Category: Silicon Valley

NASA again rescheduled its long-delayed uncrewed mission to the Moon on Tuesday as Tropical Storm Nicole churned toward the east coast of Florida, officials said.

A launch attempt, which had been scheduled for November 14, will now take place on November 16, Jim Free, a senior official at the U.S. space agency, said on Twitter.

It is the third delay of the highly anticipated launch in as many months.

“Our people are the most important aspect of our mission,” wrote Free, who is NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development. “Adjusting our target launch date for #Artemis I prioritizes employee safety and allows our team to tend to the needs of their families and homes.”

The Atlantic Ocean storm was expected to develop into a hurricane Wednesday near the Bahamas, before making landfall in Florida either later that evening or early Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said.

A hurricane warning has been issued near the Kennedy Space Center, where the rocket — NASA’s most powerful ever — is to blast off.

With Nicole gaining strength, “NASA … has decided to retarget a launch for the Artemis I mission for Wednesday, November 16, pending safe conditions for employees to return to work, as well as inspections after the storm has passed,” the agency said in a statement Tuesday evening.

NASA added that a launch occurring during a two-hour window that opens at 1:04 a.m. EST (0604 GMT) on November 16 would result in a splashdown on Friday, December 11.

A back-up launch date has been set for November 19.

NASA said it would leave the 98-meter SLS rocket on the launch pad, where it had been placed several days before.

After two launch attempts were scrubbed this summer because of technical problems, the rocket had to be returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building to protect it from Hurricane Ian.

Earlier Tuesday, Nicole was packing sustained winds near 100 kilometers per hour with higher gusts and was expected to strengthen even further, according to the NHC.

Some experts have voiced concern that the rocket, which is estimated to cost several billion dollars, could be damaged by debris from the hurricane if it remains exposed.

The SLS rocket is designed to withstand 136 kph winds at the 18-meter level, NASA said. It is designed to also withstand heavy rains at the launch pad and the spacecraft hatches have been secured to prevent water intrusion.

The uncrewed mission, dubbed Artemis 1, will bring the United States a step closer to returning astronauts to the Moon five decades after humans last walked on the lunar surface.

The goal of Artemis 1, named after the twin sister of Apollo, is to test the SLS rocket and Orion crew capsule that sits on top.

Mannequins are standing in for astronauts on the mission and will record acceleration, vibration, and radiation levels.
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The Horn of Africa’s record drought has dried up wide areas of land and vegetation, left millions of livestock dead and threatened the survival of both wildlife and people. In Kenya, to reduce the impact of drought, a Dutch conservation group is helping ethnic Maasai to restore parched lands through rainwater harvesting. But with a failed rainy season forecast for the fifth time in a row, some are asking whether conservation efforts will be enough. Reporter Juma Majanga has more from Amboseli Kenya. Videographer: Juma Majanga
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The Ugandan government says it will end the school year earlier than planned because of an Ebola outbreak that has affected 23 students, including eight children who died.

Millions of Ugandan students in primary and secondary schools will be affected by the decision to end the semester two weeks early, due to the ongoing Ebola virus outbreak.

Joyce Moriku Kaducu, the state minister for education, announced the closure on Tuesday.

“Pre-primary, primary and secondary schools will close for Term 3 holidays on Friday, 25th November 2022,” Kaducu said.

According to the Ministry of Education, Ebola cases were found at five schools in the Kampala, Wakiso and Mubende districts.    

Kaducu said the Cabinet of President Yoweri Museveni made the decision to close schools nationwide based on concerns that crowded schools will increase infection rates for the virus. 

The schools with affected children have been cordoned off and are being asked to decontaminate their facilities so children can safely return after the new year.

The decision to end the school term early is a disappointment to many families.  Ugandan schools were closed for two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic before reopening earlier this year.
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Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter comes as the U.S. holds midterm elections this week, with observers warning that online misinformation about the credibility of the electoral process can have real-world effects. Is Twitter, under Musk, ready? Tina Trinh reports. Michelle Quinn contributed.
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Facebook parent company Meta is preparing to begin large-scale layoffs this week, according to U.S. media reports. 

The layoffs, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal, are expected to affect thousands of employees and would be the company’s first job cuts of this scale in its 18-year history. 

The job cuts are expected to come as early as Wednesday.  

Meta has not commented on the news reports.  

The expected layoffs would follow a string of job cuts at technology companies in recent months, including Twitter, Microsoft, Lyft and Stripe. 

Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said in his company’s last earnings call in October that “we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.” 

He said the company would focus its investments on a small number of “high priority growth areas” while most other teams would “stay flat or shrink over the next year.” 

Meta, along with other technology firms, are facing economic pressures on several fronts, including slowing economic growth, rising interest rates that force digital advertisers to cut back, and increasing interest rates, which make it more expensive for companies like Meta to borrow money.  

Social media companies are also facing growing competition from newer rivals like TikTok and Snapchat.  

Twitter cut around half of its staff last week after Tesla billionaire Elon Musk took over the company. 

Bloomberg News is reporting that Twitter is now reaching out to dozens of recently fired employees and asking them to return.  

It said some employees were let go by mistake while others were laid off before management realized their skills would be useful for the company’s plans. 

Some information in this report came from Reuters. 

 
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Meta Platforms Inc. is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week that will affect thousands of employees, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter, with an announcement planned as early as Wednesday.

Meta declined to comment on the WSJ report.

Facebook parent Meta in October forecasted a weak holiday quarter and significantly more costs next year wiping about $67 billion off Meta’s stock market value, adding to the more than half a trillion dollars in value already lost this year.

The disappointing outlook comes as Meta is contending with slowing global economic growth, competition from TikTok, privacy changes from Apple, concerns about massive spending on the metaverse and the ever-present threat of regulation.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects the metaverse investments to take about a decade to bear fruit. In the meantime, he has had to freeze hiring, shutter projects and reorganize teams to trim costs.

“In 2023, we’re going to focus our investments on a small number of high priority growth areas. So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year. In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today” Zuckerberg said on the last earnings call in late October.

The social media company had in June cut plans to hire engineers by at least 30%, with Zuckerberg warning employees to brace for an economic downturn.

Meta’s shareholder Altimeter Capital Management in an open letter to Zuckerberg had previously said the company needs to streamline by cutting jobs and capital expenditure, adding that Meta has lost investor confidence as it ramped up spending and pivoted to the metaverse.

Several technology companies, including Microsoft Corp., Twitter and Snap have cut jobs and scaled back hiring in recent months as global economic growth slows due to higher interest rates, rising inflation and an energy crisis in Europe.
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Better catch the moon’s disappearing act Tuesday — there won’t be another like it for three years.

The total lunar eclipse will be visible throughout North America in the predawn hours — the farther west, the better — and across Asia, Australia and the rest of the Pacific after sunset. As an extra treat, Uranus will be visible just a finger’s width above the moon, resembling a bright star.

Totality will last nearly 1 1/2 hours — from 5:16 a.m. to 6:42 a.m. EST — as Earth passes directly between the moon and sun.

Known as a blood moon, it will appear a reddish orange from the light of Earth’s sunsets and sunrises. At the peak of the eclipse, the moon will be 390,653 kilometers away, according to NASA scientists. Binoculars and telescopes will enhance viewing, provided the skies are clear.

South America will get a glimpse of Tuesday’s lunar eclipse, weather permitting. Striking out altogether, Africa, the Middle East and most of Europe will have to wait until 2025.

Among those providing a livestream of Tuesday’s lunar extravaganza: Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and the Italian-based Virtual Telescope Project.

It’s the second total lunar eclipse this year; the first was in May. The next one won’t be until 2025. Plenty of partial lunar eclipses will be available in the meantime.
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When world leaders, diplomats, campaigners and scientists descend on Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt for talks on tackling climate change, don’t expect them to part the Red Sea or other miracles that would make huge steps in curbing global warming.

Each year there are high hopes for the two-week United Nations climate gathering and, almost inevitably, disappointment when it doesn’t deliver another landmark pact like the one agreed 2015 in Paris.

But those were different days, marked by a spirit of cooperation between the world’s two biggest polluters — the United States and China — as well as a global realization that failure to reach an agreement would put humanity on a self-chosen track to oblivion.

This November the geopolitical tiles have shifted: a devastating war in Ukraine, skyrocketing energy and food prices, and growing enmity between the West on the one hand and Russia and China on the other make for difficult conditions at a gathering that requires cooperation and consensus.

“There’s a lot of high and low expectations around this Egypt COP, a lot of mix of ambition and fatalism,” said Avinash Persaud, special envoy for the Barbados prime minister.

Here’s what to look out for during the 27th Conference of the Parties, or COP27, from Nov. 6-18 and why it might still end up being a success.

Science warnings

Scientists are more concerned about global warming than three decades ago, when governments first came together to discuss the problem because the pace of warming in the past decade is 33% faster than in the 1990s.

Greenhouse gas emissions are still rising, while tangible impacts from climate change are already being felt around the world.

But there is some progress. Before Paris, the world was heading for 4.5 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial times.

Recent forecasts have that down to 2.6 C, thanks to measures taken or firm commitments governments have already made. That’s far above the 1.5 C limit countries agreed to seven years ago, however, and the time for keeping that target is fast running out.

Researchers say the world has already warmed by 1.2 C and capping temperatures at 1.5 C would require emissions to drop by 43% by the end of the decade, a highly ambitious goal. To get to the less ambitious 2 C goal emissions have to fall 27%.

“The 1.5 degrees is in intensive care and the machines are shaking. So, it is in high danger. But it is still possible,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “My objective in Egypt is to make sure that we gather enough political will to make this possibility really moving forward, to make the machines work … We’re getting close to moments where tipping points might, at a certain moment, make it irreversibly impossible to achieve. Let’s avoid it at all costs.”

Energy scramble

Prices for oil, coal and natural gas have jumped since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some countries have responded by trying to tap new sources of fossil fuel.

This has raised concerns about governments backsliding on their commitments to cut emissions, including the agreement at last year’s climate talks to “phase down” the use of coal and sharply reduce the amount of methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — released into the atmosphere.

At the same time, rising fossil fuel prices have made renewable energy more competitive. Building solar and wind power plants remains more expensive for developing countries though. To help them cut their emissions quickly, rich nations are negotiating aid projects known as ‘just transition energy partnerships’, or JET-Ps, with several major emerging economies including Indonesia and India that could be finalized during or shortly after COP27.

Climate finance

One of the big sticking points in past negotiations concerned the financial support poor countries receive from rich nations to cope with climate change.

A deadline to provide $100 billion annually by 2020 was missed and now looks set to be achieved only next year. Future funding needs are likely to be in the trillions, not billions, said Mohamed Nasr, Egypt’s lead negotiator.

“The gap on finance is huge,” he said, noting that half the population of Africa doesn’t yet have access to electricity, much less clean energy.

Developed countries including the United States have also yet to make good on a pledge to double the amount they provide for adaptation, and make that half of the overall funding.

Discussions on climate finance also include the highly contentious issue of countries being compensated for the irreparable harm they’ve suffered as a result of global warming. Big polluters have strongly opposed demands for ‘loss and damage’ payments in the past, but observers say they’ve seen a softening of positions recently, including by the United States.

“I think that people are not expecting miracles in terms of a huge fund just miraculously appearing, but they are expecting a credible, meaningful pathway,” said Inger Andersen, head of the U.N. Environment Programme.

This would give countries that have done very little to cause the climate crisis but are on the front line of dealing with it “something to hold on to,” she said.

Activist voices

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is not coming to this year’s gathering and recently called the U.N. process a “scam.”

Other activists have also voiced frustration at the slow pace of negotiations, given the scale of the threat posed by climate change. But Harjeet Singh of Climate Action Network International said there is no other space where all countries are equal.

“Tuvalu theoretically is as powerful as the U.S. and Malawi as powerful as the European Union,” he said of the talks. “For us as civil society it’s also a place to call out these countries, to call their bluff, to put a spotlight on those polluters and raise our voices.”

University of Maryland social scientist Dana Fisher, who studies the environmental movement, said given Egypt’s authoritarian government and an escalation of in-your-face tactics by frustrated protestors, especially youth, she would not be surprised if there are clashes.

“There’s going to be a vanguard of them who are going to be willing to break the law and engage in probably what will start out as civil disobedience, peaceful civil disobedience,” Fisher said. “And they’re probably going to get beaten up. And it’s going to be very good for mobilizing sympathizers.”

Egypt has insisted that campaigners will have “full opportunity of participation, of activism, of demonstration, of voicing that opinion.”

Eye on Africa

The gathering in Egypt will be the first time since 2016 that U.N. climate talks have taken place in Africa. Experts say it is important the continent gets more attention, given how heavily it is affected by rising temperatures.

“If we look at the 50 countries that are most vulnerable to climate change impacts and who have the least resilience, these are low income countries and most of them are in Africa,” said Preety Bhandari of the World Resources Institute. “So it is fortuitous that we are having this particular COP in Africa to highlight what the vulnerable countries are asking from the climate regime.”

Campaigners say that recognizing the challenges Africa faces and prioritizing the needs of vulnerable countries is essential for a successful outcome this year.
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U.N. rights chief Volker Turk on Saturday urged Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, to make respect for human rights central to the social network after he sacked around half the company’s employees.

Reports of Musk laying off the platform’s entire human rights team were “not, from my perspective, an encouraging start,” Turk said in an open letter.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said he was writing with “concern and apprehension about our digital public square and Twitter’s role in it.”

He warned against propagating hate speech and misinformation and highlighted the need to protect user privacy.

Musk, the richest person in the world, took control of the platform a week ago in a contentious deal.

After completing his mammoth $44 billion acquisition, Musk quickly set about dissolving Twitter’s board and sacking its chief executive and top managers.

Twitter on Friday fired roughly half of its 7,500-strong workforce.

“Like all companies, Twitter needs to understand the harms associated with its platform and take steps to address them,” wrote Turk.

“Respect for our shared human rights should set the guardrails for the platform’s use and evolution. In short, I urge you to ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter under your leadership.”

Turk posted the open letter on Twitter, where he has more than 25,000 followers.

Turk, an Austrian longtime U.N. official who took up his post as the U.N. rights chief on Oct. 17, spelt out some fundamental human rights principles, urging Musk to put them at the heart of Twitter’s management going forward.

‘Horrific’ consequences

Turk urged Twitter to stand up for the rights to privacy and free expression to the fullest extent possible, under relevant laws, and to transparently report on government pressures that would infringe those rights.

But he said free speech “is not a free pass,” saying that the viral spread of harmful disinformation, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulted in real-world harm.

“Twitter has a responsibility to avoid amplifying content that results in harms to people’s rights,” Turk said.

“There is no place for hatred that incites discrimination, hostility or violence on Twitter.

“Hate speech has spread like wildfire on social media… with horrific, life-threatening consequences.”

Twitter should therefore continue to bar such hatred on the platform, while every effort should be made to remove such content promptly, said Turk.

He also said free speech depended on the effective protection of privacy.

“It is vital that Twitter refrain from invasive user tracking and amassing related data and that it resist, to the fullest extent possible under applicable laws, unjustified requests from governments for user data,” Turk said.

He said research was essential to understand the impact of social media on societies, and therefore urged Musk to maintain access to Twitter’s data through its open application programming interfaces.

Finally, he stressed that Twitter should have content moderation capacity in all languages and contexts, not just in the United States or in English-language content. 
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Twitter on Saturday launched a subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check now given only to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the platform’s verification system just ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

In an update to Apple iOS devices, Twitter said users who “sign up now” can receive the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.” So far, verified accounts do not appear to be losing their checks.

Anyone being able to get the blue check could lead to confusion and the rise of disinformation ahead of Tuesday’s elections if impostors decide to pay for the subscription and co-opt the names of politicians and election officials. Along with widespread layoffs that began Friday, many fear the social platform that public agencies, election boards, police departments and news outlets use to keep people reliably informed could become lawless if content moderation and verification are chipped away.

The change represents the end of Twitter’s current verification system, which was launched in 2009 to prevent impersonations of high-profile accounts such as celebrities and politicians. Before the overhaul, Twitter had about 423,000 verified accounts, many of them rank-and-file journalists from around the globe that the company verified regardless of how many followers they had.

Experts have raised grave concerns about upending the platform’s verification system that, while not perfect, has helped Twitter’s 238 million daily users determine whether the accounts they were getting information from were authentic. Current verified accounts include celebrities, athletes, influencers and other high-profile public figures, along with government agencies and politicians worldwide, journalists and news outlets, activists and businesses and brands.

The update Twitter made to the iOS version of its app does not mention verification as part of the new blue check system.

Musk, who had earlier said that he wants to “verify all humans” on Twitter, has floated that public figures would be identified in ways other than the blue check. Currently, for instance, government officials are identified with text under names stating that they are posting from an official government account.

President Joe Biden’s @POTUS account, for example, says in gray letters it belongs to a “United States government official.”

Co-founder Dorsey apologizes for job losses

The change comes a day after Twitter began laying off workers to cut costs and as more companies are pausing advertising on the platform as a cautious corporate world waits to see how it will operate under its new owner.

About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, tweeted Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity.

He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group the least affected by the job cuts and that “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combating state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey Saturday took blame for the widespread job losses. He had two runs as CEO of Twitter, with the most recent stretching from 2015 into 2021.

“I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly,” he tweeted. “I apologize for that.”

Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as a severance.

Revenue already falling

Meanwhile, Twitter has already seen “a massive drop in revenue” because of pressure from activist groups on advertisers to get off the platform, Musk tweeted Friday. That hits Twitter hard because of its heavy reliance so far on advertising to make money. During the first six months of this year, nearly $92 of every $100 it made in revenue came from advertising.

United Airlines Saturday became the latest major brand to pause advertising on Twitter, confirming the move but declining to discuss the reasons for it or what it would need to see to resume advertising on the platform.

It joined the growing list of big companies pausing ads on Twitter, including General Motors, REI, General Mills and Audi.

Musk tried to reassure advertisers last week, saying Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” because of what he calls his commitment to free speech.

But concerns remain about whether a lighter touch on content moderation at Twitter will result in users sending out more offensive tweets. That could hurt companies’ brands if their advertisements appear next to them.
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World health officials are linking a significant rise in African Ebola outbreaks in this century to climate change.    

Uganda’s September 20 Ebola outbreak is just the latest in a growing number of eruptions of this deadly hemorrhagic disease in Africa. Since 2000, the World Health Organization has reported 32 outbreaks of Ebola, 19 in the last decade compared to 13 in the preceding one.

Ebola is one of a range of zoonotic diseases — infections originating in animals and jumping to humans. A WHO analysis finds Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers constitute nearly 70% of these outbreaks. The remaining 30% include dengue fever, anthrax, plague, and monkeypox.  

WHO Africa incident manager for the Ebola outbreak in Uganda, Patrick Otim, says the number of zoonotic diseases occurring in the region in the last decade has increased by more than 63%.

“There have been a couple of researchers that have shown a possible link between the climatic changes that we are seeing and the increase in zoonotic diseases, and for this particular case for Ebola, for instance,” he said.

Otim said diseases are caused by several factors. Ebola, he said, is strongly influenced by the human factor. As populations increase and people encroach on wildlife habitats, interaction with animals increases. This, he said, increases the spread of disease to humans.

Otim said temperature and climatic changes also spur migration and movement of some Ebola virus hosts. 

“For the Ebola virus, we know that the bats and other animals are hosts of this particular virus,” he said. So, when they move from areas where, for instance, there is drought or whether areas that are no longer conducive for them and they move to favorable areas, they may move into an area where the human population is inhabiting and therefore the interaction between the humans increases.”

WHO says Ebola now has spread to seven districts in Uganda beyond the original epicenter in the Mubende district. The latest reports put the number of cases at 131, including 48 deaths.

The current Ebola outbreak in Uganda has been triggered by the so-called Sudan strain for which there is no vaccine. WHO said several promising candidate vaccines soon will undergo clinical trials to evaluate their potential against Ebola.
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Astronomers have discovered the closest known black hole to Earth, just 1,600 light-years away.

Scientists reported Friday that this black hole is 10 times more massive than our sun. And it’s three times closer than the previous record-holder.

It was identified by observing the motion of its companion star, which orbits the black hole at about the same distance as Earth orbits the sun.

The black hole was initially identified using the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, said Kareem El-Badry of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

El-Badry and his team followed up with the International Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to confirm their findings, which were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The researchers are uncertain how the system formed in the Milky Way. Named Gaia BH1, it’s located in the constellation Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer.
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More than 120 world leaders will attend this year’s U.N. climate talks, and requests by environmental activists to stage a rally during the event would be responded to “positively,” host Egypt said.

Veteran diplomat Wael Aboulmagd, who heads the Egyptian delegation, told reporters Friday that his country had been working for months to set the scene for “meaningful outcomes” at the two-week meeting in the Red Sea coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh starting Sunday.

“We have, I think about 121 maybe, and the number is growing, heads of state and government here,” he said during an online briefing. “We hope that it will be a watershed moment.” Leaders such as U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed their attendance, but Aboulmagd said other major heads of state such as China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi would not be going.

Aboulmagd said recent scientific reports highlighted the urgency of tackling global warming.

“Everyone is now aware of the gravity of the situation, of the enormity of the challenge, and have come here hopefully to work together,” he said.

Greenhouse gases, financial aid

Several thorny issues will be discussed at the November 6-18 talks, including further cutting greenhouse gas emissions and boosting financial aid for poor countries struggling with the impacts of climate change. It is the first such meeting held in Africa since 2016. Over 40,000 people have registered for the event.

Aboulmagd appealed to negotiators to engage constructively. “We cannot afford to waste any time,” he said. “So everyone must rise to the occasion and must move away from the adversarial winner-takes-all approach that has plagued this process for too long.”

Civil society groups have expressed concern that their presence at this year’s talks will be restricted, citing Egypt’s questionable human rights record.

But Aboulmagd said activists would get their space, with special arrangements already put in place “for those who want to organize demonstrations or protests or stand-ins.”

Asked about the possibility of holding a large rally midway through the talks, as has traditionally happened in previous meetings, he said, “That will be taken care of.”

Organizers would need to submit the names of contact persons, and city officials must approve the planned route.

“Once a request to that effect comes, it will be responded to positively,” he said.

Egypt would press diplomats to live up to the lofty pledges their leaders had made, Aboulmagd said, warning that so far, these had not been translated into the negotiating rooms.

“This separation between the reality in the public sphere and what actually happens in negotiating rooms cannot continue,” he said. “It is about real lives that are being lost and future lives that will be devastated” by unchecked climate change. 
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Twitter began widespread layoffs Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the company, raising grave concerns about chaos enveloping the platform and its ability to fight disinformation just days ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

The speed and size of the cuts also opened Musk and Twitter to lawsuits. At least one was filed Thursday in San Francisco alleging Twitter has violated federal law by not providing fired employees the required notice.

The company had told workers by email that they would find out Friday if they had been laid off. It did not say how many of the roughly 7,500 employees would lose their jobs.

Musk blames activists for drop in advertising

Musk didn’t confirm or correct investor Ron Baron at a Friday conference in New York when he asked the billionaire Tesla CEO how much money he would save after he “fired half of Twitter.”

Musk responded by talking about Twitter’s cost and revenue challenges and blamed activists who urged big companies to halt advertising on the platform. Musk hasn’t commented on the layoffs themselves.

“The activist groups have been successful in causing a massive drop in Twitter advertising revenue, and we’ve done our absolute best to appease them and nothing is working,” he said.

No other social media platform comes close to Twitter as a place where public agencies and other vital service providers — election boards, police departments, utilities, schools and news outlets — keep people reliably informed. Many fear Musk’s layoffs will gut it and render it lawless.

Several employees who tweeted about losing their jobs said Twitter also eliminated their entire teams, including one focused on human rights and global conflicts, another that checks Twitter’s algorithms for bias in how tweets get amplified, and an engineering team devoted to making the social platform more accessible for people with disabilities.

Fear that disinformation spreads ‘like wildfire’

Eddie Perez, a Twitter civic integrity team manager who quit in September, said he fears the layoffs so close to the midterms could allow disinformation to “spread like wildfire” during the post-election vote-counting period in particular.

“I have a hard time believing that it doesn’t have a material impact on their ability to manage the amount of disinformation out there,” he said, adding that there simply may not be enough employees to beat it back.

Perez, a board member at the nonpartisan election integrity nonprofit OSET Institute, said the post-election period is particularly perilous because “some candidates may not concede and some may allege election irregularities, and that is likely to generate a new cycle of falsehoods.”

Workers laid off worldwide

Twitter’s employees have been expecting layoffs since Musk took the helm. He fired top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, and removed the company’s board of directors on his first day as owner.

As the emailed notices went out, many Twitter employees took to the platform to express support for each other — often simply tweeting blue heart emojis to signify its blue bird logo — and salute emojis in replies to each other.

The sweeping layoffs will jeopardize content moderation standards, according to a coalition of civil rights groups that escalated their calls Friday for brands to pause advertising buys on the platform. The layoffs are particularly dangerous ahead of the elections, the groups warned, and for transgender users and other groups facing violence inspired by hate speech that proliferates online.

Leaders with the organizations Free Press and Color of Change said they spoke with Musk on Tuesday, and he promised to retain and enforce election integrity measures already in place. But the mass layoffs suggest otherwise, according to Jessica Gonzalez, co-CEO of Free Press.

“When you lay off reportedly 50% of your staff — including teams who are in charge of actually tracking, monitoring and enforcing content moderation and rules — that necessarily means that content moderation has changed,” Gonzalez said.

The layoffs affected Twitter’s offices around the world. In the United Kingdom, Twitter would be required by law to give employees notice, said Emma Bartlett, a partner specializing in employment and partnership law at CM Murray LLP.

In the case of mass firings, failure to notify the government could “have criminal penalties associated with it,” Bartlett said, adding that whether criminal sanctions are ever applied is another question.

The speed of the layoffs could also open Musk and Twitter up to discrimination claims if it turns out, for instance, that they disproportionally affected women, people of color or older workers.

Employment lawyer Peter Rahbar said most employers “take great care in doing layoffs of this magnitude” to make sure they are justified and don’t unfairly discriminate or bring unwanted attention to the company.

The layoffs come at a tough time for social media companies, as advertisers are scaling back and newcomers — mainly TikTok — are threatening older platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

In a tweet Friday, Musk blamed activists for what he described as a “massive drop in revenue” since he took over Twitter late last week. He did not say how much revenue had dropped.

Big companies including General Motors, REI, General Mills and Audi have all paused ads on Twitter because of questions about how it will operate under Musk. Volkswagen Group said it is recommending its brands, which include Audi, Lamborghini and Porsche, pause paid activities until Twitter issues revised brand safety guidelines.

Musk last week sought to convince advertisers that Twitter wouldn’t become a “free-for-all hellscape,” but many remain concerned about whether content moderation will remain as stringent and whether staying on Twitter might tarnish their brands.

In his tweet, Musk said “nothing has changed with content moderation.”

But Twitter advertisers have steadily declined since Musk agreed to buy Twitter in April, according to MediaRadar, which tracks ad buys. Between January and April, the average number of advertisers on Twitter was 3,350. From May through September, the number dropped to 3,100. Prior to July, more than 1,000 new advertisers were spending on Twitter every month. In July and August, that number dropped to roughly 200.
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The lone volunteer in a study involving a gene-editing technique has died, and those behind the trial are now trying to figure out what killed him.

Terry Horgan, a 27-year-old who had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, died last month, according to Cure Rare Disease, a Connecticut-based nonprofit founded by his brother, Rich, to try and save him from the fatal condition.

Although little is known about how he died, his death occurred during one of the first studies to test a gene editing treatment built for one person. It’s raising questions about the overall prospect of such therapies, which have buoyed hopes among many families facing rare and devastating diseases.

“This whole notion that we can do designer genetic therapies is, I would say, uncertain,” said Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist at New York University who is not involved in the study. “We are out on the far edge of experimentation.”

The early-stage safety study was sponsored by the nonprofit, led by Dr. Brenda Wong at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The hope was to use a gene-editing tool called CRISPR to treat Horgan’s form of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The rare, genetic muscle-wasting disease is caused by a mutation in the gene needed to produce a protein called dystrophin. Most people with Duchenne die from lung or heart issues caused by it.

At this point, it’s unclear whether Horgan received the treatment and whether CRISPR, other aspects of the study or the disease itself contributed to his death. Deaths are not unheard of in clinical trials, which test experimental treatments and sometimes involve very sick people.

But trials involving CRISPR are relatively new. And Fyodor Urnov, a CRISPR expert at the Innovative Genomics Institute at University of California, Berkeley, said any death during a gene therapy trial is an opportunity for the field to have a reckoning.

“Step one is to grieve for the passing of a brave human soul who agreed to be basically a participant in an experiment on a human being,” Urnov said. “But then, to the extent that we can, we must learn as much as we can to carve out a path forward.”

Few answers yet

A statement from Cure Rare Disease said multiple teams across the country are looking into the details of the trial and its outcome, and the company intends to share findings with the scientific community.

“It will probably be 3-4 months to come up with a full conclusion,” said spokesman Scott Bauman. “At this stage of the game, saying anything is pure speculation.”

The company, which is also working on 18 other therapeutics, said in its statement that the team’s work is essential not only to shed light on the study’s outcome but also “on the challenges of gene therapy broadly.” Meanwhile, it said, “we will continue to work with our researchers, collaborators, and partners to develop therapies for the neuromuscular diseases in our pipeline.”

Bauman said the company has filed a report on death the with the FDA as required. The FDA declined to release or confirm the report.

Sarah Willey, spokesperson for Chan Medical School, said scientists there provided data to the company for the report. She later emailed to say no one there would comment further; out of respect for the family’s wishes, all information would come from Cure Rare Disease.

A crucial question is whether CRISPR played a part in Horgan’s death.

The chemical tool can be used to “edit” genes by making cuts or substitutions in DNA. The tool has transformed genetic research and sparked the development of dozens of experimental therapies. The inventors of the tool won a Nobel Prize in 2020.

In this case, scientists used a modified form of CRISPR to increase the activity of a gene. The CRISPR therapeutic is inserted directly into the body and delivered to cells with a virus.

But CRISPR is not perfect.

“We know that CRISPR can miss its target. We know that CRISPR can be partially effective. And we also know that there may be issues with … viral vectors” that deliver the therapy into the body, Caplan said. “Red flags are flying here.”

Another difference? The recent trial involved just one person — a type of trial Caplan is skeptical about.

A ‘medical pioneer’

On the company’s website, Horgan was described as a “medical pioneer” who “will be remembered as a hero.”

In 2020, the Montour Falls, New York resident blogged that he was diagnosed with Duchenne at age 3. As a kid, he said, he loved computers — once building his own — and would play catch in the driveway with his family when he could still walk. Later in his life, he used a motorized wheelchair. He studied information science at Cornell University and went on to work at the school in the information science department.

“As I grew up and began to understand what it meant to have DMD, my fears about this disease began to grow as it began to manifest,” Horgan wrote. “There weren’t many, or any, trials available to me through the years” — until this one brought the prospect of a customized drug.

The plan was to suppress Horgan’s immune system to prep his body for a one-time, gene-editing therapy delivered by IV at UMass medical school, followed by monitoring in the hospital. The therapy is designed to increase the level of an alternate form of the dystrophin protein using CRISPR, with the goal of stabilizing or potentially reversing the progression of symptoms.

Urnov, scientific director for technology and translation at the Berkeley genomics institute, said no other trial targeted this disease using this kind of virus to deliver this particular payload with its modified form of CRISPR.
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The U.S. flu season is off to an unusually fast start, adding to an autumn mix of viruses that have been filling hospitals and doctors’ waiting rooms.

Reports of flu are already high in 17 states, and the hospitalization rate hasn’t been this high this early since the 2009 swine flu pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, there have been an estimated 730 flu deaths, including at least two children.

The winter flu season usually ramps up in December or January.

“We are seeing more cases than we would expect at this time,” the CDC’s Dr. José Romero said Friday.

A busy flu season is not unexpected. The nation saw two mild seasons during the COVID-19 pandemic, and experts have worried that flu might come back strong as a COVID-weary public has moved away from masks and other measures that tamp the spread of respiratory viruses.

Community Montessori school in New Albany, Indiana, switched to virtual teaching at the end of the week because so many students were out sick with the flu. Beginning Monday, the school’s 500 students will go back to wearing masks.

“Everybody just wants kids on campus, that is for sure,” said the school’s director, Burke Fondren. “We will do what we need to do.”

There may be some good news: COVID-19 cases have been trending downward and leveled off in the past three weeks, Romero said.

And in a few parts of the country, health officials think they may be seeing early signs that a wave of another respiratory virus may be starting to wane. RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, is a common cause in kids of cold-like symptoms such as runny nose, cough and fever. While RSV continues to rise nationally, preliminary data suggest a decline in the Southeast, Southwest and in an area that includes Rocky Mountain states and the Dakotas, CDC officials said.

Experts think infections from RSV increased recently because children are more vulnerable now, no longer sheltered from common bugs as they were during pandemic lockdowns. Also, the virus, which usually affects children ages 1 and 2, is now sickening more kids up to age 5.

At the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital, beds have been full for 54 days straight.

“The curves are all going up for RSV and influenza,” said Dr. John Cunningham, Comer’s physician-in-chief.

RSV illnesses seem to be unusually severe, he added.

Comer has had to turn down transfer requests from other hospitals because there was no room. Chicago-area hospitals had been able to transfer kids to Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin, but that’s stopped.

“They have no more beds, either,” Cunningham said.

There’s not yet a vaccine against RSV, but there are shots for flu and COVID-19. Health officials say flu vaccinations are down in both kids and adults compared with before the pandemic, although they are up in children from last year.

So far this season, there have been an estimated 1.6 million flu illnesses and 13,000 hospitalizations. Flu activity is most intense in some of the areas where RSV is fading, including the Southeast, according to CDC data.
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U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said Friday a new study indicates their COVID-19 booster vaccination provides significant antibody protection against the omicron variant and its subvariants among adults.

The companies introduced a new booster targeting the omicron variant in September, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved it for use last month, along with a similar vaccine produced by U.S. drug company Moderna, as have several other countries.

In their statement, the companies said the new data show the COVID-19 booster, adapted to target the omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, generated four times the neutralizing antibodies against the omicron variants among adults ages 55 and older than their original vaccine.

The study also showed after one month, the booster dose generated more than 13 times the number of neutralizing antibodies against the variants in patients older than 55 than patients who received the original vaccine; 9.5 times the antibodies in patients 18 to 55 years old.

Pfizer Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said in the statement that as the United States heads into the holiday season, the new data should encourage people who have not done so to seek out a booster shot as soon as they are eligible to receive it — six months after their last vaccination.

Pfizer and BioNTech said they have shared the data with the FDA and plan to share it with the European Medicines Agency and other global health authorities as soon as possible.

A booster dose of the omicron-targeting vaccine has been authorized by the FDA for emergency use for ages 5 years and older and has also been granted marketing authorization in the EU by the European Commission.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Twitter Inc temporarily closed its offices on Friday after telling employees they would be informed by email later in the day about whether they are being laid off.

The move follows a week of uncertainty about the company’s future under new owner Elon Musk.

The social media company said in an email to staff it would tell them by 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday (12 p.m. EDT/1600 GMT) about staff cuts.

“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” said the email sent on Thursday, seen by Reuters.

Musk, the world’s richest person, is looking to cut around 3,700 Twitter staff, or about half the workforce, as he seeks to slash costs and impose a demanding new work ethic, according to internal plans reviewed by Reuters this week.

The company’s content moderation team is expected to be a target of the cuts, tweets from Twitter employees suggested on Friday. Musk has promised to restore free speech while preventing it from descending into a “hellscape.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Twitter employees vented their frustrations about the layoffs on the social network, using the hashtag #OneTeam.

User Rachel Bonn tweeted: “Last Thursday in the SF (San Francisco) office, really the last day Twitter was Twitter. 8 months pregnant and have a 9 month old. Just got cut off from laptop access.”

Responding to the #OneTeam thread, Twitter’s Head of Safety & Integrity Yoel Roth, said: “Tweeps: My DMs (direct message routes) are always open to you. Tell me how I can help.”

Roth was the most senior executive to message publicly with a tweet of support for staff who are losing their jobs. He also appeared to still have his job. Last week, Musk endorsed Roth, citing his “high integrity” after he was called out over tweets critical of former U.S. President Donald Trump years earlier.

Roth did not respond to a request for comment.

Twitter said in the email that its offices would be temporarily closed and all badge access suspended in order “to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data.”

The company’s office in Piccadilly Circus, London, appeared deserted on Friday, with no employees in sight.

Inside, any evidence the social media giant had once occupied the building had been erased. Security staff said there were ongoing refurbishments, refusing to comment further.

The company said employees who were not affected by the layoffs would be notified via their work email addresses. Staff who had been laid off would be notified with next steps to their personal email addresses, the memo said.

A member of security staff at Twitter’s EMEA headquarters in Dublin told reporters that nobody was coming into the office on Friday and employees had been told to stay home.

Another member of the security staff locked the revolving doors at the front of the building where around 500 members of staff worked before the layoffs began.

Some employees tweeted their access to the company’s IT system had been blocked and feared that suggested they had been laid off.

“Looks like I’m unemployed y’all. Just got remotely logged out of my work laptop and removed from Slack,” tweeted a user with the account @SBkcrn, whose profile is described as former senior community manager at Twitter.

A class action lawsuit was filed on Thursday against Twitter by its employees, who argued the company was conducting mass layoffs without providing the required 60-day advance notice, in violation of federal and California law.

The lawsuit also asked the San Francisco federal court to issue an order to restrict Twitter from soliciting employees being laid off to sign documents without informing them of the pendency of the case.

Musk has directed Twitter’s teams to find up to $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings, according to two sources familiar with the matter and an internal Slack message reviewed by Reuters.

He has already cleared out the company’s senior ranks, firing its chief executive and top finance and legal executives. Others, including those sitting atop the company’s advertising, marketing and human resources divisions, have departed throughout the past week.

Musk’s first week as Twitter’s owner has been marked by chaos and uncertainty. Two company-wide meetings were scheduled, only to be canceled hours later. Employees told Reuters they were left to piece together information through media reports, private messaging groups and anonymous forums.

The layoffs, which were long expected, have chilled Twitter’s famously open corporate culture that has been lauded by many of its employees.

“If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home,” Twitter said in the email on Thursday.

Shortly after the email landed in employee in boxes, hundreds of people flooded the company’s Slack channels to say goodbye, two employees told Reuters. Someone invited Musk to join the channel, the sources said.
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