World
China accused of using overseas bases to target dissidents
China has reportedly established dozens of “overseas police stations” in nations around the world that activists fear could be used to track and harass dissidents as part of Beijing’s crackdown on corruption.
Information about the outposts underscored concerns about the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s influence over its citizens abroad, sometimes in ways deemed illegal by other countries, as well as the undermining of democratic institutions and the the theft of economic and political secrets by bodies affiliated with the one-party state.
Spanish-based non-government group Safeguard Defenders published a report last month, called “110 Overseas. Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild,” that focused on the foreign stations.
Laura Harth, a campaign director with the group, told The Associated Press that China has set up at least 54 overseas police service stations.
“One of the aims of these campaigns, obviously, as it is to crack down on dissent, is to silence people,” Harth said. “So people are afraid. People that are being targeted, that have family members back in China, are afraid to speak out.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Thursday that Beijing wasn’t doing anything wrong. “Chinese public security authorities strictly observe the international law and fully respect the judicial sovereignty of other countries,” Mao said.
The Dutch government said this week it was looking into whether two such police stations — one a virtual office in Amsterdam and the other at a physical address in Rotterdam — were established in the Netherlands.
“We are investigating the activities of these so-called police centers. Once there is more clarity on the matter, we will decide on appropriate action,” the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement sent to the AP. “We have not been informed about these centers via diplomatic channels.”
Another Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, described the foreign outposts identified by Safeguard Defenders as service stations for Chinese people who are abroad and in need of help with, for instance, renewing their driver’s licenses.
Wang added that China also has cracked down on what he called transnational crimes but said the operation was conducted in line with international law.
In its report, Safeguard Defenders reproduced Chinese media accounts about people suspected of alleged crimes in China being interrogated by video link from some of the locations in other countries that Beijing allegedly did not declare to other governments.
In one instance, according to the group, a Chinese man accused of environmental crimes was persuaded in 2020 to return from Madrid to Qingtian, in Zhejiang province, where he turned himself in to authorities.
Read: China's Xi urges military expansion as party congress gets underway
Visits by The Associated Press to some of the locations identified by Safeguard Defenders in Rome, Madrid and Barcelona found, respectively, a massage parlor, the Spanish headquarters of an association of citizens from Qingtian and a firm providing legal translation services. There was no indication of police stations or other activity directly related to the Chinese government.
A worker at the Barcelona translation company confirmed to the AP that a Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station operated on the premises for a few weeks this year in a test-drive capacity.
The employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists, the press, said the police service center offered document renewal services to Fuzhou citizens living in the Barcelona region who could not return to China due to pandemic travel restrictions and the high cost of flights.
According to Safeguard Defenders, China claims 230,000 suspects of fraud were “persuaded to return” to China from April 2021 to July 2022.
“These operations eschew official bilateral police and judicial cooperation and violate the international rule of law, and may violate the territorial integrity of third countries involved in setting up a parallel policing mechanism using illegal methods,” its report said.
The European Union’s executive arm said Thursday it was up to member countries to investigate such allegations since it would be a matter of national sovereignty.
A Hungarian opposition lawmaker claimed this month to have discovered two sites in Budapest where Chinese overseas police stations operated without the knowledge of the country’s Interior Ministry.
The lawmaker, Marton Tompos, said one of the two locations in Hungary’s capital had a sign that said Qingtian Overseas Police Station. Tompos said he was unable to contact anyone affiliated with the sites and that when he visited again days later, the sign had been removed.
The Hungarian Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to AP questions on the matter.
Three informal Chinese police stations are operating in Portugal, Safeguard Defenders reported. Portuguese authorities did not immediately reply to AP questions about the claim.
Read: China's Xi expected to get third five-year term
A Portuguese TV report said one of the venues, located in an industrial complex in northern Portugal, appeared to be a car shop operated by a Chinese man. The man denied any connection with the Chinese government, though broadcaster S.I.C. Noticias showed him in a video promoting the Beijing Winter Olympics and said he heads a local association that helps Chinese immigrants.
In Tanzania, both police and the Chinese Embassy have denied the presence of a Chinese-run police station in the country’s commercial hub and former capital, Dar es Salaam, after the BBC reported on it last week.
“You are fabricating stories,” the embassy tweeted, calling the report an example of disinformation aimed at dividing China-Africa relations. A police spokesman sent the AP a copy of China’s denial in response to questions Thursday.
In Lesotho, a kingdom in southern Africa, national police Senior Superintendent Mpiti Mopeli also denied the existence of any Chinese law enforcement activities. He said such operations would be illegal as any form of policing in Lesotho is conducted by local authorities.
Over his decade in power, Chinese President Xi Jinping has pushed a relentless anti-corruption drive that has seen tens of millions of Communist Party cadres investigated and expanded overseas via a pair of campaigns known as Sky Net and Fox Hunt. Both are tasked with locating allegedly corrupt officials who have fled abroad and convincing them to return to China with their stolen state assets.
Since China began opening up in the 1980s, corruption has been a major problem among those enjoying access to state funds and resources with few safeguards in place, and cash was often squirreled away abroad, particularly in the U.S. and other countries without extradition treaties with China.
Russia threatens West's satellites
Ukrainian forces attacked Russia’s hold on the southern city of Kherson on Thursday while fighting also intensified in the country’s east. The battles came amid reports that Moscow-appointed authorities in Kherson have fled the city, joining tens of thousands of residents who have been evacuated to other Russia-held areas.
Ukrainian forces were surrounding Kherson from the west and attacking Russia’s foothold on the west bank of the Dnieper River, which divides the region and the country.
Amid the battles, Russia issued a warning that the United States could be drawn into the conflict, adding it could target Western commercial satellites used for military purposes in support of Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the United States of pursuing “thoughtless and mad” escalation. She argued that Washington should take a more responsible approach shown during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis ‒ when the Cold War superpowers stepped back from the brink of nuclear confrontation.
Ukraine has pushed ahead with an offensive to reclaim the Kherson region and its capital of the same name, which Russian forces captured during the first days of a war now in its ninth month.
More than 70,000 residents from the Kherson city area have evacuated in recent days, the region’s Kremlin-installed governor, Vladimir Saldo, said Thursday.
Members of the Russia-backed regional administration were included in the evacuation, the deputy governor, Kirill Stremousov said. Monuments to Russian heroes were moved, along with the remains of Grigory Potemkin, the Russian general who founded Kherson in the 18th century, that were kept at the city’s St. Catherine’s Church.
In eastern Ukraine, Russian forces continued to bombard the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, making slow gains toward the center.
Amid the heavy combat on two fronts, Russian officials stepped up warns that the West could become part of the conflict.
“The more the U.S. is drawn into supporting the Kyiv regime on the battlefield, the more they risk provoking a direct military confrontation between the biggest nuclear powers fraught with catastrophic consequences,” said Zakharova, the Russian Foreign ministry spokeswoman.
“Washington now keeps upping the ante, apparently believing that it’s capable of controlling the escalation,” she said.
Read: Russia conducts first nuclear drill since start of Ukraine war
The deputy head of Russia’s delegation at a U.N. arms control panel, Konstantin Vorontsov, described the use of U.S. and other Western commercial satellites for military purposes during the fighting in Ukraine as “extremely dangerous.”
“The quasi-civilian infrastructure could be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike,” Vorontsov warned.
As they have all month, Russian forces carried out attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which have caused increasing worry ahead of winter.
A Russian drone attack early Thursday hit an energy facility near the capital of Kyiv, causing a fire, said Kyiv regional Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba. He said the latest attacks inflicted “very serious damage.”
“The Russians are using drones and missiles to destroy Ukraine’s energy system ahead of the winter and terrorize civilians,” Kuleba said in televised remarks.
Kuleba announced new rolling blackouts and urged consumers to save power. He said authorities were still pondering over specifics of the blackouts needed to restore the damaged power facilities.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said rolling blackouts would also be introduced in the neighboring Chernihiv, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regioms.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said earlier that Russian attacks have already destroyed 30% of the country’s energy infrastructure.
In a likely response to Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, a power plant was attacked just outside Sevastopol, a port in the Russian-annexed region of Crimea. The plant suffered minor damage in a drone attack, according to city leader Mikhail Razvozhayev. He said electricity supplies were uninterrupted.
Crimea, a region slightly larger than Sicily, was annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014. It has faced drone attacks and explosions amid the fighting in Ukraine. In a major setback for Russia, a powerful truck bomb blew up a section of a strategic bridge linking Crimea to Russia’s mainland on Oct. 8.
A senior Ukrainian military officer accused Russia of planning to stage explosions at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and blame them on Ukraine in a false flag attack.
Read: Russian authorities advise Kherson residents to leave Ukraine region
Gen. Oleksii Gromov, the chief of the main operational department of the Ukrainian military’s general staff, pointed to Moscow’s repeated unfounded allegations that Ukraine was plotting to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb as a possible signal that Moscow was planning explosions at the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station.
Russia took control of the Zaporizhzhia plant in the opening days of the invasion. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of attacking the plant, whose reactors were shut down following continuous shelling.
Gromov also charged Thursday that Russian forces may have staged explosions at residential buildings in the city of Kherson before retreating from the city “to inflict a critical damage to the infrastructure of the areas being reclaimed by Ukraine.”
The war in Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis is likely to cause global demand for fossil fuels to peak or flatten out, according to a report released Thursday by the Paris-based International Energy Agency, largely due to the fall in Russian exports.
“Today’s energy crisis is delivering a shock of unprecedented breadth and complexity,” the IEA said, releasing its annual report, the World Energy Outlook.
The report said this was forcing the world’s more advanced economies to accelerate structural changes toward renewable energy sources.
Prince Harry's memoir ‘Spare’ to narrate journey from ‘trauma to healing’
Prince Harry’s memoir, an object of obsessive anticipation worldwide since first announced last year, is coming out Jan. 10.
The book will be called “Spare” and is being billed by Penguin Random House, as an account told with “raw, unflinching honesty” and filled with ”insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.”
In a statement released Thursday, Penguin Random House summoned memories of the stunning death in 1997 of Prince Harry’s mother, Diana, and of Harry and his brother, William, “walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow — and horror.”
“As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling — and how their lives would play out from that point on,” the statement reads in part.
“For Harry, this is his story at last.”
The memoir’s title is an apparent reference to Prince Harry’s being a royal “spare,” not the first in line to succession. William, Prince of Wales, is next in line.
The 416-page book will come out in 16 languages, from Dutch to Portuguese, and also will be released in an audio edition read by Prince Harry. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Harry, the Duke of Sussex, will be using proceeds from “Spare” to donate to British charities. He has already given $1.5 million to Sentebale, an organization he co-founded with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho to help children and young people in Lesotho and Botswana affected by HIV/AIDS.
Penguin Random House identifies Prince Harry as “a husband, father, humanitarian, military veteran, mental wellness advocate, and environmentalist.”
Read: Meghan addresses youth summit on UK visit with Prince Harry
Royals watchers and the public at large have speculated endlessly since the book was first announced in July 2021, billed as “intimate and heartfelt” and tentatively scheduled for this year.
The Duke of Sussex had already revealed a news-making willingness to discuss his private life when he and his American-born wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, were interviewed for a March 2021 broadcast by their neighbor in Santa Barbara, California, Oprah Winfrey. The couple spoke of Meghan’s deep unhappiness with her new life in England, the alleged racism within the royal family and Harry’s fear that his wife’s life might be endangered had they remained in his native country.
In 1992, Diana worked with author Andrew Morton on her explosive memoir “Diana: Her True Story,” in which she described at length her unhappy marriage to the future King Charles, Harry’s father.
Harry and Meghan stepped back from their royal duties in 2020 and moved to the U.S. Harry told Winfrey that his family cut him off financially and that he helped pay for his security with money left to him by his mother. They have launched numerous initiatives, including a Netflix production deal and the “impact-driven non-profit” Archewell Foundation.
The book’s delay led to rumors that Harry was hesitating to say too much about his family, or was perhaps revising the narrative after his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, died in September. He has spoken of being estranged from his brother, William, although the siblings and their wives appeared in public together during the mourning period following the Queen’s death.
“Penguin Random House is honored to be publishing Prince Harry’s candid and emotionally powerful story for readers everywhere,” the global CEO of Penguin Random House, Markus Dohle, said in a statement. “He shares a remarkably moving personal journey from trauma to healing, one that speaks to the power of love and will inspire and encourage millions of people around the world.”
Did the Pope actually say ‘even nuns watch porn’?
Online pornography viewing poses risks to priests and nuns, according to Pope Francis, who claims that it “weakens the priestly heart.”
At a Vatican meeting, the 86-year-old Pope was asked how social media and digital technology should be used, BBC reports.
He claimed that pornography was “a vice that so many people have — even priests and nuns.”
Read more: Pope blasts Russia's 'infantile' war, EU-Libya deal in Malta
“The devil enters from there,” BBC quoted Pope Francis as saying.
He advised priests and seminaries to use social media and other aspects of the digital world, but to not spend too much time there.
He declared: “The pure heart, the one that Jesus receives every day, cannot receive this pornographic information.”
Read more: Pope to UN forum: Hunger is 'crime' violating basic rights
“Delete this from your phone, so you will not have temptation in hand,” he urged the group.
According to church doctrine, pornography violates chastity.
Report: Global crises can speed up move to clean energy
Spiraling energy costs caused by various economic factors and the Ukraine war could be a turning point toward cleaner energy, the International Energy Agency said in a report Thursday. It found the global demand for fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and natural gas, is set to peak or plateau in the next few decades.
The report looked at scenarios based on current policies and said that coal use will fall back within the next few years, natural gas demand will reach a plateau by the end of the decade and rising sales of electric vehicles mean that the need for oil will level off in the mid-2030s before ebbing slightly by mid-century. Total emissions are currently going up each year, but slowly.
“Energy markets and policies have changed as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not just for the time being, but for decades to come,” said the IEA’s executive director Fatih Birol. A surge in demand following COVID-19 pandemic restrictions lifting and bottlenecks in supply chains have also contributed to soaring energy prices.
“The energy world is shifting dramatically before our eyes. Government responses around the world promise to make this a historic and definitive turning point toward a cleaner, more affordable and more secure energy system,” Birol said.
The role of natural gas as a “transition fuel” that will bridge the gap between a fossil-fuel based energy system to a renewable one has also taken a dent, the report said. Although it’s a fossil fuel, natural gas is considered cleaner than coal and oil, as burning it produces less carbon dioxide.
But despite the largely positive outlook, the report adds that the share of fossil fuels in the global energy mix puts the world on track to a warming of 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, a whole degree (1.8 Fahrenheit) more than the target set in the Paris climate deal.
That’s in line with a U.N. report released Wednesday that said current climate pledges are “nowhere near” where they need to be to meet the ambitious target. Top climate scientists say that to keep warming in line with the 1.5 C goal, emissions need to be slashed by 45% by 2030.
Energy policy analysts say that while there are promising steps in the right direction, the move toward clean energy needs to be much faster.
“Clean energy investment is delivering. It is the reason why the world is on track to peak CO2 emissions. But that’s only the first step. We need big emissions cuts, not a plateau,” said Dave Jones, an energy analyst at London-based environmental think-tank, Ember.
The report estimated that clean energy investment will be above $2 trillion by 2030 but added it would need to double to keep the transition in line with climate goals.
“The energy crisis has detracted from the climate crisis, but fortunately the answer is the same to both: a gigantic step up in clean energy investment,” Jones said.
“This report makes a very strong economic case for renewable energy which is not only more cost-competitive and affordable than fossil fuel alternatives but also is proving to be much more resilient to economic and geopolitical shocks,” said Maria Pastukhova a senior policy advisor in E3G, a climate change think-tank.
She added that leaders and negotiators at the U.N. climate conference in Egypt next month will need to “double down” on reducing the demand for energy and unlock finance for developing countries to help fund their transition to renewables which would speed up emissions cuts.
US economy likely returned to growth after shrinking in first 2 quarters of 2022
The problems have hardly gone away. Inflation, still near a 40-year high, is punishing households. Rising interest rates have derailed the housing market and threaten to inflict broader damage. And the outlook for the world economy grows bleaker the longer that Russia’s war against Ukraine drags on.
But for now anyway, the U.S. economy has likely returned to growth after having shrunk in each of the first two quarters of 2022.
At least that’s what economists expect to see Thursday when the Commerce Department issues its first of three estimates of gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic output — for the July-September period.
Economists surveyed by the data firm FactSet have predicted, on average, that GDP grew at a 2% annual rate in the third quarter. That would reverse annual declines of 1.6% from January through March and 0.6% from April through June.
Consecutive quarters of declining economic output are one informal definition of a recession. But most economists say they believe the economy has so far skirted a recession, noting the still-resilient job market and steady spending by consumers. Most of them have expressed concern, though, that a recession is likely next year as the Federal Reserve continues to steadily ratchet up interest rates to fight inflation.
Preston Caldwell, head of U.S. economics for the financial services firm Morningstar, notes that the economy’s contraction in the first half of the year was caused largely by factors that don’t reflect its underlying health and so “very likely did not constitute a genuine economic slowdown.” He pointed, for example, to a drop in business inventories, a cyclical event that tends to reverse itself and generally doesn’t reflect the state of the economy.
By contrast, consumer spending, fueled by a healthy job market, and stronger U.S. exports likely restored the world’s biggest economy to growth last quarter.
Thursday’s report from the government comes as Americans, worried about high prices and recession risks, are preparing to vote in midterm elections that will determine whether President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party retains control of Congress. Inflation has become a signature issue for Republican attacks on the Democrats’ stewardship of the economy.
The risk of an economic downturn next year remains elevated as the Fed keeps raising rates aggressively to try to tame stubbornly high consumer prices. The central bank has raised its benchmark short-term rate five times this year, and it’s expected to announce further hikes next week and again in December. Chair Jerome Powell has warned bluntly that taming inflation will “bring some pain” — namely, higher unemployment and, possibly, a recession.
Higher borrowing costs have already hammered the home market. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, just 3.09% a year ago, is approaching 7%. Sales of existing homes have fallen for eight straight months. Construction of new homes is down nearly 8% from a year ago.
Still, the economy retains pockets of strength. One is the vitally important job market. Employers have added an average of 420,000 jobs a month this year, putting 2022 on track to be the second-best year for job creation (behind 2021) in Labor Department records going back to 1940. The unemployment rate was 3.5% last month, matching a half-century low.
But hiring has been decelerating. In September, the economy added 263,000 jobs — solid but the lowest total since April 2021.
International events are causing further concerns. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has disrupted trade and raised prices of energy and food, creating a crisis for poor countries. The International Monetary Fund, citing the war, this month downgraded its outlook for the world economy in 2023.
‘Entering Twitter HQ - let that sink in!’: Musk tweets
Elon Musk, the billionaire poised to acquire Twitter later this week, strolled into the company’s headquarters Wednesday carrying a porcelain sink and tweeting “Entering Twitter HQ - let that sink in!”
Musk’s $44 billion deal to take Twitter private faces a Friday deadline, although the video he posted offered no evidence that the acquisition is complete. Twitter and Musk representatives had no comment on that question, although Twitter did confirm that Musk’s video tweet was real. Musk also changed his Twitter profile to refer to himself as “Chief Twit” and his location to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.
The splashy video — a vintage Musk production — also pulled the spotlight back to the world’s richest man and his on-again, off-again pursuit of the social platform.
The Friday deadline to consummate the deal was ordered by the Delaware Chancery Court in early October. It is the latest step in an epic battle during which Musk signed a deal to acquire Twitter, then tried to back out of it, leading Twitter to sue the Tesla CEO to force him to conclude the deal. If the two sides don’t meet the Friday deadline, the next step could be a November trial.
Robert Anderson, a law professor at Pepperdine University, said he fully expects the deal to close by Friday’s deadline but didn’t see much substance to Musk’s video. “I don’t see anything unusual about it, other than that he brought a sink,” he said.
Musk had been expected to visit Twitter this week and is expected to return again Friday if the deal is finalized, according to an internal memo cited in a report by Bloomberg News.
His apparent enthusiasm about visiting Twitter headquarters stood in sharp contrast to one of his earlier suggestions that the building should be turned into a “homeless shelter” because, he said, so few employees actually worked there.
The Washington Post reported last week that Musk told prospective investors that he plans to cut three quarters of Twitter’s 7,500 workers when he becomes owner of the company. The newspaper cited documents and unnamed sources familiar with the deliberation. Several hours after posting his sink video, Musk tweeted that he was meeting “a lot of cool people at Twitter today!” He gave no details.
One of Musk’s biggest obstacles to closing the deal was keeping in place the financing pledged roughly six months ago.
A group of banks, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, signed on earlier this year to loan $12.5 billion of the money Musk needed to buy Twitter and take it private. Solid contracts with Musk bound the banks to the financing, although changes in the economy and debt markets since April have likely made the terms less attractive. Musk even said his investment group would be buying Twitter for more than it’s worth.
Less clear is what’s happening with the billions of dollars pledged to Musk by investors who would get ownership stakes in Twitter. Musk’s original slate of equity partners included an array of partners ranging from the billionaire’s tech world friends with like-minded ideas about Twitter’s future, such as Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, to funds controlled by Middle Eastern royalty.
The more equity investors kick in for the deal, the less Musk has to pay on his own. Most of his wealth is tied up in shares of Tesla, the electric car company that he runs. Since April, he has sold more than $15 billion worth of Tesla stock, presumably to pay his share. More sales could be coming.
Musk, 51, has shared few concrete details about his plans for the social media platform. While he’s touted free speech and derided spam bots since agreeing to buy the company in April, what he actually wants to do about either remains a mystery.
Technology analysts have speculated that Musk wants to use Twitter to help create an “everything app” similar to China’s WeChat service, which allows users to do video chats, message, stream video, scan bar codes and make payments.
Musk’s flirtation with buying Twitter appeared to begin in late March. That’s when Twitter said he contacted members of its board — including co-founder Jack Dorsey — and told them he was buying up shares and was interested in either joining the board, taking Twitter private or starting a competitor.
Then, on April 4, he revealed in a regulatory filing that he had become the company’s largest shareholder after acquiring a 9% stake worth about $3 billion.
At first, Twitter offered Musk a seat on its board. But six days later, CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted that Musk would not be joining the board after all. His bid to buy the company quickly followed.
Inside Twitter, Musk’s offer was met with confusion and falling morale, especially after Musk publicly criticized one of Twitter’s top lawyers involved in content-moderation decisions.
In July, Musk abruptly reversed course, announcing that he was abandoning his bid to buy Twitter. His stated reason: Twitter hadn’t been straightforward about its problem with fake accounts he dubbed “spam bots.” Twitter sued, and two weeks before a 5-day trial was scheduled to begin, Musk changed his mind again, saying that he wanted to complete the deal after all.
Competition with TikTok: Facebook parent Meta reports revenue down
Facebook parent Meta on Wednesday reported that its revenue declined for a second consecutive quarter, hurt by falling advertising sales as it faces competition from TikTok’s wildly popular video app.
The quarter’s weak results raised fresh questions about whether Meta’s plans to spend $10 billion a year on the metaverse — a concept that doesn’t quite exist yet and possibly never will — is prudent while its main source of revenue is faltering.
The quarterly results from Meta Platforms Inc. sent its stock tumbling 19% in after-hours trading to $105.20. If the sell-off holds through Thursday’s regular trading day, it will be the lowest it’s been since 2016. The stock closed Wednesday down 61% for the year.
Meta’s disappointing results followed weak earnings reports from Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft this week. The Menlo Park, California, company earned $4.4 billion, or $1.64 per share, in the three month period that ended Sept. 30. That’s down 52% from, $9.19 billion, or $3.22 per share, in the same period a year earlier.
Analysts were expecting a profit of $1.90 per share, on average, according to FactSet.
Revenue fell 4% to $27.71 billion from $29.01 billion, slightly higher than the $27.4 billion that analysts had predicted.
Some of the company’s investors are concerned Meta is spending too much money and confusing people with its focus on the metaverse, a virtual, mixed and augmented reality concept that few people understand — while it also grapples with a weakening advertising business.
“Meta has drifted into the land of excess — too many people, too many ideas, too little urgency,” wrote Brad Gerstner, the CEO of Meta shareholder Altimeter Capital, earlier this week in a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “This lack of focus and fitness is obscured when growth is easy but deadly when growth slows and technology changes.”
In addition to an accelerating revenue decline, Meta also forecast weaker-than-expected sales for the current quarter, further raising worries that the revenue slump is more of a trend than an aberration.
“While we face near-term challenges on revenue, the fundamentals are there for a return to stronger revenue growth,” Zuckerberg said in a statement. “We’re approaching 2023 with a focus on prioritization and efficiency that will help us navigate the current environment and emerge an even stronger company.”
Meta said it expects staffing levels to stay roughly the same as in the current quarter — a departure from previous years’ double-digit workforce growth. The company had about 87,000 employees as of Sept. 30, an increase of 28% year-over-year.
“To return to stronger growth, Meta needs to turn its business around,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Debra Aho Williamson. “As Facebook Inc., it was a revolutionary company that changed the way people communicate and the way marketers interact with consumers. Today it’s no longer that innovative groundbreaker.”
She added that “Meta would benefit from less priority on the metaverse and more on fixing its core business.” Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which includes its metaverse and virtual reality efforts, had an operating loss of $3.67 billion in the third quarter, compared with a loss of $2.63 billion a year earlier. Its revenue was $285 million.
Meta said it expects Reality Labs operating losses in 2023 to “grow significantly year-over-year.”
Despite the revenue decline, Meta grew its user base. Facebook’s monthly active users were 2.96 billion as of Sept. 30, up 2% from a year earlier. And 3.71 billion people logged in to at least one of Meta’s family of apps — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger — up 4% year-over-year.
Asia-Pacific countries to cooperate in using space applications for sustainable development
Ministers and heads of national space agencies Wednesday endorsed the Jakarta Ministerial Declaration on Space Applications for Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific at the close of a high-level meeting co-organised by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and Indonesia.
The Declaration shows the strong commitment of countries to using innovative space applications to address outstanding and emerging development challenges of persistent poverty, food security, threats to global health, and increasing vulnerability to disasters, climate change and environmental degradation.
“Without a doubt, this Declaration will not only sustain the momentum of increasing integration of space and geospatial information applications in support of sustainable development but also reach countries in special situations to ensure that everyone in our region captures the benefits of space science, technology and its applications,” said Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP.
Space applications provide multiple solutions for socioeconomic development. The cooperation between countries in the region has greatly broadened over the years, going beyond disaster response to all thematic priority areas for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Countries have implemented over 600 activities contributing to 156 out of the 188 actions identified in the 2018 Asia-Pacific Plan of Action on Space Applications for Sustainable Development.
To this end, delegates at the fourth Ministerial Conference on Space Applications for Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific agreed to accelerate Phase II of the Plan of Action under the guiding theme “Space+ for our Earth and Future,” comprising four core elements: leveraging innovative digital applications; engaging end users, including the private sector and youth; managing data and information more effectively; and enhancing partnerships with national, regional and global stakeholders.
"Through the fourth Ministerial Conference, BRIN fully supports the Asia Pacific Action Plan on Space Applications for Sustainable Development (2018–2030) both in terms of research and innovation, as well as in terms of formulating policy recommendations related to the use of space," said Laksana Tri Handoko, Chair of the National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia (BRIN).
At the Conference, ESCAP also launched its compendium on Geospatial Practices for Sustainable Development in South-East Asia 2022, which documents more than 60 good practices in the subregion. Alongside well-established space applications in drought monitoring and early warning, South-East Asian countries have diversified their use of space technology into areas such as spatial mapping of poverty, tracking of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, and evidence-based accounting of land, renewable energy and other natural resources.
Russia conducts first nuclear drill since start of Ukraine war
Vladimir Putin has overseen annual exercises by Russia's strategic nuclear forces at a time of heightened tensions with the West over his eight-month-long war in Ukraine, according to BBC.
Ballistic and cruise missiles were launched from the Arctic to Russia's Far East, the Kremlin said.
The US was told about the drill under the terms of the New Start arms treaty.
The launches took place as Russia makes unsubstantiated claims that Ukraine is plotting to use a "dirty bomb".
A "dirty bomb" is an explosive device mixed with radioactive material and the Russian allegations have been widely rejected by Western countries as false.
Kyiv warned the claims indicate Moscow itself could be preparing such an attack.
The last Russian nuclear drill took place five days before it invaded Ukraine.
Ahead of the latest exercise, military officials in Washington pointed out that, in notifying the US, the Russians were complying with arms control obligations.
Nato is also staging its own nuclear exercises, dubbed Steadfast Noon, in north-western Europe. The Western defensive alliance said training flights involving 14 countries were taking place until Sunday over Belgium, the UK and the North Sea.
Russia's exercises were being held against a backdrop of a flagging campaign in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Moscow has sent troops into the key southern city of Kherson to help defend it. Russia took Kherson in the early days of the war, but recently it has come under pressure as Ukrainian troops advance.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was seen on Russian TV saying that the aim of the drill was for military command and control to practise carrying out "a massive nuclear strike by the strategic nuclear forces in retaliation for the enemy's nuclear strike".
A Yars inter-continental ballistic missile was launched from Plesetsk cosmodrome, some 800km (500 miles) north of Moscow, and a Sineva ballistic missile was fired from the Barents Sea to the remote Kura test site in Kamchatka province in Russia's Far East, the Kremlin said.
All missiles reached their targets, it added.
President Putin was shown on Russian TV watching a video feed of the launch. Footage was also broadcast of remarks he gave via videolink to a conference of regional intelligence services in which he doubled down on his accusations of a Ukrainian dirty bomb plot.
He also repeated other baseless allegations made by Russia in recent months against Ukraine, including that it had been turned by the US into a "testing ground for military biological experiments".
Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Wednesday that "my personal opinion is that Putin won't use nukes". Separately, he told US TV that Ukraine's counter-offensive in the south had been hampered by rainy weather.
In an address to the nation in September, Mr Putin said his country had "various weapons of destruction" and would "use all the means available to us", adding: "I'm not bluffing."
Following the remarks, the EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, told the BBC that "it's a dangerous moment [in the war] because the Russian army has been pushed into a corner, and Putin's reaction - threatening using nuclear arms - it's very bad".