Dennis Levitt got his first Tesla, a blue Model S, in 2013, and loved it. “It was so much better than any car I’ve ever driven,” the 73-year-old self-storage company executive says.

He bought into the brand as well as Elon Musk, Tesla Inc.’s charismatic chief executive officer, purchasing another Model S the following year and driving the first one across the country. In 2016, he stood in line at a showroom near his suburban Los Angeles home to be one of the first to order two Model 3s — one for himself, the other for his wife.

“I was a total Musk fanboy,” Levitt says.

Was, because while Levitt still loves his Teslas, he’s soured on Musk. “Over time, his public statements have really come to bother me,” Levitt said, citing the CEO’s spats with US President Joe Biden, among others. “He acts like a seven-year-old.”

Before it was reported Musk had an affair with Sergey Brin’s wife, which he’s denied; before his slipshod deal, then no-deal, to acquire Twitter Inc.; before the revelation he fathered twins with an executive at his brain-interface startup Neuralink; before SpaceX fired employees who called him “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment”; before an article said SpaceX paid an employee $250,000 to settle a claim he sexually harassed her, allegations he’s called untrue; Musk’s behavior was putting off prospective customers and perturbing some Tesla owners.

The trends have shown up in one consumer survey and market research report after another: Tesla commands high brand awareness, consideration and loyalty, and customers are mostly delighted by its cars. Musk’s antics, on the other hand? They could do without.

Creative Strategies, a California-based customer-experience measurer, mentioned owner frustration with Musk in a study it published in April. A year earlier, research firm Escalent found Musk was the most negative aspect of the Tesla brand among electric-vehicle owners surveyed.

“We hear from Tesla owners who will say, ‘Look, I love my vehicle, but I really wish I didn’t have to respond to my friends and family about his latest tweet,’” says Mike Dovorany, who spoke with thousands of EV owners and potential buyers during his two years working in Escalent’s automotive and mobility group.

Tesla has so far had no trouble growing its way through Musk’s many controversies. The dip in vehicle deliveries the company reported last quarter was its first sequential decline since early 2020 and largely had to do with Covid lockdowns in Shanghai forcing its most productive factory to shut for weeks. Competitors that have been chasing the company for a decade may still be years away from catching up in the EV sales ranks.

Musk’s star power, built in no small part by his activity on Twitter — the same forum where he’s become such a lightning rod — has contributed immensely to Tesla, especially since it’s shunned traditional advertising.

His steady stream of online banter, punctuated with the occasional grandiose announcement or stunt keeps Tesla in the headlines. During the company’s earlier days, the trolling and glib comments were a feature, not a bug. They allowed Musk to shape media coverage and made him the ringleader for Tesla’s legion of very-online fans.

But after making Tesla and himself so synonymous with one another, Musk has waded into political conflicts, attempted to buy one of the world’s most influential social media platforms and struggled to bat back unflattering coverage of his personal life, putting the company’s increasingly valuable brand at risk.

Jerry James Stone, a 48-year-old chef in Sacramento, California, who teaches his 219,000 YouTube channel subscribers how to make vegan and vegetarian meals, drives a Volkswagen Beetle convertible and plans to go electric with his next car. He isn’t sure yet which model, but certain it won’t be a Tesla.

“Elon has just soiled that brand for me so much that I don’t even think I would take one if I won one,” Stone says. “You have this guy who’s the richest dude in the world, who has this huge megaphone, and he uses it to call somebody a pedophile who’s not, or to fat-shame people, all these things that are just kind of gross.”

According to Strategic Vision, a US research firm that consults auto companies, some 39 percent of car buyers say they wouldn’t consider a Tesla. That’s not necessarily out of the ordinary — almost half of respondents say they won’t consider German luxury brands. But Tesla does lag more mass-market brands: Toyota, for example, is only off the shopping list for 23 percent of drivers.

Emma Sirr, a 28-year-old worker in cloud computing who lives in Bozeman, Montana, gets around with her partner and their two dogs in a 2004 Nissan Frontier. They’ve been researching EVs for about three years and until recently considered Teslas the only viable option, given their range and the charging infrastructure the company has built in their area. But they refused to buy one because of Musk, their main gripes being his politics, staff turnover at the company and its cavalier approach to autonomous-driving technology.

“We took Tesla off the table from the get-go,” Sirr says. Sirr and her partner have their eyes on the Kia Niro and Chevrolet Bolt as possible alternatives. “As consumers, our power is what we buy. I think younger generations in particular vote with their wallets, and I feel like that might come back to bite.”

For much of the past decade, Tesla lacked competitors that matched its models’ battery range and other measures of performance. Consumers put off by Musk’s mischief had few EVs to turn to. As legacy automakers introduce more capable electric models, Tesla won’t have as much leeway.

“We’ve seen among the early adopters more of a willingness to take risks or to put up with things that are out of the ordinary, says Dovorany, who left Escalent for an automotive tech startup earlier this year. “We’re not seeing that as much with incoming buyers.” To win this cohort, automakers need to check every box, and for some, that includes employing a CEO who doesn’t share Hilter memes on social media.

Levitt, the self-described former Musk fanboy, took a test ride last month in a Lucid. He wasn’t sold on it, partly he says because it didn’t have enough cargo space for his golf gear. He’s still waiting for another automaker to steal him away from Tesla and considering models from Audi, Mercedes and BMW.

“If you take Mr. Musk and his antics out of the equation, I’m about 98 percent certain that my next car would be a Tesla,” Levitt says. ”His antics put me in play.”

A Chinese rocket has fallen back to Earth over the Indian Ocean but NASA said Beijing had not shared the "specific trajectory information" needed to know where possible debris might fall.

US Space Command said the Long March 5B re-entered over the Indian Ocean at approximately 12:45 PM EDT (1645 GMT), but referred questions about "reentry’s technical aspects such as potential debris dispersal impact location" to China.

"All spacefaring nations should follow established best practices and do their part to share this type of information in advance to allow reliable predictions of potential debris impact risk," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said. 

"Doing so is critical to the responsible use of space and to ensure the safety of people here on Earth."

Social media users in Malaysia posted video of what appeared to be rocket debris.

Aerospace Corp, a government funded nonprofit research center near Los Angeles, said it was reckless to allow the rocket's entire main-core stage – which weighs 22.5 tonnes – to return to Earth in an uncontrolled reentry.

China: Debris won't risk anyone

Earlier this week, analysts said the rocket body would disintegrate as it plunged through the atmosphere but is large enough that numerous chunks will likely survive a fiery re-entry to rain debris over an area some 2,000 km long by about 70 km wide.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment. 

China said earlier this week it would closely track the debris but said it posed little risk to anyone on the ground.

The Long March 5B blasted off July 24 to deliver a laboratory module to the new Chinese space station under construction in orbit, marking the third flight of China's most powerful rocket since its maiden launch in 2020.

The Tiangong space station is one of the crown jewels of Beijing's ambitious space programme, which has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon, and made China only the third nation to put humans in orbit.

The new module, propelled by the Long March 5B, successfully docked with Tiangong's core module on Monday and the three astronauts who had been living in the main compartment since June successfully entered the new lab.

China has poured billions of dollars into space flight and exploration as it seeks to build a program that reflects its stature as a rising global power.

Source: Reuters

Sri Lanka's new president has said that an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help pull the bankrupt nation out of its economic crisis has been pushed back to September because of unrest over the past weeks.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, in his first speech since he was elected by Parliament on July 20, said on Saturday even though he as the prime minister had aimed to reach an agreement by early August, it has now been pushed back by a month.

Wickremesinghe was elected to complete the five-year term of his predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled to Singapore after protesters angry over economic hardships stormed his official residence and occupied several key government buildings.

Wickremesinghe said talks with the IMF on a rescue package had not moved since those incidents.

Multi-party government

Sri Lanka announced in April that it is suspending repaying its foreign loans because of a serious shortage of foreign currency. The island nation owes $51 billion in foreign debt, of which $28 billion must be paid by 2027.

The currency crisis led to a shortage of many critical imported items like fuel, medicine and cooking gas.

Wickremesinghe on Friday wrote to 225 lawmakers in Parliament to join him in a multi-party government to face the crisis.

He reiterated the call on Saturday saying that blaming former leaders will not solve the problem but everyone should get together to stop the country from falling further.

Wickremesinghe, a six-time prime minister and veteran politician, is unpopular because he is supported by majority lawmakers who are backed by the powerful Rajapaksa family, which has ruled Sri Lanka for most of the past two decades. 

Many accuse Wickremesinghe of protecting the Rajapaksas, who are widely blamed for corruption and misrule that led to the crisis.

Wickremesinghe has empowered the military to dismantle protest camps that had been set up near the president's office for more than 100 days. Several people including protest leaders have been arrested in the crackdown.

Source: AP

Pope Francis has agreed that the attempt to eliminate Indigenous culture in Canada through a church-run residential school system amounted to a cultural “genocide”.

Speaking to reporters while en route home from Canada on Saturday, Francis said he didn’t use the term during his trip to atone for the Catholic Church’s role in the schools because it never came to mind.

“It’s true I didn’t use the word because it didn’t come to mind, but I described genocide, no?” Francis, who used the term “cultural destruction” in his apology during his “penitential pilgrimage“ to Canada, said.

“I asked forgiveness for this work, which was genocide,” Francis said. “It’s a technical word, ‘genocide’. I didn’t use because it didn’t come to mind, but I described that, and it’s true it’s a genocide.” he said.

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission determined in 2015 that the forced removal of Indigenous children from their homes and placement in the residential schools to assimilate them constituted a “cultural genocide”.

Some 150,000 children from the late 1800s to the 1970s were subject to the forced assimilation policy, aimed at making them fully Christian and Canadian.

Many were physically and sexually abused at the schools, and children were beaten for speaking their Native languages. Thousands are believed to have died of disease and malnutrition.

'Disastrous error'

Francis said he repeatedly condemned the system that severed family ties and attempted to impose new cultural beliefs as “catastrophic” to generations of Indigenous peoples.

Francis ended his trip to Canada as he began — by apologising to the Indigenous survivors of Catholic-run schools.

He wrapped up his journey on Friday in the capital of the vast northern territory of Nunavut, Iqaluit, which means "the place of many fish".

Francis met with survivors of the schools, then told a crowd of around 2,000 mainly Indigenous people that their stories "renewed in me the indignation and shame that I have felt for months".

The six-day visit took the pontiff from Alberta in western Canada to Quebec and then the far north allowed him to meet many of Canada's First Nations, Metis and Inuit people, who for years had been awaiting his plea for forgiveness.

While many of them welcomed the gesture by the 85-year-old, who spent much of the trip in a wheelchair due to knee pain, they also made clear that this was only a first step on a journey of reconciliation.

Some have called for Francis to rescind the Doctrine of Discovery, the 15th century papal bulls that allowed European powers to colonise any non-Christian lands and people.

Demands were also made for him to allow Indigenous people access to records documenting what happened in the schools and to return Indigenous artefacts currently held in Vatican museums.

During his tour, Francis vowed to promote Indigenous rights and said the Church was on a "journey" of healing and reconciliation.

Last Monday, he visited the town of Maskwacis, the site of two former residential schools, where he apologised and called forced assimilation "evil" and a "disastrous error".

Source: agencies

Joe Biden has tested positive for Covid-19 for a second time and is returning to isolation, his White House doctor said, attributing the result to "rebound" positivity from treatment the US president received.

The 79-year-old Biden "tested positive late Saturday morning, by antigen testing," following four consecutive days of negative tests, and "will reinitiate strict isolation procedures," presidential physician Kevin O'Connor wrote in a memorandum.

"This in fact represents 'rebound' positivity," O'Connor wrote, referring to a situation in which patients treated with the drug Paxlovid — as Biden was — clear the virus but test positive after completing their course.

No reason to reinitiate treatment

"The president has experienced no re-emergence of symptoms and continues to feel quite well. This being the case, there is no reason to reinitiate treatment at this time," he added.

The second positive test came just three days after O'Connor said Biden had tested negative for the disease and no longer needed to isolate, which he had been doing since receiving a first positive result on July 21.

Source: AFP

Wildfires in the US states of California and Montana have exploded in size overnight amid windy, hot conditions and were quickly encroaching on neighbourhoods, forcing evacuation orders for over 100 homes, while a blaze in Idaho state was spreading.

In California's Klamath National Forest, the fast-moving McKinney fire, which started on Friday, went from charring just over 1 square kilometre to scorching as much as 160 square kilometres by Saturday in a largely rural area near the Oregon state line, according to fire officials.

"It’s continuing to grow with erratic winds and thunderstorms in the area and we’re in triple digit temperatures," said Caroline Quintanilla, a spokesperson at Klamath National Forest.

Meanwhile in Montana, the Elmo wildfire nearly tripled in size to more than 28 square kilometres within a few miles of the town of Elmo. 

Roughly 320 kilometres to the south, Idaho residents remained under evacuation orders as the Moose Fire in the Salmon-Challis National Forest charred more than 174.8 square kilometres in timbered land near the town of Salmon. It was 17 percent contained.

A significant build-up of vegetation was fueling the McKinney fire, said Tom Stokesberry, a spokesperson with the US Forest Service for the region.

US House bill

McKinney's explosive growth forced crews to shift from trying to control the perimetre of the blaze to trying to protect homes and critical infrastructure like water tanks and power lines, and assist in evacuations in California’s northernmost county of Siskiyou.

Deputies and law enforcement were knocking on doors in the county seat of Yreka and the town of Fort Jones to urge residents to get out and safely evacuate their livestock onto trailers. Automated calls were being sent to land phone lines as well because there were areas without cell phone service.

Over 100 homes were ordered evacuated and authorities were warning people to be on high alert. Smoke from the fire caused the closure of portions of Highway 96.

The Pacific Coast Trail Association urged hikers to get to the nearest town while the US Forest Service closed a 177-kilometre section of the trail from the Etna Summit to the Mt. Ashland Campground in southern Oregon.

As fires raged across the West, the US House on Friday approved wide-ranging legislation aimed at helping communities in the region cope with increasingly severe wildfires and drought — fueled by climate change — that have caused billions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses in recent years.

The legislative measure approved by federal lawmakers combines 49 separate bills and would increase firefighter pay and benefits; boost resiliency and mitigation projects for communities affected by climate crisis; protect watersheds; and make it easier for wildfire victims to get federal assistance.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein has sponsored a similar measure.

Source: AP

Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organization has “neutralised” a PKK terrorist, who was among the perpetrators of the 2008 Istanbul terrorist attack, in Syria, according to security sources.

The terrorist, Nusret Tebis (code-named “Rustem”) was found on Saturday, hiding in an apartment in the northeastern city of Al-Hasakah, 60 kilometres south of the Turkish border.

The fugitive PKK terrorist, who was on Türkiye’s most wanted terrorists list, joined the terrorist organisation in 1995 from Türkiye’s eastern Siirt province.

He had reportedly fled to northern Iraq after the 2008 terrorist attack in Istanbul’s Gungoren district.

On July 27, 2008, the terror group targeted civilians in Gungoren by detonating two bombs planted in garbage containers when streets were packed with people in the evening.

The deadly explosions killed 18 civilians and wounded at least 154 others.

Turkish authorities use “neutralise” to imply the terrorists in question surrendered or were killed or captured.

In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Türkiye, the PKK — listed as a terrorist organisation by Türkiye, the US and the EU — has been responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants.

Source: AA