Elon Musk is no longer the world’s richest person as Tesla shares keep sliding.

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• Investors made $15 billion by betting that shares in Tesla would fall this year, per S3 Partners.
• The value of Elon Musk’s company has sunk by almost 70% from its November 2021 peak.
• Musk has refused to draw a link between Tesla’s decline and his takeover of Twitter.

Short-sellers made $15 billion this year betting that shares in Tesla would fall, as about $800 billion was wiped off its value, new research shows.

Analysis by S3 Partners showed bets against Tesla shares proved to be the most profitable of 2022, with shorts against Amazon shares making a return of $6.2 billion. 

S3 said interest in betting against Tesla started falling in April as the stock began declining, reducing potential returns, but ramped up again in September as Elon Musk’s acrimonious acquisition of Twitter entered its final stages.

About 3% of Tesla shares are being shorted, making it the second-largest US short after Apple. 

One of those betting against the company is reportedly Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who Musk said earlier this year had a short of up to $2 billion against Tesla. 

Tesla’s value has fallen by more than $800 billion this year. The company was worth $1.24 trillion at its peak in November 2021, but shares closed on Friday at $123, leaving it worth $385 billion. The stock began the year at almost $400, which equals a decline of about 70%.

Musk’s holding in Tesla means his wealth has fallen by $132 billion this year, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and he is no longer the world’s richest person after being overtaken by Bernard Arnault.

Tesla has not been immune to a wider market selloff amid high inflation and rising interest rates that has seen the S&P 500 sink by nearly a fifth this year.

But Musk has consistently refused to draw a link between his work at Twitter and Tesla’s declining fortunes, even though several high-profile investors have begged him to bring his attention back to the carmaker. 

He has instead sought to blame the Federal Reserve’s regimen of interest rate hikes, which he argues make all stocks — not just Tesla’s — less attractive to own.

The Twitter CEO has sold $3.6 billion worth of Tesla shares this year to fund operations at Twitter while he seeks to shape the social media site in his vision.

On Thursday, Musk said he wouldn’t sell any more Tesla stock for at least 18 months.

The liver donation plan was found to violate South Korea’s organ transplant act, a court found.

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• A Korean woman who planned to donate part of her liver in exchange for a job for her son was fined.
• A nurse became suspicious of the woman and reported her to authorities, The Hankyoreh reported.
• She asked a judge for clemency on the grounds she didn’t know she was breaking the law.

A woman who planned to donate part of her liver to a man in exchange for cash and a job for her son has been fined, a report said.

Koren publication The Hankyoreh reported that a Korean woman in her 50s, named Ms K, was reported when her extended stay in hospital after contracting COVID-19 attracted suspicion. 

She had been tipped off in February that the chairman of a construction company was seriously ill and required a liver transplant. She met with an employee, called Mr N, who had gone to school with the company’s president – who was also the chairman’s son.

Ms K reportedly agreed to donate part of her liver in exchange for 100 million won ($77,000) and a job for her son, per The Hankyoreh.

The outlet reported that Ms K entered hospital on March 7 to have tests before making the donation, and was added to the organ donor register a week later. 

She later entered hospital for the surgery, but tested positive for COVID-19, delaying the procedure. In the interim, a nurse grew concerned about the nature of the pair’s relationship and reported the woman for organ trafficking.

The surgery was then canceled. The chairman died in July while an investigation was carried out, per The Hankyoreh.

Their agreement was found to have breached South Korea’s organ transplant act, which states: “No person shall give, receive or promise to give or receive money, financial gain.”

A court ordered Ms K to pay a fine of 3 million won ($2,343), while Mr N was given a six-month prison sentence — suspended for two years. An accomplice received a one-year sentence.

The Hankyoreh reported that Ms K asked the judge for clemency on the basis that she didn’t know she was breaking the law. 

“I thought my son would be able to get a job if the operation was a success. I also got greedy because they promised to give me money,” Ms K reportedly said during the trial, per The Hankyoreh.

The judge said: “Organ removal and transplant is strictly prohibited by law in light of the fact that it can undermine public health and endanger the health and lives of both the donor and the recipient when conducted illegally. Since the defendants’ actions are in violation of this, they cannot avoid punishment under criminal law.”

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• A man at a National Science Foundation base in Antarctica was charged with assaulting a female colleague. 
• The female employee said Stephen Tyler Bieneman was suffocating her with his leg.
• Bieneman was arrested in Antarctica and transported to Hawaii.

A man on a search and rescue team at the US National Science Foundation base in Antarctica was arrested and transported to Hawaii after being accused of assaulting a female colleague, according to court documents filed in the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii. 

Officials charged Stephen Tyler Bieneman with assault within the maritime and territorial jurisdiction, according to a criminal complaint filed on December 12.

The incident occurred at the McMurdo Station, one of three research stations managed by the National Science Foundation under the US Antarctic Program, according to a federal affidavit filed by Deputy US Marshal Marc E. Tunstall, a federal agent stationed in Antarctica.

Tunstall writes in the affidavit that he was informed on November 25 of an assault that occurred at McMurdo. The victim, a woman, had initially disclosed that she did not want to name herself or the man she said had assaulted her, but she later agreed to meet with Tunstall, a doctor, and a sexual assault advocate present, per the affidavit. 

The woman, a US national, told Tunstall that while she and Bieneman — who she described as a casual friend — were sitting on a couch, she tried to prank him by taking his name tag and jokingly stating that she would not give it back. She then said, according to court documents, that they both stood up and moved behind the couch when Bieneman “put her on her back, placed his left shin over her throat, and began going through her coverall pocket” to find his name tag. 

According to the affidavit, the woman told Tunstall that she then tapped Bieneman’s leg and made a “choking symbol” to indicate that she couldn’t breathe, but he did not remove his leg until he found his name tag, which took one minute. The woman rated the pain as an 8 out of 10, according to the affidavit.

She was eventually helped by another man who helped her receive medical care, per court documents.

Bieneman made his first court appearance on Thursday and was released with an unsecured bond of $25,000.

His first hearing is set for January 12, 2023, before Magistrate Kenneth J. Mansfield.

A public defender representing Bieneman and the US attorney prosecuting the case did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

The NSF, through the US Antarctic Program, employs thousands of scientists, staff, and military personnel who oversee research operations in the southernmost continent.

Assault, especially sexual assault against women, has been long documented in the remote base of Antarctica. A report released in June by the NSF revealed that many employees viewed sexual harassment as a pervasive issue. 

Over 70% of female respondents and nearly 50% of male respondents said sexual harassment is a problem within the US Antarctic Program, while 47% of female respondents and 33% of male respondents said sexual assault is a problem.

“Every woman I knew down there had an assault or harassment experience that had occurred on ice,” one person said in the report.

BEIJING (Reuters) -The eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang is battling around 1 million new daily COVID-19 infections, a number expected to double in the days ahead, the provincial government said on Sunday.

Despite a record surge of cases nationwide, China reported no COVID deaths on the mainland for the five days through Saturday, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday.

Citizens and experts have called for more accurate data as infections surged after Beijing made sweeping changes to a zero-COVID policy that had put hundreds of millions of its citizens under relentless lockdowns and battered the world’s second-largest economy.

Nationwide figures from China had become incomplete as the National Health Commission stopped reporting asymptomatic infections, making it harder to track cases. On Sunday the commission stopped reporting daily figures, which the China CDC then published.

“The infection peak is estimated to arrive earlier in Zhejiang and to enter a period of elevated level around New Year’s Day, during which the daily new infection number will be as high as 2 million,” the Zhejiang government said in a statement.

Zhejiang said that among the 13,583 infections being treated in the province’s hospitals, one patient had severe symptoms caused by COVID, while 242 infections of severe and critical conditions were caused by underlying diseases.

China narrowed its definition for reporting COVID deaths, counting only those from COVID-caused pneumonia or respiratory failure, raising eyebrows among world health experts.

The World Health Organization has received no data from China on new COVID hospitalisations since Beijing eased its restrictions. The organisation says the data gap might be due to the authorities struggling to tally cases in the world’s most populous country.

“China is entering the most dangerous weeks of the pandemic,” said a research note from Capital Economics. “The authorities are making almost no efforts now to slow the spread of infections and, with the migration ahead of Lunar New Year getting started, any parts of the country not currently in a major COVID wave will be soon.”

The cities of Qingdao and Dongguan have each estimated tens of thousands of daily COVID infections recently, much higher than the national daily toll without asymptomatic cases.

The country’s healthcare system has been under enormous strain, with staff being asked to work while sick and even retired medical workers in rural communities being rehired to help grass-root efforts, according to state media.

Bolstering the urgency is the approach of the Lunar New Year in January, when huge numbers of people return home.

Daily requests to the emergency centre in the eastern city of Hangzhou have recently more than tripled on average from last year’s level, state television reported on Sunday, citing a Hangzhou health official.

Suzhou, also in the east, said late on Saturday its emergency line received a record 7,233 calls on Thursday.

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“The Kremlin tried Ruble-stabilization, but now we see Moscow is on the tip of a financial bubble – From here it can accelerate even faster.”

In his opinion, a quick end to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine is not in sight.

Ukraine’s military said Russia had pulled some troops from towns on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River from Kherson city, the first official Ukrainian report of a Russian withdrawal on what is now the main front line in the south..

* Spain has stepped up security at public and diplomatic buildings after a spate of letter bombs, including one sent to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and another to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid, where an official suffered minor injuries.

* Air raid alerts were issued across all of Ukraine following warnings by Ukrainian officials that Russia was preparing a new wave of missile and drone strikes. “An overall air raid alert is in place in Ukraine. Go to shelters,” country’s border service wrote on Telegram messaging app.

* Ukraine’s military said it had found fragments of Russian-fired nuclear-capable missiles with dud warheads in west Ukraine, and that their apparent purpose was to distract air defences.

* The recently liberated Ukrainian city of Kherson has lost its power supply after heavy shelling by Russian forces, the regional governor said.

* European Union governments tentatively agreed on a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian seaborne oil, with an adjustment mechanism to keep the cap at 5% below the market price, an EU diplomat said.

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on that big problems had accumulated in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), accusing the West of spurning the chance to make it a real bridge with Russia after the Cold War.

* Lavrov said that discussions with Washington about potential prisoner exchanges were being conducted by the two countries’ intelligence services, and that he hoped they would be successful.

* The European Union needs patience as it sanctions Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, as most measures will only have an impact in the medium and long term, Lithuania’s prime minister said in an interview at  the  Reuters NEXT conference.

* Switzerland has frozen financial assets worth 7.5 billion Swiss francs ($7.94 billion) as of Nov. 25 under sanctions against Russians to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said.

* Russia said the German parliament’s move to recognise the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine as a Soviet-imposed genocide was an anti-Russian provocation and an attempt by Germany to whitewash its Nazi past.

* Ukraine sacked a top engineer at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, accusing him of collaborating with Russian forces, and urged other Ukrainian staff at the plant to remain loyal to Kyiv.

* Russia must withdraw its heavy weapons and military personnel from the Zaporizhzhia plant if the U.N. atomic watchdog’s efforts to create a protection zone are to succeed, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

* In a grim sign of the energy crisis caused by Russian attacks on Ukraine’s electricity grid, nine people have been killed in fires over the past 24 hours as Ukrainians resorted to emergency generators, candles and gas cylinders in violation of safety rules to try to heat their homes after power outages.

* “Remember one thing – the Russians are afraid. And they are very cold and no one will help them, because they do not have popular support,” – Andriy Yermak, chief of Ukrainian presidential staff.

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