NEW YORK/PARIS: OpenAI’s board has not yet received a formal bid from an Elon Musk-led consortium, although a lawyer for the billionaire said the offer had been sent to OpenAI’s outside counsel. A day after Musk publicized a bid to offer $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls ChatGPT maker OpenAI, the two sides were still at odds over what exactly happened to the formal bid.
OpenAI’s board of directors has not yet received a formal bid from Musk’s group, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday, adding to the confusion over the unsolicited attempt to take control of the world’s most prominent AI company.
Musk’s lawyer, Marc Toberoff, told Reuters that he sent the offer by email on Monday to OpenAI’s outside counsel at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. The law firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The bid — attached to an email — was in the form of a “detailed four-page Letter of Intent” to purchase OpenAI’s assets, signed by Musk and other investors and addressed to the board, Toberoff said.
“Whether Sam Altman chose to provide or withhold this from OpenAI’s other Board members is outside of our control,” he said, referring to OpenAI’s CEO.
The nonprofit that controls OpenAI is not for sale, Altman told Reuters on Tuesday when asked about Musk’s offer to buy it. The offer by the Musk-led consortium came amid the billionaire’s fight to block the artificial intelligence startup from transitioning to a for-profit firm.
“I have nothing to say. I mean, it’s ridiculous,” Altman said on the sidelines of an AI summit in Paris when asked about the offer.
“The company is not for sale. It’s another one of his tactics to try to mess with us,” Altman said, referring to Musk.
In an internal message to OpenAI employees on Monday, Altman said the board, though it had not officially reviewed the offer, planned to reject it based on the interest of OpenAI’s mission.
Musk cofounded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 as a nonprofit, but left before the company took off due to a disagreement over the company’s direction and funding sources with Altman and other co-founders. In 2023, he launched the competing AI startup, xAI. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of technology company X, is a close ally of US President Donald Trump. He leads the Department of Government Efficiency, a new arm of the White House tasked with radically shrinking the federal bureaucracy.
OpenAI, in the process of raising $40 billion, is also seeking to transition into a for-profit from a nonprofit entity, which it says is required to secure the capital needed for developing the best AI models. The complicated transition involves putting a price tag on OpenAI’s nonprofit control of the for-profit arm.
Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings has said she is reviewing OpenAI’s proposed changes to ensure the company is “adhering to its specific charitable purposes for the benefit of the public beneficiaries, as opposed to the commercial or private interests of OpenAI’s directors or partners.”
Legal experts said Musk’s bid complicates the fair value held by OpenAI, particularly regarding charitable assets in its complicated corporate conversion, meaning the price it needs to pay in exchange for the nonprofit to give up control.
“It does help set a price point for the thinking about the valuation of the nonprofit assets,” Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, the consumer rights watchdog, told Reuters. “If it were to occur as proposed, the regulators have a duty to ensure that if there’s a selloff of assets to a for-profit entity, that fair market value is obtained.”
OpenAI’s board has not received Musk’s takeover bid, source says
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OpenAI’s board has not received Musk’s takeover bid, source says
- OpenAI’s board of directors has not yet received a formal bid from Musk’s group, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday
Poland holds tight vote with EU role at stake
- An exit poll is expected as soon as ballots close and election officials predict that the final result will be known on Monday
- Presidents in Poland have the power to veto legislation and are also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces
Warsaw’s pro-EU mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, 53, an ally of the centrist government, faces off against nationalist historian Karol Nawrocki, 42, with opinion polls showing that the race was too tight to call.
Polls close at 9:00 p.m. (1900 GMT) in the EU and NATO country, which borders Ukraine and has been a key supporter of its neighbor in the war against Russia.
An exit poll is expected as soon as ballots close and election officials predict that the final result will be known on Monday.
A victory for Trzaskowski would be a major boost for the progressive agenda of the government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a former European Council president.
It could mean significant social changes such as the introduction of civil partnerships for same-sex couples and an easing of the near-total ban on abortion.
Presidents in Poland, a fast-growing economy of 38 million people, have the power to veto legislation and are also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Victory for Nawrocki would embolden the populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which ruled Poland between 2015 and 2023, and could lead to fresh parliamentary elections.
Many Nawrocki supporters want stricter curbs on immigration and advocate for conservative values and more sovereignty for the country within the European Union.
“We should not give in to European pressure,” 40-year-old Agnieszka Prokopiuk, a homemaker, said ahead of the vote.
“We need to make our own way... and not succumb to trends from the West,” she said in the city of Biala Podlaska in eastern Poland near the Belarus border.
Tomasz Czublun, a 48-year-old mechanic, said: “The European Union is important but the sovereignty of our country is much more important.”
Anna Materska-Sosnowska, a politics expert, called the election “a real clash of civilizations” because of the wide policy differences between the candidates.
Many Trzaskowski voters support greater integration within the EU and an acceleration of social reforms.
Malgorzata Wojciechowska, a tour guide and teacher in her fifties, said Polish women “unfortunately do not have the same rights as our European friends.”
“I hope that Rafal Trzaskowski will relaunch the debate on abortion so that we can finally live in a free country where we can have our own opinion,” she said.
The election is also being watched closely in Ukraine, which is seeking to bolster international diplomatic support in its negotiations with Russia as its resistance to Moscow’s invasion grinds on.
Nawrocki, an admirer of US President Donald Trump, opposes NATO membership for Kyiv and has called for curbs on benefits for the estimated one million Ukrainian refugees in Poland.
He used his last campaign hours on Friday to leave flowers at a monument to Poles killed by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II.
“It was a genocide against the Polish people,” he said.
The election’s final result is expected to hinge on whether Trzaskowski can mobilize enough supporters and whether far-right voters will cast their ballots for Nawrocki.
Far-right candidates secured more than 21 percent of the vote in the election’s first round, which Trzaskowski won by a razor-thin margin of 31 percent against 30 percent for Nawrocki.
3 patients are killed in a fire that broke out at a hospital in the German city of Hamburg
BERLIN: Three patients were killed and many people were injured, two of them critically, in a fire that broke out overnight at a hospital in the German city of Hamburg, authorities said Sunday.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the hospital, the Marienkrankenhaus, shortly after midnight. It broke out in a room in the geriatric ward, on the ground floor of the building, and spread to the facade of the floor above. Smoke spread across the building’s four floors.
It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the fire.
The fire department said that three adult patients were killed and more than 50 people injured, the German news agency dpa reported. Of those, two were in life-threatening condition, 16 had serious injuries and 36 were slightly hurt.
A section of the hospital had to be evacuated. Injured patients were treated either at the hospital itself or in nearby clinics. The fire was extinguished within about 20 minutes.
Bangladesh top court restores largest Islamist party
- The Supreme Court overturns cancelation of Jamaat-e-Islami’s registration
- Allows it to be formally listed as a political party with the Election Commission
DHAKA: Bangladesh on Sunday restored the registration of the largest Islamist party, allowing it to take part in elections, more than a decade after it was removed under the now-overthrown government.
The Supreme Court overturned a cancelation of Jamaat-e-Islami’s registration, allowing it to be formally listed as a political party with the Election Commission.
“The Election Commission is directed to deal with the registration of that party in accordance with law,” commission lawyer Towhidul Islam said.
Jamaat-e-Islami party lawyer, Shishir Monir, said the Supreme Court’s decision would allow a “democratic, inclusive and multi-party system” in the Muslim-majority country of 170 million people.
“We hope that Bangladeshis, regardless of their ethnicity or religious identity, will vote for Jamaat, and that the parliament will be vibrant with constructive debates,” Monir told journalists.
After Sheikh Hasina was ousted as prime minister in August, the party appealed for a review of the 2013 high court order banning it.
Sunday’s decision comes after the Supreme Court on May 27 overturned a conviction against a key leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, A.T.M. Azharul Islam.
Islam had been sentenced to death in 2014 for rape, murder and genocide during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
Jamaat-e-Islami supported Islamabad during the war, a role that still sparks anger among many Bangladeshis today.
They were rivals of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of the Awami League, who would become Bangladesh’s founding figure.
Hasina banned Jamaat-e-Islami during her tenure and cracked down on its leaders.
In May, Bangladesh’s interim government banned the Awami League, pending the outcome of a trial over its crackdown on mass protests that prompted her ouster last year.
Top defense officials say Ukraine war has blurred lines, exposing global threats
- Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė stated at the Shangri-La Dialogue that if Ukraine were to fall, it would have a ripple effect in Asia
SINGAPORE: China and North Korea’s support for Russia in its war against Ukraine has exposed how lines between regions have blurred, and the need for a global approach toward defense, top security officials said Sunday.
North Korea has sent troops to fight on the front lines in Ukraine, while China has supported Russia economically and technologically while opposing international sanctions.
Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė told delegates at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premiere defense forum, that if Ukraine were to fall, it would have a ripple effect in Asia and suggested it could embolden China in its territorial claims on Taiwan and virtually the entire South China Sea.
“If Russia prevails in Ukraine, it’s not about Europe. It’s not about one region,” she said. “It will send a very clear signal also to smaller states here in Indo-Pacific that anyone can ignore their borders, that any fabricated excuse can justify invasion.”
The comments echoed those from French President Emmanuel Macron as he opened the conference on Friday advocating for greater European engagement in the Indo-Pacific.
On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested European countries should focus their defense efforts in their own region and leave the Indo-Pacific more to the US, but Šakalienė said the regions were clearly intertwined.
“It’s not a secret that when we talk about the main perpetrators in cybersecurity against Japan it’s China, Russia and North Korea,” she said.
“When we talk about main cybersecurity perpetrators against Lithuania it’s Russia, China and Belarus — two out of the three are absolutely the same.”
She added that “the convergence of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea into an increasingly coordinated authoritarian axis,” demands a unified response. Iran has been a key supplier of attack drones to Russia for its war effort.
“In this context, the United States’ strategic focus on Indo-Pacific is both justified and necessary, but this is not America’s responsibility alone,” she said.
Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles told reporters on the sidelines that his main takeaway from the three-day conference, hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, was the “real intent in the way in which European countries have engaged” in the debates.
“It reflects the sense of connection, interconnectedness ... between Indo-Pacific on the one hand and the North Atlantic on the other,” he said.
China sent a lower-level delegation from its National Defense University this year to the conference, but its Foreign Ministry on Sunday responded to comments from Hegseth that Beijing was destabilizing the region and preparing to possibly seize Taiwan by force.
“No country in the world deserves to be called a hegemonic power other than the US itself, who is also the primary factor undermining the peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific,” it said, while reiterating its stance that the Taiwan issue was an internal Chinese matter.
“The US must neve play with fire on this question,” the ministry said.
Philippines Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr, whose country has been involved in increasingly violent clashes with China over competing claims in the South China Sea, scoffed at the idea that the US was the problem.
“What the Chinese government considers fair and just may stand in stark contrast to the norms and values accepted by the rest of the world, especially the smaller countries,” he said.
“To envision a China-led international order, we only need to look at how they treat their much smaller neighbors in the South China Sea.”
He also underscored the international implications of the tensions in the Indo-Pacific, noting that the South China Sea was one of several maritime routes that are “arteries of the global economy.”
“Disruption in any of these maritime corridors triggers ripple effects across continents, impacting trade flows, military deployments, and diplomatic posture,” he said.
Mexico’s first judicial elections stir controversy and confusion among voters
- Instead of judges being appointed on a system of merit and experience, Mexican voters will choose between some 7,700 candidates vying for more than 2,600 judicial positions
MEXICO CITY: Mexico is holding its first ever judicial elections on Sunday, stirring controversy and sowing confusion among voters still struggling to understand a process set to transform the country’s court system.
Mexico’s ruling party, Morena, overhauled the court system late last year, fueling protests and criticism that the reform is an attempt by those in power to seize on their political popularity to gain control of the branch of government until now out of their reach.
“It’s an effort to control the court system, which has been a sort of thorn in the side” of those in power, said Laurence Patin, director of the legal organization Juicio Justo in Mexico. “But it’s a counter-balance, which exists in every healthy democracy.”
Now, instead of judges being appointed on a system of merit and experience, Mexican voters will choose between some 7,700 candidates vying for more than 2,600 judicial positions.
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum and party allies have said the elections are a way to purge the court system of corruption in a country that has long faced high levels of impunity. Critics say the vote could damage democracy and open the judicial system up further to organized crime and other corrupt actors hoping to get a grip on power.
That process has only grown more chaotic in the run-up to the vote.
Civil society organizations like Defensorxs have raised red flags about a range of candidates running for election, including lawyers who represented some of Mexico’s most feared cartel leaders and local officials who were forced to resign from their positions due to corruption scandals.
Also among those putting themselves forward are ex-convicts imprisoned for years for drug-trafficking to the United States and a slate of candidates with ties to a religious group whose spiritual leader is behind bars in California after pleading guilty to sexually abusing minors.
At the same time, voters have been plagued by confusion over a voting process that Patin warned has been hastily thrown together. Voters often have to choose from sometimes more than a hundred candidates who are not permitted to clearly voice their party affiliation or carry out widespread campaigning.
As a result, many Mexicans say they’re going into the vote blind. Mexico’s electoral authority has investigated voter guides being handed out across the country, in what critics say is a blatant move by political parties to stack the vote in their favor.
“Political parties weren’t just going to sit with their arms crossed,” Patin said.
Miguel Garcia, a 78-year-old former construction worker, stood in front of the country’s Supreme Court on Friday peering at a set of posters, voter guides with the faces and numbers of candidates.
He was fiercely scribbling down their names on a small scrap of paper and said that he had traveled across Mexico City to try to inform himself ahead of the vote, but he couldn’t find any information other than outside the courthouse.
“In the neighborhood where I live, there’s no information for us,” he said. “I’m confused, because they’re telling us to go out and vote but we don’t know who to vote for.”
