Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 1

Last week Bill and Melinda Gates announced that they would be divorcing, and now new reports have come out about why.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Melinda Gates has been considering divorcing Bill Gates for two years before the divorce was made official. The two were married for 27 years, and according to the Journal, Melinda had been meeting with lawyers across multiple different firms since 2019 in an attempt to fix a marriage that was "irretrievably broken."

Bill and Melinda haven't said what has caused the two to split up, but the Journal reported that the main speculative reason is that Melinda has been upset with Bill over his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Bill and Melinda first met Epstein in 2011 after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting an underage girl in 2008 - "still haunts" Melinda Gates. People who were close to the meeting said that Melinda was "furious" over the relationship Bill had with Epstein.

The hunt for former President Donald Trump's financial records has been reignited by a Democrat-led House committee.

The committee is currently pushing a federal judge to order former President Donald Trump to comply with a subpoena to release his financial records. The argument the committee is pushing is that Trump has no reason or claim not to release his financial records now that he is no longer the President of the United States.

The effort is being led by the chair Carolyn Maloney, and according to a source close to the matter, if the committee is successful, it would be moving closer to obtaining Trump's tax records. Douglas Letter, the general counsel for congressional Democrat, wrote, "While the committee's need for the subpoenaed information has not changed, one key fact has: plaintiff Donald J Trump is no longer the president".

Colonial Pipeline is recovering from a ransomware attack over the weekend which forced the largest US fuel pipeline operator to shut its critical networking supplying the US east coast.

Reuters reports the story explaining that the "attack is one of the most disruptive digital ransom schemes reported and has prompted calls from American lawmakers to strengthen protections for critical U.S. energy infrastructure from hacking attacks".

The Biden administration and Washington are reportedly doing what they can behind the scenes to ensure that fuel supply remains solid and that Colonial Pipeline is back and operating ASAP. The gigantic cross-US pipeline runs between Texas and New Jersey, a distance of around 5500 miles (8850km).

A new craze has sparked outrage online as people in China are ordering what is called a "blind box", which is a mystery parcel that is shipped to the buyer that contains a random pet.

BBC News reported that on Monday, 160 distressed cats and dogs were found inside a courier company's truck in Chengdu. Chinese law states that it's illegal to transport live animals. However, local media has reported that these "blind boxes" are overwhelmingly popular. These "blind boxes" can contain any animal from tortoises, lizards, rats, dogs, and cats.

As you can imagine, the cruelty of this entire practice has sparked outrage online, with some users saying, "Have we made any achievements in the rescue and management of stray animals? Now there is a pet blind box industry?". State media outlet Xinhua even went as far to say "blind boxes" are a "desecration of life". Online buyers of these "blind boxes" have been urged to have "more goodwill and more respect for life".

A Black man who has intellectual disabilities was forced to work unpaid by a former South Carolina restaurant manager.

The former restaurant manager is 56-year-old Bobby Paul Edwards, and in 2019 Edwards was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he plead guilty against forced labor chargers. Edwards enslaved 43-year-old John Christopher Smith, who was forced to work 100 hour weeks, at zero pay, with no days off, for 5 years. Now, Edwards is being forced to pay Smith an entitled total of $546,000 as a rightful compensation.

Court documents state that Smith began his full-time employment in 1990 at the age of 12 under the ownership of Edwards' relatives. In 2009 Edwards took over the operation and allegedly moved Smith into an apartment described as "sub-human," "deplorable" and "harmful to human health", according to Smith's lawyer.

I think that even if you were living under a rock you'd have to have known about the "Disaster Girl" meme purely with a 1-second look, with the super-popular internet meme selling for over $500,000 in NFT form.

The NFT (non-fungible token) version of Disaster Girl recently sold for 180 Ethereum, which at the time was worth $500,000 and at the time of writing was worth just over $550,000. The original photo of "Disaster Girl" saw then-four-year-old Zoe Roth standing in front of her father's camera in front of a burning house.

The house wasn't exactly burning normally, as firefighters had intentionally set fire to the house and then let the kids play around with the fire hose and pumping water into the house on fire. The picture set the internet on fire, pun intended, and became an instant meme of the ages. Even the NFT caption explains it perfectly: "Discovered by internet connoisseurs it rapidly spread to every corner of the world, becoming one of the most recognizable images of the 21st century".

Bill and Melinda Gates have announced their divorce after 27 years of marriage, with the ex-CEO of Microsoft taking to Twitter to announce the news.

The now-split couple wrote together, but published on Bill Gates' personal Twitter: "After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage. Over the last 27 years, we have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives".

"We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives. We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life".

Last Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it will be working towards banning menthol cigarettes across the US.

The FDA Commissioner, Janet Woodcock stated that the reason the FDA is looking to ban menthol cigarettes is because it will help save lives. Woodcock says, "Armed with strong scientific evidence, and with full support from the [Biden] Administration, we believe these actions will launch us on a trajectory toward ending tobacco-related disease and death in the U.S."

Additionally, the FDA said that the menthol flavor masks the harshness of tobacco products, which makes them easier to start using, thus making them more addictive and harder to quit "by enhancing the effects of nicotine." 18.6 million people in the US smoke menthol cigarettes, and out of all Black smokers 85% smoke menthol cigarettes, while 30% of White smokers smoke menthol, according to the FDA.

Elon Musk might be going from strength to strength with Tesla and SpaceX -- but brain-computer interface startup Neuralink lost its co-founder Max Hodak quietly "a few weeks ago".

Hodak took to his personal Twitter to announce the news, where he said: "I am no longer at Neuralink (as of a few weeks ago). I learned a ton there and remain a huge cheerleader for the company! Onward to new things". Neuralink hasn't announced a replacement for Hodak at the time of writing.

Musk and Hodak started Neuralink together, with Hodak barely even a month ago saying that the technology exists right now to "build Jurassic Park if we wanted to". Because that isn't a scary thought at all, given how that went in all of the Jurassic Park movies. In departing Neuralink, Hodak was asked what he plans to do next where he simply replied "Not Jurassic Park".

Elon Musk will be hosting Saturday Night Live on May 8 and with it is a storm of controversy brewing just off the coast, with Musk's appearance on SNL triggering some cast members.

SNL cast members won't be forced to appear alongside Musk on May 8 when he hosts the show, which Musk has teased that he wanted to see "just how live Saturday Night Live really is". I guess this has broken the programming of the SNL cast members brains, with a source telling Page Six: "Speaking historically, if a cast member has been that unhappy, they don't have to do it. ['SNL' boss Lorne Michaels] won't ever make them do anything they don't want to do".

Musk followed him his tweet announcing he'd be hosting SNL with another tweet on April 28 which simply read "The Dogefather SNL May 8" which sent the price of Dogecoin pumping upwards.