https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaG07sTJENxyeTTfph1G *INTERNATIONAL NEWS* *11 February 2025* *NEWS HEADLINES* *Man who lost £600m Bitcoin fortune considers buying landfill site to search for it* *Elon Musk launches $97bn bid to buy ChatGPT-maker OpenAI* *SA’s military reinforces beleaguered DRC mission* *NEWS IN DETAIL* *Man who lost £600m Bitcoin fortune considers buying landfill site to search for it* A man who believes he accidentally lost a Bitcoin fortune in a council rubbish tip is exploring the possibility of buying the landfill site before it is shut. James Howells, from Newport in South Wales, claimed his ex-girlfriend mistakenly threw out a hard drive containing thousands of Bitcoins in 2013. According to the 39-year-old IT worker, they are worth more than £600m and he has been trying to recover them ever since. Now he is considering buying the site so he can hunt for the missing fortune himself, multiple outlets reported on Monday. Newport City Council is planning to close and cap the site in the 2025-26 financial year, which would almost certainly spell the end of any lingering hopes of recovering them. Mr Howells said in widely reported comments on Monday it had been "quite a surprise" to hear of the council's closure plan. Last month a judge dismissed a legal case he brought to force the council to allow him to search the landfill site, or award him £495m in compensation. He said the council had claimed in court that closing the landfill to allow him to search "would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport, whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway. "I expected it would be closed in the coming years because it's 80-90% full - but didn't expect its closure so soon. "If Newport City Council would be willing, I would potentially be interested in purchasing the landfill site 'as is' and have discussed this option with investment partners and it is something that is very much on the table." _Sky News_ *Elon Musk launches $97bn bid to buy ChatGPT-maker OpenAI* A group led by Elon Musk has made a $97.4bn (£78.7bn) bid to buy OpenAI just months after the X owner sued the artificial intelligence start-up. Mr Musk co-founded OpenAI with its current chief executive Sam Altman in 2015, but left before the company took off after it released ChatGPT in late 2022. Initially launched as a non-profit, OpenAI is currently transitioning to a for-profit model - which it says it needs to do so it can afford to develop the best AI models. Mr Musk disagrees with the move and said in a press release about the bid: "It's time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was. "We will make sure that happens." The offer is being backed by Mr Musk's rival artificial intelligence company xAI, which could merge with OpenAI following a deal, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the bid. The offer relates only to the non-profit that controls the company rather than the whole OpenAI operation. OpenAI was valued at $157bn (£127bn) in its latest funding round in October last year. A deal of this size would require the investing group to raise enormous funds. Mr Musk's offer appears to have escalated longstanding tensions with his former colleague Mr Altman, who posted on X: "no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want." Mr Musk bought Twitter, now called X, for $44bn (£38bn) in 2022. The pair publicly fell out when Mr Musk resigned from the OpenAI board in 2018. They are already embroiled in a lawsuit as Mr Musk sued both OpenAI and Mr Altman last year, accusing them of breaching a contract by pivoting towards profit, arguing OpenAI was going back on its pledge to develop AI carefully and make it freely available. Mr Musk and OpenAI lawyers faced off in a California federal court last week as a judge weighed up whether to back the X owner's request for a court order that would block the company from becoming a for-profit entity. US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has not yet ruled on the request but said she would not stop the case from moving to a jury trial. _Sky News_ *SA’s military reinforces beleaguered DRC mission* SA has sent additional troops and military equipment to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in recent days, political and diplomatic sources said, after 14 of its soldiers were killed in fighting with Rwanda-backed rebels last month. The reinforcement comes amid fears that fighting in eastern DRC could spark a broader war in a powder keg region that has over the past three decades witnessed genocide, cross-border conflicts and dozens of uprisings. Flight data reviewed by Reuters showed transport aircraft flying from SA to Lubumbashi in southern DRC. An airport employee there confirmed military planes had landed last week. "We have been informed of a (SA National Defence Force) troop build-up in the area of Lubumbashi. We gather that about 700 to 800 soldiers had been flown to Lubumbashi," Chris Hattingh, defence spokesperson for the DA, wrote in a text message to Reuters. Hattingh said it was "difficult to figure out what is unfolding" because parliament's defence committee had not been briefed. The SANDF spokesperson said on Friday he was not aware of the deployment to Lubumbashi and declined to comment further on Monday. A DRC army spokesperson said he could not confirm the deployment. Lubumbashi is about 1,500km south of Goma, the eastern city on Rwanda's border that the M23 rebels seized last month during an offensive that has killed more than 2,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. SA is believed to have around 3,000 troops deployed in the DRC, both as part of a UN peacekeeping mission and a Southern African regional force tasked with helping the DRC's army combat the M23 insurgency. Its intervention has drawn heavy criticism at home after the fall of Goma left SANDF soldiers surrounded and with no clear exit strategy. "They're extremely poorly resourced and equipped," said Kobus Marais, who served as the DA's shadow defence minister before the party entered the governing coalition last year. "This is not our war." Marais, a defence analyst who said he was being kept abreast of the situation, said the flights to Lubumbashi carried medicine, ammunition and consumables. The additional troops were to assist in the case of further clashes and as a deterrent as negotiations to end the fighting get under way. An IL-76 cargo plane with the tail number EX-76008 made five round-trip flights from Pretoria to Lubumbashi between January 30 and February 7, according to flight tracking data from FlightRadar24. The flights left from the south side of Pretoria, where the SA air force has a base. An employee at Lubumbashi airport told Reuters on Saturday he had seen several rotations of aircraft bringing troops and equipment. Three diplomats and a minister from a country in the region said they were aware of the deployment. With M23 rebels controlling Goma's airport, SA troops there are cut off from resupplies. "The pattern of chartered cargo flights under SANDF callsigns from SA to Lubumbashi and locations inside (neighbouring) Burundi points to the likely creation of some type of additional contingency force," said a defence expert who asked not to be named. Two successive wars in the 1990s and 2000s grew out of the Rwandan genocide, drawing in a half dozen of the DRC's neighbours and killing millions, mainly through hunger and disease. Uganda and Burundi, which have thousands of troops in eastern DRC, are also reinforcing their positions. Rwanda has rejected accusations that thousands of its troops are fighting alongside M23, while African leaders have urged the parties to hold talks. _Times Live_