What happened
Space exploration and artificial intelligence company SpaceX has raised $75 billion (£56 billion) ahead of its long-awaited stock market debut, a move expected to give it an initial valuation of almost $1.8 trillion (£1.3 trillion).

The company sold shares at $135 each, matching forecasts and setting the stage for what could become the largest public listing in history. Trading is due to begin on the Nasdaq exchange today.

If investors are willing to buy shares at or above the offering price, SpaceX will immediately rank among the world’s most valuable listed companies.

Who said what
Investor enthusiasm appears strong, with several analysts predicting that the shares could climb higher once trading begins. Brokerage firm Oppenheimer has set a target price of $190 a share. Yet “Elon Musk’s history of overpromising” has some investors increasingly worried that SpaceX “may burn them”, said Ryan Mac and Mike Isaac in The New York Times.

What next?
Despite becoming a publicly traded company, chief executive Elon Musk will retain overwhelming control through a special share structure that gives him more than 84% of voting power. If the float goes to plan it will make Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

What happened
Global warming is putting millions of homes at risk of subsidence-related shrink-swell, a new analysis has found. Hotter, drier summers can shrink the ground under buildings and drag down foundations, causing cracks and sloping floors, and substantially reducing a property’s value. The most vulnerable areas include highly populated parts of north London, as well as Essex, Kent and large swathes of the east coast, according to scientists at the British Geological Survey (BGS).

Who said what
By combining potential volume change with projected rainfall and temperatures, we have been able to identify the places “most likely to become susceptible to shrink-swell subsidence”, said BGS scientist Anna Harrison. “Most are in the London area and that’s also where you’re going to see bigger changes in rainfall and temperature. It’s a double whammy.”

Last spring was the UK’s warmest on record and “the driest in more than 50 years”, said The Guardian. In just the first six months of last year there were £153 million worth of subsidence-related insurance claims.

What next?
The number of properties likely to be affected in London will exceed 26% by 2070.

For the people of Gaza, “fear is no longer linked only to what falls from the sky”, but also to “what crawls from below”, according to Prospect.

Rats and other rodents have “taken over everything in a frenzy” and, with summer approaching, their numbers are expected to soar even higher.

A “plague” of rodents is “terrorising” the area, said the Financial Times, as rats and weasels “chew their way into tents, biting children and contaminating food”. A Unicef spokesperson who visited Gaza this month said rodents were becoming “a huge, huge problem because of accumulated rubble everywhere”.

The threat they pose is more than psychological. Rats transmit diseases through urine and waste, causing fever and other serious issues. Diabetic patients are particularly vulnerable to rodent bites as they may not feel it happening and serious complications can occur.

More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, and rats began “eating human bodies under the rubble”, Samah al-Dabla, who was displaced from Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, told Al Jazeera.

Rats are now appearing in the tents where many Gazans live. Al-Dabla has tried to buy rat poison, but the prices are too high and she already struggles to afford enough food for her family. And any food that she does manage to obtain tends only to attract more rats.

Cogat, the Israeli Ministry of Defense body that monitors aid access to Gaza, said “nearly 170 tons of pesticides and thousands of traps for rats, mosquitoes and other pests have been brought into the Gaza Strip in recent weeks”.