As of 2020, there were reportedly 2,095 billionaires on earth with an estimated total net worth of $trillion. Today we will be looking at a fraction of those billionaires. Let’s dive straight into a list of the world’s top 10 billionaires.

Who Are Richest People in the World?

1. Elon Musk

Tesla CEO and co-founder Elon Musk ,is currently the world’s richest man with a net worth of $203 billion surpassing the former world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos. In 2018, Musk was ranked 25th on Forbes list of The World’s Most Powerful People. In 2019, he was ranked joint-first on Forbes list of the Most Innovative leaders of 2019. Musk is also the founder of rocket company SpaceX.

2. Jeff Bezos

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the second richest man in the world. This 57-year-old American entrepreneur and investor has a net worth of $183 million. Bezos also founded aerospace manufacturer Blue Origin in 2000 and purchased The Washington Post newspaper in 2013. He manages other investments through his Bezos Expeditions venture capital firm.

3. Bill Gates

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is the third richest person in the world and the largest land owner in the United States with a net worth of $134 billion. Gates, who is also a philanthropist, is also one of the only five people in the world with over $100 billion. Gates co-chairs Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has spent billions to help fight polio and malaria.

4. Bernard Arnault

The French luxury tycoon’s wealth shot up at an exponential rate during the initial pandemic but flatlined as demand for luxury goods reduced. The French billionaire and art collector has a net worth of $117 billion. His business empire consists of more than 70 brands including Louis Vuitton, Sephora and Moët.

5. Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has a net worth of $101 billion. Mark first developed Facebook alongside fellow students while attending Havard University in 2004. As Facebook’s users began to grow, Mark dropped out of Havard to focus on growing his business. He is the youngest centibillionaire which is people whose wealth exceeds $100 billion.

6. Warren Buffett

Warren Buffet, who is the 6th richest man in the world, is the only one in our list of billionaires whose wealth shrunk. His net worth dropped by $4.09 billion, leaving him with a net worth of $85.2 billion. The economic drop was affected by the pandemic that affected the four major US airlines that he had invested in.

7. Larry Page

Google co-founder Larry Page has a net worth of $81.4 billion, making him one of the wealthiest people in the world. The American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur is controlling shareholder and co-founder of Alphabet Inc, which is Google’s parent company.

8. Larry Ellison

Co-founder of software giant Oracle has a net worth of $79.7 billion. He is also a stakeholder in Tesla and owns a third of California-based company, Redwood City.

9. Steve Ballmer

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has a net worth of $79.1 billion. He was hired by Bill Gates as an employee at Microsoft in 1980 and eventually became the company’s president in 1998. He then replaced Gates as CEO in 2000. Ballmer also owns Los Angeles basketball team, Clippers, which he bought in 2014 for $2 billion.

10. Serger Brin

Our last man in the list of the ten richest people in the world is Alphabet co-founder Serger Brin. Brin stepped down as president of the Google parent company but is a board member and controller shareholder.

Conclusion

For those with the ambition of one day joining the list of the wealthiest people in the world, hope you were taking notes. You can either become a technological innovator or become a retail king. You can also simply inherit a large sum. No matter the route you take, work hard, work smart and make wise investments.

Weed is known for its various healing aspects, that’s why it’s not surprising for most cannabis affluents to ask the question, does weed kill coronavirus? 

There are no recorded studies about research tests conducted between cannabinoids and the coronavirus. From the known traits of cannabis, we know that weed may have medical properties that might harm or help someone battling or trying to prevent the virus. However, smoking cannabis is more likely to increase your risk of contracting Covid-19 only because smoking makes your lungs more vulnerable to infection.

Dr. Donald Tashkin is a UCLA professor with extensive experience in studying the effects of smoking on the lungs. Dr. Tashkin formerly discovered that smoking weed may temporarily increase the symptoms of bronchitis, including coughing, inflammation in the lungs, and phlegm production. Although the effects were much less compared to those found for tobacco, Tashkin insists that smoking anything increases risk.

Doctors generally recommend avoiding any kind of smoking during this pandemic outbreak. And because Covid-19 deaths are caused by respiratory cases, the best option would be to avoid cannabis smoking as well.

But if you are a patient who needs to use cannabis for various treatments, don’t panic. You can find other ways to consume the drug, be it sublingually through tinctures or by consuming edibles.

How Can Weed Assist with Coronavirus?

Cannabis is known to numb inflammation and help with pain; on the other hand, it can also dampen the immune system’s response to a new infection. The immunosuppressive qualities of weed come from the fact that it reduces inflammation. This suppressive property is very useful in fighting viruses that use inflammation to replicate. However, it is not clear from the research available whether these immune effects would be helpful or harmful for coronavirus.

Cannabis has a known ability to reduce certain comorbidities of the coronavirus. Coronavirus can be complicated by conditions such as diabetes and obesity, and cannabis is known to reduce incidents of both. Weed also helps patients reduce the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, which can complicate coronavirus. Cannabis may help curb the effects of other illnesses and conditions that may put you at greater risk of contracting the virus, but that does not necessarily mean that smoking weed will prevent or kill the virus.

Although there may be no indication of the drug’s ability to cure coronavirus, cannabis has been proven to have disease-prevention qualities that show potential in helping rather than harming the advancement of coronavirus; this is because of the drug’s ability to dampen inflammation. According to researchers, a significant number of severe cases of the late stages of Covid-19 is an overactive immune response called a cytokine storm. These storms cause such extensive inflammations damaging the host’s own body, which leads to death.

What Can be Done?

Scientists are looking at a class of drugs called IL-6 cytokine inhibitors. The drugs which are currently on the market have severe side effects. On the other hand, both CBD and THC have demonstrated abilities to inhibit IL-6, indicating that they could be able to help bring down cytokine storms.

However, researchers still caution that it may be too early to assume cannabis as a treatment.

“We know that cannabis has profound anti-inflammatory action, but we don’t fully understand how to harness that, especially when it comes to treating this specific illness,” says cannabis researcher Dr. Sue Sisley.

Final Words

Further research on the anti-inflammatory effects of weed is necessary for both the cannabis flower and root; both of which have similarly been used to decrease inflammatory effects. Engage us on the comment section on what your thoughts are when it comes to corona and weed.

Disclaimer: This article contains graphic content. Read at your discretion. 

The first woman on federal death row in nearly 70 years, Lisa Montgomery, was executed by lethal injection. She was pronounced dead on Wednesday at 1.31 am EST. 

Lisa was executed after an 11th-hour order from the Supreme Court, which cleared all legal obstacles that would hinder her execution. The execution was done at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. 

Her execution could be the final federal execution under outgoing President Donald Trump. Lisa Montgomery was the 11th federal death row inmate to be executed under Trump’s administration.

Her execution was initially scheduled for 6 pm on Tuesday but as delayed after her lawyers appealed the execution. They argued Montgomery was ineligible for the death penalty given her severe mental illness which would have been proved through a competency hearing. The Supreme Court, however, threw this case out.

“The government stopped at nothing in its zeal to kill this damaged and delusional woman. Lisa Montgomery’s execution was far from justice,” said Kelley Henry, Montgomery’s lawyer, in a statement.

Montgomery was sentenced to death in 2008 for the 2004 murder of a pregnant woman, cutting the foetus out and kidnapping it.

Montgomery introduced herself to her victim via an online chat room for rat terrier owners. Chatting with Stinnett under a false name, she pretended that she too was pregnant. They began exchanging e-mails about their pregnancies.

Montgomery arrived at Stinnett’s home in Missouri under the guise of purchasing a rat terrier puppy. She then strangled her 8-months pregnant victim from behind before using a knife to cut her baby out of the womb.

She then took off with the infant leaving Stinnett for dead. Stinnett’s mother, Becky Harper, found her daughter lying in a pool of blood with her womb slashed open and called 911.

Montgomery was arrested in her home on December 17, 2004, in her Kansas home.

Just a couple of hours outside Bangkok, a cafe has embraced cannabis-based wellness. Ban Lao Reung (Storytelling House) which is in Pranchinburi city, has updated its menu with cannabis dishes.

Apart from cannabis dishes, the restaurant housed in a 71-year-old residence will also provide weed-infused drinks and pot pizza. The restaurant is next to Asia’s first medical marijuana clinic, Chaophraya Abhaibhubejhr Hospital, from which it gets its marijuana.

Medical marijuana was legalized in February 2019. The recent legalization allows only for government-approved facilities to sell marijuana products. The new Marijuana-cooking cafe can, therefore only get cannabis products from the hospital near it.

The restaurant currently which only offers good mood pizza, deep-fried weed leaves served with spicy mango salad and sparkling passion fruit mixed with weed juice plans on launching more products in the future. 

In case you are planning on visiting the restaurant, worry not, you will not need a designated driver after consuming the dishes. Unless you consume the food in great quantities, the level of THC will only leave you smiling and feeling good.

Don’t forget to add this restaurant to your travel wishlist.

Elon Musk has to be the one billionaire who doesn’t care about painting or portraying perfection. This is what sets apart South African entrepreneur and self-proclaimed meme-lord from the other billionaires earning him the large following he has. Below are five controversies of the Tesla, SpaceX, and PayPal co-founder.

1. Making Tesla Private then Backtracking

In a couple of tweets, Musk teased buying out Tesla’s free-float stock at a price of $420, adding he already secured the funding for the same. At a price tag well over $10 billion, this essentially meant one of the biggest ever corporate buyouts to render Tesla a private company. The tweets which sparked a federal investigation angered Tesla board members and made ‘420’ into a cipher for weed. In an interview, he revealed that he tweeted while under the influence of marijuana.

2. Suggesting a Rating Site for Journalists

After Tesla was portrayed in a negative light due to production issues with the Tesla’s Model 3 sedan, Musk suggested the creation of a journalist rating website. Close to 700,000 people on Twitter supported him in vetting journalists’ credibility. He felt that the media was painting his company negatively to maximize clicks and earn advertising dollars. “The hypocrisy of big media companies who lay claim to the truth, but publish only enough to sugarcoat the lie, is why the public no longer respects them,” shared a vexed Musk.

3. Smoking Weed While on Joe Rogan Experience Podcast

Musk got in trouble for smoking pot on camera while on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast. While on the show that streamed live in September 2018, Musk also drank whiskey. In his defense, Musk smoked marijuana after being assured it was legal in California. As a result, NASA reviewed workplace safety at Musk’s SpaceX, which was developing its spacecraft.

4. Tweeting that Tesla’s Stock was Too High

Everyone was shocked when Musk admitted in a tweet that Tesla’s stock price was overvalued. Would you do that? His tweet resulted in Tesla’s price, crashing by 9% ($13 billion). The CEO tweeted, “Tesla stock price is too high imo.”

5. Thai Cave Rescue

In 2018, the tech billionaire offered to provide a submarine to help efforts of rescuing a children’s soccer team in northern Thailand stranded inside a flooded cave. After British cave diver Vernon Unsworth questioned the submarine’s utility, which was ultimately unused, Musk dubbed him a “child rapist.” Musk later apologized for unfounded claims. He apologized again after Unsworth’s lawyers threatened to sue him.