Musk's moves felt from Wall Street to the Vatican
Elon Musk has been in the news epicentre in the last day, from stripping Pope Francis of Twitter verification to Tesla's drag on stocks and the explosion of the world's largest rocket. Three disparate stories dominated global news in a way that underlined the extraordinary influence of the one person who connects them all – Musk. "Elon Musk has outsized capability to sway the news cycle," University of Florida assistant media professor Andrew Selepak said. Musk has quickly gone from being an innovator few knew of to a "tech billionaire playboy who has almost taken the place of Donald Trump as a Twitter troll," Selepak said. Twitter began the mass removal of blue ticks on Thursday, with the symbol previously signifying a verified account vanishing from users including the Pope, Trump and Justin Bieber. Twitter's owner, Musk, who has seen his US$44 billion investment in the site shrivel, had pledged to get rid of what he described as a "lords & peasants system". The platform had been providing free blue checkmarks to the accounts of high-profile users to show they were who they claimed to be. Musk's switch does away with verifying who is behind accounts, with the checks now simply indicating who has paid a monthly subscription fee. Techsponential analyst Avi Greengart described Musk's blue checkmarks as "receipts" rather than verification. Musk was looking to the sky as well, where the colossal Starship built by SpaceX exploded minutes after launch in Texas.  He congratulated his SpaceX team on an "exciting" test of the next-generation spacecraft designed to send astronauts to the Moon, Mars and beyond. Meanwhile, Wall Street stocks ended lower on Thursday following lackluster corporate results from electric vehicle maker Tesla and several regional banks.  Shares of Tesla slumped after reporting a drop in quarterly earnings and hinting the Musk-led company could face further profit pressures from more price cuts on its vehicles. (AFP)