• Jensen Huang says he would be "delighted" to meet with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
• The Nvidia CEO said he has yet to receive an invitation.
• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have visited Trump at his Palm Beach resort.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says he has yet to meet with President-elect Donald Trump following the latter's victory in November's presidential election.

Huang was giving an interview to Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow on Tuesday when he was asked if he'd been invited to visit Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Palm Beach resort.

"Not yet but I would be delighted to go see him and congratulate him and do everything we can to help this administration succeed," Huang told Ludlow.

A Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment on Huang's remarks.

The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

In November, Trump said he plans to impose an additional 10% import tariff on Chinese goods entering the US. He previously said in February that he would introduce tariffs of more than 60% on China.

Huang told investors at Nvidia's earnings call in November that the chip giant will "comply with any regulation that comes along fully."

China is an important market for Nvidia, making up nearly 17% of the company's total revenue in the year to the end of January 2024.

Several tech billionaires, ranging from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, have already made trips to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the president-elect.

Trump has enjoyed a warm reception from business leaders as he prepares to take office for the second time.

The president-elect has raised at least $200 million in donations since winning the election, The New York Times reported on Saturday, citing people involved with the fundraising.

At least $150 million of the funds will go toward Trump's upcoming inauguration, far outpacing the $106.8 million he received for his first inauguration in 2017. The rest of the donations will help fund Trump's political activities and future presidential library.

"One of the big differences between the first term, in the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend," Trump said at a news conference last month.

"I don't know, my personality changed or something," Trump added.

• Mark Zuckerberg wore a Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1 watch in a Facebook video he posted on Tuesday.
• The Meta CEO was announcing the end of the company's fact-checking partnerships in the US.
• Zuckerberg has also worn watches from the other Swiss brands De Bethune and Patek Philippe.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sported a new luxury timepiece while announcing the end of his company's fact-checking partnerships in the US on Tuesday.

Zuckerberg's watch, a Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1, costs more than $900,000 and is assembled entirely by hand. Greubel Forsey says on its website that it makes only two or three models of the Hand Made 1 every year.

"Hey, everyone. I want to talk about something important today, because it's time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram," Zuckerberg said while wearing the Hand Made 1 on his left wrist in a video he posted on Facebook.

When asked about the video, Greubel Forsey CEO Michel Nydegger told Bloomberg that Zuckerberg's choice of timepiece showed a "true appreciation for the most traditional approach to fine watchmaking today."

According to Greubel Forsey's website, the "Hand Made 1" has 281 parts, most of which are made in-house by the watchmaker.

Meta and Greubel Forsey didn't respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

This isn't the first time Zuckerberg has publicly demonstrated his interest in luxury timepieces.

In September, Zuckerberg wore a rose gold De Bethune DB25 Starry Varius during an interview with the business podcast "Acquired." The watch costs about $90,000, according to listings by the watch retailers The 1916 Company and The Hour Glass.

Zuckerberg was also seen wearing the Patek Philippe Grand Complications In-Line Perpetual Calendar 5236P-001 when he posted a selfie with his wife, Priscilla Chan. The watch costs $141,400, according to Patek Philippe's website.

Zuckerberg has expressed some interest in timepieces to other business leaders. At Anant Ambani's pre-wedding party in March, he showed his admiration for Ambani's Richard Mille watch.

"You know, I never really wanted to get a watch. But after seeing that, I was like, watches are cool," Zuckerberg told Ambani, according to a video circulated on social media.

Joseph Rosenfeld, an image consultant in New York, told BI in September that Zuckerberg's "love for premium watches and subtle luxury" suggested a shift in the Meta CEO's style and identity.

"He's stepping into a role where his appearance reflects his position as a tech innovator," Rosenfeld said.

Zuckerberg's penchant for expensive watches appears to be one facet of a wider image transformation.

For one, the Meta chief has ditched his gray t-shirts and hoodies, opting for shearling jackets and gold chains instead.

But watches aside, what Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday is set to have far-reaching ramifications on Meta's approach toward content moderation.

Meta said it was replacing its fact-checking partners with a crowdsourced moderation tool like the community notes used by X, formerly Twitter.

"We've seen this approach work on X — where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see," Meta's chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, wrote in a blog post.

"We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they're seeing — and one that's less prone to bias," Kaplan added.

• A major brush fire is making its way through the Pacific Palisades and looks set to get stronger.
• The Palisades Fire had burned over 2,921 acres at 0% containment as of 5:16 a.m. local time Wednesday.
• One climate scientist said it was the worst wildfire in Southern California since 2011.

A major fire is blazing across thousands of acres of an affluent neighborhood of Los Angeles into the early hours of Wednesday, threatening tens of thousands of homes and forcing people to flee on foot.

The Palisades Fire broke out around 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday, and quickly spread.

It had burned over 2,921 acres at 0% containment as of 5.16 a.m. local time Wednesday, according to California's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, said in a BlueSky post on Tuesday that it's the worst wildfire in Southern California since 2011.

The National Weather Service said that "extreme" fire weather conditions were set to continue until mid-afternoon Wednesday.

The worst of the fire is expected to occur between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. local time on Wednesday, fire ecologist Chad Hanson told the BBC.

"It's going to be quite a rough night," he added.

At least 30,000 residents have been ordered to evacuate, while residents not under an evacuation order in the coastal city of Malibu — home to many celebrities — were told by city officials to prepare to leave.

More than 300,000 Californians were out of power as of 4 a.m. local time, according to a tracking site.

Electricity provider Southern California Edison said that it had cut power to almost 26,000 homes and was considering cuts to a further 133,000 "due to heightened wildfire risk" in Los Angeles County.

The cause of the fire is still being investigated.

Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin M. Crowley said more than 25,700 people were threatened by the fire, as well as around 10,367 homes and 13,208 structures.

No injuries or deaths were reported as of Tuesday afternoon.

The median home price in Pacific Palisades, an affluent area, was $3.2 million as of November, according to Redfin.

Crowley said the fire was being fueled by strong winds and the surrounding topography, which were "making it extremely challenging" for firefighters on the scene.

Mandatory evacuation orders were issued for the area all the way down to the Pacific Ocean.

Evacuation orders and warnings have also been issued for two further fires. The Hurst fire, in the north of the region, covered 1,000 acres, and the Eaton fire, in the north-east, covered 500 acres, both as of 2.30 a.m. local time.

California's Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Tuesday.

"There's no fire season, it's fire year," Newsom said at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, noting other fires California has faced in recent months, including the Franklin and Mountain fires. "It's year-round."

In a post on X on Wednesday, Newsom said that 1,400 firefighters were involved, with more on their way.

During the press conference, Newsom encouraged residents to heed the evacuation orders. He also announced Tuesday that the state had secured federal assistance from FEMA to support the fire response. 

Live footage on ABC7 showed houses burning Tuesday afternoon.

The fire could spread further and grow stronger as extreme winds in the area are forecast to peak in the evening through Wednesday morning.

As winds pick up, humidity is set to decrease.

"Just about everything is going to get worse before it gets better," Swain, the UCLA scientist, said in a video update Tuesday afternoon.

Evacuees abandoned cars as traffic stalled

Palisades Drive, the major road out of the neighborhood, was packed with slow-moving lines of cars shortly after noon Tuesday, as people evacuated beneath a smoky haze and bright-orange flames licked the hillside in the distance, shown live on ABC7.

The state agency CalFire reported that the fire was on both sides of Palisades Drive.

ABC7 spoke to multiple people who were evacuating on foot, including some who had abandoned their cars on the road.

One resident told the news channel that "a whole bunch of neighbors" were stuck in their homes on Palisades Drive.

"This is apocalyptic. We've had small fires, nothing like this," they added.

Jonathan Vigliotti, a CBS News correspondent who was on the ground as a neighborhood went up in flames, said on X that there was "mass panic in the streets."

Historic windstorm is 'worst possible scenario'

Officials have not yet determined how the fire started, but it erupted during a high-risk major windstorm that created extreme fire conditions in the area.

Warm, dry Santa Ana winds from the deserts of Nevada and Utah are expected to bring gusts up to 100 mph to Southern California through Wednesday morning.

The National Weather Service called the windstorm "life-threatening and destructive" and warned that these could be the strongest north winds in 14 years.

With low humidity and dry vegetation in the region, the winds created a perfect storm for fire ignition.

The NWS urged residents to be ready to evacuate, as such winds can rapidly spread any fire that breaks out.

"This is pretty much the worst possible scenario for a firefight," David Ortiz of the LAFD told local news station KTLA.

• Dell is ditching its old naming system for PC products.
• The company is dividing its PC line-up into three categories: Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max.
• Dell executives said Apple didn't own the words "pro" and "max" when asked about the similar names.

Tech giant Dell has announced a new naming system for its PC line-up.

But that sparked some questions from people who attended a media briefing on Monday, who pointed out that Dell's new naming system seemed similar to a key competitor's.

Dell told reporters ahead of this year's Consumer Electronics Show that it was dividing its PC products into three categories: Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max.

This replaces Dell's current system which features names like Inspiron, OptiPlex, and XPS. The company said at the briefing that the new names won't apply to its gaming brand, Alienware.

"Your branding sounds a lot like Apple. Aren't you just following them?" one audience member said at the briefing, Bloomberg's Brody Ford reported on Monday.

Ever since the iPhone 11 was introduced in 2019, Apple has used the "Pro" and "Pro Max" labels for the iPhone's higher-tiered variants. The naming system is also used for some of Apple's other products as well, like the iPad Pro tablet, and the AirPods Pro earphones.

Apple doesn't own the words "pro" and "max," Dell's executives said at the briefing.

The company's COO Jeff Clarke said that the naming decision was based on research Dell did with "tens of thousands of customers," per Bloomberg.

The new naming system will "make it easier for our customers to do business with us," said Dell founder and CEO, Michael Dell.

Dell and Apple did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.

To be sure, Apple isn't the only tech company who has used words like "pro" in its product names. For instance, Microsoft has its Surface Pro tablets as well as its AI subscription offering, Copilot Pro.

Rival HP made a similar move to simplify their product naming system last year. The company said in May that it was using the prefix "Omni" for its consumer laptops and desktops, and the prefixes "Elite" and "Pro" for its commercial offerings.

Although Dell is best known for its computer business, the company has increasingly turned its attention toward its flourishing AI business. The company said in June that it was partnering with chip giant Nvidia to build an AI factory for Elon Musk's AI startup, xAI.

In November, Dell said its Infrastructure Solution Groups, which includes sales of AI servers, earned $11.4 billion in revenues for the third quarter of 2024, a 34% year-on-year increase.

Dell's shares were up by over 57% last year.

• Justin Trudeau, 53, announced that he's stepping down as the leader of Canadian's Liberal Party.
• The party will choose a new leader. Once that happens, Trudeau will step down as prime minister.
• Trudeau has served since 2015 but faced repeated calls to step down in recent weeks.

Justin Trudeau on Monday announced that he would step down as prime minister of Canada once his party chooses a new leader.

"This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I'm having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election," Trudeau said at a press conference in Ottawa.

The Canadian leader said that he would step down as Canada's Liberal Party, and that he would cease to be prime minister once his party selects a new leader "through a robust, nationwide, competitive process."

Trudeau, 53, has been Canada's prime minister since 2015. His nine-year-long tenure as premier is coming to an abrupt end following weeks of turmoil within Trudeau's own party, the Liberal Party.

He faced repeated calls from party colleagues to step down after the Liberal Party lost three by-elections last year. In December, Trudeau's deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, announced her sudden resignation from his cabinet.

Freeland, who was also the finance minister, said Trudeau had offered her another cabinet position, but she decided to step down because it was "the only honest and viable path for me." She had clashed with Trudeau over his push for increased spending and how Canada should handle the incoming Trump administration.

In November, President-elect Donald Trump said he planned to impose a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico.

Since then, Trump has continued to taunt Trudeau by referring to him as Canada's "governor" and has joked about making Canada the 51st US state.

"The Great State of Canada is stunned as the Finance Minister resigns, or was fired, from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau," Trump said of Freeland's resignation in a Truth Social post last month.

Shortly after Freeland's resignation, opposition politician and New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh said his party would bring a vote of no confidence against Trudeau when parliament sat again in January.

Singh's party entered into a confidence-and-supply agreement with Trudeau's minority government in March 2022, but withdrew from it in September.

"I called for Justin Trudeau to resign, and he should," Singh wrote in an open letter on December 20.

Canada's next general election must be held by October 2025.

• Sam Altman wrote a blog post about his experience running OpenAI on Sunday.
• Altman said OpenAI would have fallen apart in 2023 without Ron Conway's and Brian Chesky's help.
• That was the year Altman was briefly ousted and then reinstated as OpenAI's CEO.

OpenAI would have fallen apart back in 2023 without venture capitalist Ron Conway and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, Sam Altman wrote in a blog post on Sunday.

Altman expressed his gratitude to Conway and Chesky in a blog post titled "Reflections," which detailed his brief ouster from OpenAI. Altman said the post was inspired by a recent interview he gave to Bloomberg, which was published on Sunday as well.

"Ron Conway and Brian Chesky went so far above and beyond the call of duty that I'm not even sure how to describe it," Altman wrote.

Altman was fired as OpenAI's CEO on November 17, 2023. The company's board said in a statement that it was removing Altman because he "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board" but did not elaborate further.

Altman returned as CEO on November 22, 2023, after nearly all of OpenAI's staff threatened to quit if he wasn't reinstated.

In his blog post, Altman said "there were a lot of people who did incredible and gigantic amounts of work" to help him and OpenAI when he was ousted, but Conway and Chesky "stood out from all others."

"I've of course heard stories about Ron's ability and tenaciousness for years and I've spent a lot of time with Brian over the past couple of years getting a huge amount of help and advice," Altman wrote.

"But there's nothing quite like being in the foxhole with people to see what they can really do," he continued. "I am reasonably confident OpenAI would have fallen apart without their help; they worked around the clock for days until things were done."

Conway and Chesky, Altman wrote, gave him "great advice" and "stopped me from making several mistakes." The pair also tapped on their vast networks to assist him, Altman added.

"I thought I knew what it looked like to support a founder and a company, and in some small sense I did," Altman wrote. "But I have never before seen, or even heard of, anything like what these guys did, and now I get more fully why they have the legendary status they do."

Representatives for Conway and Chesky did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Conway and Chesky are longtime friends of Altman and were one of the first people he called after OpenAI fired him.

Conway was also one of Altman's guest speakers when the latter taught a class on startups at Stanford University in 2014.

Altman and Chesky's friendship, meanwhile, goes back more than a decade. Altman mentored Chesky when Airbnb was a part of Y Combinator, a startup accelerator.

When Altman was fired from OpenAI, he briefly considered launching another AI startup but was discouraged by Conway and Chesky, The New York Times reported in December 2023.

"You should be willing to fight back at least a little more," Chesky told Altman, per The Times.

OpenAI's board, Conway later told Time magazine, had fired Altman for "nitpicky, unfireable, not even close to fireable offenses."

The billionaire venture capitalist had spoken to the magazine as part of a profile on Altman that was published in December 2023.

"It is reckless and irresponsible for a board to fire a founder over emotional reasons," Conway told the outlet.

• Sam Altman was ousted as OpenAI's CEO by the company's board in November 2023.
• Altman said he was left with a "complete mess" after he was reinstated as CEO.
• Altman said his ouster was "a crazy thing to have to go through" and that he had "no time to recover."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the ChatGPT maker was like a house on fire following his brief ouster from the company.

Altman told Bloomberg in an interview published Sunday that he was left with a "complete mess on my hands" after being reinstated as CEO.

On November 17, 2023, OpenAI's board said in a statement it was removing Altman because he "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board."

The board, however, didn't give further details about Altman's firing. Altman was later reinstated as CEO just five days later, after OpenAI's employees protested the board's decision.

"And it got worse every day. It was like another government investigation, another old board member leaking fake news to the press," Altman told Bloomberg.

"And all those people that I feel like really fucked me and fucked the company were gone, and now I had to clean up their mess," he added.

Altman did not specify which board member he was referring to.

Back in November, OpenAI's board consisted of six people: Altman, fellow cofounders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, AI researcher Helen Toner, and Tasha McCauley, an entrepreneur and researcher at the RAND Corporation. Sutskever, D'Angelo, Toner, and McCauley had voted for Altman's removal.

D'Angelo was the only one of the four to remain on OpenAI's board following Altman's return as CEO. Sutskever left his position as OpenAI's chief scientist in May.

"It was just a crazy thing to have to go through and then have no time to recover, because the house was on fire," Altman told Bloomberg.

When approached for comment, OpenAI told Business Insider that it had nothing further to add to Altman's interview.

OpenAI saw multiple exits in its leadership ranks following Altman's return as CEO.

Sutskever's co-lead for OpenAI's superalignment team, Jan Leike, left his post at the same time Sutskever did, and joined the company's rival, Anthropic.

Then, in August, the company's cofounder and head of its alignment science efforts, John Schulman, left OpenAI to join Anthropic too.

In September, OpenAI's CTO Mira Murati announced her departure from the company as well.

OpenAI is in talks with California's attorney general's office about becoming a for-profit entity, Bloomberg separately reported. The company was launched as a non-profit research organization in 2015.

In October, OpenAI closed a $6.6 billion funding round, valuing it at $157 billion.

• Parts of the US are being battered by Winter Storm Blair, with states of emergency declared.
• The frigid conditions are impacting travel, with icy Midwest roads and flights and trains canceled.
• Snow hit Washington, DC, on Monday as the area prepares for the Trump administration transition.

Ice-storm warnings and unpleasantly cold conditions are expected to continue in much of the northern US.

The Arctic outbreak, dubbed Winter Storm Blair by the Weather Channel, has disrupted travel and resulted in at least five deaths.

The storm is bringing heavy snow to areas in the mid-Atlantic region that haven't seen such weather in a decade, the National Weather Service warned.

Heavy snowfall has occurred in places such as Kansas City, Missouri, where local media reported 10 inches of snow on Sunday night, and Louisville, Kentucky, which saw its largest single-day snowfall in about 25 years.

On Tuesday, snow is expected to dwindle in most of the areas blanketed by it as the storm moves south.

Two people have died in a weather-related crash in Wichita, Kansas, a Missouri public works employee was fatally injured during snow removal operations, and a person in Houston, Texas, died due to cold weather, NBC reported on Monday afternoon.

As of 3 a.m. ET Tuesday, about 207,063 utility customers were without power across Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, Illinois, and Missouri, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks power outages across the US. That was down from about 254,000 customers on Monday afternoon.

Travel delays and cancellations

More than 2,900 flights were canceled and over 9,300 flights within, into, or out of the US were delayed on Monday, according to FlightAware.

More than half of Monday flights were canceled at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, while the nearby Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport saw 125 flights, or 43% of those scheduled Monday, canceled.

Chicago O'Hare and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airports are leading the country in delays.

Amtrak, the US national rail operator, also announced a series of cancellations in the Northeast and the Midwest on Monday.

The numbers of impacted flights are expected to continue to rise.

Airlines including American, Delta, Southwest, and United have said they're waiving change fees for flights impacted by the storm.

Meanwhile, freezing temperatures led to icy roads and dangerous driving conditions in the Midwest on Sunday. The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported 436 crashes and 1,788 stranded motorists by 3 p.m. on Monday.

Heavy snow and cold to continue

The NWS Weather Prediction Center said Monday that the adverse weather would move toward the mid-Atlantic throughout the day, bringing up to 12 inches of snow and dangerously cold temperatures.

Snow — possibly mixed with sleet and freezing rain — reached about 8 inches in Washington, DC, where preparations are underway for Donald Trump's incoming administration.

Additional cold weather warnings have also been issued in Baltimore, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis, with officials warning to limit travel in the impacted areas, The Weather Channel reported.

The Baltimore-Washington National Weather Service said on Monday afternoon that heavy snow would continue through 11 p.m., dropping up to 3 more inches before the snow system exits the area.

On Monday night, it predicted light snow to continue into the night with an extra 1 to 2 inches near urban areas and in the mountains, and low temperatures in the single digits in the west to upper teens elsewhere.

In an X post in the early hours of Tuesday, the mayor of Washington, DC, Muriel Bowser, said more than 200 snow plows would work through the night, and that school would be closed Tuesday.

Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Arkansas have declared states of emergency, with Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey declaring a state of emergency for several counties.

In all, about half the US population is expected to experience freezing temperatures over the next week, Axios reported.

• Tesla annual sales declined for the first time in over a decade.
• The US EV giant sold 1.79 million cars in 2024, a 1% drop from the 1.81 million sold in 2023.
• Tesla is still the world's largest EV maker but Chinese rivals like BYD are closing in on it.

Chinese auto companies like BYD are giving Tesla a run for its money this week.

On Thursday, Tesla announced that it had delivered 1.79 million vehicles last year, a 1% drop from the 1.81 million vehicles it delivered in 2023. This is the first time Tesla's annual sales have declined in over a decade.

Tesla shares fell by as much as 8% on the same day, trading as low as $373.40 before paring losses.

Tesla's Chinese rivals, on the other hand, saw a rise in sales at the end of 2024.

BYD said on Wednesday that it had sold 1.76 million battery electric cars in 2024, a 12% increase from the 1.57 million cars it sold in 2023.

Smaller EV makers like Nio and Xpeng saw similar improvements in their sales figures as well.

Nio said in a statement on Wednesday that it had delivered 221,970 vehicles in 2024, a 38.7% increase from the 160,038 cars it delivered in 2023.

Xpeng delivered 190,068 vehicles last year, a 34% increase from the 141,601 vehicles delivered in 2023, per a filing made on Wednesday.

To be sure, Tesla is still the world's largest EV maker. The company played a pioneering role in popularizing EVs when it first burst into the scene with the Roadster in 2008.

But the Elon Musk-led EV giant had to engage in a price war in the past year to fend off its rivals.

Besides slashing prices for its vehicles in China, Tesla also doled out incentives like three months of free Supercharging and its Full Self Driving (Supervised) beta software to entice US customers.

Back in January 2024, Musk told investors in an earnings call that Chinese automakers are the "most competitive car companies in the world."

"If there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world," Musk said.

Tesla, BYD, Nio, and Xpeng did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• A Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside the Trump International Hotel at Las Vegas on Wednesday.
• Las Vegas police thanked Elon Musk for his assistance in investigating the blast.
• Musk gave the police further information on the blast and footage from Tesla's charging stations.

Las Vegas police expressed their appreciation for Tesla CEO Elon Musk's assistance after a Cybertruck exploded outside the Trump International Hotel on New Year's Day.

"I have to thank Elon Musk specifically," Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a press conference on Wednesday.

"He gave us quite a bit of additional information in regards to how the vehicle was locked after it exploded due to the nature of the force from the explosion as well as being able to capture all of the video from Tesla charging stations across the country, he sent that directly to us so I appreciate his help on that," the sheriff added.

The explosion, which took place at 8:40 a.m. Las Vegas time, left one dead and seven injured. The driver, who was killed in the explosion, has not been named.

McMahill told reporters that the Cybertruck's cargo bed contained gasoline canisters, fuel canisters, and "larger mortar fireworks." The FBI is trying to determine whether the blast was an act of terrorism.

"The evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack. Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards," Musk wrote in an X post on the same day, echoing McMahill's remarks at the press conference.

"The fact that this was a Cybertruck really limited the damage that occurred inside of the valet because it had most of the blast go up through the truck and out," McMahill said at the press conference.

"In fact, if you look on that video you'll see that the front glass doors of the Trump hotel were not even broken by that blast which they were parked directly in front of," he added.

A video of the blown-up Cybertruck was also shown during the briefing. The vehicle's cargo bed was torched by the explosion, but its hull appeared to be otherwise intact, per the footage.

Tesla did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

The blast happened just hours after a driver plowed into a crowd of people in New Orleans with a rented Ford pickup truck.

At least 15 people were killed during the New Orleans attack. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that authorities are investigating if the two incidents are linked.

"The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now," Musk wrote on X following the explosion in Las Vegas.

Musk wrote in a subsequent X post that "the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself."

"All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion," he added.

The Cybertruck was first announced by Tesla in November 2019, but design changes saw the its release get delayed from 2021 to 2023.

When Musk first unveiled the Cybertruck in 2019, he said that the vehicle will be made from the same stainless-steel alloy used in SpaceX's Starship rocket.

The Cybertruck's skin "is literally bulletproof to a 9-mm handgun," Musk said.

"So, you know, when you say something's built tough, that's what we mean," he added.

• Justin Baldoni sued The New York Times over its story on Blake Lively's sexual-harassment claims.
• The Times stood by its reporting and said it would defend against the lawsuit.
• Lively also filed a lawsuit accusing Baldoni of retaliation for her harassment claims.

Justin Baldoni is taking legal action against The New York Times after the paper reported about his costar Blake Lively's allegations of misconduct against him.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Los Angeles Superior Court, named Baldoni, his publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, and the "It Ends With Us" producers Jamey Heath and Steve Sarowitz as plaintiffs.

The lawsuit, obtained by Business Insider, accused the Times of relying "almost entirely" on what it described as "Lively's unverified and self-serving narrative" and said the newspaper disregarded "an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives."

The lawsuit, embedded in full below, included screenshots of messages that it said contradicted the Times' reporting.

The lawsuit said the plaintiffs suffered damages that amounted to at least $250 million.

In a statement provided to BI, a Times spokesperson said the outlet stood by the reporting and would "vigorously defend against the lawsuit."

"Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported. It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article," the statement said.

The spokesperson also said the paper published Baldoni's full response statement to its story and said he and other subjects "have not pointed to a single error" in its reporting.

Lawyers for Lively said in a statement provided to BI: "Nothing in this lawsuit changes anything about the claims advanced in Ms. Lively's California Civil Rights Department Complaint, nor her federal complaint, filed earlier today."

The federal suit, also reviewed by Business Insider, named Baldoni and members of his PR team. It was based on the California civil-rights complaint and accused Baldoni and others of orchestrating a campaign to retaliate against her for speaking up about what she said was sexual misconduct.

The lawyers also said they encourage everyone to read Lively's full lawsuit, which is embedded below.

Representatives for Baldoni did not address Lively's lawsuit directly when reached by BI.

Bryan Freedman, a lawyer for Baldoni and the other plaintiffs suing the Times, told BI in a statement that Lively and her team had orchestrated a "vicious smear campaign" against his clients and that the Times had "cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful 'untouchable' Hollywood elites."

The Times' bombshell story, "'We Can Bury Anyone': Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine," was published December 21 and detailed messages exchanged between Baldoni and his PR team.

Lively filed a legal complaint against Baldoni at about the same time, where she accused him of sexual harassment and of coordinating a smear campaign to tarnish her reputation.

Baldoni's lawyers argued in their complaint Tuesday that the Times' story was based on "a premise that is categorically false and easily disproven," saying the Times had access to messages proving that Lively and not Baldoni was at fault.

Read Baldoni's lawsuit against the Times:

Read Lively's lawsuit against Baldoni and others:

• Chief Justice John Roberts flagged threats to the judicial system in his year-end review.
• Disgruntled lawmakers and litigants pose a threat to judicial independence, Roberts wrote.
• Roberts didn't name anyone specifically when he admonished public officials for intimidating judges.

False accusations and charged rhetoric against judges pose a threat to judicial independence, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his year-end review for 2024.

The report, published on Tuesday, delved into the dangers posed by disgruntled politicians and litigants against judges and the wider judicial system.

Roberts said in his report that some judicial decisions are "egregiously wrong" and do merit pushback, but that "not all actors engage in 'informed criticism.'"

"I feel compelled to address four areas of illegitimate activity that, in my view, do threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends: (1) violence, (2) intimidation, (3) disinformation, and (4) threats to defy lawfully entered judgments," Roberts wrote.

The report came not long before President-elect Donald Trump is due to be inaugurated on January 20.

Roberts did not mention Trump in the report, though it did cite instances of litigants airing their criticisms of judges.

"Today, in the computer era, intimidation can take different forms," Roberts wrote. "Disappointed litigants rage at judicial decisions on the Internet, urging readers to send a message to the judge."

"They falsely claim that the judge had it in for them because of the judge's race, gender, or ethnicity—or the political party of the President who appointed the judge," the chief justice added.

Trump has notably clashed with judges presiding over cases against him.

He was repeatedly fined for violating his gag order during his New York hush-money trial.

The former president was held in contempt of court after criticizing his presiding judge, New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan during an interview with "Real America's Voice" in April.

"But this judge, uh, said that I can't get away from the trial. You know he's rushing the trial like crazy. Nobody's ever seen a thing go like this. The jury was picked so fast — 95% Democrats," Trump said in a phone interview with the network.

Trump also clashed repeatedly with Lewis Kaplan, the judge in a defamation suit brought against him by E. Jean Carroll.

In his report, Roberts admonished public officials for attempting to intimidate judges, though he stopped short of naming them.

"Public officials certainly have a right to criticize the work of the judiciary, but they should be mindful that intemperance in their statements when it comes to judges may prompt dangerous reactions by others," Roberts wrote.

The chief justice also admonished lawmakers for trying to defy the Supreme Court's decisions.

"Elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings," the chief justice wrote.

In April 2023, congressional Democrats urged the White House to ignore a federal judge's decision to block the sale of the abortion pill mifepristone. The Biden administration rejected the suggestion. The Supreme Court later upheld access to the drug in a ruling issued in June.

The Supreme Court did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Geoffrey Hinton doesn't support OpenAI's plan to become a for-profit company.
• Hinton said OpenAI has "received numerous tax and other benefits from its non-profit status."
• Hinton voiced his support for the injunction Elon Musk filed against OpenAI's transition.

Elon Musk has a new supporter in his legal fight against OpenAI: AI "godfather" Geoffrey Hinton.

"OpenAI was founded as an explicitly safety-focused non-profit and made a variety of safety related promises in its charter," Hinton said in a statement issued by Encode, a youth-led advocacy organization for human-centered AI, on Monday.

"It received numerous tax and other benefits from its non-profit status. Allowing it to tear all of that up when it becomes inconvenient sends a very bad message to other actors in the ecosystem," he added.

Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics in October. He's known as the godfather of AI for his work in neural networks and he spent more than a decade at Google before quitting in May 2023.

OpenAI was launched as a nonprofit research organization in 2015. Hinton's comments come as OpenAI takes steps towards becoming a for-profit company.

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman and others but left its board in 2018, is trying to block that move. Last month, his lawyers filed an injunction against OpenAI to stop its transition to a for-profit entity. When asked about the filing, a spokesperson for OpenAI told BI Musk's latest filing "continues to be utterly without merit."

Encode filed an amicus brief in support of Musk's efforts on December 27.

"From the start, OpenAI's mission was to keep its technology under the control of a nonprofit accountable to the public," Adam Billen, Encode's vice president of public policy, said in a statement to Business Insider on Tuesday morning.

"Its decision to abandon that mission in favor of profit underscores why public involvement is essential in shaping the future of this transformative technology," Billen continued.

Musk's legal battle against OpenAI

In February, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the ChatGPT-maker of violating its nonprofit mission by partnering with Microsoft.

Musk withdrew the lawsuit in June, only to refile it in August.

Musk's lawyers are arguing that OpenAI's executives "deceived" Musk into co-founding the company by playing on his concerns about AI's existential risks.

This isn't the first time Hinton has criticized OpenAI.

At a press conference in October, Hinton said Altman is "much less concerned with safety than with profits," and described the situation as "unfortunate."

OpenAI closed a $6.6 billion funding round in October, valuing it at $157 billion.

OpenAI, Hinton, and Musk did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.

• Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have reached a divorce settlement after eight years.
• Jolie filed for divorce in 2016, two years after the pair got married.
• Her representative said in a statement to BI that she was exhausted but relieved it was over.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have reached a divorce settlement.

"More than eight years ago, Angelina filed for divorce from Mr. Pitt. She and the children left all of the properties they had shared with Mr. Pitt, and since that time she has focused on finding peace and healing for their family," Jolie's lawyer, James Simon, told Business Insider on Tuesday.

"This is just one part of a long ongoing process that started eight years ago," Simon said, adding that Jolie was "exhausted" but "relieved this one part is over."

Jolie and Pitt signed off on the settlement on Monday, Simon told People.

Pitt's representative declined to comment when contacted by BI.

Jolie, 49, and Pitt, 61, became an item after working together on the 2005 film "Mr and Mrs Smith." At the time, Jolie was in the process of divorcing actor and director Billy Bob Thornton, while Pitt was married to "Friends" actress Jennifer Aniston.

Pitt and Aniston were idealized as Hollywood's perfect couple, which made rumors that Pitt and Jolie were having an affair all the more shocking.

A month after Aniston filed for divorce in March 2005, Pitt and Jolie were photographed on vacation in Kenya.

In the years that followed, the couple built a family: Jolie adopted her son Maddox in 2002 and her daughter Zahara in 2005 while she was with Pitt. In 2006, their first biological child, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, was born, and they adopted Pax a year later. In 2008, Jolie gave birth to twins: Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline.

The couple got engaged in 2012 and secretly married in France in 2014.

They were photographed together for the final time in July 2016, and Jolie filed for divorce later that year, citing irreconcilable differences and requesting primary custody of their six children.

That September, Pitt was accused of physically abusing one of his children. After an investigation, the FBI agency said no charges had been filed and it would not pursue the case further.

What followed was what is widely regarded as a messy split, with the couple disagreeing over child support, custody, and how to divide their respective stakes in a winery that they bought in 2008, and where they married in 2014.

In 2022, in an FBI report obtained by Rolling Stone and Puck, Jolie alleged Pitt assaulted her on the 2016 flight, was intoxicated, and caused $25,000 worth of damage to their private jet.

At the time, spokespeople for Jolie, Pitt, and the FBI did not respond to BI's requests for comment.

A divorce lawyer for Pitt told the New York Times at the time that while he accepted responsibility for some things in his past, he would not accept responsibility for what he did not do.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

• Nichole Wischoff worked at Citi for a year before leaving for the startup world.
• Wischoff said that even though she made a lot of money in banking, she didn't love her job.
• Working with startups was a better match for her personality, she says.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nichole Wischoff, 34, founder of Wischoff Ventures. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider previously published essays about her first recruit at Wischoff Ventures, Neal Mintz, and his hiring experience.

I picked up running while on a high school student exchange in Belgium.

Running taught me a lot. For one, there are no short-term wins in running. If you want to finish a marathon, you need to put in a lot of super-consistent work to build up your mileage.

Running taught me to keep chipping away at the things that I really want. There's no such thing as short-term success when building your career. But one thing's for sure — if you are willing to put in the work every day, you will see results over time.

Getting into but not enjoying banking

Before I entered the startup world, I worked on project finance at Citi Community Capital, an arm of Citi that deals with community development lending and investing.

Even though I made a lot of money in banking, I didn't enjoy working there.

To be sure, I loved the work itself. It was challenging and super interesting, but I felt suffocated in that environment. But I felt like I was chained to my desk for 14 to 16 hours a day, working continuously and skipping lunch breaks.

Entering the world of startups and venture capital

Fortunately, because I was based in the Bay Area, I was able to make friends in tech and learn more about their careers.

My then-boyfriend, now husband, worked in tech and he encouraged me to give tech a shot.

When I was recruited by my first tech company, a fintech company named Blend, he helped me negotiate the offer. I ended up getting roughly 40% more than what I was making in banking.

After accumulating years of experience in the startup world, I started making angel investments in startups.

Eventually, I started my early-stage venture capital firm, Wischoff Ventures.

I know that I'm not meant for the boardroom

Looking back at my career, I would say that working with and in startups was a good match for my personality. Startups allow you to do as much as you possibly want until you can't take it anymore.

In contrast, your role will be very structured and defined if you work in a big corporate company. There won't be a lot of flexibility. You will be given three to five objectives, and you need to hit them.

In startups, you get to do a lot of things. You can dabble in business development, product management, and fundraising. I enjoy having variety in my work.

I know, too, that I'm not meant for the boardroom. Even now, as a VC, I don't take board seats because I don't find them to be very interesting or useful. What I want is to help get companies off the ground. I don't want to manage hundreds of employees or report to tons of people.

Of course, I do get really bad days in venture capital now and then. But I have stuck on it because I love the adrenaline of clinching a deal. It could be an addiction, but I love momentum and knowing that I'm making progress every single day.

The truth is, you have to be crazy to raise a venture capital fund. You need to make hundreds of pitches and stomach the rejections.

It is a lot like running a marathon. You have to put in the work every day, and it's not sexy. That's what it takes to make it as a VC. You have to like pain and doing hard things.

• Former President Jimmy Carter died on Sunday at the age of 100.
• Foreign and business leaders celebrated Carter's humanitarian work.
• President-elect Donald Trump said the world owes Carter "a debt of gratitude."

Former President Jimmy Carter died on Sunday at the age of 100. World leaders responded with an outpouring of support, celebrating Carter's legacy as a humanitarian.

The Georgia peanut farmer turned politician served as president from 1977 to 1981. But he is perhaps most known for his humanitarian work after leaving the White House.

Carter championed human rights and pushed for peace in various corners of the world. In 1982, he founded The Carter Center to focus on such issues.

In 2002, Carter received a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to promote peace and human rights. Carter also played an active role with Habitat for Humanity until the end of his life.

"My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love," Carter's son, Chip, said in a statement via The Carter Center on Sunday.

Biden: Carter was "a man of principle, faith, and humility"

President Joe Biden said on Sunday that he would order a state funeral in Washington for Carter.

"Today, America and the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman, and humanitarian," Biden said in a statement.

"With his compassion and moral clarity, he worked to eradicate disease, forge peace, advance civil rights and human rights, promote free and fair elections, house the homeless, and always advocate for the least among us," Biden added. "He saved, lifted, and changed the lives of people all across the globe."

Biden said that the love Carter shared with his late wife, Rosalynn Carter, was "the definition of partnership" and that their leadership was "the definition of patriotism."

Trump: "We all owe him a debt of gratitude"

President-elect Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that Carter's presidency "came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude."

"While I strongly disagreed with him philosophically and politically, I also realized that he truly loved and respected our Country, and all it stands for," Trump said in a subsequent post.

Trump had earlier criticized Carter's decision to hand over control of the Panama Canal to Panama, saying in a Truth Social Post on December 21 that his predecessor had "foolishly gave it away."

The president-elect recently accused Panama of charging US vessels "exorbitant prices" and threatened to retake control of the canal.

Former presidents and lawmakers tout Carter's post-presidential record

Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama said in a statement on Sunday that Carter had "the longest and most impactful post-presidency in American history."

"Elected in the shadow of Watergate, Jimmy Carter promised voters that he would always tell the truth," the Obamas said.

"And he did — advocating for the public good, consequences be damned. He believed some things were more important than reelection — things like integrity, respect, and compassion," the statement added.

Former President George W. Bush said in his statement that Carter was a "man of deeply held convictions" who "set an example of service that will inspire Americans for generations."

"President Carter dignified the office. And his efforts to leave behind a better world didn't end with the presidency," Bush said.

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday that Carter had "worked tirelessly for a better, fairer world."

"I will always be proud to have presented the Medal of Freedom to him and Rosalynn in 1999, and to have worked with him in the years after he left the White House," Bill Clinton said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X that Carter led an "extraordinary life" that touched countless people's lives through his vision and generosity.

Sen. Bernie Sanders said on X that Carter would be remembered as a "decent, honest and down-to-earth man" for both his time as president and his later humanitarian work.

"He will be sorely missed," Sanders wrote.

US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg shared a tribute to the former president on X, writing that Carter's "leadership, intellect, and moral example ennobled our country, during and ever since his presidency."

Foreign politicians and business leaders hail Carter's peacemaking efforts

On X, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared a photo of the former president wearing a tool belt in front of a construction site with the message: "Today, we honor President Carter's lifetime of service and his commitment to leaving the world better than he found it. May he rest in peace."

Melinda French Gates said in her tribute that Carter was her hero. The philanthropist said she knew Carter best as a "global health advocate" who took on "diseases that impact the world's poorest people, like Guinea worm disease."

"When President Carter left office, there were more than 3.5 million cases of this painful, debilitating disease around the world each year. This year, thanks in no small part to the work of the Carter Center, that number was down to single digits," French Gates wrote.

"One of my favorite teachings says: 'To know that even one life has breathed easier because you lived, this is to have succeeded.' We honor President Carter by remembering that because of him, life is healthier, better, and safer not just for one life, but for millions," she continued.

Carter's death prompted tributes from foreign leaders such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

"He was a leader who served during a time when Ukraine was not yet independent, yet his heart stood firmly with us in our ongoing fight for freedom," Zelenskyy said of Carter in his X post.

"We deeply appreciate his steadfast commitment to Christian faith and democratic values, as well as his unwavering support for Ukraine in the face of Russia's unprovoked aggression," he added.

"Jimmy Carter's legacy is one of compassion, kindness, empathy, and hard work. He served others both at home and around the world his entire life — and he loved doing it," Trudeau wrote on X. "He was always thoughtful and generous with his advice to me."

King Charles — one of the few living figures from Carter's presidency still active in public life — also posted a tribute.

In the note, Charles said Carter's "dedication and humility served as an inspiration."

He nodded to Carter's 1977 visit to the UK, where Charles appeared in the background of this photo (top left, you can see his head) showing Carter meeting with G7 leaders and Queen Elizabeth II.

• 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.

• South Korea's national assembly impeached acting president Han Duck-soo on Friday.
• Han took over from President Yoon Suk Yeol on December 14.
• Yoon was impeached after declaring martial law for several hours.

South Korean lawmakers impeached the country's acting president, Han Duck-soo on Friday, just two weeks after he had taken up the post.

Han, who is also the country's prime minister, took over from President Yoon Suk Yeol. Yoon was impeached after declaring martial law in South Korea on December 3.

The Democratic Party, South Korea's main opposition party, filed a motion to impeach Han on December 26.

While impeaching a president requires a two-thirds majority in the 300-seat National Assembly, impeaching a prime minister only requires a simple majority of lawmakers. 192 lawmakers voted on Friday to impeach Han.

Han has been suspended from his duties immediately. The country's finance minister, Choi Sang-mok, is next in line for the acting presidency.

The opposition moved against Han after he refused to appoint three judges to fill the nine-member constitutional court bench.

The constitutional court is the bench that will rule on Yoon's removal from office.

There are currently six justices, and six votes are needed to remove Yoon. This poses a potential obstacle ousting Yoon permanently, as the loss of one vote will allow him to continue to remain president.

The South Korean won on Friday fell to its lowest level against the dollar since 2009.

This story is developing, please check back for more updates.

• OpenAI and Microsoft have an internal definition for AGI, per The Information.
• The two companies agreed to define AGI as a system that can generate $100 billion in profits.
• OpenAI says on its website that AGI refers to AI systems that are smarter than humans.

OpenAI and Microsoft have a definition for artificial general intelligence, and it hinges on the money the emerging technology can bring in.

The two companies signed an agreement in 2023 that defined AGI as a system that can generate $100 billion in profits, The Information reported on Thursday, citing documents it had obtained.

OpenAI has, however, publicly defined AGI on its website as "a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work."

The ChatGPT maker added that its nonprofit board would decide whether AGI has been achieved.

"Such a system is excluded from IP licenses and other commercial terms with Microsoft, which only apply to pre-AGI technology," the company wrote on its website.

OpenAI and Microsoft did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Based on its agreement with Microsoft, OpenAI still has some way to go before it can achieve AGI.

The company expects to accumulate losses of around $44 billion between 2023 to 2028, and could hit $100 billion in revenue in 2029, The Information reported in October, citing financial documents it had obtained.

"My guess is we will hit AGI sooner than most people in the world think and it will matter much less," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times DealBook Summit on December 4.

In November, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI is in preliminary talks with California's attorney general's office about becoming a for-profit company.

OpenAI was initially launched as a nonprofit research organization in 2015. The company closed a $6.6 billion funding round in October, valuing it at $157 billion.

• Elon Musk had some criticism for former Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun on Christmas Day.
• "Boeing is on a much better track with the new CEO," Musk wrote on X.
• Musk said Calhoun, an accounting graduate, "had no idea how airplanes or rockets worked."

Boeing is "on a much better track" after changing CEOs, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday.

Musk was talking about America's shortage of engineering talent on X when he was asked about the embattled aerospace manufacturer.

"That said, talking in terms of specific companies, Boeing is on a much better track with the new CEO. The prior guy had no idea how airplanes or rockets worked. Just zero," Musk wrote in his post.

Boeing was previously led by Dave Calhoun, who served as the company's CEO from January 2020 to July 2024.

The Virginia Tech accounting graduate was succeeded by former Rockwell Collins CEO Kelly Ortberg in August. Ortberg holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Iowa.

When Boeing announced Calhoun's resignation in March, Calhoun said the decision was 100% his own.

"I've entered my fifth year. At the end of this year, I'll be close to 68 years old," Calhoun said in an interview with CNBC.

This isn't the first time Musk has criticized Calhoun's academic background. Back in June, Musk said that Boeing had lost touch with its engineering roots.

"The CEO of an aircraft company should know how to design aircraft, not spreadsheets," Musk wrote in an X post on June 25.

Representatives for Calhoun and Ortberg at Boeing did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment. Musk also did not respond to a request for comment.

Calhoun's departure came amid a deepening quality-control crisis at Boeing.

The aerospace company faced intense scrutiny in January after a door plug flew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 during an Alaskan Airlines flight from Oregon to California.

The incident resulted in a series of investigations from the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Justice, and the National Transportation Safety Board.

According to a Senate subcommittee report on Boeing's safety and quality practices that was published in June, several whistleblowers came forward to express concerns about how Boeing handles faulty plane parts.

Calhoun's predecessor, Dennis Muilenburg, was fired after two crashes involving a different Max variant, the Max 8, killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019.

Calhoun publicly apologized to the families of the crash victims during a Senate hearing in June, but defended Boeing's safety record when he was grilled by lawmakers.

"You're proud of the safety record?" Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri asked Calhoun.

"I am proud of every action we've taken," Calhoun said.

In October, Ortberg shared his four-part turnaround plan for Boeing in a memo to employees.

Ortberg's plan called for a fundamental change in the company's culture, a stabilization of its business, an improvement in execution discipline, and the building of a new future for the planemaker.

"We need to be on the factory floors, in the back shops and in our engineering labs. We need to know what's going on, not only with our products, but with our people," Ortberg wrote.

"And most importantly, we need to prevent the festering of issues and work better together to identify, fix, and understand root cause," he added.

Boeing reported a net loss of $6.1 billion in the third quarter of 2024 in the same month. The company recorded a loss of more than $1.4 billion in the previous quarter.

Boeing's shares are down by over 31% this year.

"It will take time to return Boeing to its former legacy, but with the right focus and culture, we can be an iconic company and aerospace leader once again," Ortberg said in his October memo.