NEW DELHI: American electric carmaker Tesla, which has been seeking a reduction in import duties to sell its vehicles in India, will not manufacture its products locally unless it is allowed to first sell and service its cars in the country, company founder and chief executive Elon Musk has said.

In a tweet responding to a user asking about Tesla setting up a manufacturing plant in India, he said, “Tesla will not put a manufacturing plant in any location where we are not allowed first to sell & service cars.”

Last month, Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari had said if Tesla was ready to manufacture its electric vehicles in India then there was ‘no problem’ but the company must not import cars from China.

He had said Tesla wanted to launch its vehicles in India “but import duties are the highest in the world by far of any large country!”.

Currently, India imposes 100 per cent import duty on fully imported cars with CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight) value more than USD 40,000 and 60 per cent on those costing less than that amount.

Detroit (US)(AP): Tesla CEO Elon Musk gave the strongest hint yet Monday that he would like to pay less for Twitter than his USD 44 billion offer made last month.

Musk told a Miami technology conference that a viable deal at a lower price would not be out of the question, according to a report by Bloomberg News, which said it viewed a livestream video of the conference posted by a Twitter user.

Also at the All In Summit, Musk estimated that at least 20 per cent of Twitter’s 229 million accounts are spam bots, percentage he said was at the low end of his assessment, according to the report.

The appearance came a few hours after Musk began trolling Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who posted a series of tweets explaining his company’s effort to fight bots and how it has consistently estimated that less than 5 per cent of Twitter accounts are fake.

In all, the day’s events bolstered theories from analysts that Musk either wants out of the deal or is seeking a lower price, largely due to a huge decline in value of Tesla stock, some of which he has pledged to finance the Twitter acquisition.

Twitter shares closed Monday down just over 8 per cent at 37.39, below where the stock was just before Musk disclosed that he was Twitter’s largest shareholder. Musk made the offer to buy Twitter for 54.20 per share on April 14.

On Friday Musk tweeted that his plan to buy Twitter was placed on temporary hold as he tried to pinpoint the number of fake accounts on the social media platform. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said the hold was pending details of Twitter’s calculation that fake accounts are less than 5 per cent of its users.

In tweets on Monday, Agrawal acknowledged Twitter isn’t perfect at catching spam. He wrote that every quarter, the company has made the estimate of less than 5 per cent spam.

Our estimate is based on multiple human reviews of thousands of accounts that are sampled at random, consistently over time, Agrawal wrote.

Estimates for the last four quarters were all well under 5 per cent, he wrote. The error margins on our estimates give us confidence in our public statements each quarter.

Musk, using his favourite platform, responded with a smiling emoji of poop, then asked how Twitter’s advertisers know what they’re getting for their money.

Tesla shares closed Monday down nearly 6 per cent at USD 724.37. They have lost about one-third of their value since the trading day before Musk disclosed his Twitter stake.

Musk did not immediately return messages seeking comment. The All In Summit said in an email that it would post the video of Musk’s appearance in the coming days. 

Beijing; At least 25 people were injured when a passenger plane of China’s Tibet Airlines with 122 people onboard veered off the runway and caught fire while taking off in the country’s southwest Chongqing city on Thursday.

The Tibet-bound plane was carrying 113 passengers and nine crew members, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

All the people aboard the plane were evacuated and the injured were rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment.

Airport sources said that 25 people have been injured.

Video footage posted by China Central Television (CCTV) showed flames and billowing black smoke from the fuselage of the Tibet Airlines plane on the tarmac at Chongqing Jiangbei international airport, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

People could be seen running from the plane after escaping via an evacuation slide at the rear door.

CCTV said the fire had been extinguished and the runway closed.

The aircraft was about to depart for Nyingchi in Tibet when the fire started.

The airline has said that the accident is under investigation.

This is the second incident involving a passenger plane in China in recent weeks.

On March 12, a Boeing 737 aircraft from Kunming to Guangzhou had crashed in Tengxian county of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. All the 132 people on board, including nine crew members, were killed.

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s former prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa is facing calls for his arrest from Opposition politicians for inciting violence against peaceful anti-government protesters that claimed at least five lives, left over 200 people injured and saw arson attacks on the homes of several politicians.

The resignation of the prime minister has automatically annulled the Cabinet and the country is currently being run by his younger brother and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Mahinda Rajapaksa has been accused by the Opposition of inciting the ruling party mobs to attack peaceful protesters by making a defiant speech while addressing several thousands of his supporters to deflect calls for his resignation.

“Rajapaksa (Mahinda) must be arrested and brought before the law,” M A Sumanthiran, the main Tamil legislator, said in a message.

The same sentiments were expressed by former President Maithripala Sirisena and the main Opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya party’s leader Ranjith Madduma Bandara.

“He must be arrested for encouraging violence. There was no reason to attack the peaceful protesters,” Sirisena said.

The Colombo national hospital said at least 213 people had been admitted for treatment.

One of the protesters who had been brutally assaulted by the Rajapaksa supporters remains in a very critical condition.

Mahinda Rajapaksa later resigned, saying he was making way for his brother president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to set up an all-party interim government.

There were reports from all parts of the island of arson attacks on the homes of ruling party politicians, including on the ancestral house of the Rajapaksa family in the deep southern district of Hambantota.

Meanwhile, Mahinda Rajapaksa vacated the Temple Trees, the official residence of the prime minister, Tuesday morning, according to media reports.

The police on Monday used tear gas and fired in the air to stop a mob which was trying to break into Temple Trees, the office cum residence of the prime minister.

An all-island curfew, which was scheduled to be lifted on Tuesday, was extended last night until Wednesday as arson attacks were reported from most parts of the country.

Army chief General Shavendra Silva called for calm and said the necessary action would be taken to maintain law and order.

In the current state of emergency, the troops are given extensive powers to arrest people.

The Opposition parties urged the reconvening of Parliament before the scheduled date of May 17.

The trade unions announced that they would launch a continuous strike from Tuesday to protest against the government-backed crackdown on the peaceful protests.

The violence occurred as pressure mounted on the embattled government led by President Gotabaya to form an interim administration to overcome the worst economic crisis facing the country.

Sri Lanka is currently in the throes of unprecedented economic turmoil since its independence from Britain in 1948.

The crisis is caused in part by a lack of foreign currency, which has meant that the country cannot afford to pay for imports of staple foods and fuel, leading to acute shortages and very high prices.

Thousands of demonstrators have hit the streets across Sri Lanka since April 9 seeking the resignation of President Gotabaya and Prime Minister Mahinda, as the government ran out of money for vital imports; prices of essential commodities have skyrocketed and there are acute shortages in fuel, medicines and electricity supply.

In a special Cabinet meeting on Friday, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared a state of emergency with effect from Friday midnight.

This is the second time that an emergency was declared in Sri Lanka in just over a month as the island nation was in the grip of the worst economic crisis.

Beijing:Chinese state media say 53 people died in a building collapse one week ago in central China and 10 were rescued. Authorities said Friday the search had ended for people trapped from the collapse.

The last survivor was pulled out shortly after midnight on Thursday, 5 days after the residential and commercial building in the city of Changsha suddenly caved in on April 29.

At least nine people have been arrested in connection with the collapse on suspicion of ignoring building codes or committing other violations.

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa has likely entered a new wave of Covid-19 earlier than expected as new infections and hospitalizations have risen rapidly over the past two weeks, the country’s health minister said on Friday.

“Whichever way you look at it, it does suggest that we may actually be entering the fifth wave much earlier,” Health Minister Joe Phaahla said Friday at a televised press briefing.

He said officials will be watching carefully over the next few days to determine if the increase is sustained which would confirm a new wave.

The country’s new infections are now several thousand per day, up from a few hundred a few weeks ago.

According to Phaahla, there was currently no information indicating the emergence of a new strain, which scientists had earlier suggested may drive the country’s fifth wave, expected during the country’s upcoming winter season from May into June.

“We have always been informed that when a new wave comes, it will be driven by a new variant, but at this stage we have not been alerted to a definite new variant except changes in the omicron,” said Phaahla.

Three South African provinces — Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape — currently are accounting for 85% of new infections, with the positivity rate in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal above 20%, he said.

Hospitalizations from the new cases are increasing but are still relatively low, Dr. Waasila Jassat from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, said.

“We are starting to see a small rise in hospital admissions in the private and public sector,” said Jassat. “Since around the 17 of April, we are seeing a sharp increase in hospital admissions.”

South Africa has experienced the highest number of infections in Africa since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, accounting for more than a quarter of the continent’s 11.4 million cases.

More than 252,000 people in South Africa have died from the virus, but the numbers are considered to be much higher when considering the number of excess deaths recorded since the pandemic compared to the same periods before the pandemic.

Just over 44% of South Africa’s adult population has been vaccinated.

DETROIT: Elon Musk has sold 4.4 million shares of Tesla stock worth roughly $4 billion, most likely to help fund his purchase of Twitter.

Musk reported the sale in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. The shares were sold over the past few days, at prices ranging from $872.02 to $999.13.

The world’s richest man, who is the CEO of Tesla, tweeted that he doesn’t plan any further sales of the company’s shares.

Most of the sales took place on Tuesday, a day when Tesla shares closed down 12%, a huge single-day drop.

Analysts said Tesla investors are fearful that Musk will be distracted by Twitter and less engaged in running the electric car company.

Twitter agreed to be acquired by Musk on Monday for $44 billion.