SALISBURY, England: British investigators will update an emergency response committee of senior ministers on Wednesday about the mystery illness that struck down a former Russian double agent and his daughter.
Sergei Skripal, once a colonel in Russia’s GRU military intelligence service, and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia, were found slumped unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center in the southern English city of Salisbury on Sunday afternoon.
Police said they had been exposed to an unknown substance. More than two days later, both are critically ill in intensive care.
Counter-terrorism police are now leading the investigation and Britain’s military research laboratory at Porton Down is trying to identify the substance which caused Skripal, 66, and his daughter to fall ill.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd will chair the emergency response meeting.
Britain has cautioned Russia that if the Kremlin was behind any poisoning then there will be grave consequences and British ministers have drawn parallels with the 2006 murder of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko who was killed with radioactive polonium-210 in London.
A previous British inquiry said President Vladimir Putin probably approved the murder Litvinenko who died after drinking green tea laced with the rare and very potent radioactive isotope at London’s Millennium Hotel.
Russia, which denied any involvement in the death of Litvinenko, has dismissed claims that it may have had a hand in the poisoning of Skripal.
Moscow says anti-Russian hysteria is being whipped up without any evidence to show its involvement in the Skripal case. Russia holds a presidential election on March 18, which polls show Vladimir Putin should comfortably win.
Skripal, who passed the identity of dozens of spies to the MI6 foreign intelligence agency, was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged in 2010 for Russian spies caught in the West as part of a Cold War-style spy swap at Vienna airport.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested Skripal in 2004 on suspicion of betraying dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006 after a secret trial.
Britain’s top ministers to meet on mysterious illness of Russian double agent
Britain’s top ministers to meet on mysterious illness of Russian double agent
SpaceX acquires xAI in record-setting deal as Musk looks to unify AI and space ambitions
- The deal is the biggest M&A transaction of all time
- Deal values xAI at $250 billion, SpaceX at $1 trillion
Elon Musk said on Monday that SpaceX has acquired his artificial-intelligence startup xAI in a record-setting deal that unifies Musk’s AI and space ambitions by combining the rocket-and-satellite company with the maker of the Grok chatbot. The deal, first reported by Reuters last week, represents one of the most ambitious tie-ups in the technology sector yet, combining a space-and-defense contractor with a fast-growing AI developer whose costs are largely driven by chips, data centers and energy. It could also bolster SpaceX’s data-center ambitions as Musk competes with rivals like Alphabet’s Google, Meta, Amazon-backed Anthropic and OpenAI in the AI sector.
The transaction values SpaceX at $1 trillion, and xAI at $250 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI’s mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!” Musk said. The purchase of xAI sets a new record for the world’s largest M&A deal, a distinction held for more than 25 years when Vodafone bought Germany’s Mannesmann in a hostile takeover valued at $203 billion in 2000, according to data compiled by LSEG. The combined company of SpaceX and xAI is expected to price shares at about $527 each, another person familiar with the matter said. SpaceX was already the world’s most valuable privately held company, last valued at $800 billion in a recent insider share sale. XAI was last valued at $230 billion in November, according to the Wall Street Journal. The merger comes as the space company plans a blockbuster public offering this year that could value it at over $1.5 trillion, two people familiar with the matter said.
SpaceX, xAI and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The deal further consolidates Musk’s far-flung business empire and fortunes into a tighter, mutually reinforcing ecosystem – what some investors and analysts informally call the “Muskonomy” – which already includes Tesla, brain-chip maker Neuralink and tunnel firm the Boring Company. The world’s richest man has a history of merging his ventures together. Musk folded social media platform X into xAI through a share swap last year, giving the AI startup access to the platform’s data and distribution. In 2016, he used Tesla’s stock to buy his solar-energy company SolarCity.
The agreement could draw scrutiny from regulators and investors over governance, valuation and conflicts of interest given Musk’s overlapping leadership roles across multiple firms, as well as the potential movement of engineers, proprietary technology and contracts between entities.
SpaceX also holds billions of dollars in federal contracts with NASA, the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, which all have some authority to review M&A transactions for national security and other risks.
