elon musk was at the news epicenter thursday from stripping pope francis of twitter verification to teslas drag on stocks and the explosion of the world’s largest rocket three utterly disparate stories dominated global news in a way that underlined the extraordinary influence of the one person who connects them all – musk elon musk has outsized capability to sway the news cycle university of florida assistant media professor andrew selepak told afp musk has quickly gone from being an innovator few knew of to a tech billionaire playboy who has almost taken the place of donald trump as a twitter troll selepak said twitter began the mass removal of blue ticks on thursday with the symbol previously signifying a verified account vanishing from users including the pope donald trump and justin bieber twitters owner musk who has seen his 44 billion investment in the site shrivel had pledged to get rid of what he described as a lords  peasants system the platform had been providing free blue checkmarks to the accounts of highprofile users to show they were who they claimed to be musks switch does away with verifying who is behind accounts with the checks now simply indicating who has paid a monthly subscription fee techsponential analyst avi greengart described musks blue checkmarks as receipts rather than verification musk was looking to the sky as well where the colossal starship built by spacex exploded minutes after launch in texas musk congratulated his spacex team on an exciting test of the nextgeneration spacecraft designed to send astronauts to the moon mars and beyond despite the failure to complete the flight test and reach orbit spacex and musk the founder and ceo of the private space company declared it a success starship malfunctioned and began spinning out of control exploding four minutes after liftoff in what spacex euphemistically called a rapid unscheduled disassembly meanwhile wall street stocks ended lower on thursday following lackluster corporate results from electric vehicle maker tesla and several regional banks shares of tesla slumped after reporting a drop in quarterly earnings and hinting the muskled company could face further profit pressures from more price cuts on its vehicles as twitter tesla and spacex deal with turbulence musk is a common denominator noted independent tech analyst rob enderle the ceo is supposed to be the mature member of the staff who keeps the train on the tracks enderle told afp musk is the opposite of that he often lacks maturity and knocks the train off the tracks after revolutionizing the auto industry sending his own rocket to space and building a fortune the eccentric billionaire bought twitter late last year and fired its top executives he promotes himself as a champion of free speech but has been accused of being autocratic and bullying as well as of endorsing misinformation on the platform the 51yearold is among the richest people in the world born in pretoria on june 28 1971 the son of an engineer father and a canadianborn model mother musk left south africa in his late teens to attend queens university in canada he transferred to the university of pennsylvania after two years and earned bachelors degrees in physics and business musk abandoned plans to study at stanford university in california instead he started zip2 a company that made online publishing software for the media industry he banked his first millions when he sold zip2 to us computer maker compaq for more than 300 million in 1999 musks next company xcom eventually merged with paypal the online payments firm bought by internet auction giant ebay for 15 billion in 2002 after leaving paypal musk embarked on a series of ever more ambitious ventures he founded spacex in 2002 and became chairman of tesla in 2004 musk enterprises include tunneldrilling the boring company and neuralink which is focused on linking human brains and computers he has said he wants to make humans an interplanetary species by establishing a colony of people living on mars