Electricity prices across Europe are set to fall below zero this weekend as the continent experiences a surge

If you’ve been a social media user over the past year, chances are you’ve seen Andrew Tate popping up on your feed – and you’ve probably seen him in the news recently too. Tate, 36, his brother Tristan and two other associates have been charged in Romania with rape, human trafficking and organised crime after they were detained in December 2022. Earlier this year, the 36-year-old influencer lost his appeal against a judge's earlier decision to extend his arrest from 24 hours to 30 days, so he remains behind bars. For now. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Before his arrest, every other video seemed to feature him on TikTok, making him both one of the most ubiquitous faces on the app and one of the most controversial. But who is Andrew 'Cobra' Tate and why did he suddenly go viral last year? Here’s everything you need to know. Who is Andrew Tate? Andrew Tate/Instagram Tate, 36, is a former professional kickboxer, entrepreneur and content creator, who founded an online course in “modern wealth creation” at his own “Hustlers University”. Speaking about his personal wealth, he previously said in an interview: "I was broke for a long time. I made my first million when I was say 27 and then I had a 100 million by the time I was 31, 32 and then I became a trillionaire quite recently." There are no trillionaires on the planet (according to Forbes, Elon Musk is worth $250 billion) so that might be wishful thinking on Tate’s behalf. However, Essential Sports estimates that his net worth to be around $30 million. He enjoyed a pretty successful kickboxing career, winning world titles in two different weight divisions. He first came to prominence outside of the sporting arena while appearing on the 2016 season of Big Brother in the UK, which ended in controversial circumstances. Tate gained notoriety at the time after he was evicted from the series after a video surfaced online appearing to show him beating a woman with a belt. Speaking at the time, Tate claimed that it was part of role-play to which the woman in the video had consented. He also said he was using a felt belt. In a statement made to his Facebook, he said: ”They cut out all the sound cause she’s LAUGHING in the video. And they cut off the end of the video where she gets the belt and hits me back while we’re both laughing. What bullsh**t. It was 2012 and we were having a laugh.” He later drew criticism following comments surrounding rape which he made following the #MeToo movement. As the Metro reported, he tweeted at the time: “Sexual harassment is disgusting and inexcusable. However, a man looking at you or whistling at you or asking your name isn’t harassment. He added: “Women have been exchanging sex for opportunity for a very long time. Some did this. Weren’t abused. […] If you put yourself in a position to be raped, you must bare some responsibility. His Twitter account was suspended in 2017, and the tweets were later removed from Twitter. But in 2022, Twitter verified the account of the infamous kickboxer, which it had already banned, as the social media company appeared to ignore its own rules. Tate initially declined to comment further than disavowing two other accounts - @iron_mentality and @of_wudan - that appeared to be associated with him contacted by The Independent. However, following the publication of an article on the news site, he said: “I don’t agree with being banned, people get banned from Twitter all the time and make new profiles. I’m not inciting violence, promoting terrorism or harassing anyone. This is censorship of free speech. I’ve never had specific tweets banned or been cautioned.” MORE: Tate thinks you're a 'weak' man if you live with a woman MORE: The most controversial Cobra Tate moments we can actually talk about Why did he suddenly go viral? There isn’t one viral moment or individual clip to pinpoint his rise to viral fame, but rather it seems like part of a larger concerted effort to get his name and face out there. However, one comment which did bring a great deal of attention was his decision to call out Jake Paul for a fight. He claims he previously offered Paul £2.5million to take him on in 2020. "I don't dislike him, I understand him but I want to make something clear, I would still kick the living f*** out of Jake Paul," he told The Fellas podcast. "I'm not some washed-up UFC fighter and I'm not smaller than him, I would beat the living s*** out of him and if he wants to fight I'll fight him any day of the f****ng week. He's very smart with his 'I'm just a YouTuber angle'.” He added: "You're a full-grown man with the best coaches in the world who has dedicated years to learning how to box. The guy's not a jack*** and the fact he puts this spin on it is very smart. "I offered him $3million at the time, I don't think it's about money for him I think it's about credibility and fame. Him fighting me is a massive risk for him, he knows that. I'd love to kick the f*** out of the guy because I love to fight, that's the difference between me and everyone else he's fought," Tate continued. "I'm not some desperate guy at the end of his career who needs the money. I would dedicate my life [to training], treat him like a professional and I would destroy him like I've destroyed all of the professionals I have ever fought." Paul was asked about the possibility of fighting Tate in a press conference recently, and he replied: "I don't know who that is." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

By Emma Farge GENEVA Robots presented at an AI forum said on Friday they expected to increase in

The number of Twitter users is “tanking” following the release of rival app Threads, according to the head of an internet services company. Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince shared a graph showing an apparent decline in Twitter’s popularity following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social network late last year, with a steep drop appearing at the start of July when tech rival Mark Zuckerberg launched his text-based app. Separate figures from data intelligence platform Similarweb showed that traffic to Twitter was down 5 per cent in the first two full days that Threads was available, compared with the previous week, while user retention has also declined. In a report on the trend, Similarweb noted that the drop in user retention is “a bad sign for app user loyalty” for Twitter. The metric only accounts for people visiting Twitter’s website and not those using the app, with other measures suggesting the number of daily active users steadily increased in the nine months following Mr Musk’s takeover. Twitter does not publish up-to-date user data and did not respond to a request from The Independent for the latest figures. The launch of Threads last Thursday saw a record number of users flock to the app in its first few days, with Mr Zuckerberg revealing that the app had reached 100 million sign ups on Monday. “That’s mostly organic demand and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet,” the Meta boss posted on Threads. “Can’t believe it’s only been five days!” Recent estimates published by Statista put the number of monthly active Twitter users at around 436 million. The arrival of Threads comes at a difficult time for Twitter, with Mr Musk recently announcing a limit to the number of tweets users can view after issues with data harvesting on the platform. Twitter has threatened to sue Threads’ parent company Meta, claiming former Twitter staff were hired to create a “copycat” platform. “Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” Mr Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro wrote in a letter to Mr Zuckerberg, as reported by Semafor. “Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.” The Independent has reached out to Mr Spiro for further information about any potential legal action. Read More Musk, Zuckerberg and the bitter battle for the future of social media Account tracking Elon Musk’s jet is now on Threads after Twitter suspended it Elon Musk says ‘Zuck is cuck’ as Threads inches closer to 100m users Instagram’s boss has said it will fix some glaring issues with Threads

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BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 7, 2023--