US opens probe into Musk's Neuralink over animal testing: Reports

UNITED STATES : The Inspector General for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) opened a probe into Elon Musk's Neuralink over employee complaints about animal testing, Reuters reported citing documents the news agency reviewed and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations. The Reuters report said the company has killed about 1,500 animals following experiments since 2018. However, the total number of animal deaths does not necessarily indicate Musk's company is violating regulations, the report said

Current and former Neuralink employees, the report added, have alleged the number of animal deaths is too high because of Musk's demands to speed research. Neuralink has passed all USDA inspections of its facilities, the report said, citing regulatory filings. A spokesperson for the USDA inspector general declined to comment, the report added.

The controversies surrounding Twitter do not seem to end right from the time the world's richest man acquired the micro-blogging site. Tesla CEO last week tweeted, saying that, "Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won't tell us why." But later on December 1, he clarified that all was sorted after meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Twitter's advertisers' list, including Pfizer, GM, among others, stopped giving advertisements ever since the world's richest man took over as CEO. On Saturday, Musk said that Apple had 'fully resumed' advertising on the micro-blogging site during a Twitter Spaces conversation.

Notably, Twitter CEO last week released the internal 'Twitter Files' that showed the company responded to a request "from the Biden team" during the 2020 election -- shortly after the company cracked down on Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden's laptop story.

Musk tweeted a link to the account of independent journalist and author Matt Taibbi, who began posting a series of tweets revealing the inner story about the decision behind the censorship of Hunter Biden's laptop story. "The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story," Taibbi tweeted.