Elon Musk’s tumultuous month atop Twitter has already included firing most of the company’s employees, tinkering with key features and restoring banned accounts.
Now he is embarking on what could be his riskiest gambit yet: a war with Apple.
The billionaire attacked the iPhone maker with a flurry of tweets Monday, saying the company had cut its Twitter advertising and threatened to bump the social network from Apple’s app store.
Epic Games chief executive Tim Sweeney has rallied to support the Twitter owner, calling Apple “a menace to freedom”.
5 things to start your day
1) Musk threatens ‘war’ with Apple over claims it is censoring free speech – Elon Musk has threatened to “go to war” with Apple after accusing the iPhone-maker of stifling free speech on Twitter and threatening to block its app
2) How Xi’s zero-Covid mismanagement left China’s economy on the brink – Unrest in Shanghai has rapidly grown into the worst protests against Beijing in decades
3) Ben Wright: We underestimate Beijing’s financial colonialism at our peril – It’s hard not to form the conclusion that Beijing is deliberately setting debt traps for developing nations to stumble into
4) Private equity billionaire accused of rape in Epstein’s mansion – Leon Black’s lawyer called the claims ‘categorically false and part of a scheme to extort money’
5) Millions of rural households will be forced to spend £13k on heat pumps – Rural homeowners could be forced to spend £13,000 on controversial heat pumps as “net zero” rules cause traditional oil heating systems to be banned
What happened overnight
Tokyo stocks closed lower this morning after Wall Street stocks slumped on worries about China’s zero-Covid policy.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index ended down 0.48pc, or 134.99 points, at 28,027.84, while the broader Topix index slipped 0.57pc, or 11.34 points, to 1,992.97.
Frustration over China’s hardline Covid restrictions has sparked a weekend of rare protests nationwide, and security forces have filled the streets of major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.
Investors are also shifting their attention to a speech by US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell this week, Mizuho Securities said in a note.
Meanwhile, shares of Chinese property companies surged after the country’s securities regulator lifted a ban on equity refinancing for listed property firms.
That helped Chinese blue chips jump almost 3pc, in the largest one-day rally in a month and a marked reversal of Monday’s steep falls.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan followed with gains of 1.8pc, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng climbed 3.9pc.
