Elon Musk has been told Taiwan is “not for sale” by the island’s foreign minister after the tech mogul said Taiwan was an integral part of China. Speaking to the All-In Summit in Los Angeles uploaded to YouTube this week, Musk attracted criticism when he said: “Their [Beijing’s] policy has been to reunite Taiwan with China. From their standpoint, maybe it is analogous to Hawaii or something like that, like an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China mostly because … the US Pacific Fleet has stopped any sort of reunification effort by force,” he said. Taiwan foreign minister Joseph Wu, posted on Twitter/X in response, saying that he hoped Musk could ask China to “open @X to its people“. China blocks X, along with other major western social media like Facebook. "Perhaps he thinks banning it is a good policy, like turning off @Starlink to thwart Ukraine’s counterstrike against Russia,” Wu added, referring to Musk’s refusing a Ukrainian request to activate his Starlink satellite network in Crimea’s port city of Sevastopol last year to aid an attack on Russia’s fleet there. “Listen up, Taiwan is not part of the PRC & certainly not for sale!” Wu said, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China. This is not the first time Musk has annoyed Taiwan, which Xi Jinping wants to annex, claiming it is a province of China. Last October, he suggested that tensions between China and Taiwan could be resolved by handing over some control of Taiwan to Beijing. Meanwhile, this week has seen the largest scale Chinese military activity near Taiwan since major drills in April. On Thursday Taiwan’s defence ministry said it had detected 68 aircraft and 10 ships around Taiwan in the previous 24 hours, including 40 aerial crossings of the median line, prompting rumours of suspected military exercises, which have not been announced by China. Meanwhile, on Wednesday Chen Binhua, a spokesperson for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, accused the US and Taiwan of collusion to strengthen Taiwan’s defense capabilities. Maybe Musk should stay out of international relations and stick to Twitter/X. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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JK Rowling has revealed she would "happily" serve two years in prison over her transgender views. Taking to Twitter/X, the Harry Potter writer - who has been outspoken on her views on the matter - responded to a Mail on Sunday story that suggested a hypothetical Labour government could introduce gender-related “aggravated offences," which may carry up to a two-year sentence. The report added how misgendering a transgender person could be listed as an "aggravated offence." “I’ll happily do two years if the alternative is compelled speech and forced denial of the reality and importance of sex," Rowling tweeted and then noted how she would fight the charge. “Bring on the court case, I say. It’ll be more fun than I’ve ever had on a red carpet.” The 58-year-old then joked about what kind of duties she would do in prison if she were ever in that scenario. “Hoping for the library, obviously, but I think I could do ok in the kitchen,” Rowling said. “Laundry might be a problem. I have a tendency to shrink stuff/turn it pink accidentally. Guessing that won’t be a major issue if it’s mostly scrubs and sheets, though.” Before imagining what prison life would be like, Rowling had tweeted a photo from Dazed magazine which in 2018 projected the statement, “Repeat after us: Trans Women are Women,” onto the British Ministry of Justice offices. “No,” she wrote as the caption, sharing her opposition to the statement. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.