Musk quietly hits brakes on a third political party
The Tesla CEO is also considering using some of his vast financial resources to back US Vice President JD Vance if he decides to run for president in 2028, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday (AEST), citing people familiar with the matter.
Reuters

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Perth Now
4 hours ago
- Perth Now
Tesla slow in reporting self-driving tech crashes
US federal auto safety regulators are investigating why Tesla has repeatedly broken rules requiring it to quickly tell them about crashes involving its self-driving technology. It's potentially significant development given the company's plans to put hundreds of thousands of driverless cars on US roads over the next year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Thursday that Tesla's reports on numerous incidents involving its driver assistance and self-driving features were submitted far too late — several months after the crashes, instead of within five days as required. The probe comes two months after the electric vehicle maker run by Elon Musk started a self-driving taxi service in Austin, Texas, with hopes of soon offering it nationwide. The company also hopes to send over-the-air software updates to millions of Teslas already on the road that will allow them to drive themselves. Investors enthusiastic about such plans have kept Tesla stock aloft despite plunging sales and profits due to boycotts over Musk's support for US President Donald Trump and far-right politicians in Europe. The safety agency said the probe will focus on why Tesla took so long to report the crashes, whether the reports included all the necessary data and details and if there are crashes that the agency still doesn't know about. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment, but the agency noted that the company has told it the delays were "due to an issue with Tesla's data collection," which Tesla says has now been fixed. The new investigation follows another probe that began in October into potential problems with Tesla's self-driving technology in foggy weather and other low-visibility conditions, which has been linked to several accidents including one death. That probe involves 2.4 million Tesla vehicles. The crash reporting rule for vehicles using level two driver-assistance software, or those that require drivers to pay full attention to the road, was implemented in 2021. Since then, Tesla has reported 2308 crashes when the software was used, the vast majority of the more than 2600 reported by all automakers, according to agency data. The numbers are skewed by the fact that Tesla is by far the dominant maker of partial self-driving vehicles in the US The company has been offering robotaxi rides in Austin to only a select group of riders, but said it will allow any paying customer to hail its cabs starting sometime in September, according to a Musk post on X earlier this month. Tesla has also begun allowing limited robotaxi service in San Francisco with a driver behind the wheel as a safety check to conform with California rules. Investors in Tesla were initially cheered after Trump won the presidency in hopes he would reward his biggest financial backer, Musk, by getting safety regulators to go easier on the company. Now that isn't so certain given Musk's falling out with the president in recent months after Musk called Trump's budget bill an "abomination" that would add to US debt and threatened to form a new political party. Tesla stock fell less than 1.0 per cent in afternoon trading on Thursday to $US321 ($A500).


Perth Now
7 hours ago
- Perth Now
Cost cuts hit UN investigation into Rohingya genocide
Millions of dollars of funding cuts from donors and UN cost-cutting could hamper evidence gathering and undermine efforts to seek justice for Rohingya who fled Myanmar, the investigation head says. Nicholas Koumjian, head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, said he fears that the scale-back of its work will hurt efforts to bring perpetrators to justice. "It will affect the ability to convict because we lose capacity," he told Reuters in an interview in Geneva. "That would send a message of impunity. It says to perpetrators: don't worry about being charged." About 750,000 Rohingya, a Muslim minority group, fled a Myanmar military offensive in August 2017 - a campaign seen by prosecutors as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. The Myanmar military says the operation was a legitimate counter-terrorism campaign in response to attacks by Muslim militants. The mechanism, set up by the UN Human Rights Council in 2018 to analyse evidence of serious violations of international law, is assisting jurisdictions investigating the alleged persecution of the Rohingya, including the International Criminal Court. Unless more funding is received by year-end, the mechanism will have to stop both an open-source project and one investigating sexual violence and crimes against children, Koumjian said. The shortages come amid a UN liquidity crisis, meaning only 73 per cent of the mechanism's $US15 million ($A23 million) annual budget is available. It also faces a nearly $US9 million ($A14 million) shortfall for the next two years in voluntary grants from donors, which have previously included Britain, Canada and the EU, according to a confidential document seen by Reuters. Asked to comment, a mechanism spokesperson said it now estimates that gap at $US6.2 million ($A9.6 million). "It's a severe strain on us to try to meet the budget with these limitations," said Koumjian, a former prosecutor from the US who has worked on Bosnia and Sierra Leone war crimes cases. He said the Trump administration is ending two of its three grants and that other donors had indicated funding lapses from year-end, without giving details. The US State Department did not respond to a request for comment. Washington said last year it had provided $US3 million ($A4.7 million) to gather and analyse open-source evidence of the most serious violations of international law in Myanmar since 2011 and for witness protection, a government website showed. The mechanism's mandate includes both researching alleged crimes against the Rohingya as well as violations in Myanmar since the 2021 military coup. It has submitted evidence to the ICC, the International Court of Justice and Argentina and Britain. Donor cuts mean protection and counselling services for witnesses have already stopped, Koumjian said. "The consequence of that could be very great, because sometimes we provide assistance for people in life-threatening situations," he said. This month, the mechanism said it has found evidence of systematic torture by Myanmar security forces. Myanmar's military government said it was conducting "security measures" lawfully and did not illegally arrest, torture or execute innocent civilians, blaming "terrorists". Koumjian's teams helped scan hundreds of thousands of social media posts from the 2017 Rohingya campaign for hate speech and found 43 accounts linked to the military, he said, showing "the state was fomenting hatred". A Myanmar military spokesperson did not respond to multiple calls from Reuters seeking comment.


West Australian
7 hours ago
- West Australian
Cost cuts hit UN investigation into Rohingya genocide
Millions of dollars of funding cuts from donors and UN cost-cutting could hamper evidence gathering and undermine efforts to seek justice for Rohingya who fled Myanmar, the investigation head says. Nicholas Koumjian, head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, said he fears that the scale-back of its work will hurt efforts to bring perpetrators to justice. "It will affect the ability to convict because we lose capacity," he told Reuters in an interview in Geneva. "That would send a message of impunity. It says to perpetrators: don't worry about being charged." About 750,000 Rohingya, a Muslim minority group, fled a Myanmar military offensive in August 2017 - a campaign seen by prosecutors as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. The Myanmar military says the operation was a legitimate counter-terrorism campaign in response to attacks by Muslim militants. The mechanism, set up by the UN Human Rights Council in 2018 to analyse evidence of serious violations of international law, is assisting jurisdictions investigating the alleged persecution of the Rohingya, including the International Criminal Court. Unless more funding is received by year-end, the mechanism will have to stop both an open-source project and one investigating sexual violence and crimes against children, Koumjian said. The shortages come amid a UN liquidity crisis, meaning only 73 per cent of the mechanism's $US15 million ($A23 million) annual budget is available. It also faces a nearly $US9 million ($A14 million) shortfall for the next two years in voluntary grants from donors, which have previously included Britain, Canada and the EU, according to a confidential document seen by Reuters. Asked to comment, a mechanism spokesperson said it now estimates that gap at $US6.2 million ($A9.6 million). "It's a severe strain on us to try to meet the budget with these limitations," said Koumjian, a former prosecutor from the US who has worked on Bosnia and Sierra Leone war crimes cases. He said the Trump administration is ending two of its three grants and that other donors had indicated funding lapses from year-end, without giving details. The US State Department did not respond to a request for comment. Washington said last year it had provided $US3 million ($A4.7 million) to gather and analyse open-source evidence of the most serious violations of international law in Myanmar since 2011 and for witness protection, a government website showed. The mechanism's mandate includes both researching alleged crimes against the Rohingya as well as violations in Myanmar since the 2021 military coup. It has submitted evidence to the ICC, the International Court of Justice and Argentina and Britain. Donor cuts mean protection and counselling services for witnesses have already stopped, Koumjian said. "The consequence of that could be very great, because sometimes we provide assistance for people in life-threatening situations," he said. This month, the mechanism said it has found evidence of systematic torture by Myanmar security forces. Myanmar's military government said it was conducting "security measures" lawfully and did not illegally arrest, torture or execute innocent civilians, blaming "terrorists". Koumjian's teams helped scan hundreds of thousands of social media posts from the 2017 Rohingya campaign for hate speech and found 43 accounts linked to the military, he said, showing "the state was fomenting hatred". A Myanmar military spokesperson did not respond to multiple calls from Reuters seeking comment.