
Elon Musk becomes first person to be worth more than $300 billion
CBSN
Elon Musk's net worth has surpassed $300 billion, making him the first person on the planet to reach that milestone. It also means the Tesla chief executive is worth tens of billions more than the second-richest person on earth, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.
Musk was worth $302 billion as of Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That's an increase of almost $10 billion from the previous day, thanks to a jump in Tesla shares on Thursday.
To give Musk's wealth some perspective, consider that it is greater than the annual GDP of nations such as Finland, Chile and Vietnam — and exceeds the market value of Netflix and PayPal, a company that he co-founded. The surge in Musk's assets comes as lawmakers are considering a billionaires tax that would take a bite out of the wealth of the nation's roughly 700 billionaires.

In the past year, over 135 million passengers traveled to the U.S. from other countries. To infectious disease experts, that represents 135 million chances for an outbreak to begin. To identify and stop the next potential pandemic, government disease detectives have been discreetly searching for viral pathogens in wastewater from airplanes. Experts are worried that these efforts may not be enough.