International
Elon Musk loses World’s richest man title to Jeff Bezos as Dangote maintains top spot in Africa
Elon Musk loses World’s richest man title to Jeff Bezos as Dangote maintains top spot in Africa
Jeff Bezos has dethroned Elon Musk to reclaim his title as the world’s richest man after raking in a massive $23bn in 2024, while Musk has lost $31bn, the latest Bloomberg Billionaires Index has shown.
The Amazon founder’s net worth currently stands at $200bn, topping the Tesla chief’s $198bn, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed on Tuesday.
The billionaires’ wealth gains and losses closely tracked the stock market fortunes of Amazon and Tesla, who count their founders as their biggest shareholders.
Amazon’s share price has surged by more than 18 percent this year, while Tesla’s has dropped by 24 percent.
Despite selling $8.5bn worth of Amazon shares earlier this month, Bezos remains the biggest shareholder in the e-commerce giant with a 9.56 percent stake.
Musk has an equity stake in Tesla of about 20 percent.
In January, a judge in the United States struck down a Tesla pay package for Musk valued at up to $55.8bn after finding that the process for approving his remuneration was deeply flawed.
Musk, who also runs X and SpaceX, rose to the top of the rich list in May after toppling Bernard Arnault, the chairman and CEO of luxury goods company LVMH, who now ranks third with $197bn.
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Bezos, Musk and Arnault have jockeyed for the top spot in recent years in the ranking, which is based on fluctuations in the stock market and other economic data.
Meanwhile, Chairman Dangote Industries, Aliko Dangote maintained his position as Africa’s richest person.
The Lagos, Nigeria-based company owns sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest cement producer, Dangote Cement, which had revenue of 1.38 trillion naira ($3.4 billion) in 2021. It also has interests in sugar, salt, oil, fertilizer and packaged food.
As of March 5, 2024, Dangote gained $141m to keep his top spot.
The majority of Dangote’s fortune is derived from his 86% stake in publicly traded Dangote Cement. He holds the shares in the company directly and through his conglomerate, Dangote Industries.
Dangote’s other publicly traded assets include stakes in Dangote Sugar, Nascon Allied Industries and United Bank for Africa. His stakes in the publicly traded companies are held directly and through Dangote Industries, which also owns closely held businesses operating in food manufacturing, fertilizer, oil and other industries.
His most valuable closely held asset is a fertilizer plant with capacity to produce up to 2.8 million tonnes of urea annually. Its net value is based on a discounted cash flow analysis by KPMG. The valuation was confirmed by outside analysts.
A $19 billion oil refinery that is currently being developed in Nigeria isn’t included in the valuation because it’s not yet operational.
The billionaire owns six residential and commercial properties in Lagos. They are valued using the capitalization method, using rental income provided by Dangote’s spokesman, Anthony Chiejina, and capitalization rates from CBRE Broll Nigeria.
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His cash holdings are based on an analysis of dividends, taxes, insider transactions and other expenditures.
See the list of the world’s top ten richest below:
Rank Name Total net worth ($) Last change $ YTD change Country / Region Industry
1 Jeff Bezos $200B -$500M +$23.4B United States Technology
2 Elon Musk $198B -$17.6B -$31.3B United States Technology
3 Bernard Arnault $197B -$1.84B +$18.3B France Consumer
4 Mark Zuckerberg $179B -$1.42B +$50.7B United States Technology
5 Bill Gates $150B +$475M +$8.88B United States Technology
6 Steve Ballmer $143B -$125M +$12.6B United States Technology
7 Warren Buffett $133B -$1.26B +$13.4B United States Diversified
8 Larry Ellison $129B -$242M +$6.26B United States Technology
9 Larry Page $122B -$2.86B -$4.09B United States Technology
10 Sergey Brin $116B -$2.66B -$3.76B United States Technology
Elon Musk loses World’s richest man title to Jeff Bezos as Dangote maintains top spot in Africa
International
$100m coin collection buried for decades to be auctioned
$100m coin collection buried for decades to be auctioned
A coin collection, much of which remained buried underground for over 50 years, is expected to surpass $100 million at auction, according to experts.
Named the Traveller Collection, this extraordinary assemblage is believed to be the most valuable coin collection ever brought to auction.
The coins will be sold gradually over the next three years, with the first auction set for May 20.
Beyond its immense value, the collection’s origins make for a fascinating tale.
Spanning over 100 territories and encompassing coins from ancient times to the modern era, the collection is being auctioned by Numismatica Ars Classica.
What sets it apart is that most of the coins remained hidden underground for half a century before resurfacing.
According to a press release shared with CNN, the anonymous collector behind the collection began acquiring gold coins after the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
Over time, he developed “a taste for coins with great historical interest, beauty and rarity” and eventually amassed approximately 15,000 coins.
During the 1930s, he and his wife traveled extensively across the Americas and Europe, acquiring rare and historically significant coins while meticulously documenting their purchases.
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Despite settling in Europe at a time when Hitler’s Nazi party loomed over the continent, the collector sensed the impending danger. In response, he carefully packed the coins into cigar boxes, which were then placed inside aluminum containers and buried underground, where they remained undisturbed for five decades.
Among the collection is a 50 Toman coin, part of an “exceedingly rare” set minted in Tehran and Isfahan during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
International
AI will replace doctors, teachers, others in 10 years – Bill Gates
AI will replace doctors, teachers, others in 10 years – Bill Gates
Bill Gates, a co-founder of Microsoft, has claimed that improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) over the next decade may render humans superfluous for the majority of work.
In a recent interview with comedian Jimmy Fallon on NBC’s The Tonight Show in February, the billionaire philanthropist discussed how AI may take over many facets of life and business.
Gates remarked that expertise is currently “rare”, emphasising the continuous reliance on human specialists in industries such as medicine and education.
For example, we continue to rely on highly trained individuals, such as “a great doctor” or “a great teacher”, whose knowledge cannot be simply replaced by AI.
However, “with AI, over the next decade, that will become free, commonplace — great medical advice, great tutoring,” Gates said.
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In other words, Gates believes that the world is entering a new era of “free intelligence”, as he described in a recent interview with Harvard University professor and happiness specialist Arthur Brooks.
According to Gates, this transition will result in rapid breakthroughs in AI-powered technology, making them more accessible and affecting almost every part of our lives.
These breakthroughs will vary from more effective treatments and diagnoses to widely available AI instructors and virtual assistants.
“It’s very profound and even a little bit scary — because it’s happening very quickly, and there is no upper bound,” Gates told Brooks.
The discussion of how humans will fit into an AI-powered future continues.
Some analysts suggest that artificial intelligence will improve human productivity rather than completely replacing labour, hence driving economic growth and creating new jobs.
However, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman cautions that technological improvements in the coming years will disrupt the nature of most occupations across nearly all industries, potentially exerting a “hugely destabilising” influence on the workforce.
AI will replace doctors, teachers, others in 10 years – Bill Gates
International
Poland suspends migrants’ right to apply for asylum
Poland suspends migrants’ right to apply for asylum
Poland has temporarily suspended the right of migrants arriving in Poland via its border with Belarus to apply for asylum.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced it would be happening after the controversial bill, which will allow Polish authorities to suspend this right for up to 60 days at a time, was signed into law by President Andrzej Duda.
Tusk had said it would be adopted “without a moment’s delay” while Duda said the changes were needed to strengthen security on the country’s borders.
But the law has been criticized by rights groups including Human Rights Watch, which said the EU should take legal action against Poland if it was implemented.
The group urged the country’s parliament last month to reject the bill, saying it “flies in the face of Poland’s international and EU obligations” and could “effectively completely seal off the Poland-Belarus border, where Polish authorities already engage in unlawful and abusive pushbacks”.
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The government said previously the suspension would only be applied temporarily to people who pose a threat to state security, for example large groups of aggressive migrants trying to storm the border.
Exemptions will be made for unaccompanied minors, pregnant women, the elderly or unwell, anyone exposed to “real risk of serious harm” by being returned and citizens of countries accused of conducting the instrumentalization of migration – like Belarus
Tusk has dismissed criticism from human rights groups.
“Nobody is talking about violating human rights, the right to asylum, we are talking about not granting applications to people who illegally cross the border in groups organised by Lukashenko,” he said in October.
Since 2021, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Finland have seen a huge increase in the number of people crossing into their countries illegally from Belarus and Russia.
Polish authorities have sent thousands of troops and border guards to police its border with Belarus and built a 5.5-metre-high steel fence along 186 km of the frontier where at times several thousand migrants have been left stranded.
Rights groups estimate more than one hundred people have died on the borders between Belarus and Poland, Lithuania and Latvia since 2021.
EU eastern flank countries and the European Commission have accused the Belarusian and Russian authorities of weaponising migration to create a new route into the EU to destabilize the bloc.
Poland suspends migrants’ right to apply for asylum
BBC
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