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Twitter Staff Told Layoffs Necessary to Prevent Bankruptcy

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Twitter Staff Told Layoffs Necessary

Elon Musk stated in his first address to Twitter employees since purchasing the company that the layoffs were necessary to keep the social media platform from going bankrupt.

Two executives (Yoel Roth and Robin Wheeler) who had emerged as members of Elon Musk’s new leadership team have allegedly resigned.

When Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter last month, firing the majority of the social network’s top executives.

Roth had taken over all of Twitter’s Trust and Safety efforts, while Wheeler stepped up to oversee relationships with concerned advertisers.

The social network is saddled with significant debt due to the acquisition, and some advertisers have backed off due to Musk’s plans for content moderation.

The Information and Platformer first reported Musk’s bankruptcy announcement.

free food at twitter

According to Bloomberg, Elon Musk told staff that the days of free food and other perks at Twitter’s offices are over.

In discussing Twitter’s finances and future, Musk stated that the company needed to move quickly to make the new $8 subscription product, Twitter Blue, something users would want to pay for, given the impact of advertisers’ pullback on revenue.

Elon Musk warned employees in an email late Wednesday of difficult financial times with “no way to sugarcoat the message about the company’s economic outlook.

He prohibited employees from working remotely unless he personally approved it.

The billionaire recently laid off half of Twitter’s workforce and significantly changed the company’s subscription policies.

twitter

The changes resulted in multiple major advertisers being impersonated by newly paid accounts with blue check marks.

Twitter’s information security chief, privacy chief, and chief compliance all left Twitter earlier this week.

Their departure has raised concerns with leftists over the company’s ability to keep the platform secure and in compliance with the government’s regulatory rules on data.

Twitter is bound by the Federal Trade Commission, which governs how the company handles user data, and violations may result in fines.

According to a company document obtained by The Verge, Twitter’s daily user growth reached “all-time highs” during Elon Musk’s first full week as owner.

According to an internal FAQ obtained by The Verge and shared with Twitter’s sales team to use in conversations with advertisers, monetizable daily user (mDAU) growth has accelerated to more than 20% since Musk’s dramatic takeover.

According to the FAQ, Twitter’s largest US market is growing quickly. Twitter added more than 15 million mDAUs since the end of the second quarter when it stopped reporting financials as a public company.

If those figures are consistent with how Twitter reported metrics when it was publicly available, they suggest that the service has not seen a mass exodus under Musk’s ownership.

twitter

He tweeted on Sunday that “user numbers have increased significantly around the world” since his deal to buy Twitter was announced.

Twitter reported 237.8 million mDAUs and a 16.6 percent year-over-year growth rate in the second quarter.

“Hate speech levels remain within historical norms.”

While users are not abandoning Twitter in droves, advertisers are. Musk said in another tweet on Friday that the company has seen a “massive drop in revenue” due to “activist groups pressuring advertisers.”

Reports of a sharp increase in racist and hateful tweets after his takeover alarmed advertisers, but Twitter later explained that the influx resulted from coordinated “trolling campaigns.”

According to the FAQ for advertisers published on Monday, “levels of hate speech remain within historical norms, accounting for 0.25% to 0.45% of tweets per day among hundreds of millions.”

twitter

Meanwhile, Musk’s destabilization of Twitter’s leadership, combined with the resignation of the company’s top advertising executive, Sarah Personette, has left advertisers trying to figure out who to approach with their concerns.

Alex Josephson, a 10-year company vet currently VP of Twitter Next, a team that has helped brands create campaigns on the social network since 2019, shared the FAQ on Monday.

His post to the sales team notes that Musk’s mass layoffs on Friday affected 25% of the organization and that “the decision to scale back our presence in select geographies contributed significantly to the sales reductions.”

Another source of concern for advertisers has been Musk’s tweeting, particularly a now-deleted tweet that amplified a bogus conspiracy theory about the violent attack on Paul Pelosi.

“Do the same rules apply to Elon as to everyone else on Twitter?” one section of the Twitter advertiser FAQ asks.

“Yes,” is the simple answer.

It also reiterates Musk’s claim that Twitter will not change its content moderation policies until a “content moderation council of widely diverse viewpoints” is formed and convened. It needs to be clarified whether Musk knows that Twitter already has a Trust and Safety Council comprised of outside experts.

Another section of the FAQ emphasizes how quickly things are changing on Twitter right now, stating that the upcoming redesign of the Twitter Blue subscription, which will include paid verification, “will not affect existing verified accounts at this time” and that “large brand advertisers who are already verified will now have an additional ‘Official’ label beneath their name upon Twitter Blue’s relaunch this week.”

Source: Bloomberg, The Verg, VOR News

Business

United CEO Tries To Reassure Customers Following Multiple Safety Incidents

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united

United Airlines is attempting to reassure passengers following a spate of accidents on its Boeing jets this year. In a statement to customers, the airline states that safety is “at the center of everything that we do.”

“While they are all unrelated, I want you to know that these incidents have captured our attention and sharpened our focus,” CEO Scott Kirby wrote in a Monday morning statement to customers.

united

United CEO Tries To Reassure Customers Following Multiple Safety Incidents

On Friday, a United Boeing 737-800 landed in Medford, Oregon, missing an underside fuselage panel.

Earlier this month, United experienced four mishaps, all involving Boeing jets. A United Boeing 737-900ER blew flames from its engine after takeoff from Houston, a Boeing 777 lost a wheel during takeoff from San Francisco, a Boeing 737 Max slipped off a runway in Houston, and a United Boeing 777 trailed hydraulic fluid as it left Sydney.

“Our team is reviewing the details of each case to understand what happened and using those insights to inform our safety training and procedures across all employee groups,” Kirby continued.

The airline is extending pilot training by one day, retooling training for new mechanics, and “dedicating more resources to supplier network management.”

Passengers witnessing a run of negative articles about the airline and its Boeing jets may consider booking elsewhere. In its letter, the airline is attempting to keep consumers from departing. As of the end of last year, 81% of the jets used on United’s mainline operations were manufactured by Boeing, compared to little more than half of the jets in rivals Delta and American Airlines’ mainline fleets.

Aside from the problems on  flights, the most dramatic Boeing incident this year featured an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9, which lost a door stopper on a January 5 flight, resulting in a gaping hole in the plane’s side. And last week, a Latam Airlines flight from Sydney, Australia, to Auckland, New Zealand, fell unexpectedly, throwing some passengers to the cabin ceiling.

united

United CEO Tries To Reassure Customers Following Multiple Safety Incidents

Investigators are still investigating the causes of both events, but a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board showed Boeing left the bolts required to keep the door plug in place on the 10-week-old Alaska Air jet. Boeing asserted that an incident in the cockpit rather than a problem with the aircraft’s systems may have caused the Latam accident.

The age of the aircraft in the United incidents suggests that the problem could be with their staff rather than Boeing’s well-documented quality faults. For example, Boeing purchased the jet that lost its panel on a Friday trip in 1998. So, Boeing’s quality difficulties are likely unrelated to that occurrence.

However, Boeing’s issues have impeded United’s operations. Due to the FAA’s production slowdown, it has halted hiring a new class of pilots since it will receive fewer new planes from Boeing this year, as previously promised. In January, the Alaska Air incident grounded its 737 Max 9 jets for three weeks.

united

United CEO Tries To Reassure Customers Following Multiple Safety Incidents

Furthermore, approval of a new generation of Boeing jets, the 737 Max 10, ordered by United, has been delayed due to the company’s quality and safety issues.

Kirby told investors last week that United is considering purchasing more jets from Boeing competitor Airbus. He also stated earlier this year that the Alaska Air incident was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” on United’s plans to receive deliveries of the Max 10 in the near future.’

SOURCE – (CNN)

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For The Past Year, Global Ocean Temperatures Has Set New Records On A Daily Basis.

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ocean

According to new data, the world’s oceans have now been subjected to an unprecedented year of heat, with new temperature records being smashed every day.

Global water surface temperatures began breaking daily records in mid-March last year, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, raising fears about marine life and extreme weather worldwide.

ocean

For The Past Year, Global Ocean Temperatures Has Set New Records On A Daily Basis.

“The amplitude by which previous sea surface temperature records were beaten in 2023, and now again in 2024, is remarkable,” said Joel Hirschi, associate head of marine systems modelling at the National Oceanography Centre in the United Kingdom.

Gregory C. Johnson, a NOAA oceanographer, reported that the global average ocean temperature in 2023 was 0.25 degrees Celsius higher than the previous year. That increase “is equivalent to about two decades’ worth of warming in a single year,” he told CNN. “So it is quite large, quite significant, and a bit surprising.”

According to scientists, human-caused global warming, along with El Niño, a natural climate trend characterized by higher-than-average water temperatures, is accelerating  heat.

The biggest repercussions are for marine life and global weather. As the global waterwarms, hurricanes and other extreme weather phenomena, such as blistering heat waves and heavy rains, may gain more force.

High temperatures are already wreaking havoc on coral. In March, based on aerial observations, authorities declared that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is witnessing its seventh mass bleaching episode.

Bleaching happens when heat-stressed corals release the algae that dwell in their tissue and serve as a food supply. If water temperatures continue too high for too long, corals will starve and die.

ocean

For The Past Year, Global Ocean Temperatures Has Set New Records On A Daily Basis.

Data from NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program suggest that the crisis extends far beyond Australia, with the world potentially facing a fourth worldwide mass coral bleaching event in the coming months.

Ocean heat creates the conditions for more powerful hurricanes. “The warmer the ocean, the more energy to fuel storms is available,” said Karina von Schuckmann, an oceanographer at Mercator Ocean International in France.

Temperatures in the North Atlantic, an water area important for storm generation, have been unusual, startling some scientists who are still investigating the specific causes.

“At times, the records (in the North Atlantic) have been broken by margins that are virtually statistically impossible,” Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School, said to CNN.

If water temperatures remain high in the second half of 2024 and a La Niña event intensifies the Atlantic hurricane season, “this would increase the risk of a very active hurricane season,” Hirschi explained.

The oceans contain around 90% of the world’s excess heat generated by burning planet-heating fossil fuels. “Measuring water warming allows us to track the status and evolution of planetary warming,” Schuckmann stated in an interview with CNN. “The ocean is the sentinel for global warming.”

El Niño is expected to weaken and fade in the coming months, perhaps reducing record water temperatures if La Niña replaces it.

ocean

For The Past Year, Global Ocean Temperatures Has Set New Records On A Daily Basis.

“In the past, surface temperature values have decreased after the passage of El Niño,” Schuckmann said. However, she cautioned that it is now hard to forecast when water temperatures will fall below record levels.

While natural climatic variability will cause water temperatures to vary, NOAA’s Johnson predicts that in the long run, they will “continue to break records as long as greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere rise.”

SOURCE – (CNN)

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Reactions As Vladimir Putin Secures A Fifth Term As Russia’s President After Tightly Controlled Vote

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putin charged with war crimes

Vladimir Putin won a historic fifth term as Russia’s president on Monday, as the electoral commission announced the results of a referendum in which he faced no serious challenges and took place amid the toughest crackdown on dissent and free speech since Soviet times.

putin

Reactions As Vladimir Putin Secures A Fifth Term As Russia’s President After Tightly Controlled Vote

Putin claimed that the landslide majority demonstrated Russians’ “trust” and “hopes” in him, while lawmakers throughout Europe blasted the vote as a hoax and Russia’s efforts to conduct elections in seized portions of Ukraine that it claims as its territory.

Here’s what Putin, European leaders, and others say:

“Of course, we have a lot of work ahead. But I’d like to clarify one thing: no one has ever been able to intimidate or stifle our will or self-conscience since our consolidation. They have failed in the past and will fail in the future. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia.

“The elections took place in an ever-shrinking political space, which has resulted in an alarming increase of violations of civil and political rights, and precluded many candidates from running, including all those opposed to Russia’s illegal war of aggression.” – Statement from the European Union.

“These Russian elections highlight the intensity of repression under President Putin’s administration, which tries to stifle all dissent to his illegal war. Putin eliminates his political opponents, controls the media, and declares himself the winner. “This is not a democracy.” — David Cameron, UK Foreign Secretary.

putin

Reactions As Vladimir Putin Secures A Fifth Term As Russia’s President After Tightly Controlled Vote

“Searches at voting stations’ entrances, attempts to examine ballots before voters place them in ballot boxes, and detentions of voters who arrived at noon. According to reports, at one voting location in Moscow, police asked that the chairman of a commission (of poll workers) unlock a ballot box and hand them a ballot with anything inscribed on it. This is the first time in my life that I have witnessed such ridiculousness.” — Stanislav Andreychuk, co-chair of Golos, the independent election watchdog, on Telegram.

putin

Reactions As Vladimir Putin Secures A Fifth Term As Russia’s President After Tightly Controlled Vote

“The Russian election was one without a choice. Holding so-called elections in portions of Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia violates international law. It is all the more amazing that so many Russians made it known over the weekend that they do not agree with this Russian president. That you go to a polling station even if you’re surrounded by military earns me the highest respect.” — German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

SOURCE – (AP)

 

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