Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday in a filing that he will be the chief executive officer of Twitter, the social media company he recently acquired for $44 billion.

The move comes after Musk, who also runs Tesla and SpaceX, fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and other top company officials last week.

Musk previously changed his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit” in a sign alluding to this move.

Last week, Musk’s takeover of the social media company for $44 billion concluded a months-long saga. 

Since then, Musk has moved quickly to begin making changes at the company, which he had ridiculed for months for being slow to introduce product changes or take down spam accounts.

Musk’s teams began meeting with some employees to investigate Twitter’s software code and understand how aspects of the platform worked, according to two sources familiar with the matter. 

Some staff who spoke with Reuters said they had received little communication from Musk or other leaders and were using news reports to piece together what was happening at the company.

A maker of coffee-scented lip balms brewed up a new lawsuit against Starbucks for allegedly stealing its idea after the company’s first complaint against the java giant was dismissed by a California judge.

Balmuccino, a California-based company with ties to Dr. Oz, took the fight to Seattle-based Starbucks’ doorstep by filing the lawsuit in a Western Washington District Court last week.

According to the lawsuit, Oz — the Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania — introduced his sister-in-law, the actress Samantha Lemole, to then-CEO Howard Schultz for a pitch meeting in New York in 2017.

Schultz allegedly connected Lemole with Starbucks’ head of product development and senior vice president Mesh Gelman, but a deal was never made.

However, in 2019 Starbucks launched s’mores Frappuccinos lip glosses in Chocolicious Bliss, Marshmallow Glow, Campfire Spark and Graham Glam flavors, according to the lawsuit. 

“Starbucks misappropriated trade secrets to create their competing product,” said Eduardo Martorell, the legal representative of Balmuccino. “They launched a nationwide marketing campaign to sell the product.”  

Balmuccino representatives had shared several details with the Starbucks team, including the creation process and names of its material suppliers and manufacturers in the 2017 meeting, the lawsuit claims.

Gelman left the company soon after that meeting and the following year Balmuccino learned through its suppliers that Starbucks had reached out to them regarding coffee-flavored lip balms, the suit said. The product’s details and specifications were apparently similar to the ones Balmuccino was hoping to launch. 

In 2019, Balmuccino filed its initial lawsuit in Los Angeles, where the company has its headquarters, but the court threw out the case.

“The Superior Court of California for the County of Los Angeles ruled that there was a lack of jurisdiction over Starbucks in California,” Martorell said in a statement.

An appeal also proved fruitless. Balmuccino’s latest filing in Washington state seeks $75,000 in damages.  

Starbucks did not respond to a request for comment. 

The Federal Reserve should maintain its hawkish stance at its meeting this week despite mounting calls for a pivot toward softer economic policy, ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers asserted Monday.

The Fed will announce its latest policy move at the conclusion of a two-day summit Wednesday. Summers, a frequent critic of the Fed’s response to inflation, argued the central bank should reaffirm that policy tightening will continue until prices meaningfully recede.  

“I do not think that the dovish pivot in some of the rhetoric coming out of the Fed has yet been warranted by the economic statistics that I have seen,” Summers told Bloomberg on Monday.

“I hope the Fed will be clear that it is staying the course on doing what’s necessary until we see very clear signs of inflation coming down, but we’ll have to see how they assess things,” Summers added.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has remained adamant for months that policymakers were committed to a tightened policy environment until inflation improves. However, mounting fears of a recession have prompted increased calls among investors for the Fed to dial down its interest rate hikes.

Earlier this month, San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said the central bankers should seek to avoid an “unforced downturn” in the economy as a result of hiking rates too sharply.

“We have to make sure we are doing everything in our power not to over-tighten, and we can’t pull up too fast, and say we are done,” Daly said, according to Reuters.

Investors are pricing in an 88% probability that the Fed will hike by three-quarters of a percentage point and a 12% probability of a smaller half-point hike, according to data from CME Group. A week ago, the market saw a nearly 96% probability of a three-quarter-point hike.

Summers has been one of the most outspoken voices calling on the Fed to tackle inflation, even if tightened policy results in significant job losses.

The former Clinton administration official said this week’s Fed gathering was a “big meeting” with major implications for the economic outlook.

“I don’t think anybody’s going to be very surprised when they do 75 basis points and that certainly would be what I would expect. I think people are going to be watching very carefully for the signals coming out of this meeting with respect to the next meeting and beyond,” Summers added.

The Fed has hiked by three-quarters of a percentage point for three consecutive meetings.

Elon Musk’s plans to revamp Twitter’s verification system — and potentially charge $20 a month for coveted “blue checks” — have verified users chirping about whether the fee would be worth it. 

Journalists — some of whom feel like they are part of what makes the social media site valuable — bristled at the proposed changes. 

“I’m not paying Twitter more than I’m paying Netflix every month,” CNBC anchor David Faber said Monday, referencing the streaming giant that sells subscriptions for as low as $6.99 per month. “We have millions of followers. Why should we pay?”

Jim Cramer, Faber’s co-host on “Squawk on the Street,” crowed: “I’m not paying them anything. They should pay me.”

Still, a banker familiar with Twitter’s thinking said charging for verification is the easiest way for the company to quickly make a profit — and argued that for most users who have spent years building their Twitter profile and online brand, shelling out $19.99 a month is a fait accompli.

“There is no alternative platform for global social discourse,” the banker told The Post. “Are you really going to give it up and start from scratch by not paying $20 a month? You have to go through with it.”

Another insider who has worked with Twitter added that part of the appeal of blue checks is that tweets from verified users are boosted by the site’s algorithm. 

One crafty blue-check Twitter user told The Post he already has a contingency plan if his blue check mark is removed: Take a screenshot of his current verification status and make it his cover photo or pinned tweet. 

In a test of Twitter users’ attitudes toward the potential fee, Jason Calacanis, a venture capitalist who’s advising Musk, conducted a Twitter poll late Sunday asking if users would be willing to pay for Twitter verification and a blue check mark. More than 81% of respondents said they wouldn’t pay for the perk. 

In response to Calacanis’ poll, Musk wrote: “Interesting.” 

Musk and Calacanis did not respond to requests for comment. It’s unclear whether the company will reconsider the reported plan. 

Workers at China’s largest iPhone factory scaled fences after being locked inside the plant amid the country’s stringent measures to curb the spread of COVID.

Stunning video from the Communist nation showed workers at the Foxconn plant in the central city of Zhengzhou climbing over the perimeter fence Sunday and trekking back to their homes.

“There were so many people on the road, as if we were escaping from a famine,” said a Foxconn worker in his 30s surnamed Yuan, who said he scaled fences in order to leave the plant and return to his central China hometown of Hebi.

Workers at the factory, which employs 200,000, have been locked inside since Oct. 14 after an alleged COVID outbreak.

Since the lockdown began, conditions inside the plant have worsened, according to the workers. Trash had begun piling up in the hallways, and last week, the plant banned all dine-in catering. Workers had to eat meals in their dormitories, some crowded with as many as 11 people.

All the while, employees were expected to continue working full days, even ramping up production with the release of Apple’s new iPhone 14.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Foxconn is Apple’s biggest iPhone maker, producing 70% of iPhone shipments globally, which in turn makes up 45% of the Taiwanese firm’s revenue, analysts at Taipei-based Fubon Research said this month.

A person with direct knowledge of the matter said iPhone production at the plant could drop as much as 30% in November, and that Foxconn is working to boost production at a factory in Shenzhen, China, to make up for the shortfall.

“Foxconn really messed up, I don’t think a lot of people would want to go back. I know I wouldn’t,” Dong Wanwan, a 20-year-old worker who escaped the plant on Sunday, told Bloomberg.

Foxconn said Sunday it will not stop workers from leaving if they choose to, and that it will “resume dine-in meals to improve the convenience and satisfaction of employees’ lives,” with the cooperation of the Chinese government.

The Chinese government began removing workers from assembly lines without warning if they were suspected of having the virus, creating widespread fear and uncertainty among employees.

“People would be called away in the middle of work, and if they don’t show up the next day, that would mean they had been taken away,” one worker told Reuters.

The lockdown is part of China’s controversial zero-COVID policy that has plagued the country’s economic productivity since 2020.

Zhengzhou reported 167 locally transmitted infections last week, resulting in a citywide lockdown of over 10 million people.

With Post wires