San Francisco (AP): Tesla CEO Elon Musk won't be joining Twitter's board of directors as previously announced. The tempestuous billionaire remains Twitter's largest shareholder.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted the news, which followed a weekend of Musk tweets suggesting possible changes to Twitter, including making the site ad-free. Nearly 90% of Twitter's 2021 revenue came from ads.

Elon's appointment to the board was to become officially effective on 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he would not be joining the board, Agrawal wrote in a reposted note originally sent to Tesla employees. I believe this is for the best.

Agrawal didn't offer an explanation for Musk's apparent decision, although he dropped one major hint. The Twitter board believed having Elon as a fiduciary of the company, where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders, was the best path forward," he wrote.

At 9:30 p.m., Musk tweeted an emoji of a face with round eyes and a hand over its mouth. The symbol is often used to suggest embarrassment or coy laughter, sometimes with a connotation of Oops! It was not clear what Musk meant by the tweet, and he didn't elaborate on it. 

Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.



Kolkata (PTI): Trinamool Congress MLA Humayun Kabir has apologised to the party's leadership for his recent comment that a "coterie" was influencing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's key decisions.

Kabir, the MLA of Bharatpur in West Bengal's Murshidabad district, expressed his apology on Friday in reply to a show cause notice issued by the party's disciplinary committee.

"Yes, I have sent a reply. I will certainly follow party discipline. But I think being a person from the rural belt, not conversant with the ways of the city, I faced this situation for speaking my mind. However, I had not said anything against my party or its leadership," he told reporters.

"Our CM epitomises the spirit of 'Maa-Mati-Manush' and being a person of the grassroots level, I always stay rooted to the ground. Maybe I should have been more careful about my way of expressing," he said.

A senior member of the TMC's legislative disciplinary committee said the reply to the show cause letter was received, and a decision on it will be communicated soon.

Kabir, however, said some other TMC MPs had on earlier occasions made comments against party colleagues but were not censured.

On Thursday, he met the CM in the assembly's lobby where she had asked him to reply to the show-cause notice first.

On November 26, Kabir had said a coterie within the party was taking certain decisions to cement their position and was influencing the CM's key decisions for their short-term gains.

He had said this a day after the TMC national executive meeting where the party had categorically asked its leaders not to make comments in public against any internal decision and formed disciplinary committees at different levels.

Kabir had earlier advocated for giving more responsibility to TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, reiterating that the Diamond Harbour MP was undoubtedly the number two in the party's hierarchy and those trying to undermine his influence would not succeed.