SpaceX founder Elon Musk is helping Florida get cell service and connect to the internet.

More than 370 Starlink satellite units have been deployed across Florida, officials said Monday.

The units can support up to 120 devices at a time. They are being centered at mobile command units to assist with rescue and recovery efforts.

Speaking about the equipment on Monday, Florida emergency management officials thanked Musk for the donations, which they said were easy to use. They said it took people about 20 minutes to unbox the equipment and have it working in about 20 minutes.

Parts of Florida have struggled to get cell service following the devastation from Hurricane Ian.

As more people gain internet access, the state is requesting that they document when missing people have been found safe. They can fill out a form at https://safe.fl.gov. To report a missing person, information can be submitted to https://missing.fl.gov/es.

Drone videos from Fort Myers to Arcadia show the devastation. Some communities are still underwater.

Florida has reported 58 storm-related deaths. However, that number is expected to rise as officials gain more access to areas that were vulnerable to the hurricane.

Twitter launches $8 monthly subscription with blue checkmark

Updated: 3:46 PM EDT Nov 5, 2022

Twitter on Saturday launched a subscription service for $8 a month that includes a blue checkmark now given to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the platform's verification system.In an update to Apple iOS devices, Twitter said users who "sign up now" can receive the blue checkmark next to their names, "just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow."The change represents the end of Twitter's current verification system, which was launched in 2009 to prevent impersonations of high-profile accounts such as celebrities and politicians. Twitter before the overhaul had about 423,000 verified accounts, many of them rank-and-file journalists from around the globe that the company verified regardless of how many followers they had.Experts have raised grave concerns about upending the platform's verification system that, while not perfect, has helped Twitter's 238 million daily users determine whether the accounts they were getting information from were authentic. The update Twitter made to the iOS version of its app does not mention verification as part of the new "blue check" system.It comes a day after the company began laying off workers to cut costs. About half of the company's staff of 7,500 was let go, tweeted Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of safety & integrity.Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on Saturday took blame for such widespread job losses. He had two runs as CEO of Twitter, with the most recent stretching from 2015 into 2021. "I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly," he tweeted. "I apologize for that."

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Elon Musk took the witness stand Friday to defend a 2018 tweet claiming he had lined up the financing to take Tesla private in a deal that never came close to happening.

The tweet resulted in a $40 million settlement with securities regulators. It also led to a class-action lawsuit alleging he misled investors, pulling him into court Friday.

The mercurial billionaire took the witness stand wearing a dark suit on the third day of a civil trial in San Francisco that his lawyer unsuccessfully tried to move to Texas, where Tesla is now headquartered, on the premise that media coverage of his tumultuous takeover of Twitter had tainted the jury pool.

The nine-person jury assembled earlier this week will be responsible for deciding whether a pair of tweets that Musk posted on Aug. 7, 2018 damaged Tesla shareholders during a 10-day period leading up to a Musk admission that the buyout he had envisioned wasn't going to happen.

A month later, Musk stepped down as Tesla's chairman while remaining CEO as part of the Securities and Exchange Commission settlement without acknowledging any wrongdoing.

In the first of those those two 2018 tweets, Musk stated “funding secured” for a what would have been a $72 billion buyout of Tesla at a time when the electric automaker was still grapping with production problems and was worth far less than it is now. Musk followed up a few hours later with another tweet suggesting a deal was imminent.

On the stand Friday, Musk — who last year bought Twitter for $44 billion — said tweeting is “most democratic way” to communicate with investors.

"I care a great deal about retail investors,” he said during questioning by shareholder attorney Nicholas Porritt.

But he acknowledged that investors can get more detail in a traditional corporate filing with securities regulators, given the character limits set on Twitter.

“I think you can absolutely be truthful" on Twitter, Musk said. “But can you be comprehensive? Of course not.”

Even before Musk took the stand, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen had declared that the jurors can consider those two tweets to be falsehoods, leaving them to decide whether Musk deliberately deceived investors and whether his statements saddled them with losses.

Musk has previously contended he entered into the SEC settlement under duress and maintained he believed he had locked up financial backing for a Tesla buyout during meetings with representatives from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

The trial over his Tesla tweets come at a time when he has been focusing on Twitter, which he acquired in October after trying to back out of that purchase.

Musk’s leadership of Twitter — where he has gutted the staff and alienated users and advertisers — has proven unpopular among Tesla’s current stockholders, who are worried he has been devoting less time steering the automaker at a time of intensifying competition. Those concerns contributed to a 65% decline in Tesla’s stock last year that wiped out more than $700 billion in shareholder wealth — far more than the $14 billion swing in fortune that occurred between the company’s high and low stock prices during the Aug. 7-17, 2018 period covered in the class-action lawsuit.

Tesla’s stock has split twice since then, making the $420 buyout price cited in his 2018 tweet worth $28 on adjusted basis now. The company's shares were trading around $133 Friday, down from the company’s November 2021 split-adjusted peak of $414.50.

After Musk dropped the idea of a Tesla buyout, the company overcame its production problems, resulting in a rapid upturn in car sales that caused its stock to soar and minted Musk as the world’s richest person until he bought Twitter. Musk dropped from the top spot on the wealth list after the stock market’s backlash to his handling of Twitter.

A Tesla Model S "spontaneously caught fire" on a California highway.

According to the Sacramento Fire Department, the Tesla Model S was engulfed in flames when crews arrived at the scene on Highway 50 on Saturday.

The fire department said battery cells continued to combust as they attempted to put the fire out.

It was eventually extinguished after crews used about 6,000 gallons of water, officials said.

Tesla warns about the dangers of a burning battery, saying it releases toxic vapors.

However, no injuries were reported.

The federal government has looked into concerns about Tesla batteries catching fire. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration declined to investigate Tesla battery fires in 2019.

"The available data indicate that noncrash battery fires in Tesla vehicles are rare events," the agency noted.

A jury on Friday decided Elon Musk didn’t deceive investors with his 2018 tweets about electric automaker Tesla in a proposed deal that quickly unraveled and raised questions about whether the billionaire had misled investors.

The verdict by the nine jurors was reached after less that two hours of deliberation following a three-week trial. It represents a major vindication for Musk, who spent about eight hours on the witness stand defending his motives for the August 2018 tweets at the center of the trial.

Musk, 51, wasn't on hand for the brief reading of the verdict, after making a surprise appearance earlier Friday for closing arguments that drew starkly different portraits of him.

Alex Spiro, Musk's attorney, declined to comment as he walked out of the courtroom following the verdicts.

The trial pitted Tesla investors represented in a class-action lawsuit against Musk, who is CEO of both the electric automaker and the Twitter service he bought for $44 billion a few months ago.

Shortly before boarding his private jet on Aug. 7, 2018, Musk tweeted that he had the financing to take Tesla private, even though it turned out he hadn’t gotten an iron-clad commitment for a deal that would have cost $20 billion to $70 billion to pull off.

Musk's integrity was at stake at the trial as well part of a fortune that has established him as one of the world’s richest people. He could have been saddled with a bill for billions of dollars in damages had the jury found him liable for the 2018 tweets that had already been deemed falsehoods by the judge presiding over the trial.

Earlier Friday, Musk sat stoically in court during the trial’s closing arguments while he was both vilified as a rich narcissist whose reckless behavior risks “anarchy” and hailed as a visionary looking out for the “little guy."

The trial hinged on whether Musk's tweeting in 2018 misled Tesla shareholders, steering them in a direction that they argue cost them billions of dollars. The civil case centered on two tweets Musk posted Aug. 7, 2018 about a Tesla buyout that never happened.

The first tweet Musk declared he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private. A few hours later, Musk sent another tweet indicating that the deal was imminent.

The tweets caused Twitter’s stock to surge during a 10-day period covered by the lawsuit before falling back after Musk abandoned a deal in which he never had a firm financing commitment, based on evidence presented during the trial.

Nicholas Porritt, a lawyer for the Tesla shareholders, urged the jurors to rebuke Musk for his “loose relationship with the truth.”

“Our society is based on rules,” Porritt said. “We need rules to save us from anarchy. Rules should apply to Elon Musk like everyone else.”

Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, conceded the 2018 tweets were “technically inaccurate.” But he told the jurors, “Just because it’s a bad tweet doesn’t make it a fraud.”

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen, who presided over the trial, decided last year that Musk’s 2018 tweets were false and has instructed the jury to view them that way.

During roughly eight hours on the stand earlier in the trial, Musk insisted he believed he had lined up the funds from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to take Tesla private after eight years as a publicly held company. He defended his initial August 2018 tweet as well-intentioned and aimed at ensuring all Tesla investors knew the automaker might be on its way to ending its run as a publicly held company.

“I had no ill motive,” Musk testified. “My intent was to do the right thing for all shareholders.”

Spiro echoed that theme in his closing argument.

“He was trying to include the retail shareholder, the mom and pop, the little guy, and not seize more power for himself," Spiro said.

Porritt, meanwhile, scoffed at the notion that Musk could have concluded he had a firm commitment after a 45-minute meeting at a Tesla factory on July 31, 2018, with Yasir al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund, given there was no written documentation.

A text message that al-Rumayyan sent later in August that is part of the trial evidence also indicated that the Saudi fund was only interested in learning more about Musk's proposal to take Tesla private at a time the company was valued at about $60 billion.

“Apparently a $60 billion financing commitment was obtained and no one wrote down a single word," Porritt said, while asserting that amount was larger than the combined economic output of Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador.

Spiro, though, pointed to Musk's track record helping to start and run a list of companies that include digital payment pioneer PayPal and rocket ship maker SpaceX, in addition to Tesla. The automaker based in Austin, Texas, is now worth nearly $600 billion, despite a steep decline in its stock price last year amid concerns that Musk's purchase of Twitter would distract him from Tesla.

Recalling Musk's roots as a South African immigrant who came to Silicon Valley to create revolutionary tech companies, Spiro described his client “as the kind of person who believes the impossible is possible."

Porritt put a different twist on Musk's mindset during his presentation. “To Elon Musk, if he believes it, or just thinks about it, it's true.”

In his concluding remarks, Porritt told jurors their decision boiled down to their answer to one question: “Do the rules apply to everyone, or can Elon Musk do whatever he wants and not face the consequences?"