Voters in South Texas delivered Elon Musk a decisive victory, overwhelmingly approving a ballot measure to establish Starbase, Texas, as its own city.
By a margin of 212 to 6, residents of the far-flung community surrounding SpaceX’s rocket-launch site and headquarters voted resoundingly in favor of the incorporation effort, results posted on the county election Web site showed.
At the same time, voters also approved the city’s first elected officials, all three of whom are current or former SpaceX employees and ran unopposed.
. Photo: AP
Virtually all of the inhabitants within the 3.76km2 territory are Musk’s employees at the massive manufacturing facility that dominates the beachfront town, or their family members.
Incorporation is not a free pass for Musk to adopt all regulations he wishes, but it would give the company unique authority to set the pace of its own development in the area. The new city commission would have authority over zoning, building projects and more pedestrian aspects of life.
Over the past seven years, SpaceX has reshaped the area known as Boca Chica, transforming the once sleepy retirement community into a thriving production site for the development of SpaceX’s powerful Starship rocket, the vehicle by which Musk hopes to execute his long-standing dream to start a human settlement on Mars.
However, SpaceX officials say the company has been unable to provide enough housing for the hundreds of workers who want to live near its headquarters. A recent attempt to build more townhouses was rejected by the county. About 260 SpaceX employees live in the enclave on the southern tip of Texas, their partners and families push the total population close to 500. An additional 3,100 workers commute from Brownsville, the closest big city, or other locales.
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Japan is to downgrade its description of ties with China from “one of its most important” in an annual diplomatic report, according to a draft reviewed by Reuters, as relations with Beijing worsen. This year’s Diplomatic Bluebook, which Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government is expected to approve next month, would instead describe China as an important neighbor and the relationship as “strategic” and “mutually beneficial.” The draft cites a series of confrontations with Beijing over the past year, including export controls on rare earths, radar lock-ons targeting Japanese military aircraft and increased pressure around Taiwan. The shift in tone underscores a deterioration
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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) yesterday faced a regional election battle in Rhineland-Palatinate, now held by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Merz’s CDU has enjoyed a narrow poll lead over the SPD — their coalition partners at the national level — who have ruled the mid-sized state for 35 years. Polling third is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which spells a greater threat to the two centrist parties in several state elections in September in the country’s ex-communist east. The picturesque state of Rhineland-Palatinate, bordering France, Belgium and Luxembourg and with a population of about 4 million,
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