Elon Musk’s war on bots continues, but users need to pitch in USD 1 per year for the cause: Xrolled out a test subscription model on Tuesday that requires new users in New Zealand and the Philippines to pay an annual fee of USD 1 to use the platform, reports the Wall Street Journal. Musk believes that this subscription plan, creatively named Not A Bot, is the only way to fight, well, bots — automated programs that operate to perform predefined tasks — and not accidentally block real, human users.

Bot activities are worse than ever, despite Musk’s early promise of a crackdown. Before his USD 44 bn purchase of the company, Musk pledged to eliminate bots on the platform. But since his acquisition, bot activity has just gotten worse. Even though bots comprise less than 5% of current users on the platform — the same amount since before the Musk takeover — they now generate between 21-29% of the content coming from the US. This isn’t the first time Musk has claimed that a subscription would deter bots — this was his reasoning behind the USD 8 monthly verification fee as well.

Existing users are safe from the subscription fee, whichis only required for people setting up new accounts. While they are able to refuse payment, the platform will only be available to them in a read-only capacity, meaning that they would not be able to post, like, and reply to content, along with other key functions. “This won’t stop the bots completely,” posted Musk, “but it will be 1000x harder to manipulate the platform.” By some estimates, two thirds of Musk’s followers are bots.

Breakthrough in battling therapy resistant prostate cancer:Scientists have discovered a potential way to reverse the resistance to therapy of advanced forms of prostate cancer, according to the results of a study published in Nature. The study found that, when administered alongside the usual hormone therapy used for treatment, a new drug stopped healthy white blood cells getting hauled into cancerous tumors. As a result, tumors shrank, and some stopped growing altogether. The study was conducted by cancer institutes from the UK and Switzerland where 23 patients with prostate cancer whose tumors no longer responded to hormone therapy participated. Out of the 23, five had a positive response, where their tumors shriveled by 30%, reports The Guardian.

Geopolitical advisors in businesses are the latest accessory to navigate the new world order: With the ongoing geopolitical hot-pockets of concern growing at an unprecedented rate many companies are hiring former government officials or employees to advise on political risks to their business, according to the Financial Times. Retired diplomats, and retired government officials have answered the call in a surge following the Russian-Ukraine and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, as well as the potential re-election of Donald Trump, and finally China’s tense relations with Taiwan. For now, multinationals will be relying on these advisors to predict and prevent any business loss due to geopolitical conflicts and possibly consolidating industries in the future. “It’s fair to say the state of the world went from relative stability and order to far less stable; this disruption to globalization of course has implications for business,” Chief executive of US construction company Barton Malow, Ryan Maibach, told the salmon-backed paper.

Geopolitical advisors are not new but are growing in popularity. Oil and gas companies have been frequent customers of these well-seasoned international figures, but other businesses are biting on. US tech companies, with their businesses reliant on chips that are subject to Taiwanese-Chinese volatility, are buying in. Other household names have their own key risk officers, already: Ex-UK National Security Adviser Sir Stephen Lovegrove was re-employed as a senior advisor at the investment bank meanwhile the previous head of MI6, Sir Alex Younger, found himself as an advisor in Goldman Sachs starting from 2021.

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