Former Australian police officer pleads not guilty to killing his ex-boyfriend and the man’s partner
Month: October 2025
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- A group of Tesla investors is pushing back against Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package.
- Unions and state treasurers warned that the deal doesn’t do enough to keep Musk focused on Tesla.
- Tesla’s board argues that if Elon Musk doesn’t deliver, he gets nothing.
Not all of Tesla’s investors are on board with CEO Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package.
In a letter sent on Thursday, a group of unions, state treasurers, and institutional investors urged Tesla shareholders not to vote for the mammoth pay deal.
The investor group includes SOC Investment Group, the American Federation of Teachers, and Brad Lander, the New York City Comptroller, who have all previously criticized Tesla’s board.
Their letter attacks the EV giant’s governing body as insufficiently independent from Musk, and says that the performance goals of the billionaire’s compensation package are vague and not as demanding as they initially appear.
Tesla unveiled the proposed $1 trillion pay package last month, and shareholders will vote on whether to approve it at the company’s general meeting in November.
For Musk to access the full payout, he needs to grow Tesla’s market cap to $8.5 trillion over the next decade and hit a series of ambitious product milestones.
These include boosting annual earnings to $400 billion a year, building a million Optimus robots, and delivering around 12 million EVs by 2035 — an average of 1.2 million a year, which the letter points out is well below the total Tesla sold in 2024.
The shareholder group criticized Tesla’s board for not securing a commitment from Musk, who runs multiple companies, to “devote his attention” to Tesla, and warned that the pay package could lead to share dilution for Tesla shareholders.
The letter also pointed to the EV giant’s volatile performance, with sales and revenue both slumping in the first half of the year amid rising competition and backlash over Musk’s political activities.
Tesla’s sales bounced back in a big way in the third quarter, with the company announcing record quarterly deliveries on Thursday.
Tesla’s board responded to some of the points raised by the investors in a post on X, arguing that the compensation package creates trillions of dollars of value for shareholders and will accelerate global prosperity.
“If Elon Musk doesn’t deliver results, he receives nothing,” the company said.
Read the original article on Business Insider
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- Chipotle is betting big on bold new flavors, adding two proteins and two sauces to its menu this year.
- The changes come as the chain has faced two consecutive quarters of declining sales.
- Chipotle’s chief brand officer said the company is leaning into global flavors to court younger fans.
Chipotle is betting that bold new flavors can do what burritos and slop bowls alone no longer can: bring customers back.
The chain is leaning hard into limited-time proteins, new sauces, and global twists to spice up its slowing business.
“Nothing brings new people into Chipotle or reminds existing people to come to Chipotle again, like new items,” Chris Brandt, president and chief brand officer at Chipotle, told Business Insider.
This year, Chipotle has launched two proteins as limited-time offerings: new honey chipotle chicken in March and the return of carne asada in September. As for its limited-time sauces, the fast-casual Mexican grill restaurant debuted adobo ranch in June, followed by a smoky red chimichurri sauce in September.
The new menu innovations come as Chipotle has faced two consecutive quarters of declining sales. The entire fast-casual sector has taken a hit this year, with consumers pulling back on spending and seeking out more value-driven meal deals. Laurie Schalow, Chipotle’s chief corporate affairs officer, in September told Business Insider that the company’s health remains very strong.
In response, Chipotle’s strategy has been to double down on offering attractive new menu items to coax cost-conscious customers back — and try to court young consumers to become lifelong fans.
“Sauces are an easy way and a low-risk way — as people are a little bit pressed for money — to be adventurous, but with affordable innovation, I would call it,” Brandt said.
He said young consumers are embracing international food and “looking for something a little bit different, maybe more than any generation before them.”
In addition to the new menu items, Chipotle also launched a line of dorm room merchandise this year in collaboration with Urban Outfitters and a loyalty program geared toward college students.
The California-based company is innovating beyond its home turf, too. Its limited-time offerings are available in Canada. The company also said earlier this month it would expand into Asian markets for the first time, opening restaurants in Singapore and South Korea with its full US menu.
While Chipotle’s staple menu items remain the same across markets, Brandt said the company will consider regional offerings in the future.
“We believe that Chipotle’s menu translates really well across all of those different markets,” Brandt said. “So we don’t feel the need to do a lot of localization — there might be some of that as we continue to expand, but we like to go right out the gate and prove that what people love about Chipotle here is going to be the same in a lot of different places.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
A group of international scientists is on a complex, arduous expedition to learn more about the glaciers of the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan, drilling and extracting two deep ice cores in what the team descibes as a race against the impact of global warming.
Scientists from the Swiss-funded PAMIR Project and their Tajik partners are working at an altitude of 5,800 meters on the Kon Chukurbashi ice cap, taking ice samples down to the bedrock at an estimated depth of just over 100 meters.
“The Pamirs remain to date one of the last major high-altitude regions where no deep ice core has ever been retrieved,” the PAMIR Project said in a statement. “If many glaciers in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan still seem resilient in the face of global warming, scientists do not know how long this will last.”
The two-week expedition began on September 24. If successful, it will secure environmental information from air bubbles and chemical trace concentrations and isotopes, and possibly organisms trapped in the ice, and help future generations anticipate and adapt to changes in Earth’s climate and ecosystems, the project said. The expedition is being coordinated by the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and conducted by the National Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan along with Swiss, Japanese, and American universities.
Because of the extreme altitude, team members had prepared for gradual acclimatization with a plan for a base camp and a camp at higher altitude. Logistical difficulties and the challenges of site access have prevented such an expedition in the past.
The Pamir glaciers are a riddle to scientists who have observed both health and decay in the reaction of the high-altitude ecosystems to climate change. Various theories, including more wind-induced precipitation at high elevations and summertime cooling, have been put forward. But field measurements are lacking and the theories have not been tested against scientific data.
At an international conference on glacier preservation in Dushanbe this year, President Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan called for the establishment of a regional lab to study the topic. Most of Central Asia’s glaciers are in Tajikistan.
The United Nations said last month that some 1,000 glaciers out of the total number of 14,000 that have existed in Tajikistan in recent decades have disappeared and many small ones are expected to vanish in the next 30-40 years.
A recent study published in the Communications Earth & Environment journal noted the relative stability of some glaciers in Central Asia, but said there had been a recent drop in glacier health in the Northwestern Pamirs following significantly lower snowfall and snow depth since 2018.
One of the authors of that study is Evan Miles, a Switzerland-based glaciologist who is leading the current PAMIR Project expedition.
“This ice holds hundreds and possibly even thousands of years of physical records of snowfall, temperature, dust, and atmospheric chemistry,” Miles said, according to the project statement. “We are racing against time to retrieve it before climate-change induced melt damages these natural archives forever.”
Of the two ice cores marked for extraction, one will be used for research and the other will go to a storage site to be built at the French-Italian Concordia station in Antarctica.
The goal of the site is to “collect, save and manage ice cores from selected glaciers currently in danger of degradation or disappearance, with their yielded information for decades and centuries to come,” said the Ice Memory Foundation, a France-based group that was created by scientific institutions.
Israeli Forces Intercept Final Gaza Aid Vessel, Detaining Over 450 Activists
Israeli forces intercepted the last boat of the Global Sumud Flotilla attempting to reach Gaza, detaining more than 450 international activists in operations that drew significant international condemnation, reports 24brussels.
On October 3, 2025, Israeli commandos boarded the Marinette, a Polish-flagged vessel with a crew of six, off the Gaza coast. Livestreams documented troops storming the deck of the ship, which represented the final operational unit of the Flotilla that initially set sail with a total of 44 boats aimed at delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians facing a blockade.
Earlier in the week, another flotilla vessel carrying 21 activists requested to dock in Larnaca, Cyprus, citing the need for refueling and humanitarian support. A government spokesperson confirmed that authorities registered the passengers, provided essential aid, and offered consular services. It remains unclear if this boat was among those intercepted by Israeli forces.
The mass interception on October 2 included hundreds of activists from various countries, sparking protests and international outrage. Notably, among those detained was Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. Israeli authorities declared that all captured activists would be deported.
Public opinion in Israel shows significant support for U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to resolve the ongoing conflict in Gaza. A survey conducted by the Lazar Research Institute, published by Maariv, indicated that 66 percent of Israelis support the plan, while 11 percent oppose it. However, skepticism regarding its chances for success remains prevalent, with only 14 percent believing it has a strong chance of succeeding, 41 percent viewing its potential as limited, and 30 percent deeming its prospects unlikely.
The seizure of the Marinette effectively concludes the mission of the Global Sumud Flotilla, highlighting the ongoing blockade of Gaza and raising questions about the efficacy of diplomatic efforts in addressing the humanitarian crisis in the region.