrighted data could be considered fair use.

"While generative models rarely produce outputs that are substantially similar to any of their training inputs, the process of training a generative model involves making copies of copyrighted data," Balaji wrote. "If these copies are unauthorized, this could potentially be considered copyright infringement, depending on whether or not the specific use of the model qualifies as 'fair use.' Because fair use is determined on a case-by-case basis, no broad statement can be made about when generative AI qualifies for fair use."

That same day, the Times published a profile of the former OpenAI researcher.

"If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company," he told the Times.

On November 26, eight days after Balaji's name appeared in the Times' attorney's letter, officers from the San Francisco Police Department responded to a welfare check at a Lower Haight-area apartment around 1:15 p.m.

"Officers and medics arrived on scene and located a deceased adult male from what appeared to be a suicide," an SFPD spokesperson told BI. "No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation."

The office of the city's chief medical examiner later identified the deceased male as Balaji.

"The manner of death has been determined to be suicide," David Serrano Sewell, executive director of the city's office of the chief medical examiner, told BI. He did not provide further comment.

"We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news today and our hearts go out to Suchir's loved ones during this difficult time," an OpenAI spokesperson told BI when reached for comment on Friday.

• Isak Andic, the founder of the fashion brand Mango, has died in an accident, the company said.
• Andic fell into a ravine while hiking in caves near Barcelona, according to reports.
• Andic and his family have an estimated net worth of $4.5 billion, according to Forbes.

Isak Andic, the billionaire founder of the European fashion company Mango, died on Saturday. He was 71.

Andic, who served as the company's non-executive chairman, died after an accident, Mango CEO Toni Ruiz said in a press release.

"Isak has been an example for all of us. He dedicated his life to Mango, leaving an indelible mark thanks to his strategic vision, his inspiring leadership and his unwavering commitment to values that he himself imbued in our company," Ruiz said in the press release.

Ruiz praised Andic's "care and affection that he always had" for the company.

Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister of Spain, said in a post on X that Andic died in an accident in the caves of Salnitre in Collbató, which is just outside of Barcelona.

According to multiple reports, Andic fell into a ravine while hiking through caves with his family. The ravine was over 320 feet deep, CNN reported, citing local police.

On Sunday, Mango's website featured a tribute to Andic on its home page, and photos show the flags at the company's headquarters in Barcelona flying at half-mast.

Andic started the company in Barcelona in 1984. According to Mango's website, it's now in over 120 markets and has a thriving online presence. Forbes reported that Andic and his family are worth $4.5 billion.

• A man from Northern Ireland looks set to spend Christmas in the UAE following his arrest.
• Authorities in Abu Dhabi arrested Craig Ballentine after he posted a negative Google review about his former UAE employer.
• Ballentine's family said the situation is "a living nightmare."

A man from Northern Ireland who was arrested after posting a negative review about his former employer in Dubai looks set to spend Christmas in the United Arab Emirates.

Craig Ballentine was arrested in Abu Dhabi's airport in October over a negative Google review he posted about his former workplace — a dog grooming salon in Dubai, according to Radha Stirling, an advocate who helps foreigners navigate legal trouble in the UAE.

Ballentine spent about six months working at the salon in 2023. He said he needed time off due to illness and presented his employer with medical certificates as proof of his condition.

But the employer reported him as "absconded" with UAE authorities after he missed work, and he was hit with a travel ban.

After getting the ban lifted, Ballentine returned to Northern Ireland, where he wrote a Google review detailing the issues with his former employer.

He was arrested after returning to the UAE for a holiday and now faces charges of slander.

Ballentine, who said he had paid a fine and was given a one-month social media ban, had hoped to get his travel ban lifted and return to Northern Ireland ahead of Christmas.

But he told the BBC that while on the way to a police station to get the ban lifted, he was told authorities wanted to appeal his case and had set a court date for February.

"While I was in the middle of the transit going there, I got the email that the court was not happy and they wanted to appeal again," he said. "I called friends and family and couldn't stop crying, because you're holding on to those emotions, you're just trying to focus on 'let's get out of here.'"

A GoFundMe set up by Ballentine's family has raised nearly $2,500 to help with his legal fees.

"What started out as a holiday to catch up with friends for Craig has turned out to be a living nightmare," the family says on the page.

"At present legal fees are crippling and any money raised will go to help clearing these costs," they added.

Ballentine has also appealed to politicians to support his case with the help of Radha Stirling, a representative from the campaign group "Detained in Dubai."

"The amount of support Craig has is quite incredible," Stirling said. "Charging someone for an online review is something everyone can imagine happening to them. We've received an influx of worried tourists contacting us to check their police status in Dubai and it's certainly a good idea."

Stirling has helped several tourists held up in the country on exaggerated charges and forced to pay costly fees as a resolution. She previously told Business Insider that it's relatively easy to file a complaint that can prevent someone from leaving the country.

"There's been a lot of cases in the past where people have been accused of road rage or flipping the middle finger and that kind of thing, even when they haven't," Stirling previously told BI. "Then someone goes down to the police station, and whatever they say is automatically believed. They don't need evidence."

In one case Stirling worked on, a female college student lightly nudged an airport security officer during a security screening search. They accused her of assault, and she was unable to leave the nation for months.

In another case, a woman was detained after she was accused of screaming, which her accusers said violated a vague law criminalizing "offensive behavior" like rudeness or swearing. She paid $1,000 to have the travel ban that prevented her from leaving lifted, though her accusers initially demanded $10,000.

"It's actually culturally widespread, and the police haven't done anything to clamp down on that sort of extortion," Stirling previously told BI.

• Mark Zuckerberg's Meta urged California to halt OpenAI's transition to a for-profit company.
• In doing so, Zuckerberg sided with his occasional nemesis, Elon Musk, who also wants to stop OpenAI.
• It seems the two tech billionaires have finally found some common ground.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk have long-standing beef about everything from artificial intelligence to how they run their respective social media platforms.

While that feud has lasted for the better part of a decade — and has even threatened to get physical — the two tech billionaires now agree on at least one thing: their competitor, OpenAI, should remain a nonprofit.

Zuckerberg's Meta asked the California attorney general on Friday to stop OpenAI from becoming a for-profit company. Meta accused Sam Altman's company of "taking advantage" of its status as a nonprofit to raise billions.

"OpenAI wants to change its status while retaining all of the benefits that enabled it to reach the point it has today. That is wrong. OpenAI should not be allowed to flout the law by taking and reappropriating assets it built as a charity and using them for potentially enormous private gains," Meta said in the letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

OpenAI is one of Meta's biggest competitors in the AI tech race.

"Failing to hold OpenAI accountable for its choice to form as a nonprofit could lead to a proliferation of similar startup ventures that are notionally charitable until they are potentially profitable," Meta wrote in the letter.

With that, Zuckerberg sided with Musk, who is engaged in an ongoing legal fight to prevent OpenAI from becoming a for-profit.

Musk, one of 11 OpenAI cofounders who split from the company early on, launched a second bid in November to stop OpenAI from making the transition, asking a court for an injunction against the company.

The injunction request also argues that OpenAI and Microsoft, the largest corporate investor in the AI startup, have worked together to build a "for-profit monopoly," engaging in anti-competitive behavior that also targets xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence venture.

OpenAI has fought back. On Friday, it published a blog post titled "Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit." The post includes a series of emails and messages between Musk and other cofounders, including Altman, going back as far as November 2015, a month before the company was founded.

In one of those emails, Musk responded to Altman's proposal to start a Delaware-based nonprofit: "Also, the structure doesn't seem optimal," Musk wrote.

Musk left the organization in 2018 in part because he believed OpenAI's "probability of success was 0," according to an OpenAI blog post from March. Musk has accused OpenAI of straying from its original mission to develop an artificial general intelligence that is safe and benefits humanity.

Almost a decade after its founding as a nonprofit, OpenAI is now eyeing the switch to a for-profit venture to generate more investor capital. In October, the company announced a $6.6 billion funding round, raising OpenAI's valuation to $157 billion. That investment, however, comes with a stipulation that OpenAI become a for-profit within two years.

Meanwhile, Meta said it plans to pour as much as $37 billion on infrastructure costs alone this year, largely related to AI. Musk's xAI told investors last month that it secured $5 billion in funding.

Musk and spokespeople for Meta and OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

• The Alexander brothers have been hit with federal sex-trafficking charges.
• Oren and Tal Alexander are top real-estate agents. Police also arrested a third brother.
• The brothers earlier denied the accusations through an attorney.

The Alexander brothers were arrested on Wednesday on federal charges of sex trafficking. Prosecutors accused the siblings of operating a "long-running sex trafficking scheme," according to an unsealed indictment.

The New York prosecutors said in the indictment that Tal and Oren — who are among the nation's top luxury real-estate agents — and their brother, Alon, collaborated for more than a decade with others both "known and unknown" to "repeatedly and violently drug, sexually assault, and rape dozens of victims."

The indictment said the brothers used their wealth and prominent positions "to create opportunities to rape and sexually assault women" in Manhattan and Miami in a scheme that began in 2010 and lasted more than 10 years.

At times, prosecutors said the brothers planned out the sexual assaults in advance "using the promise of luxury experiences, travel, and accommodations to lure and entice women to locations where they were forcibly raped or sexually assaulted, sometimes by multiple men, including one or more of the Alexander brothers."

Other times, the Alexander brothers chose their victims by chance, prosecutors said.

The real-estate duo, in particular, the indictment said, "used their prominent positions in the industry to induce other women to attend events and parties, and to meet other women at those events and parties, whom one or more of the defendants later sexually assaulted."

Prosecutors alleged the Alexander brothers worked together and with other men to arrange events and both domestic and international trips that they used as "bait" to "recruit, entice, harbor, transport, and maintain multiple women."

Ahead of events and trips, the Alexander brothers would secure drugs, including hallucinogenic mushrooms, cocaine, and GHB, which they agreed to provide women, the indictment says.

On multiple occasions, they and others would "surreptitiously" drug women's drinks, prosecutors said.

"At times, the defendants physically restrained and held down their victims during the rapes and sexual assaults and ignored screams and explicit requests to stop," the indictment said.

Oren Alexander, Alon Alexander, and their cousin, Ohad Fisherman, were also separately charged in Florida with sexual battery in three incidents in Miami involving three different women in 2016, 2017, and 2021.

Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the state attorney for Miami-Dade County in Florida, announced the charges in a joint news conference with the Miami Beach police department on Wednesday.

Florida prosecutors charged Oren Alexander with three counts of sexual battery, with one of the charges involving multiple perpetrators and classified as a second-degree felony. Alon Alexander was charged with one count of sexual battery involving multiple perpetrators, a second-degree felony. Fisherman was charged with one count of sexual battery by multiple perpetrators.

In the first incident in 2016, Oren and Alon took turns raping a woman at Alon's Miami Beach apartment while Fisherman held her down, the state attorney said. The woman told police that after the assault, Oren asked her to shower and Alon told her not to tell anybody what had happened. The woman told her two sisters and a friend about the assault but did not contact police at the time because she feared retribution from the men, the state attorney said.

Prosecutors said the second incident, which involved only Oren, took place after a woman attended a real-estate event with him in 2017. After the event, Oren invited her to his apartment, where he gave her a glass of wine, after which she said she felt weak and out of control of her body. She found herself on Oren's bed with Oren on top of her; she could not move or speak or push him off. He then raped her, she said.

In the third incident in 2021, a woman met Oren at a dinner she attended with a friend, the state attorney said. Oren invited the woman and her friend to his house on Flamingo Drive. At his house, Oren brought the woman to a couch next to his bedroom, removed her shoes, and started kissing her. The woman said she felt uncomfortable as Oren became aggressive. When she tried to pull away from him, he ripped off the top of her dress, leaving her naked on top. She went to his bedroom to grab a T-shirt from his closet and tried to leave the house. But when she got downstairs, she realized she could not leave because the doors were remote-controlled. She went back upstairs to ask Oren to let her out. There, Oren pushed her onto his bed, held her down with his knees, and assaulted her as she told him no, prosecutors said.

Rundle, the state attorney, thanked the "brave women" for disclosing what happened to them.

"These women are strong and they're resilient," she said. "They are an example to anyone else out there who has experienced sex violence."

Local news footage showed Oren and Alon being escorted into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami on Wednesday. Tal, who was not mentioned in the Florida news conference, was being held at a separate jail, Local 10 News reported.

The brothers' arrest follows years of sexual-assault allegations by multiple women.

Deanna Paul, a New York attorney for Tal Alexander, confirmed to Business Insider that police arrested the brothers in Miami on Wednesday morning but declined to comment further.

The brothers have "strongly" denied any wrongdoing, James Cinque, a New York-based attorney, told Business Insider in September.

"We have asked them not to comment while these matters work their way through the legal system," Cinque said, "but are comfortable that they will ultimately be vindicated."

The FBI began investigating the Alexander brothers after The Real Deal first reported in June that two women had filed civil lawsuits against Oren and Alon earlier this year.

The women, Kate Whiteman and Rebecca Mandel, said the brothers took turns raping them in two separate incidents in 2010 and 2012, respectively. About 10 days after The Real Deal's article was published, another woman, Angelica Parker, filed a lawsuit accusing Alon and Tal of raping her in their New York City apartment in 2012 while Oren watched. In July, a fourth woman, the actor and comedian Renée Willett, filed a lawsuit against Oren, accusing him of drugging and raping her, also in his SoHo apartment in 2015.

"We are glad to hear that there will finally be some measure of accountability for the Alexander brothers and justice for their many victims," David E. Gottlieb, a partner at Wigdor, the law firm representing Parker, said in a statement to BI. "We applaud all the survivors who have had the strength and courage to speak up about their unimaginable experiences after years of pain and suffering."

A day after the criminal indictments, another woman, going by "Jane Doe," filed a lawsuit in New York against Alon and Oren, accusing them both of raping her in 2016.

The lawsuit said Alon invited the plaintiff to a barbecue and pool party in Miami on New Year's Eve but that when she arrived she realized she was the only guest. She said Fisherman held her down while Oren raped her with Alon watching. Alon then raped her, the lawsuit said.

Lawyers for Alon, Oren, and Fisherman did not respond to a request for comment from BI on the new lawsuit.

Alon and Oren also appeared in court in Miami on Thursday, where a judge ordered they be held without bond, The New York Times reported. Alon had told the judge his wife was expected to give birth to their first child "any day now" and that she was counting on him to be with her. The next hearing is set for Friday.

At a press conference on Wednesday announcing the indictment, Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, called on additional victims to speak out.

"Our investigation is far from over," Williams said. "If you have been a victim of the alleged sexual violence perpetrated by Alon Alexander, Oren Alexander, or Tal Alexander — or if you know anything about their alleged crimes — we urge you to come forward."

Since June, more than a dozen women have said they were raped or assaulted by the three brothers, sometimes in tandem. Business Insider spoke to four women who described being assaulted or feeling coerced into sexual encounters, including one who said Tal, now 38, raped her in Las Vegas in 2017.

Business Insider's investigation found that it was an open secret in wealthy social circles for years that the Alexander twins, 37, and their older brother Tal, mistreated women.

Oren and Tal started their real-estate careers at Douglas Elliman before launching their own brokerage, Official, in 2022. Alon works for the family's security company in Florida.

December 12, 2024: This story has been updated to include a new lawsuit that was filed a day after the criminal indictments as well as Alon and Oren's court appearance on Thursday.

• Google DeepMind unveiled GenCast, its AI tool for weather forecasts.
• GenCast outperformed existing forecasting systems in trials, Google DeepMind said.
• Better forecasting will allow for better preparation in extreme weather events, the company said.

Google DeepMind announced its new artificial intelligence weather prediction tool called GenCast on Wednesday.

Google DeepMind said GenCast differs from other models because it has "adapted to the spherical geometry of the Earth and learns to accurately generate the complex probability distribution of future weather scenarios when given the most recent state of the weather as input."

As a result, Google DeepMind said GenCast provides better forecasts than the "top operating system," referencing the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and its model — known as ENS — that makes predictions up to 15 days in advance. GenCast, which was trained on the European center's data, "consistently outperformed ENS" when it predicted extreme heat, extreme cold, and high wind speeds.

"Now consider tropical cyclones, also known as hurricanes and typhoons. Getting better and more advanced warnings of where they'll strike land is invaluable. GenCast delivers superior predictions of the tracks of these deadly storms," the company said.

In an article in Nature published on Wednesday, Google DeepMind researchers wrote that GenCast had "greater skill than ENS on 97.2% of 1,320 targets we evaluated."

"Better predictions of extreme weather enable better decisions," DeepMind said in its press release. The company also said it would share real-time and historic forecasts from GenCast.

"We are eager to engage with the wider weather community, including academic researchers, meteorologists, data scientists, renewable energy companies, and organizations focused on food security and disaster response," the company said.

• The owners of Burger King and Popeyes franchises in Massachusetts have been fined for child labor violations.
• The office of the Massachusetts AG said it issued more than $2 million in citations against one operator.
• The US has seen a rise in child labor violations in recent years.

The Massachusetts attorney general has fined the owners of multiple Burger King and Popeyes franchises for violating child labor laws and other labor laws.

The office of Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said this week that it issued more than $2 million in citations against Northeast Foods LLC, which operates dozens of Burger King franchises across the state.

That fine includes penalties against the company as well as restitution for unpaid wages, the AG's office said in a press release.

Campbell's office alleged that the franchise operator assigned minors to work outside of legally permitted hours and more than the nine-hour daily limit that 16 and 17 year olds can work under state law.

The AG also accused Northeast Foods of failing to pay workers on time, pay minimum wage, or pay workers at all.

The AG's office said it launched an investigation into the matter after receiving a complaint from a worker at a Burger King location over a nonpayment of wages. The investigation revealed that nearly 2,000 employees at Burger King locations operated by Northeast Foods across Massachusetts were impacted by the alleged violations, the AG's office said.

Representatives for Northeast Foods did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider.

Burger King's press representative said in a statement that the company "contacted the Franchisee facing these violations immediately upon learning of them, and they have informed us they are looking into the findings of the investigation, have implemented measures such as re-training their management teams related to the work hours of minors and putting ongoing audits in place, and are working on additional actions based on the investigation."

Additionally, Campbell's office said in the same press release that it reached a settlement with two owners of 19 Popeyes locations across Massachusetts. As part of that settlement, the AG's office issued $212,516 in citations against the operators, which included restitution for impacted workers and penalties.

The AG's office said the New Jersey-based franchise operators scheduled minors for work during prohibited hours and had them work beyond the daily and weekly hour limits. They also didn't allow some workers to use their accrued sick time, the AG's office said.

Those franchise operators could not be immediately reached for comment.

Popeyes' corporate representatives said the franchisee "fully cooperated in the investigation" and has since retrained its team and is enforcing a payroll system that will alert team members when it is time to clock out.

Meanwhile, the United States has seen an increase in child labor violations in recent years.

In federal fiscal year 2023, the Department of Labor found nearly 5,800 kids employed in violation of the law, which the agency said was an 88% increase in the number of children employed in violation since 2019.

The Labor Department found just over 4,000 minors employed in violation of the law in federal fiscal year 2024.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has at least two daughters he rarely talks about.
• He has two daughters with his ex-wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva: Maria and Katerina, both in their 30s.
• Various unconfirmed reports say he has at least three other children, who he fiercely guards from the limelight.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is famously secretive about his personal life.

Putin has long tried to shield his personal life from the spotlight.

He has rarely publicly acknowledged his children, though media outlets have for years reported that he has two daughters with his ex-wife.

Putin is also rumored to have had relationships that may have produced other, secret children, including two boys by one mistress and a girl from a later rumored affair.

Putin's family affairs are so secretive that reports of exactly how many children he may have fathered have varied over the years, as have their names.

Most recently, in November 2024, Ukrainian media reportedly tracked down one of Putin's alleged daughters, who was living in Paris and working as a DJ.

Putin had two daughters with his first wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva, a former flight attendant

Sources: Vladimir Putin, Reuters, Business Insider

Their daughters' names are Maria and Katerina. Maria was born in St. Petersburg in 1985, and Katerina was born in Germany in 1986.

Sources: Vladimir Putin, Reuters, Newsweek

Both girls are named after their grandmothers. Maria's nickname is Masha, and Katerina's nickname is Katya.

Masha and Katya are common Russian shortenings for Maria and Katerina.

Sources: Vladimir Putin, Reuters, Newsweek

When the family moved to Moscow in 1996, the girls attended a German-language school. The children were reportedly removed from school when Putin became acting president, and teachers educated them at home.

Source: Newsweek

"Not all fathers are as loving with their children as he is," Lyudmila said in an undated quote on Putin's government website. "And he has always spoiled them, while I was the one who had to discipline them."

Source: Vladimir Putin

But as Putin gained political power, his children saw him less and less, according to one of his early biographers.

His first official biographer, Natalya Gevorkyan, interviewed him and his family in 1999.

The family was soon isolated and surrounded by security after Putin became prime minister for the first time, she said.

His daughters told her that they admired their father and were proud of him, but it appeared they didn't get to see him much, she said.

Source: BBC Sounds

Putin's marriage may also have been loveless. Lyudmila "was not a happy woman" and Putin wouldn't "hold" her, his biographer said.

"I understood that [Lyudmila] was not a happy woman. She was not," the biographer Gevorkyan said, speaking of her interviews conducted in 1999.

Gevorkyan said she had the impression Putin did not love her. She recalled Lyudmila as saying: "There are women who are admired by men, I think I am not that kind of woman. He will not hold me in his hands."

Gevorkyan said Lyudmila's tone was "more with respect" to her husband.

"I had the feeling that she really loved him," she added. "And I had a feeling that she was not that much loved back. I didn't have the feeling that it was a successful marriage for her."

Source: BBC Sounds

Putin and Lyudmila announced their divorce in 2013, although they were likely living separate lives long before that.

Lyudmila had become "almost invisible" in Putin's public life, according to Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at New York's New School. 

Putin was rumored to be seeing Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, while Luydmila was believed to have begun dating businessman and triathlete Arthur Ocheretny by around 2010. 

Sources: BBC, Proekt, Politico.

Meanwhile, the daughters were growing up. Maria studied biology before medical school, while Katerina majored in Asian Studies in college. Both girls attended university under false identities.

Sources: Reuters, Newsweek

There are no official current photos of the women. For Katerina, we found the slightly varying first names of "Katerina," "Katya," and "Yekaterina," and the last names "Putina," "Tikhonova," and "Shamalov."

Sources: Reuters, Newsweek

Maria is a medical researcher. According to reports, she married Dutch businessman Jorrit Faassen, although it's unclear exactly when.

Maria appears to have a lower public profile than Katerina. Here, she is seen presenting at a 2022 pediatrics conference. 

An investigation found that between 2019 and 2022, she earned $10.7 million from her role at New Medical Company (NOMEKO). 

Sources: Current Time, Reuters, Newsweek, Bloomberg

Maria and Faassen reportedly have a child — Putin told filmmaker Oliver Stone in 2017 that he was a grandfather. When Stone asked if he played with his grandchild, Putin replied: "Very seldom, unfortunately."

Sources: Reuters, The Independent, Bloomberg, Daily Mail

Katerina, an accomplished acrobatic dancer, is a tech executive.

She has been reported to head up Innopraktika, one of Moscow State University's initiatives to foster young scientists, as well as being deputy director of a mathematical institute there.  

In 2022 she was given a role overseeing Russian import substitutions.

Sources: Reuters, Bloomberg, CNN, The Moscow Times.

Here she is in her dancing days at the 2013 Rock 'n' Roll World Championship in Winterthur, Switzerland, representing Russia.

 

She took fifth place at that year's final. 

Source: WRRC

Katerina married Russian billionaire Kirill Shamalov in 2013, though they are reportedly no longer together. Their wedding was a lavish affair at the Igora resort in St. Petersburg.

The wedding was highly secure and included a laser show, an ice-skating display, and a mock Russian village, according to Reuters. 

A 2023 investigation found that the couple, though married by a priest in an elaborate ceremony, never formalized their vows at the registry office, as required by the Russian Orthodox Church. The report suggested this was connected to the structure of the family's vast and secretive property holdings. 

By 2018, the pair had split, according to Bloomberg. 

Sources: Reuters, The Guardian, Proekt   

Shamalov prospered during the marriage, racking up lucrative business interests. By the time he and Katerina split in 2018, the divorce papers revealed they were worth $2 billion.

As early as 2016, the couple were hardly corresponding, and Shamalov had seen lucrative shares in energy company Sibur returned to Putin's friends, a 2023 investigation reported. 

Sources: Reuters, Bloomberg, Proekt

Katerina made her debut on Russian state TV as a biotechnology expert in December 2018.

Her appearance did not include comments on her being related to Putin. The link was briefly made public in the course of a dance competition, but later retracted.

Source: Business Insider, Reuters

She has at least twice joined an event known as Russia's answer to Davos, and in 2024, Maria was also there. Both were rare appearances.

In June 2021, Katerina addressed the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum — but nobody called her Putin's daughter, apparently out of fear of reprisal from the Kremlin.

At the same event in 2024, Katerina appeared virtually, commenting on the "technological sovereignty" of the nation's military.

The following day, Maria spoke in person on a panel about biotech innovations. Programming listed her as a member of the Russian Association for the Promotion of Science, according to CNN.

Source: CNN

In 2022, it emerged that Katerina had begun a clandestine relationship with German ballet star Igor Zelensky and had a daughter with him.

Zelensky — no relation to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — has served as the director of the Bavarian State Ballet and the Munich State Ballet. 

The relationship was revealed by a 2022 investigation that examined Katerina's flight records, showing that she traveled with members of Putin's presidential secret service.

Per the report, Katerina secretly flew to Munich more than 50 times to see Zelensky between 2017 and 2019, with their daughter in tow.

Sources: Important Stories, Der Spiegel

Meanwhile, Maria Vorontsova split with Faassen and had a child with businessman Evgeny Nagorny, independent Russian media reported.

A post shared by Barkli_rus (@barkli_rus)

 

Nagorny — who formerly showed an interest in opposition politics — has been flying around the world with Vorontsova since at least 2016, according to a joint investigation by Russian outlets Meduza and Current Time.

They had a child together, and Nagorny became the manager of major gas company Novatek, the outlets reported. 

In 2020, per the outlets, Nagorny bought a luxury Moscow apartment in the building pictured above.  

Sources: Meduza, Current Time.

There are rumors that Putin has other children with ex-girlfriend and former Russian rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva.

It's unclear exactly when Putin began dating the famed gymnast, but rumors were swirling long before he and Lyudmila announced their divorce. 

In a 2008 news conference in Italy, a reporter asked him about the chatter, which Putin dismissed, adding: "I always disliked people who go around with their erotic fantasies, sticking their snot-ridden noses into another person's life."

Reports have varied over the years on what children they have, with tabloid reports of the birth of a daughter in 2015.

More recently, however, an investigation reported that they have two sons. 

Neither the relationship nor the reported children have been confirmed by Russia. 

Source: New York Post, Proekt, NPR

A bombshell investigation in 2024 said that Putin and Kabaeva have 2 sons who live in seclusion and extreme luxury.

The boys are named as Ivan, born in 2015, and Vladimir Jr, born in 2019.

Business Insider could not independently verify the report. 

At Ivan's birth, according to the investigation, Putin was so happy that he shouted: 'Hurray! Finally! A boy!'

Extreme secrecy surrounds them — per the investigation, they have used "cover documents since infancy, which are mostly made for intelligence officers and people under state protection."

Source: Dossier Center

 

 

 

No publicly available images exist of Ivan and Vladimir Jr.

In its investigation, the Dossier Centre declined to publish images of the boys, both of whom are still children. 

The boys live at Putin's heavily protected lakeside palace at Valdai, in western Russia, according to the report. 

Source: Dossier Centre

In 2024, Ukrainian armed forces said they had flown a drone over Valdai palace, where Kabaeva and the children reportedly live.

The drone was on its way to attack a St Petersburg oil terminal as part of a spate of attacks on Russian energy facilities, Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine's minister of strategic industries, said. 

An unnamed special services official said that it had managed to evade the extensive defenses at Valdai. 

A few months later, it emerged that Russia's armed forces had moved much-needed air defenses closer to the palace to protect it. 

Source: Kyiv Independent, RBC Ukraine, Radio Liberty

 

Reports have also claimed that a former cleaning lady, Svetlana Krivonogikh, once had an affair with Putin and moved into one of St. Petersburg's wealthiest neighborhoods.

Independent investigations have reported that the pair had a close friendship between the late 1990s and the end of the 2010s, which resulted in a daughter.

In that time, Krivonogikh went from a former cleaning lady to the billionaire owner of one of Putin's favorite ski resorts.

Sources: Proekt, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project

Krivonogikh's daughter, who was born in 2003, is named Elizaveta Vladimirovna Rozova and goes by Luisa. Identity papers do not indicate a father, but her middle name means "daughter of Vladimir." She has not confirmed any relationship.

A Proekt investigation remarked on Elizaveta's "phenomenal resemblance" to Putin and many connections between the president and her mother. Images reportedly from her social profiles show a striking resemblance to Putin. But no relationship has been proven.

In a 2021 magazine interview, Elizaveta's face was not depicted. 

Asked about the resemblance, she agreed, but said "there are a lot of people similar to Vladimir Vladimirovich," using an alternative, respectful name for Putin.

Sources: Proekt, Russian GQ

Elizaveta appears to have led a vibrant life as a DJ and fashion businesswoman in Moscow and Paris.

In a bizarre turn of events, Andrey Zakharov, the journalist who first reported on Elizaveta, got added to a Clubhouse chat with her in 2021.

"I live in my own bubble," she reportedly said, adding that she doesn't pay attention to the news.

"I watch fashion shows, I buy copies of Vogue, and I love to go to the nearby restaurant and eat tasty pasta, dishing with friends about the latest gossip and investigations."

Source: TSN, Meduza

But at the start of the invasion of Ukraine, commenters reportedly mobbed her social media — which she then deleted.

An investigation published in 2024 reported that she went suddenly off-grid, changing her name to Elizaveta Olegovna Rudnova. 

An Elizaveta Rudnova was registered to study at a private art and culture management school in Paris between 2020 and 2024, the report said. 

In November 2024, Ukrainian media reportedly tracked down Rudnova, who was living in Paris and working as a DJ.

Business Insider was unable to independently verify the report. 

Source: TSN, The Telegraph

 

In late 2020, Putin announced Russia had finalized its COVID-19 vaccine. He said he gave the shot to one of his daughters, but wouldn't specify which one.

Sources: Business Insider, BBC, Politico

In February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. No statement came from Katerina or Maria, but scrutiny of their families ramped up.

In March 2022, an activist broke into a property owned by Katerina's ex-husband Kirill Shamalov in Biarritz, France, saying he was going to use it to host Ukrainian refugees.

More than a year later, as the war dragged on, Dutch authorities seized land belonging to Maria's ex-husband Jorrit Faassen, who was under suspicion of evading sanctions. 

Sources: Insider, The Insider, The Guardian

In April 2022, the US sanctioned Maria and Katerina, saying that they had "enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people."

A White House statement said: "This action cuts them off from the US financial system and freezes any assets they hold in the United States."

The UK quickly followed suit, saying it was targeting Maria and Katerina's "lavish lifestyles." 

The announcement also contained more details about their work.

Tikhonova's work supports Russia's government and defense industry, while Vorontsova's genetics research programs are personally overseen by Putin, the White House said.

Source: White House, ABC News

 

 

The US said it believed the women were hiding assets for Putin, which was its rationale for sanctioning them. The Kremlin suggested the move was anti-Russian.

"We believe that many of Putin's assets are hidden with family members and that's why we're targeting them," a senior Biden administration official said, according to ABC News.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's top spokesperson, said the Kremlin found the decision "difficult to understand" and framed it as part of a "rabid" Western animosity toward Russia.

Since 2022, the list of countries that have slapped sanctions on Maria and Katerina has only grown.

The US, UK, European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan have all imposed sanctions on them.

Sources: ABC News, Reuters, Associated Press, Reuters, Reuters, Japan Times, New Zealand Herald

 

In July 2022, as sanctions began to bite in Russia, Katerina was given a top post overseeing import substitutions.

Tikhonova was appointed to a position at the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, known as RSPP.

Putin critics speculated that the shakeup at RSPP, a key Russian business lobby, was done to help bolster the country's lagging economy, which remains heavily dependent on foreign imports and has suffered from the bevy of international sanctions imposed due to the war in Ukraine. 

State media reporting on Tikhonova's appointment didn't mention her relationship to Putin.

Sources: RBC, Fortune

In the summer of 2022, the US added Kabaeva to its sanctions list, citing her "close relationship" with Putin.

The US government had initially held off sanctioning Kabaeva on the basis that it would be too personal a provocation to Putin — a reservation that suggests the White House, at least, is in no doubt about their relationship.

But Kabaeva was finally sanctioned in August 2022 over her ties to the Russian government. 

Sources: The Wall Street Journal, US Treasury

Svetlana Krivonogikh was the last woman connected to Putin to feel the weight of sanctions.

In February 2023, the UK sanctioned Krivonogikh. 

The UK government made no specific reference to a personal connection to Putin, although it did say she was one of five people "connected to Putin's luxury residences," including his luxury compound at Valdai.

It also said that she is "a shareholder in Bank Rossiya and the National Media Group, that consistently promotes the Russian assault in Ukraine."

Source: UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

 

In early February 2023, Kabaeva made a rare speech, where she said Russia's media is as powerful as a Kalashnikov rifle in war.

Kabaeva made the speech to the National Media Group.

Her praise of "war correspondents" came just a couple of weeks ahead of the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

Sources: Insider, Newsweek

 

In March 2023, the Innopraktika Institute, headed up by Katerina, scolded Russian youth for not being patriotic enough online.

The report, which examined young people's social media activity, likened the drop in patriotism to a hybrid special military operation waged against Russia by foreign countries — using language more associated with how Putin characterizes his own invasion of Ukraine. 

Sources: The Moscow Times, Rozkomnadzor

• North Korea is home to about 26 million people who are taught to worship their leaders as gods.
• The country is culturally and economically isolated as many suffer from malnutrition and poverty.
• Many North Koreans go to work every day on farms, in factories, and in the capital of Pyongyang.

There's limited information available about the daily lives of people living in North Korea, one of the world's most isolated nations.

The country is home to about 26 million people. Kim Jong Un, the current Great Leader, has near-total control of the country and leads a repressive regime that is willing to do away with political dissidents.

While Kim boasts his great military and nuclear might to the rest of the world, many North Korean citizens quietly struggle, suffering from malnutrition and poor living conditions. Most citizens have little idea of what's going on in the outside world due to government restrictions on travel and electricity.

North Korean citizens are active in the workforce, though sometimes against their will. Most North Koreans don't have a say in their professions and are assigned a job. Tens of thousands are being held in political prison camps where many are used for forced labor.

Below, take a look into the mostly hidden world of the work-life of North Korea. 

Many in the country suffer from food scarcity.

Following a catastrophic famine in the 1990s, North Korea pushed to increase its agricultural production. Still, food insecurity in the region is alarmingly high.

The country was receiving food aid until 2009, and in recent years, corn and rice production has improved.

Many North Koreans work in agriculture.

North Korea's disdain for modern technological intervention is, in part, a way to add more laborers to the workforce. More machines would mean fewer workers. 

Some farmers rely on relatively primitive methods to farm the land. The nation has historically struggled to produce the amount of fertilizer it needs.

This noodle restaurant was built at the request of the late leader Kim Il Sung.

Workers at Ongnyugwan, a popular noodle restaurant in Pyongyang, claim to serve 10,000 lunches a day.

The restaurant was built in 1960 at the request of the late leader Kim Il Sung.

The Pothonggang Department Store is in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital.

Kim Jong Il opened the Pothonggang Department Store in December 2010 in what officials said was an attempt to improve living conditions in Pyongyang. The store sells electronics, cosmetics, food, housing goods, and more.

While comparatively wealthy citizens shop at the upscale store, poorer city residents buy goods via an extensive black market — often trading American dollars for products.

Workers at the 326 Electric Wire Factory make cables.

The 326 Electric Wire Factory in Pyongyang says it has 1,000 workers on any given day. When the Los Angeles Times visited in 2016, only 100 were on duty.

North Korea's major trading partner is China, to whom they sell minerals, metals, guns, textiles, and agricultural and fishery products. Russia has also started importing from North Korea. 

Images of the Great Leaders are found throughout the country.

Portraits of the Kims — first Great Leader, Kim Il-Sung, his son, Kim Jong Il, and now, Kim Jong Un — can be found throughout the country.

Citizens are taught from a young age to worship their leaders as gods. 

North Korea is a major producer of textiles like silk.

The Kim Jong Suk Pyongyang textile factory, named after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's grandmother, claims to employ 1,600 workers, primarily women.

To manufacture silk, workers sort and process silkworms to produce silk threads. Officials have said they produce 200 tons of silk annually. 

 

Some products are modeled after foreign ones.

The Ryuwon Shoe Factory in Pyongyang specializes in sports footwear.

One worker, Kim Kyong Hui, told CBS News in 2019 that "the respected leader Kim Jong Un has instructed us to closely study shoes from all over the world and learn from their example."

The Chollima Steel Complex in Nampo says it employs more than 8,000 workers.

The Chollima Steel Complex is one of several North Korean steel complexes.

It was built by Mitsubishi when Japan ruled over the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945. Production briefly stopped after World War II but resumed in 1953.

People work in rice fields in North Korea's Kangwon Province.

Wonsan, the capital of the Kangwon province, is a major port city. It is being developed into a tourist site with several attractions, though tourism is highly limited. 

North Korea allowed some Russian visitors earlier in 2024 amid the growing relationship between North Korea and Russia. It has also historically allowed Chinese tourists. 

The prices of corn and rice products increased amid the pandemic.

Food scarcity was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The nation has strict internal and external security.

North Korea has a robust internal security administration that monitors its citizens. Officers in the Ministry of Public Security, the nation's law enforcement agency, function as a national constabulary.

Reports from the US Department of State indicate that North Koreans live under threat of human rights violations such as arbitrary arrests and punishments for alleged transgressions by family members. The government permits secret and unlawful killings of accused dissidents. 

North Koreans lived under severe restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, North Koreans lived under strict rules and restrictions, some of which may still be in place.

In May 2022, Kim Jong Un blamed his own officials and their "irresponsible work attitude" for a surge in COVID-19 infections.

The nation said it would reopen some travel in December 2024.

North Korean officials announced that some tourism activity could resume in December 2024, years after the COVID-19 pandemic first hit.

Though most other countries have reopened and resumed life as normal, North Korea has used the pandemic as an excuse to maintain harsh restrictions. Reports indicated that citizens were executed for violating pandemic rules. 

• Elon Musk's politics may seem to be all over the place, but he's demonstrated a consistent pattern.
• He once split his political donations, but now he's one of the largest GOP megadonors.
• Musk is set to have major influence in President-elect Donald Trump's second administration.

Elon Musk has completed his political evolution. Now, he's hoping to leverage his newfound power to disrupt the federal government. 

Musk is now virtually inseparable from President-elect Donald Trump, though he hasn't always been the typical right-wing billionaire.

The Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI CEO's rightward lean is actually the culmination of an evolution that's been playing out over decades.

As the richest man in the world, Musk's stances carry great weight. His power has been on full display since he endorsed Trump shortly after the former president survived his first assassination attempt in July. Musk, unlike some of the uber-wealthy men before him, became one of the biggest megadonors of the 2024 cycle. The Tesla CEO shelled out roughly $119 million to boost Trump, mainly through America PAC, an allied super PAC. Musk even held a series of rallies in Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state of the 2024 race.

Before encouraging others to "take the red pill," Musk cut checks for Democrats ranging from Eric Garcetti (then just a Los Angeles City councilor) to John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee. Like others in business, Musk curried favor by balancing his support between both parties, as his donation history shows on Open Secrets, a nonprofit organization that tracks money in politics. 

Musk would occasionally weigh into politics when it could affect his businesses. But ever since Trump left the White House, the billionaire has increasingly inserted himself into debates over hot-button topics, waged a largely one-way feud with President Joe Biden, and cozied up to Trump in time to help the former president complete his political comeback.

Here's how Musk got here.

The early years: From apartheid-era South Africa to Tesla takeover

Musk, 53, has said very little publicly about apartheid, the system of racial segregation that became the defining issue of his childhood in the Republic of South Africa.

His father, Errol — who inherited wealth from half of an emerald mine he used to own — was elected to Pretoria City Council in 1972, running under the anti-apartheid Progressive Party. The apartheid system was a major motivation behind the younger Musk's decision to leave South Africa for Canada in 1989, according to Ashlee Vance's 2015 biography of the billionaire. 

Growing up in the primarily white suburbs outside of Johannesburg, Musk was also surrounded by censorship and disinformation about the government's treatment of Black people, The New York Times previously reported. His mandatory government service was what first exposed him to the reality of the situation, according to the Times, which spoke to a high school classmate of Musk's about the insulated experience.

"People, at some point, realize that they've been fed a whole lot of crap," Andrew Panzera, who was in Musk's German class, told the Times. "At some point you go, 'Jeepers, we really were indoctrinated to a large extent.'"

Musk's political coming of age during the pre-social media era remains much of a mystery. But then his profile rose with the sale of his company X.com, a competitor to PayPal co-founded by Musk, and his subsequent takeover of Tesla as owner after joining founders Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning with a $6.5 million investment in 2004.

Musk's politics pre-Trump

Musk has long argued for small government and advocated for laissez-faire economic policy, calling the US government the "ultimate corporation" at a CEO summit in December 2020. In terms of donations, he's been in a relative holding pattern from his early years in Silicon Valley up to the present, donating moderate sums of money to politicians from both parties. 

"I get involved in politics as little as possible," Musk said at a 2015 Vanity Fair event, adding that, "There's some amount I have to get involved in," due to his business interests. 

He donated $2,000 each to former President George W. Bush and his 2004 Democratic challenger, former Secretary of State John Kerry. Musk also donated to California Democrats up and down the ballot, but still gave the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) $25,000 ahead of the 2006 midterms.

Another example of Musk hedging his donations came in the buildup to the 2008 presidential primaries, where he contributed to both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in their contentious race.

Musk didn't donate to either Clinton or Trump during the 2016 cycle.

The billionaire also started out as a heavy Trump skeptic, saying in October 2015 that it would be "embarrassing" if Trump won the GOP nomination, much less the presidency.

"I don't really have strong feelings except that hopefully Trump doesn't get the nomination of the Republican party, because I think that's, yeah … that wouldn't be good," Musk said at the Vanity Fair event. "I think at most he would get the Republican nomination, but I think that would still be a bit embarrassing."

But more recently, Musk has taken a different approach to the Trump-dominated GOP. His latest donations have all been to Republican candidates and causes, with Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware being the last Democrat to receive any Musk donations back in 2020.

Musk's politics during Trump's term

Starting in 2017, Musk's donations began to skew Republican, with the billionaire spending nearly seven times more on GOP campaigns than Democratic ones. He also accepted positions on two of Trump's White House councils and tweeted his support of Rex Tillerson's ultimately successful nomination as Secretary of State.

While Musk previously said he supported Hillary Clinton's campaign promises on the environment and climate change, he defended his decision to attend Trump's business council meetings so he could raise the issue along with the January 2017 travel ban affecting Muslim-majority countries. He then stepped down from the councils in June 2017, citing Trump's decision to leave the Paris Climate Accord.

"Climate change is real," Musk tweeted. "Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world."

Musk largely stopped mentioning Trump from that point until much later in his presidency, when Trump attended a SpaceX launch for NASA in May 2020.

Musk during Biden's presidency

In the last few years, Musk's flirtations with the Trump-led GOP have been ramping up.

In mid-2022, Musk said he voted for a Republican candidate for the first time in a Texas special election, adding that he expected to see a "massive red wave" in the year's midterms. Musk's Texas voter registration did not show party affiliation, but he's argued on X that the Democratic Party has drifted further from the center than the GOP.

Musk tweeted in June 2022 that he was leaning toward supporting Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president. DeSantis joked that he welcomed support from "African Americans," referencing Musk being South African.

Musk also said in July 2022 that Trump shouldn't run for president again and instead just "sail into the sunset."

But the billionaire has since changed his tune. 

After taking control of Twitter, now X, at the end of 2022, Musk reinstated Trump's account on the platform. Musk called Trump's expulsion from the platform following the January 6 riots a "morally bad decision" and "foolish to the extreme."

Musk repeatedly criticized Biden, calling the president a "damp sock puppet" last year and hosting an "anti-Biden brain trust" meeting with Republican billionaires this April. 

And, after Trump's felony conviction in May, Musk went to bat for the MAGA leader. 

"Indeed, great damage was done today to the public's faith in the American legal system," Musk wrote in a post on X.

"If a former President can be criminally convicted over such a trivial matter — motivated by politics, rather than justice — then anyone is at risk of a similar fate," Musk added, echoing Trump's own narrative that the conviction was an act of political persecution.

Even before Musk offered his formal endorsement, Trump had talked about including Musk in his administration. 

While Musk has been more bullish lately about support for the GOP, his history of donations and past comments show that he has tended to position himself wherever he thinks power and influence are heading.

Musk endorsed Trump after the former president survived an assassination attempt 

Musk offered his "full endorsement" of Trump after the former president was shot during a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. He and other big names in tech connected with the defiant image of a wounded Trump thrusting his fist in the air while Secret Service officers rushed him off stage.

Before the endorsement, Musk had been more cagey about his plans. He hadn't said much about the 2024 election after DeSantis' primary campaign flopped. In March, Musk had said he wasn't donating money to either major presidential candidate. At the time, it looked like Biden and Trump were headed to an all but certain rematch.

Musk's ambivalence didn't last long. According to The Wall Street Journal, in April, the billionaire began working with Texas real estate mogul Richard Weekley on setting up a pro-Trump super PAC.  The Tesla CEO's support did not become public until July.

"It's not meant to be sort of a hyperpartisan PAC," Musk recently told the controversial Canadian professor Jordan Peterson. "The intent is to promote the principles that made America great in the first place."

 Musk gave roughly $119 million to America PAC. In total, he donated more than $132 million to Republican causes ahead of the election, making him one of the biggest megadonors of the cycle.

Musk rallied for Trump across Pennsylvania 

On October 5, Trump returned to Butler for a rally at the scene where he was nearly assassinated in July. The guest list included family members of other victims of the shooting, along with Musk, who wore a black MAGA hat.

"As you can see, I'm not just MAGA," Musk said. "I'm dark MAGA."

He lauded Trump's strength after surviving the assassination attempt. He said President Joe Biden "couldn't climb a flight of stairs" while Trump "was fist pumping after getting shot." Trump sustained an injury to his ear in the July shooting.

"So who do you want representing America?" Musk asked an enthusiastic crowd.

Musk later held a series of town hall-style events across Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state in the race. His super PAC helped Trump's campaign in the state, which he ultimately won.

Trump has named Musk to a major new advisory organization

Trump wasted little time finding a new role for Musk. On November 12, the president-elect named Musk and conservative entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to the "Department of Government Efficiency" or DOGE. Only Congress can create departments, and by design, DOGE will operate mostly outside the federal government.

Musk has ambitious targets for the panel, which is tasked with cutting federal spending by $2 trillion.

Republicans in Congress are lining up to help. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa are leading their respective chambers' coordination with DOGE. 

Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that their outside panel would wrap up its work by July 4, 2026.