International
Musk to testify at trial over his $50 bn Tesla compensation
| By AFP | Juliette Michel |
Tesla tycoon Elon Musk will take the stand on Wednesday as part of a trial over his $50 billion pay package as CEO of the electric car giant.
Musk will testify in the same Delaware court where he faced a lawsuit by Twitter to make sure he went through with his buyout of the social platform.
The $44 billion purchase of Twitter has put Musk under a deluge of scrutiny after he conducted massive layoffs, scared advertisers and opened the platform to fake accounts.
The unrelated Tesla case is based on a complaint by shareholder Richard Tornetta, who accused Musk and the company’s board of directors of failing in their duties when they authorized the pay plan.
Tornetta alleges that Musk dictated his terms to directors who were not sufficiently independent from their star CEO to object to a package worth around $51 billion at recent share prices.
The Tesla shareholder accuses Musk of “unjustified enrichment” and asked for the annulment of a pay program that helped make the entrepreneur the richest man in the world.
According to a legal filing, Musk earned the equivalent of $52.4 billion in Tesla stock options over four and a half years after virtually all of the company’s targets were met.
When the plan was adopted it was valued at a total of $56 billion.
The non-jury trial began Monday with testimony from Ira Ehrenpreis, head of the compensation committee on Tesla’s board of directors, who said the targets set were “extraordinarily ambitious and difficult”.
Ehrenpreis argued that the board wanted to spur Musk to focus on Tesla at a time when the company was still struggling to gain traction.
‘Highly unusual’
The trial will run through Friday and is being presided over by Judge Kathaleen McCormick, the same judge who was to preside over the Twitter case.
There is no deadline for her decision which could take months.
It’s “highly unusual” for this kind of case to be brought to trial, Jill Fisch, Law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told AFP.
“There aren’t all that many successful challenges to executive compensation (as) the courts have typically treated this as a business decision,” she added.
But the court found in this case that Musk’s ownership of about 22 percent of Tesla and his role as CEO “could have an undue impact” on the board and other shareholders, she noted.
Musk canceled an in-person appearance on Sunday at an event on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali to be in court.
Asked why he had not traveled to the tropical Indonesian island, the new Twitter boss joked that his “workload has recently increased quite a lot” after his takeover of the social media giant.
International
Paraguay launches dengue vaccination for children in high-risk areas
Dengue fever, transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, remains a persistent threat in tropical and subtropical countries such as Paraguay, where it claimed the lives of 132 people among nearly 100,000 infections during the 2023–2024 Southern Hemisphere summer, according to official data. However, that figure was lower than the record set in the 2012–2013 season, when 252 deaths were reported among roughly 130,000 infections.
“Today marks a very important step toward protecting our children and bringing peace of mind to families,” Paraguay’s Minister of Health, María Teresa Barán Wasilchuk, said in a speech on Wednesday.
The vaccine will be administered to children between 6 and 8 years old in municipalities with the highest incidence of dengue cases in the past five years. Authorities will use TAK-003 (Qdenga), developed by Takeda—one of Japan’s largest pharmaceutical companies—which was approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2024.
“We celebrate this step, which positions Paraguay as a country with one of the most robust immunization programs,” said Héctor Castro, director of the Acosta Ñu Pediatric Hospital. “We will work tirelessly to ensure this government decision becomes a success in the fight against this scourge.”
Vaccinating children against dengue “is not only a historic and public health milestone, but also a humanitarian one,” Castro added during remarks delivered at the hospital in San Lorenzo, near the capital, Asunción.
International
President Paz dismisses Vidovic Over 2015 corruption sentence
Justice Minister Freddy Vidovic took office on November 9 after taking the oath of peace for a five-year term. However, his tenure was short-lived: he was removed from the position on Thursday after a past criminal conviction came to light.
In 2015, Vidovic was sentenced to three years in prison for bribery in favor of Peruvian businessman Martín Belaúnde, a former adviser to ex-president Ollanta Humala. Belaúnde was captured in Bolivia ten years ago and handed over to Peruvian authorities, who sought him for alleged involvement in a corruption case that also implicated Humala, who later served time for corruption charges.
At the time, Vidovic was part of Belaúnde’s legal defense team. He was accused of assisting the former presidential adviser in a failed attempt to escape while in Bolivia.
Following the revelation of the conviction, President Paz dismissed Vidovic and appointed Jorge Franz García as the new Justice Minister, according to the decree published on Thursday.
On Wednesday night, Government Minister Marco Antonio Oviedo confirmed the three-year sentence against Vidovic, noting that this background meant he “could not hold public office.”
Before his dismissal was made public, Vidovic acknowledged on his Facebook account that he had been convicted, but claimed he had been a victim of “kidnapping and torture” and argued that the ruling was “invalid and tainted.”
International
International organizations push for expanded kidney transplant access in SICA region
A group of international organizations held a high-level meeting in Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala, to address transplantation as a key component in the comprehensive management of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) in the countries of the Central American Integration System (SICA).
The meeting was organized by Spain’s National Transplant Organization (ONT), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and the Executive Secretariat of the Council of Ministers of Health of Central America and the Dominican Republic (SECOMISCA). It was conducted within the framework of the Triangular Cooperation Program of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and endorsed by the Ibero-American Donation and Transplant Network/Council (RCIDT).
The purpose of the gathering was to promote kidney transplantation as a priority option for renal replacement therapy, given its superior cost-effectiveness and health outcomes compared with dialysis.
According to a joint press release, the participating organizations also sought to encourage political commitment to advance equitable access to kidney transplantation and to identify common priorities for regional cooperation.
During the event, institutions presented the current status of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and access to kidney transplantation in SICA countries, as well as the 2019–2030 Regional Donation and Transplant Strategy (CD 57R11). The meeting also facilitated a regional political dialogue aimed at incorporating transplantation into the comprehensive management of CKD, with the goal of generating recommendations to ensure equitable and progressive access to renal replacement therapies.
Additionally, the organizations explored opportunities to improve CKD registry systems, including transplantation data.
The meeting was convened in response to the growing burden of Chronic Kidney Disease across the World Health Organization (WHO) regions.
Paraguay launches dengue vaccination for children in high-risk areas
President Paz dismisses Vidovic Over 2015 corruption sentence
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