Tesla (TLSA.O) boss Elon Musk disclosed another $3.6 billion in stock sales on Wednesday, taking his total near $40 billion this year and frustrating investors as the company’s shares wallow at two-year lows.

A U.S securities filing showed he unloaded 22 million shares in the world’s most valuable carmaker over three days from Monday to Wednesday.

The sale is the second big chunk of stock he has cashed out since his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in October. It isn’t clear if the sales are related to the Twitter acquisition, but they are annoying investors who are upset by a perception he is diverting his focus and resources to Twitter ahead of Tesla.

“It doesn’t put a lot of confidence in the business, or speak volumes for where his attention is at,” said Tony Sycamore, an analyst at brokerage IG Markets, where Tesla is a popular stock among small-time investors.

“It’s not a good situation. I’ve spoken to a lot of investors who have Tesla shares and they’re absolutely furious at Elon.”

There was no immediate response to a Reuters request for comment from Tesla and from Musk emailed outside business hours. Musk’s 13.4% stake in Tesla is down from about 17% a year ago, according to Refinitiv data.

Tesla’s stockprice has halved this year, underperforming both automakers (.SPLRCAUTM) and the broader tech-heavy Nasdaq (.IXIC), which is down about 30% this year. The value of Musk’s total selling over the past year comes to nearly $40 billion.

“It will start to be tiring for investors,” said Tareck Horchani, head of prime brokerage dealing at Maybank Securities in Singapore.

Musk’s fortune, mostly tied up in Tesla shares, has fallen with prices this year and he briefly lost his title as the world’s richest person last week – according to Forbes – when he was overtaken by Louis Vuitton boss Bernard Arnault.

Besides Tesla and Twitter, where Musk’s management and tweets are attracting political attention and blowback, Musk also heads rocket company SpaceX and Neuralink, a startup developing interfaces to connect the human brain to computers.

Tesla, meanwhile, is grappling with lingering logistics challenges and said in October it expected to miss this year’s vehicle delivery target. It is more profitable than rivals who have struggled to make money from selling electric cars.

The latest share sale comes a month after Musk sold shares worth $4 billion in the days after he closed the Twitter deal.

Tesla investor Ross Gerber, a strong supporter of Musk, said on Twitter that Tesla should announce a buy back “to take advantage to (sic) the low share price Elon has created.”

European Union leaders will argue on Thursday over how to prop up their countries’ industries, which have been whacked by soaring energy prices since the outbreak of war in Ukraine and now face the threat of subsidy-fuelled U.S. competition.

Poorer EU countries want a coordinated response to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – $430 billion worth of tax breaks for green energy – because they lack the deep pockets of richer member states like Germany to underpin their industries.

The tug-of-war among 27 leaders in Brussels will be inconclusive, diplomats said.

Still, it will mean that the EU ends 2022 struggling to stay united after a year of closing ranks to support Ukraine after being invaded by Russia in February and pressuring Moscow with far-reaching and unprecedented economic sanctions.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed ahead of the summit to loosen state aid rules in renewable energy and clean-tech to shield European industry.

“There is a risk that the Inflation Reduction Act can lead to unfair competition,” she said in a speech. “We need to give our answer, our European IRA.”

However, the EU is split between traditionally “dirigiste” countries that want to see the creation of a joint “sovereignty fund” to ensure a level playing field across the bloc and wealthier states that line up behind free market principles.

“Some governments have deep pockets and extensive possibilities to support their industry through national schemes, others have not,” said one senior EU diplomat. “We don’t want a national subsidy race among member states … but there have to be carefully drafted limits.”

While this dilemma is likely to be parked for another summit in February or March, the leaders may agree on Thursday on a ninth package of EU sanctions against Moscow.

This has been held up by disagreement over whether or how to offer exemptions for an EU ban on Russia fertiliser exports.

Some say these restrictions pose a food security threat to developing countries, while others argue that relaxing them would only open loopholes for Russian oligarchs who own fertiliser businesses to dodge EU sanctions against them.

Officials said the leaders are not expected to hold in-depth talks on the EU’s struggle to agree on a natural gas price cap, but rather leave the negotiations to energy ministers who will meet on Monday for the third time.

Sky-high bills have hit European citizens and forced industries to close since Russia cut off most of its gas supplies to Europe.

A draft of the summit conclusions said leaders would call for more gas deals urgently to replace Russian fuel, including through joint gas buying among EU countries.

Overshadowing the summit will be a corruption scandal that emerged in the EU parliament over the past week.

Belgian prosecutors charged Eva Kaili, a Greek member, and three others for accepting bribes from World Cup host Qatar in a bid to influence EU policymaking.

Qatar and Kaili have denied any wrongdoing.

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Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) said on Thursday its European Union cloud customers will be able to process and store parts of their data in the region from Jan. 1.

The phased rollout of its “EU data boundary” will apply to all of its core cloud services – Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Power BI platform.

Big businesses have become increasingly anxious about the international flow of customer data since the EU introduced the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, which protects user privacy.

The bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, is working through proposals to protect the privacy of European users whose data is transferred to the United States.

“As we dived deeper into this project, we learned that we needed to be taken more phased approach,” Julie Brill, Microsoft’s Chief Privacy Officer, told Reuters.

“The first phase will be customer data. And then as we move into the next phases, we will be moving logging data, service data and other kind of data into the boundary,” she said. The second phase will be completed at the end of 2023 and phase three will be completed in 2024, she said.

Microsoft operates more than a dozen datacentres across European countries including France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland.

For big companies, data storage has become so large and distributed across so many countries that it becomes difficult for them to understand where their data resides and if it complies with rules such as GDPR.

“We are creating this solution to make our customers feel more confident and to be able to have clear conversations with their regulators on where their data is being processed as well as stored,” Brill said.

Microsoft has previously said it would challenge government requests for customer data, and that it would financially compensate any customer whose data it shared in breach of GDPR.

China raced to vaccinate its most vulnerable people on Thursday in anticipation of waves of COVID-19 infections, with some analysts expecting the death toll to soar after a loosening of strict controls that kept the pandemic at bay for three years.

The push comes as the World Health Organisation also raised concerns that China’s 1.4 billion population was not adequately vaccinated, and the United States offered to help China deal with a surge in infections.

Beijing last Wednesday began dismantling its tough ‘zero-COVID’ controls, dropping testing requirements and easing quarantine rules that had caused mental anxiety for tens of millions and damaged the economy.

The pivot away from President Xi Jinping’s signature “zero-COVID” policy followed unprecedented widespread protests against it. But, WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan said COVID-19 infections were exploding in China well before the government’s decision to phase out its stringent regime.

“There’s a narrative at the moment that China lifted the restrictions and all of a sudden the disease is out of control,” Ryan told a briefing in Geneva.

“The disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease. And I believe China decided strategically that was not the best option anymore.”

There are increasing signs of chaos during China’s exit from the zero-COVID policy – with long queues outside fever clinics, runs on medicines, and panic buying across the country.

One video posted online on Wednesday showed more than 10 people, wearing thick winter clothes, hooked up to intravenous drips as they sat on stools on the street outside a hospital clinic in central Hubei province. Reuters verified the location of the video.

For all its efforts to quell the virus in the three years since it erupted in the central city of Wuhan, China may now pay a price for shielding a population that lacks “herd immunity” and has low vaccination rates among the elderly, analysts say.

“Authorities have let cases in Beijing and other cities spread to the point where resuming restrictions, testing, and tracing would be largely ineffective in bringing outbreaks under control,” analysts at Eurasia Group said in a note on Thursday.

“Upward of 1 million people could die from COVID in the coming months.”

China has said around 90% of its population is vaccinated and its National Health Commission (NHC) on Wednesday announced it would roll out the second COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for high-risk groups and elderly people over 60 years old.

China reported 2,000 new symptomatic COVID-19 infections for Dec. 14, compared with 2,291 a day. The official figures have become an unreliable guide as less testing is being done in the country.

NHC spokesperson Mi Feng said on Wednesday it was necessary to accelerate the promotion of vaccinations, according to comments reported by state media.

Vaccinations in China have been ramping up in recent days. The latest official data shows it administered 1.43 million shots on Tuesday, well above rates in November of around 100,000 – 200,000 doses a day.

In total, it has administered 3.45 billion shots, the data shows.

But citing low vaccination rates among the elderly, one care home in Shanghai said on Wednesday it was barring visitors and non-essential deliveries as well as stockpiling medicines, tests kits and protective equipment.

“We are racking our brains on how to ensure the safety of your grandparents,” the Yuepu Tianyi Nursing Home wrote in a letter posted on its official WeChat account page.

Beijing has been largely resistant to western vaccines and treatments, having relied on locally-made shots.

Pfizer’s (PFE.N) oral COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid is one of the few foreign ones it has approved.

The treatment, however, has only been available in hospitals for high-risk patients, but signs have appeared in recent days that it may soon be available to the wider public. China Meheco Group Co Ltd (600056.SS) said on Wednesday it signed a deal to import the U.S. drugmaker’s treatment.

As the virus spreads, President Xi, his ruling Politburo and senior government officials began a two-day meeting to plot a recovery for China’s battered economy, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.

Policy insiders say the leadership is likely to chart further stimulus steps and discuss growth targets at the closed-door annual Central Economic Work Conference in Beijing, and the official Xinhua news agency said plans would be made to boost domestic consumption and investment.

The world’s second-largest economy lost more steam in November as factory output growth slowed and retail sales extended declines, both missing forecasts and clocking their worst readings since May, data on Thursday showed.

Economists estimate that China’s growth has slowed to around 3% this year, far below the official target of around 5.5%, marking one of China’s worst performances in almost half a century.

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(NewsNation) — The Texas attorney general sought to collect information about residents who changed their gender on their driver’s license, according to a newspaper report published Wednesday that advocates described as worrying.

The Washington Post reported that public records obtained by the newspaper do not indicate why Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office made the request to the Texas Department of Public Safety. The head of the driver’s license division told colleagues in June to compile the “total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months.”

A DPS spokesperson told the Post that no data was ultimately handed over because it could not be accurately produced.

Texas Republicans for years have been at the forefront of efforts to restrict transgender rights. The request came months after Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered child welfare officials to investigate gender-affirming care as child abuse, a move that Paxton’s office backed in a legal opinion.

Abbott’s directive prompted lawsuits, including one filed by Texas attorney Ian Pittman. He represents families who were subject to the child welfare investigations.

“He has proven himself not to be an ally of many communities, and perhaps chief among those is the transgender community. I think it’s pure naked partisan politics,” Pittman said of Paxton’s intentions for obtaining the driver license data. “He has shown his true colors over and over again, and when somebody tells you who they are, I think you should believe them. He has used what power he has for political purposes.”

Pittman spoke about the report Wednesday on “CUOMO” and was joined by Meghan Stabler, a transgender rights advocate. Stabler transitioned in 2004 and said the process of changing documents was difficult back then and hasn’t gotten any easier.

“This is sort of a nefarious collection of data for a use that we don’t know yet,” Stabler said. “The bad intent of the ask from the AG’s office has multiple implications on the lives of trans adults or even trans teenagers … and we don’t know where it’s going. It is a very dire state for trans people in the state of Texas.”

DPS found more than 16,000 gender changes over the past two years, but officials said a manual search would have been required to determine the reason for each one. According to records obtained by the Post, DPS staff members repeatedly referred to the request as coming from the attorney general’s office as they discussed attempting to narrow the data to include only licenses that had been altered to reflect a court-ordered change in someone’s gender.

“A verbal request was received,” DPS spokesman Travis Considine told the Post. “Ultimately, our team advised the AG’s office the data requested neither exists nor could be accurately produced. Thus, no data of any kind was provided.”

Brian Klosterboer, an attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said this request of information was “highly unusual” and a violation of privacy.

Referencing the “lavender scare” that occurred in mid-to-late 1900s, Stabler is worried about where actions like the ones being taken in Texas could lead.

“For trans people, generally we want to be safe in society,” Stabler said. “It is a human issue that is impacting the mental health of kids, but also the mental health of trans adults, as well.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Moscow said no “Christmas ceasefire” was on the cards after nearly 10 months of war in Ukraine, rejecting a call by Kyiv to start withdrawing troops by Christmas as a step to end Europe’s biggest conflict since World War Two.

Russia and Ukraine are not currently engaged in talks to end the fighting, which is raging in the east and south with little movement on either side.

Violence returned to Kyiv on Wednesday, with the first major drone attack on Ukraine’s capital in weeks. Two administrative buildings were hit, but air defences largely repelled the attack. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said 13 drones had been shot down.

In one Kyiv district, where snow lay on the ground, residents said they heard the loud whirring engine of an Iranian Shahed drone followed by a powerful explosion at a building next to their homes.

“I want this all to be over … For (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, that bastard, to die,” said Yana, 39, who had been getting ready for work when the attack took place.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed, millions more displaced and cities reduced to rubble since Russia invaded its neighbour on Feb. 24, saying it needed to protect Russian speakers from Ukrainian far-right nationlists. Kyiv and its allies call it an unprovoked war of choice.

“There is no calm on the front line,” Zelenskiy said in a regular evening video address, describing Russia’s destruction of towns in the east with artillery: “So that only bare ruins and craters” remain.

Zelenskiy said this week that Russia should start withdrawing by Christmas as a step to end the conflict, but Moscow rejected the proposal, saying Ukraine must accept the loss of territory to Russia before any progress can be made.

“Just given what we’re seeing in the air and on the ground in Ukraine, it’s difficult to conclude that this war will be over by year’s end,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said in response to a question about the prosects for a negotiated peace.

Russia, which calls the war a “special military operation”, has fired barrages of missiles on energy infrastructure since October, distrupting power supplies and leaving Ukrainians without heating in freezing winter conditions.

In Paris, about 70 countries and institutions this week pledged just over 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) to help maintain Ukraine’s water, food, energy, health and transportation in face of Russia’s attacks.

U.S. officials told Reuters this week that an announcement on a decision on providing the Patriot missile defence system to Ukraine could come as soon as Thursday – a move which would significantly bolster Ukraine’s air defence.

The Kremlin said U.S. Patriot systems would be legitimate targets and warned that Washington was getting “deeper and deeper into the conflict in the post-Soviet republic”.

Despite the lack of peace talks, hundreds of detainees have been freed in swaps in recent weeks. The releases – along with progress on talks to resume Russian exports of an ingredient in fertiliser and the extension of a grains deal – have shown the two sides maintain at least limited contact on several levels.

The latest exchange of dozens of detainees included a U.S. citizen, Kyiv and Washington said on Wednesday.

The head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, identified the American as Suedi Murekezi, who he said had been “helping our people” before ending up in Russian custody. The Washington Post said Murekezi was a U.S. Air Force veteran born in Uganda.

“We certainly welcome that news,” Kirby told reporters, but did not name the freed American, citing privacy concerns.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Wednesday an all-for-all prisoner of war swap deal was an option in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. The ICRC emphasised it was up to the two countries to reach an agreement on the issue.

ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric said a major swap could build confidence and that such exchanges had in the past constituted “the first step to a broader agreement”.

Neither the Red Cross or the two sides have made public precise numbers for each country’s war detainees but there are believed to be thousands of such prisoners.

Ukraine has pushed for more captives to be returned as part of talks with Russian representatives seeking the reopening of an ammonia gas pipeline through Ukraine, Reuters has reported. The pipeline is widely seen as important to lowering world prices for fertilizer made with the gas.

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