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Hard Numbers: Musk threatens Twitter, Sri Lanka’s president won’t resign, Iraq sentences British tourist, Jan 6 hearings kickoff

Elon Musk takes on Twitter.
REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

44 billion: Tesla CEO Elon Musk has threatened to ditch his $44 billion takeover of Twitter, saying that the social platform has failed to provide accurate information on the number of active bots on the site. Musk rejects Twitter’s claim that less than 5% of daily users are linked to fake accounts and says he will scuttle the deal if the company isn’t more forthcoming.

2: Despite repeated calls to step down against the backdrop of widespread anti-government protests and a crashing economy, Sri Lanka’s embattled President Gotabaya Rajapaksa says he will see out the remaining two years of his term but will not seek re-election. Food inflation rose more than 57% in May, and the state is seeking emergency food aid to ease shortages.

6: This week, House Democrats begin a series of six hearings on the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. They hope to refocus voters’ attention ahead of November’s midterm elections, but that might be hard because polls show that US voters are overwhelmingly focused on the rising cost of living, especially high gas prices.

15: A British tourist has been sentenced to a whopping 15 years in jail for stealing archeological shards of pottery from a site in southern Iraq and trying to smuggle them out of the country. Looting antiquities in Iraq – which was widespread during the US invasion of the country – is a crime punishable by death.

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People gather outside the Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport to decry President Trump's travel ban on 19 countries which went into effect this morning.

5: US President Donald Trump added five new countries – Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, and Syria – to the list of nations banned from traveling to the US.

US President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finland's President Alexander Stubb, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pose for a family photo amid negotiations to end the Russian war in Ukraine, at the White House in Washington, D.C., USA, on August 18, 2025.
REUTERS/Alexander Drago

With the release of its National Security Strategy, the Trump administration has telegraphed how the US intends to engage with allies, and what it expects from them.