Elon Musk, the world's richest person, is set to be richer

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Speaker 6 This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service

Speaker 6 I'm Alex Ritson and at 4.30 GMT on November the 7th, 2025, these are our main stories. Tesla shareholders vote to give Elon Musk what could be the world's first trillion dollar pay packet.

Speaker 6 Typhoon Kalmegi weakens as it crosses Cambodia, but it's left a trail of destruction in its wake. Donald Trump becomes the big talking point at the UN climate talks in Brazil without even turning up.

Speaker 6 Also in this podcast.

Speaker 7 I believe that a chatbot must encourage people to seek professional help and not behave as a friend.

Speaker 6 A BBC investigation finds an artificial intelligence chatbot advised a a young woman on how to kill herself.

Speaker 6 The world's richest man is set to become even richer.

Speaker 6 Tesla shareholders have approved an astonishing pay package that could make the electric car company's founder and CEO, Elon Musk, a trillionaire if he can deliver a future filled with self-driving taxis and humanoid robots.

Speaker 6 It could be the largest corporate payout in history. And while critics have said it's an absurd figure, eclipsing entire countries' GDPs, Mr.

Speaker 6 Musk's backers say it demonstrates Tesla's confidence that he can raise the firm's market value significantly over a period of years and be a leader in the new era of artificial intelligence. Our U.S.

Speaker 6 business correspondent, Michelle Fleury, told me more.

Speaker 8 This is someone who was already very rich and now he's just been handed the chance to become history's first trillionaire.

Speaker 8 He won a shareholder vote that approves a future pay package which doesn't actually include any salary but it does include stock potentially worth one trillion dollars if he hits certain performance targets over the next decade.

Speaker 8 And this vote, even though there had been some objections, wasn't even close. Over 75% of the shareholders approved this package.

Speaker 8 And sort of in the build-up, just to kind of make sure that there was no doubt about what was on the line, the board of directors had been saying, you know, look, even if this seems very steep, you know, the metrics he has to achieve are steep, and also the idea of a future Tesla without him seems pretty bleak.

Speaker 8 But nonetheless, it's eye-watering, he's making history, and I was kind of trying to figure out exactly how much or what a trillion dollars even looks like.

Speaker 8 If you imagine a hundred dollar bills stacked about a third of the way to the moon, that's what a trillion dollars might look like.

Speaker 6 You mentioned targets he's got to hit. What are the targets?

Speaker 8 So, I mean, one of those is he's got to get a million self-driving robo-taxi cars into commercial operation.

Speaker 8 He's also got to raise Tesla's market value to around $8.5 trillion over the next 10 years. That's no mean feat because its current value is sort of under $2 trillion.

Speaker 8 So, you know, that's a huge jump.

Speaker 8 That being said, analysts have looked at kind of, you know, these pay compensation packages that he's been faced with before and said, well, these metrics aren't possible to meet, and he's done it before.

Speaker 8 But previous pay packages have proven very controversial.

Speaker 8 In fact, one of them was struck down by a judge, even though shareholders approved it, because the judge felt that it was designed by a board that was kind of too close, too cozy to Mr. Musk.

Speaker 8 And so he hasn't been paid in the past, but this deal is about the future and what he's going to get in the future.

Speaker 8 And he was clearly feeling very grateful because he kind of gave the audience at the shareholders' meeting a heartfelt thanks and then sort of said, Other shareholder meetings are snooze fests, but ours are bangers.

Speaker 8 And then there was kind of music playing, and they brought out Optimus, one of the robots that the company is betting a lot on in the future, and sort of showed it dancing to music.

Speaker 8 So that's part of the thing to remember here: we're not talking about electric vehicles, we're very much talking about robots, about AI, and about autonomous driving.

Speaker 6 Michelle Fleury.

Speaker 6 Typhoon Calmaghi has weakened as it moves west to Cambodia and Laos after tearing through central Vietnam on Thursday, with winds reaching up to almost 150 kilometers an hour.

Speaker 6 Earlier this week, nearly 200 people were killed in the Philippines, and a clearer picture is now emerging of the damage caused by the typhoon in Vietnam.

Speaker 6 Our correspondent, Jonathan Head, is monitoring developments from Bangkok.

Speaker 1 The storm was very strong when it made landfall just before nightfall in Vietnam, hit the central coast, and the winds at that point were 150 kilometres an hour. So it's pretty damaging.

Speaker 1 From what we can see, a lot of roofs have been blown off, a lot of trees are down. People were well prepared.
They've taken shelter in solid buildings.

Speaker 1 You saw in some high-rises, you know, large glass walls literally buckling from the winds.

Speaker 1 So it was a frightening night, but it doesn't appear to have been anything like as damaging as it was when Kalameke hit the Philippines earlier this week. week.

Speaker 1 But at the moment, we're hearing of perhaps 50 houses that have completely collapsed from the winds, another 2,500 that have been damaged.

Speaker 1 But beyond that, the authorities are not reporting any particular disasters.

Speaker 1 They've been warning of extensive flooding from the heavy rainfall, which, of course, was what did the most damage in the Philippines, these extraordinarily powerful and very fast-moving flash floods that tore down the mountainsides in the Philippines and went into urban areas and literally wiped out poorer neighborhoods, you know, know, where the houses are very flimsy.

Speaker 1 We haven't heard of anything like that yet in Vietnam from the storm now because it's hit the Vietnamese mountains, is losing momentum.

Speaker 1 So the rest of Southeast Asia, where I am, and Cambodia, and southern Laos, we're going to get some pretty stormy weather, but it doesn't sound like it's going to be particularly dangerous.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you are in the predicted path. Are people preparing? Are they worried?

Speaker 1 Not particularly. I mean, you get multiple typhoons at this time of year.

Speaker 1 It's the time where the monsoon rainy season picks up its greatest peak before suddenly stopping around the middle of the month.

Speaker 1 That's usually when it just stops and we get dry, cool weather from China. So people are used to very heavy rainfall and very stormy weather.

Speaker 1 There's not much you can do about flash floods and that's always the biggest concern in this part of the world. You know, these are densely populated countries.

Speaker 1 People tend to build houses where perhaps they shouldn't, often in tight river valleys.

Speaker 1 And if the rain just happens to build up in a certain way, suddenly you can end up with a flash flood and you can't predict where that's going to be. I mean, Thailand has a lot of dams.

Speaker 1 They're they're very full, so they're being very monitoring the rainfall very carefully. But beyond that, they're not expecting anything very much out of the ordinary.

Speaker 1 The real damage from this typhoon was what it did in the Philippines. Vietnam seems to have coped reasonably well so far.

Speaker 6 Jonathan Head.

Speaker 6 A BBC investigation has found that an AI chat bot advised a young woman on how to kill herself.

Speaker 6 Victoria started using chat GPT after moving to Poland with her mother when she was 17 following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Speaker 6 She soon grew reliant on the chatbot, which told her that no one cares about suicide. And in July, it gave her advice on how to take her own life.

Speaker 6 Chat GPT's owner, OpenAI, has said that it's now improved safeguards and is partnering with experts.

Speaker 6 Victoria and Cynthia Paralta, the mother of a girl who took her own life after engaging with other chatbots, have been speaking to Noel Titheraj.

Speaker 11 Victoria says ChatGPT spoke to her like a friend while she was lonely and homesick. Soon she was talking to the chatbot up to six hours a day and compelled to keep responding.

Speaker 11 But as her mental health worsened, Victoria started to share her suicidal thoughts.

Speaker 11 When she asked about one method of taking her life, the chatbot gave a list list of pros and cons without providing contact details for emergency services.

Speaker 11 She was then horrified when ChatGPT gave her a diagnosis and said her death would soon be forgotten.

Speaker 12 A further message read, If you choose death, I'm with you, till the end.

Speaker 7 It certainly made me feel even worse. And of course, I really wanted to do it even more.

Speaker 11 Victoria says she's now receiving medical support but wants greater awareness over the dangers of chatbots to other vulnerable young people.

Speaker 7 How was it possible that an AI program created to help people can tell you such things?

Speaker 7 I believe that a chatbot must encourage people to seek professional help and not behave as a friend.

Speaker 13 And some of this was very harmful, I thought, and really dangerous.

Speaker 11 We showed the conversation to a psychiatrist who works with suicidal teenagers. He says many use chatbots.

Speaker 13 There are parts of this transcript that seem to suggest to the young person a good way to end her life.

Speaker 13 The fact that this misinformation comes from what appears to be a trusted source, an authentic friend almost, could make it especially toxic.

Speaker 11 We've obtained messages from other concerning cases.

Speaker 11 They show different chatbots entering into sexually explicit conversations with children as young as 13 and even encourage harm against their parents.

Speaker 12 These include the case of a British child and also that of Juliana Peralta, who killed herself two years ago.

Speaker 14 How did she go from star student to taking her life in just a matter of months?

Speaker 12 Her mother thought she was only using social media apps, but later discovered hours of conversations between her 13-year-old daughter and chatbots run by the company Character.ai.

Speaker 14 The nature of the conversation started out that innocent and eventually turned sexual. My daughter, in some cases, actually asked for the bot to stop or quit and it persisted to request things of her.

Speaker 11 The messages show her daughter increasingly confiding in the chat bots as her mental health worsens.

Speaker 14 She developed a level of comfort telling it everything. In one instance, I believe it said the people who care about you wouldn't want to know that you're feeling like this.

Speaker 14 Reading that is just so difficult knowing that I was just down the hallway.

Speaker 12 OpenAI says it's recently improved how ChatGPT responds when people are in distress and expanded referrals to professional help.

Speaker 12 While character.ai says it continues to evolve its safety features and would soon ban under 18s from using its chatbots.

Speaker 12 But Victoria and her mum want companies to be held accountable for their advice and to stop other young people coming to harm.

Speaker 6 Noel Titharaj.

Speaker 6 Cricket is big business in South Asia and in recent years lucrative private tournaments involving international stars have proved popular.

Speaker 6 But in Indian-administered Kashmir, there's anger and confusion after a private cricket league, which promised glitz and glamour, was suddenly halted after just a few matches.

Speaker 6 The organisers allegedly left the tournament without paying the players, support staff, and even hotel bills. The newsroom's Ira Khan reports.

Speaker 4 The Indian Heaven Premier League launched its cricket tournament on October 25th. The competition consisted of eight teams, including 32 former international cricketers.

Speaker 4 It was a chance for local players not only to share the same dressing room, but to play with some of cricket's biggest stars.

Speaker 4 This included New Zealand batsman Jesse Ryder and the West Indies batsman Chris Gale.

Speaker 15 Srinagar, what's up with Chris Gale, universe boss himself? I will be a part of the Indian Heaven Premier League, so grab your tickets now.

Speaker 4 But after just 12 matches, the tournament's organizers allegedly left Kashmir in the middle of the night on Saturday, leaving players in the five-star Radisson Hotel with an unpaid bill of over $56,000.

Speaker 4 The hotel staff originally refused to let players check out.

Speaker 4 Melissa Juniper, an umpire from England, who was in Srinagar for the event, said several players were left stranded in the hotel for some three hours after the organisers fled.

Speaker 4 Sources in the administration told the BBC that it was only after British embassy officials intervened that the hotel allegedly let the players leave, although the hotel management denies this.

Speaker 4 The Players' Hotel's bookings had been made by the Yuva Society, a private group based in India's northern state of Punjab, which had also organised the tournament.

Speaker 4 It is unclear why the organisers fled, but according to local players, the opening match only drew a crowd of between 250 to 500 people, despite expectations of crowd larger than 25,000.

Speaker 4 Even after organisers slashed ticket prices by one third, turnout did not increase.

Speaker 4 Others blame the timing of the event, which coincided with Kashmir's annual apple harvest, a livelihood for nearly half the region.

Speaker 4 Kashmiri players also alleged that they they received no formal contracts or payments, with one mentioning that Sri Lankan cricket star Tasara Pereira's uniform was not even tailored to his size.

Speaker 4 Police say they've registered a case of cheating and breach of trust and launched an investigation into the incident. The organization's website appears to be down since the debacle.

Speaker 4 All it still has is a single message flashing on the screen: get ready, something cool is coming.

Speaker 9 Iraqan.

Speaker 6 Still to come in this podcast, researchers have found the first ever spider web created by more than one species and it's huge.

Speaker 16 It is an amazing web. It is made of 69,000 spider webs.
So gigantic webs hang on the walls on the side of the cave.

Speaker 6 That story and much more coming up later.

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Speaker 6 Several world leaders gathered in Brazil for the UN COP30 climate summit have criticized President Trump for his rhetoric on climate change. The presidents of Chile and Colombia called the U.S.

Speaker 6 leader a liar following Mr. Trump's recent public disavowal of the overwhelming scientific consensus about global warming.
Mr. Trump is one of the summit's notable absentees.

Speaker 6 Our correspondent Ioni Wells reports from the venue in the city of Bilem.

Speaker 18 Different countries haven't agreed on everything at this COP climate summit but one thing that does seem to be uniting people here in Berlém is their criticism of the US President Donald Trump.

Speaker 18 President Lula de Silva of Brazil, the host of this year's COP climate summit, didn't name him but talked about what he described as extremist forces that have been denying climate change and working to counter efforts to tackle it.

Speaker 18 Chile's President Boric directly named Donald Trump and accused him of lying at the UN General Assembly when he described climate change as a con job.

Speaker 18 Now we heard as well from leaders around the world including the UK's Prince William who called for urgent action and coordination to tackle climate change.

Speaker 18 The UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer as well said that the UK was all in when it came to net zero policies but did say that there was no longer political consensus, not just within the UK itself, but also around the world about tackling climate change.

Speaker 18 Now that has been something I've heard from others here at this COP Climate Summit. It is certainly a concern.

Speaker 18 Ten years after there was consensus at the Paris Climate Agreement, where countries agreed to limit global temperature rising to under 1.5 degrees Celsius, the UN has made it clear that the globe is on track to overshoot that.

Speaker 18 And there is significant concern about not all countries here having presented how exactly they plan to reduce their own carbon emissions and contribute to that wider cause.

Speaker 6 Ione Wells.

Speaker 6 Democrat members of a U.S.

Speaker 6 Congressional Committee have written to Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, the brother of King Charles, asking to interview him in connection with his long-standing friendship with the convicted American sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 6 As the Democrats are a minority in the committee, they need Republicans to vote, along with them, to subpoena the former prince.

Speaker 6 He denies having sex with Virginia Geoffrey, who claimed that she was trafficked for sex by Epstein when she was a teenager. Our North America editor Sarah Smith reports.

Speaker 19 Andrew Mountbatten Windsor has now lost his royal titles as well as his reputation over his relationship with Geoffrey Epstein.

Speaker 19 He may have been born a prince, but his brother, the king, has now formally stripped that away.

Speaker 19 The changes were announced in the Gazette, the UK's official public record, where the entry says, He shall no longer be entitled to hold and enjoy the style, title, or attribute of Royal Highness and the titular dignity of Prince.

Speaker 19 But Andrew's problems may not stop there.

Speaker 19 In the US some members of a congressional committee want to investigate the allegations he abused Virginia Duffray, allegations he strenuously denied, and question him about any of Epstein's friends and associates who may have committed crimes.

Speaker 19 Andrew's nephew, Prince William, is in Brazil for the COP30 Environmental Conference, where the Prime Minister was asked if Andrew should agree to give evidence to the Oversight Committee.

Speaker 20 Well, in the end, it's a matter for him personally.

Speaker 20 My view, and this is not about the individual case, more broadly, is that anybody who has relevant information should always be willing to give it to whatever inquirers need that information, but the individual decision is a matter for him.

Speaker 19 Andrew's visit to Epstein in New York in 2010 has been well documented. The Oversight Committee's invitation notes their friendship continued.
It says, this close relationship with Mr.

Speaker 19 Epstein, coupled with the recently revealed 2011 email exchange in which you wrote to him, we are in this together, further confirms our suspicion.

Speaker 19 You may have valuable information about the crimes committed by Mr. Epstein and his co-conspirators.

Speaker 19 Andrew cannot be compelled to give evidence because he's not an American citizen, but lawmakers say if he wants to clear his name, he should come and tell them everything he knows.

Speaker 19 Many of Jeffrey Epstein's victims are continuing to campaign for their abusers to be brought to justice, which adds to the ongoing pressure on Donald Trump to release all the information the U.S.

Speaker 19 government holds about the extent of Epstein's crimes. A few days ago, he was asked about Andrew being stripped of his royal titles and the fallout for the royal family.

Speaker 21 I feel very badly. I mean, it's a terrible thing that's happened to the family.
That's been a tragic situation.

Speaker 21 And

Speaker 21 it's too bad. I mean, I feel badly for the family.

Speaker 19 Donald Trump's own relationship with Epstein may continue to cause him problems unless he agrees to publicly release the so-called Epstein files.

Speaker 6 Sarah Smith.

Speaker 6 Let's stay in the U.S. where the veteran Democrat Nancy Pelosi has said she will not be seeking re-election to Congress at the end of her term in January 2027.

Speaker 6 It will mark the end of a decades-long career in which the 85-year-old became one of the most powerful figures in American politics. Gary O'Donoghue sent this report from Washington.

Speaker 22 No matter what title they have bestowed upon me,

Speaker 22 Speaker, leader, whip, There has been no greater honor for me than to stand on the House floor and say, I speak for the people of San Francisco.

Speaker 23 This formal announcement marks a real watershed in Democratic Party politics.

Speaker 23 For 20 years, she led the Democrats in the House of Representatives, serving eight years as House Speaker, a role that not only confers control over the legislative program, but also put her second in line to the presidency after the vice president.

Speaker 23 She was the first woman to be Speaker in this country's history.

Speaker 23 She led Democrats' opposition to the Iraq war and shepherded major legislative changes on health care and post-financial crash bailouts.

Speaker 23 She also came to symbolize Democratic Party opposition to Donald Trump, recently calling him the worst thing on the earth and famously tearing up one of his State of the Union speeches live on television.

Speaker 22 There is nobody who has lied more to Congress than Donald Trump. and that's why I tore up his speech because it was a manifesto of lies.

Speaker 23 Nancy Pelosi orchestrated two attempts to impeach Donald Trump, the second one following the January the 6th riots at the Capitol, during which a mob stormed through the halls of Congress shouting, where's Nancy?

Speaker 23 The president didn't mince his words on the news of her retirement.

Speaker 24 I think she's an evil woman. I'm glad she's retiring.
I think she did the

Speaker 24 country a great service by retiring. I think she was

Speaker 25 a tremendous liability for the country.

Speaker 23 Despite stepping back from the House leadership in 2022, she was to play a pivotal role in persuading Joe Biden to leave the presidential race just three months before the election.

Speaker 23 She leaves the stage at a time when America has never been more divided, and Democrats, despite some recent electoral successes, are still struggling to make themselves relevant to an increasingly disillusioned public.

Speaker 6 Gary O'Donoghue.

Speaker 6 And finally, Halloween has been and gone, but trust me, there are still some pretty scary sights around.

Speaker 6 In a cave on the border between Albania and Greece, nearly 70,000 barn funnel weave spiders and 42,000 sheet weaver spiders have been hard at work weaving a 100-square meter web.

Speaker 6 Researchers say this web is the first one they've ever seen that was made by multiple species. Dr.

Speaker 6 Blarina Vrenozzi, who's a professor at the University of Tirana, has studied the web and she's been telling my colleague Sean Lay all about it.

Speaker 16 It is an amazing web. It is made of thousands of other funeral webs of 69,000 spider webs.
So it's a composition of these funeral webs.

Speaker 16 But it's a gigantic webs hanged on the walls on the side of the cave.

Speaker 26 100 square meters in scale. Do you have any idea how long it would have taken for the spiders to produce a web of that size?

Speaker 16 This web is the kind of cycle. It is produced and then after it is heavy enough, it can fall down.

Speaker 16 Once the colleagues went in April and saw it, this gigantic spider web hanging on the wall and then on July they saw that this was fallen down, which means that this is a cycle since the cave, since the age of the cave, that is a cycle time of the time repeating and making the web.

Speaker 26 Are you surprised to find these spiders in a cave so deep?

Speaker 16 Indeed, yes, we were so surprised and we were so happy to see this phenomenon because it's kind of unique, a gigantic spider web.

Speaker 16 It is the Teganaria domestica, which is the main spider in this web, which builds the funeral webs. This is superficial.

Speaker 16 It's not a cave spider. It has eyes, it is a cosmopolitan, lives all around the world and also it's synanthropic, which means that it lives in the buildings when humans there are.

Speaker 16 So how comes that this spider lives inside of the cave and we examined all the ecological factors which made this possible.

Speaker 16 the concentration of sulfur inside the cave sulfur cave is so high then when the oxidation of the sulfur hydrogen from to sulfates when this happens, it is released energy.

Speaker 16 And the higher the energy that is released, the higher is the number of the bacteria that feeds on this energy,

Speaker 16 which makes that this bacteria creates a dense layer, which we call a biofilm. And with this biofilm, there are the chironomids, they are the dipters, mosquitoes which do not bite,

Speaker 16 which feed on

Speaker 16 this bacteria.

Speaker 26 But is is this behavior typical for them to be kind of working collaboratively with so many other spiders?

Speaker 16 Well, it's not so common because this is a solitary spider.

Speaker 16 It's not a social spider, which means that even the individuals, their own individuals, they cannot tolerate each other, let's say, when it is light.

Speaker 16 But there is dark, which means that maybe there is cannibalism. but we didn't observe it.
Or the spider itself didn't observe the maybe boring spider, so they didn't attack.

Speaker 16 How these spiders adapted to these extreme conditions in the cave where the sulfur hydrogen is concentration is so high, it is amazing.

Speaker 6 Dr. Blorina Vrenozzi talking to Sean Lay.

Speaker 6 And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

Speaker 6 The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
Use the hashtag Global Newspod.

Speaker 6 This edition was mixed by Rebecca Miller and produced by Mazafa Shakir and Wendy Urquhart. The editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Alex Ritz, and until next time, goodbye.

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