X, the social media service formerly known as Twitter, will launch two new tiers of subscriptions for users, its owner Elon Musk said on Friday.

One tier will be “lower cost with all features, but no reduction in ads,” while the other is “more expensive, but has no ads,” Musk said.

This week, X announced it will begin a test that charges users $1 per year in New Zealand and the Philippines in order to “post & interact with other posts.” X said it is part of a program designed to fight spam and bot activity. Those who opt out will only be able to read posts.

It’s unclear if the $1 annual subscription is one of the two new subscription tiers that Musk is referencing.

The social media company already has a $8 per month subscription service called X Premium. Users who signed up to this can get the blue checkmark on their account as well as other features, such as the ability to edit a post.

Since taking over Twitter in October 2022 and rebranding to X, Musk has made sweeping changes, including making cuts to trust and safety teams and removing the blue checkmark from non-paying accounts. The blue checkmark helped users identify authentic accounts belonging to public figures. Musk has also reinstated previously banned accounts on the platform.

Those changes have scared off advertisers. In July, Musk said X’s cash flow remains negative because of a nearly 50% drop in advertising revenue coupled with “heavy debt.”

New subscriptions could be a bid to improve the company’s finances and open new revenue streams.

X is facing challenges from less mature players such as Meta’s Threads and Bluesky.

Stellantis said Saturday that its most recent proposal to the United Auto Workers includes raises of nearly 21% over the course of the contract, including an immediate 10% pay increase, and the end of wage tiers for some workers, the latest development in a historic showdown between the big three Detroit automakers and the union.

The Jeep maker’s proposal, which is in line with proposals from Ford and General Motors, would also continue to offer profit sharing to workers, according to new details on the offer released by the company Saturday.

“The teams have been very, very careful to listen, very careful for us to come up with best offers that we can do that also protect … the company,” COO Mark Stewart said on a Saturday call with reporters.

The standoff between the UAW and major automakers Stellantis, Ford and General Motors reached a fever pitch Friday, with the union starting work stoppages after an agreement wasn’t met by a Thursday night deadline. The so-called stand-up strike started with walkouts at three key plants — one for each automaker — with the possibility that the UAW can call on more of its members to join the strike if needed.

The union has been seeking 40% hourly pay increases, a reduced 32-hour workweek, a move back to traditional pensions, the elimination of compensation tiers and a restoration of cost-of-living adjustments, among other items. The UAW didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the proposal.

Meanwhile, Ford and GM resumed negotiations Saturday after no talks occurred between the union any of the automakers the previous day. Stellantis said it planned to pick up talks again Monday.

UAW President Shawn Fain said earlier this week that Stellantis had previously offered a 17.5% increase.

Under the new proposal, starting pay for supplemental employees would increase by $4.22, or nearly 27%, to $20 an hour.

The company also said it would cut the timeline for ascending the hourly wage scale in half to four years, meaning all full-time hourly employees would reach the top before the contract expires. Under the offer, the wage-tier system would be eliminated entirely for its Mopar division, which is known for service, parts and customer interfacing.

Stellantis also offered an inflation protection measure within compensation. The company said it has committed more than $1 billion for improvements in the pension and retirement savings plans for current employees and retirees.

Stellantis leadership also pushed back against the union’s descriptions of the automaker’s plans to close or sell 18 facilities. The company has said it aims to run parts distribution centers more efficiently and continue shifting resources toward electric vehicles. Jobs in these plants would be persevered, the company said.

The automaker also stressed its commitment to bargaining and reaching an agreement that is financially feasible, echoing concerns raised by Ford and GM leadership. Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a CNBC interview Friday that the UAW demands would force the company to “choose bankruptcy over supporting our workers.” Stellantis’ leadership noted that the company needs to stay competitive with automakers that don’t have unionized employees.

“It’s not about warfare, it’s about win-win,” Stewart said. “It’s about us finding something that is great for our folks today, able to keep a future for tomorrow … for our company to be able to continue the investment path we have for electrification, and for our U.S. operations to be strong so we can compete against the transplants and we can compete against the new entrants.”

President Joe Biden said Friday that the companies should improve their current offers to ensure a strong contract is agreed on amid a period of record profits.

— CNBC’s Michael Wayland contributed to this report.

India is poised to become the world’s second-largest economy by 2075, leapfrogging not just Japan and Germany, but the U.S. too, says Goldman Sachs.

Currently, India is the world’s fifth-largest economy, behind Germany, Japan, China and the U.S.

On top of a burgeoning population, driving the forecast is the country’s progress in innovation and technology, higher capital investment and rising worker productivity, the investment bank wrote in a recent report.

“Over the next two decades, the dependency ratio of India will be one of the lowest among regional economies,” said Goldman Sachs Research’s India economist, Santanu Sengupta.

A country’s dependency ratio is measured by the number of dependents against the total working-age population. A low dependency ratio indicates that there are proportionally more working age adults who are able to support the youth and elderly.

Sengupta added that the key to drawing out the potential of India’s rapidly growing population is to boost the participation of its labor force. And Sengupta forecasts that India will have one of the lowest dependency ratios among large economies for the next 20 years.

“So that really is the window for India to get it right in terms of setting up manufacturing capacity, continuing to grow services, continuing the growth of infrastructure,” he said.

India’s government has placed a priority on infrastructure creation, especially in the setting up of roads and railways. The country’s recent budget aims to continue the 50-year interest free loan programs to state governments in order to spur investments in infrastructure.

Goldman Sachs believes that this is an appropriate time for the private sector to scale up on creating capacity in manufacturing and services in order to generate more jobs and absorb the large labor force.

Spearheading India’s economic trajectory is also its progress in technology and innovation, the investment bank said.

India’s technology industry revenue is expected to increase by $245 billion by the end of 2023, according to Nasscom, India’s non-governmental trade association. That growth will come from across the IT, business process management and software product streams, Nasscom’s report indicated.

Additionally, Goldman predicted capital investment will be another significant driver of India’s growth.

“India’s savings rate is likely to increase with falling dependency ratios, rising incomes, and deeper financial sector development, which is likely to make the pool of capital available to drive further investment,” Goldman’s report stated.

The Achilles heel to the bank’s projection is the labor force participation rate — and whether it increases at the rate which Goldman projects.

“The labor force participation rate in India has declined over the last 15 years,” the report noted, underlining that women’s participation rate in the labor force is “significantly lower” than men’s.

“A mere 20% of all working-age women in India are in employment,” the investment bank wrote in a separate report in June, citing that the low figure could be due to women being primarily engaged in piecework, which is not accounted for by the economic measures of formal employment.

Net exports have also been a drag on India’s growth, because India runs a current account deficit, Goldman said. The bank highlighted, however, that services exports have been cushioning current account balances.

India’s economy is driven by domestic demand, unlike many more export-dependent economies in the region, with up to 60% of its growth mainly attributed to domestic consumption and investments, according to Goldman’s report.

S&P Global and Morgan Stanley have also predicted that India is on course to become the third-largest economy by 2030.

India’s first-quarter GDP expanded 6.1% year-on-year, handily beating Reuters’ expectations of 5% growth. The country’s full-year growth is estimated to come in at 7.2%, compared with 9.1% growth in the 2021-2022 fiscal year.

A New York federal judge warned JPMorgan Chase that he might find the bank in contempt of court if it does not speed up in producing evidence related to late sexual offender and money manager Jeffrey Epstein for lawsuits by an Epstein accuser and the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands, CNBC has learned.

Judge Jed Rakoff suggested in a notice that JPMorgan and two law firms representing the bank have been slow-walking in turning over documents and other evidence to plaintiffs in the case, under a process known as discovery, according to a source familiar with the notice.

The notice comes two weeks before JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is scheduled to be questioned under oath by plaintiffs’ lawyers for the civil suits, which accuse his bank of enabling and benefiting from Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking of young women.

“The Court also wishes to note that it is concerned that JPMorgan is not moving more expeditiously to produce responsive documents,” Rakoff wrote in the notice, which has yet to appear on the public docket in the case in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

“While the Court appreciates the large volume of discovery that is to be completed in this case, a company as large as JPMorgan and counsel as experienced as WilmerHale and Massey & Gail should be able to move with greater speed than what was revealed by this incident,” the judge wrote, referring to the bank’s two law firms.

“So JPMorgan is put on notice that further expedition will be needed on pain of being put in contempt of Court,” Rakoff wrote.

A JPMorgan spokesperson had no comment on the notice.

Epstein, who died from a jailhouse suicide in 2019 shortly after being arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges, was a long-time customer of the bank until 2013.

The lawsuits allege the bank allowed Epstein to remain a client despite evidence he was using millions of dollars he kept on deposit to facilitate his trafficking of girls and young women to his private island in the Virgin Islands and elsewhere.

Five years before JPMorgan ended its customer relationship with Epstein, he pleaded guilty in Florida state court to soliciting sex for money from an underage girl and served 13 months in jail.

Before his conviction, Epstein was friends with former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, as well as Prince Andrew of Britain.

JPMorgan denies any wrongdoing, and in its own civil complaint the company has said former bank executive Jes Staley would be legally responsible for any liability arising from its relationship with Epstein.

Staley spent three decades at JPMorgan and had close contact with Epstein — whom he considered a friend — over the years when Epstein was a customer.

Rakoff, in a court ruling published in early May, noted that “plaintiffs allege that Mr. Staley had first-hand knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.”

“Mr. Staley is alleged to have visited Epstein’s residences several times while that operation was ongoing, and, during these visits, observed [the Epstein accuser suing JPMorgan] ‘as a sexual trafficking and abuse victim,'” Rakoff noted.

“Plaintiffs further allege that Mr. Staley himself abused some of Epstein’s victims, including” the woman suing the bank, the judge wrote. That woman claims that “‘one of Epstein’s friends’ — whom she later identified as Mr. Staley — ‘used aggressive force in his sexual assault of her and informed [her] that he had Epstein’s permission to do what he wanted to her.'”

In his own court filing, Staley called the accusations against him “baseless,” and he has denied knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking.

Staley stepped down as CEO of British banking giant Barclays in late 2021 after an inquiry by a United Kingdom regulator into how he had characterized his relationship with Epstein to Barclays.

If you are having suicidal thoughts or are in distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor.

A new billionaire emerged every 30 hours during the Covid-19 pandemic, and nearly a million could fall into extreme poverty at around the same rate in 2022. Those are the sobering statistics recently released by Oxfam.

There were 573 more billionaires in the world by March 2022 than in 2020, when the pandemic began, the global charity said in a brief that was published on Monday, the first day of the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland. That equates to one new billionaire every 30 hours, Oxfam said.

On top of that, it estimated that 263 million people could be pushed into extreme levels of poverty in 2022 because of the pandemic, growing global inequality and rising food prices that have been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. That’s the equivalent of nearly a million people every 33 hours, Oxfam said.

The organization pointed out that billionaires were collectively worth $12.7 trillion as of March. In 2021, billionaire wealth represented the equivalent of nearly 14% of global gross domestic product.

Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International, said that billionaires were arriving at the Davos summit to “celebrate an incredible surge in their fortunes.”

“The pandemic and now the steep increases in food and energy prices have, simply put, been a bonanza for them,” she said.

“Meanwhile, decades of progress on extreme poverty are now in reverse and millions of people are facing impossible rises in the cost of simply staying alive,” Bucher added.

Honing in on soaring wealth in specific business sectors, Oxfam said the fortunes of food and energy billionaires rose by $453 billion in the last two years, equating to $1 billion every two days.

For instance, food giant Cargill was reported to be one of four companies that control more than 70% of global agricultural market, Oxfam said. The corporation, owned by the Cargill family, generated a net income of nearly $5 billion last year — the biggest profit in its history. There are now 12 billionaires in the Cargill family alone, it said, up from eight prior to the pandemic. Cargill declined to comment when contacted by CNBC.

Meanwhile, Oxfam said the pandemic created 40 new billionaires in the pharmaceuticals sector. The billionaires are those who profited from their companies’ monopolies over vaccines, treatments, tests and personal protective equipment.

In order to prevent even starker wealth inequality, and to support people with rising food and energy costs, Oxfam recommended that governments impose one-off solidarity taxes on the pandemic windfalls of billionaires.

The charity also suggested that governments end “crisis profiteering” by introducing a 90% temporary excess profit tax on the windfalls generated by big corporations across all sectors.

Oxfam also proposed a permanent tax to rein in extreme wealth, monopoly power and the higher carbon emissions produced by the super-rich.

It said that an annual wealth tax starting at 2% on millionaires and 5% on billionaires could generate $2.52 trillion a year. That would be enough to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty, make enough vaccines for the global population, as well as deliver universal health care and social protection for those living in low and lower-middle income countries.

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