Elon Musk denies sexual misconduct claims

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has denied a claim of sexual misconduct by a flight attendant contracted by Space X who worked on his private jet in 2016.

A report by Business Insider said SpaceX paid the woman $2,50,000 in severance in 2018 in exchange for her agreeing not to file a lawsuit over her claim.

The report was based on an account by the flight attendant's friend, who said the flight attendant told her about the incident shortly after it happened. 

The report also said the flight attendant was required to sign a non-disclosure agreement that prohibits her from discussing the payment or anything else about Musk and SpaceX.

Musk, who is in the process of buying Twitter, used the platform to respond to the allegation.

And, for the record, those wild accusations are utterly untrue, he wrote in response to one user who tweeted in support of him.

Billionaire Elon Musk, currently embroiled in a legal tangle over the acquisition of social media platform Twitter, said that he is going to vote Republican in the US.

Musk has been a vocal critic of the Biden administration and Democrats for their proposals to tax billionaires and give more tax incentives to union-made electric vehicles, Reuters reported. 

Tesla was removed from the closely-watched sustainable index ESG recently, a move which Musk criticised.

Recently, the US government's road safety agency had dispatched a team to investigate the possibility that a Tesla involved in a California crash that killed three people was operating on a partially automated driving system. 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Wednesday confirmed that it had sent a special crash investigation team to probe the May 12 crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach.

The investigation is part of a larger inquiry by the agency into crashes involving advanced driver assistance systems such as Tesla's Autopilot. 

Since 2016, the agency has sent teams to 34 crashes in which the systems were either in use or suspected of operating.

Of the 34, 28 involved Teslas, according to a NHTSA document released Wednesday.

Fifteen people died in the crashes that NHTSA is investigating, and at least 15 more were hurt. Of the deaths, 14 occurred in crashes involving Teslas, the documents say.