CANADA
Federal court overturns American transgender woman's persecution-based refugee claim

CBC
Fri, February 2, 2024 

Daria Bloodworth is seen in bodycam footage from Colorado police filed into evidence as part of her bid to achieve refugee status in Canada based on a fear of persecution. (Daria Bloodworth - image credit)

Canada's Federal Court has overturned a decision granting refugee status to an American transgender woman who successfully argued that a combination of gun culture and rising transphobia left her at risk of persecution in the United States.

In a decision released this week, Judge Christine Pallotta said the Refugee Appeal Division erred in finding Colorado authorities were incapable of protecting Daria Bloodworth from a roommate she accused of stalking her — and that her safety couldn't be guaranteed elsewhere in the U.S.

Bloodworth — who now lives in Whitehorse — says she plans to appeal the ruling to the Federal Court of Appeal in the hopes of reinstating the October 2022 decision affirming her status as a convention refugee.

"It was made pretty clear from the get go that this was going to be an uphill battle — winning this thing, or even staying in Canada a little bit longer and not get murdered in the U.S.," Bloodworth told the CBC.

"I was incredibly happy that I won at the [Refugee Appeal Division] level. And it also increased my confidence in winning this case permanently, because I know, based on the evidence that I've submitted that I have a strong case."

'The general climate of anti-trans hatred'

Bloodworth came to Canada in 2019, seeking refugee protection in relation to claims that she was the target of threats and violence from a former roommate, her former landlord and a debt collection agency.

According to court documents, Bloodworth complained to police after her ex-roommate at Colorado State University threatened her with a gun. He was initially charged with menacing, and Bloodworth was given a protection order.

But the case against the roommate was dismissed a few months later and a judge declined to keep the protection order in place. Bloodworth claimed the ex-roommate continued to stalk her, and said police did not respond to her calls for action.

The 36-year-old's initial claim was unsuccessful, but in 2022 Refugee Appeal Division member Dilani Mohan concluded Bloodworth had a legitimate fear of persecution.

American Daria Bloodworth plans to appeal a Federal Court ruling overturning her claim to refugee status based on fear of persecution as a transgender woman.

American Daria Bloodworth plans to appeal a Federal Court ruling overturning her claim to refugee status based on fear of persecution as a transgender woman. (Daria Bloodworth)

While Mohan said the initial police response appeared reasonable, she faulted the Refugee Protection Division (RPD) — where claims are first heard — for failing to consider that Bloodworth was denied police protection for her subsequent complaints.

Mohan also surveyed a patchwork of U.S. state laws concerning the right to equal treatment before concluding that relocation within the U.S. was not an option.

She noted high rates of "discrimination and violence" in Maine, New Jersey, Illinois and Nevada and said that while New York City might be an option, the move would throw Bloodworth into poverty — which is a risk factor for violence in the U.S. itself.

"The RPD failed to consider how Colorado's open carry gun laws combined with the general climate of anti-trans hatred growing in the US could make [her] perpetually vulnerable and at risk to her life," Mohan wrote.

"I further find that [she] does not have an [internal flight alternative] in the U.S. because relocation for a person with her profile, in her circumstances, would be unreasonable."

'I honestly feel like this is home'

Bloodworth, who joked that she has become somewhat of a "jailhouse lawyer," has represented herself at all levels of proceeding to this point. Mohan commended her for doing "an impressive job in corralling evidence to support her claim."

Vancouver immigration lawyer Zool Suleman — who is not involved in the case — said Bloodworth's short-lived victory at the Refugee Appeal Division is noteworthy.

"It is unusual for cases from the United States to be approved as refugee cases in Canada. Generally speaking, the U.S. is not seen a refugee-producing country," he told the CBC.

"In this specific case, clearly the federal court felt that further thought needed to be placed upon the kinds of protections available to the claimant. And we would need to keep an eye on it to see if it is turning into an area of growing persecution claims from the United States."

Mohan noted the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration didn't intervene in the Refugee Appeal Division proceedings "in any way."

But that changed with the granting of refugee status.

The minister argued in federal court that Mohan had erred in "imposing a standard of perfect state protection" and by failing to identify "any gap in Colorado's laws, which include state-level laws to protect transgender individuals."

Pallotta agreed, finding that Mohan had failed to assess whether Bloodworth had "demonstrated with clear and convincing evidence that she exhausted the course of action reasonably available to her, without success."

The federal court ruling also says the appeal division failed to determine that internal flight was impossible — saying that "more than evidence demonstrating hardship and disadvantage" was needed to take New York City off the list.

Bloodworth — who is now studying biological sciences at Yukon University — said she hopes to stay in Canada, either by convincing the Federal Court of Appeal to overturn Pallota's decision or by making her case for refugee status before a new Refugee Appeal Division tribunal.

"I honestly feel like this is home. I'm not going to say Canada's perfect, but at least since I've moved here I haven't been threatened with a gun or threatened with a knife. I haven't been discriminated against because I'm transgender," she said.

"I feel like I could actually live here — if I was allowed to live here."

Kentucky's first transgender elected official wants you to get involved in local politics

Ryan Adamczeski
Fri, February 2, 2024

rebecca blankenship kentucky transgender politician

Kentucky legislators passed some of the nation’s worst anti-LGBTQ+ laws in 2023.

Alongside bans on gender-affirming care for minors and bans on teaching LGBTQ+ topics in public schools, the state enacted a law that also requires school districts to “at a minimum” prohibit trans students from using restrooms that align with their gender identity, and mandates that schools staff out LGBTQ+ students to their guardians.

But something else significant happened in Kentucky in 2023: The state swore in its first-ever transgender elected official. Even more significant, she was sworn in to her local school board.

Rebecca Blankenship has been a member of the Berea Independent School District's board of education for one year now and is still the only out transgender person who's ever been elected to any office in Kentucky. Moreover, during her time in the position, the state legislature has “forced us to implement policies that turn our stomachs,” she says.



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While this may seem like a cause for despair, Blankenship isn’t losing focus. Despite the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation being pumped out by state lawmakers, there are pro-LGBTQ+ measures she believes are capable of passing in the state. More importantly, there is no law the Kentucky Legislature can pass that bans basic kindness.

“Our Berea board would have loved to stand up for LGBT kids. Our state legislature, though, which is completely power mad, completely out of control, wants to come into small communities and dictate how we are going to treat each other,” Blankenship tells The Advocate. “They have forced us to implement policies that turn our stomachs, but what they cannot do is force teachers, and school staff, and bus drivers, and everybody who does their job because of the kids, to start treating those kids with cruelty or disrespect.”

“The legislature cannot ban their kindness,” she adds.

While a spate of anti-LGBTQ+ laws has gone through in the state – the majority of which target transgender minors – there’s one policy Blankenship is pushing for that could protect trans kids, and its approval is showing “early promise.” The initiative? Ban conversion therapy within the state of Kentucky. The strategy? Highlight anti-transgender hypocrisy.

Three local governments in the state have passed ordinances banning the draconian practice, but none have enforced them, Blankenship claims. This has helped “increase the pressure on the state legislature [to say] that they need to take action, so that they can't just leave this to somebody else.”

“Another thing that has helped us increase interest in doing this bill is that the legislature banned gender-affirming care for minors last year,” Blankenship notes. “They spent the whole year talking about how they wanted to ban unethical experimental medical treatments for LGBT youth. Well, here's one. … I think that we're really turning some heads with the idea that we need to be consistent.”

The Kentucky Legislature’s attacks on LGBTQ+ people have significant consequences, but they have also fostered a greater sense of community among queer people in the state. Blankenship says that lately more and more people have been inspired to get involved in local politics and even to run for office – particularly transgender people. In fact, the state may soon have its second transgender elected official and first trans representative if Emma Curtis wins her bid for the 93rd House District in Lexington.

Those are two of the biggest steps Blankenship believes people can take to support the trans community in a time where they’re under attack: run for office, and donate to those running for office who are LGBTQ+, or at least supportive of queer people. The third step is to “push their local party establishments and democratic powerhouses to do the same things: to endorse these candidates, to put money behind these candidates, to put effort behind these candidates.”

“The City Council and the school board are more important than the president,” Blankenship says. “Our local governments affect our lives so, so profoundly, and LGBT people have the same basic needs as everybody else. We pay rent, we drive on roads, we send our kids to school. … If we can all uplift each other, we can achieve a new kind of power. We can achieve a new kind of community and a new kind of politics that works for everybody.”

Enfranchising such candidates won’t just change policy nationally, she explains, but it will also “change hearts and minds locally,” as it “demonstrates that we have so much more in common with regular people, working people, than we have differences.”

“It's not regular people who want to hurt us, it's national organizations that try to co-opt religion to build power through hate,” Blankenship continues. “The fact that Kentucky's first openly trans elected official didn’t come from a city, but from a little bitty mountain town, proves that the stereotype of queerphobic rural conservatives is just not the reality.”

She adds: “My election showed that this is something that can happen. … If a trans person can win here in Appalachian State hills, they can win anywhere.”

Thousands of employees at tech giant SAP signed a petition saying they felt 'betrayed' by the company's 'radical' return-to-office U-turn

Sawdah Bhaimiya
Updated Fri, February 2, 2024


Employees at the German software giant SAP are revolting against its return-to-office policies.


Thousands of staff signed an internal letter saying they felt "betrayed" by the "radical" pivot.


But SAP's CEO recently said he didn't believe virtual meetings could foster workplace culture.

The German software giant SAP recently announced a return-to-office mandate, which has been met with backlash by thousands of employees, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

More than 5,000 SAP employees have signed a letter posted internally — and viewed by Bloomberg — criticizing the company's RTO policies and have threatened to quit as a result.

"We feel betrayed by a company that until recently encouraged us to work from home, only to ask for a radical change in direction," the letter from SAP's European works council said.

The company ordered its more than 100,000 global staff in January to return to the office or work on-site three days a week from April. This is a pivot from its flexible working policies introduced in June 2021, which allowed staff to work from home, remotely, or in the office.

The council further outlined in the letter that "the absence of significant salary increases" over the years had forced staff to find ways to adapt.

"To compensate for this, we took advantage of the remote work possibility and moved where living costs were lower, away from expensive metropolises," it wrote.

SAP CEO Christian Klein said last week that he didn't think a good work culture could be fostered via virtual meetings.

"I'm not a big believer that on a video conference platform, you can understand our culture, you can get educated, and you can get enabled to do your job best," Klein said, per Bloomberg.

Business Insider contacted SAP for comment but didn't immediately hear back.

There's been a significant push to bring workers back to the office in the past year. A number of major firms have put in place strict return-to-office policies and are even tracking workers' attendance, including Google, Amazon, Citigroup, and JPMorgan.

Tech staff rebel over flexible working ‘betrayal’
Matthew Field
Thu, February 1, 2024



Germany’s biggest technology company has suffered a staff rebellion over plans to force employees back into the office three days a week.

As many as 5,000 employees at SAP, the accounting software giant, have signed a petition claiming they have been “betrayed” by management.

SAP promised a “100pc flexible and trust-based workplace as the norm” in June 2021 and said it would allow staff to “decide when they work aligned with business needs”. Chief executive Christian Klein said in a blog post at the time that employees could “work from home, at the office, or remotely”.

However, the company changed its policies last month, saying SAP’s more than 100,000 staff would be required to be in the office at least three days a week.

Mr Klein has pushed back against working from home in recent weeks, telling investors he was “not a big believer that in a video conference platform you can understand our culture”.

The change in policy has prompted a backlash from a significant minority of staff. The petition signed by employees said: “We feel betrayed by a company that until recently encouraged us to work from home, only to ask for a radical change in direction.”

Workers have threatened to look for jobs elsewhere rather than be forced back to their desks, Bloomberg reported.

The staff letter accused SAP of trying to drive away employees by ordering them back to the office in what it claimed was a “zero-cost staff reduction strategy”.

SAP said last month it would cut up to 8,000 jobs as it sought “AI-driven efficiencies”.

Technology companies have struggled to coax staff back to the office after working from home during the pandemics, prompting internal protests and resignations across the sector.

Demand for home working has also remained high in Germany, with around 25pc of the workforce embracing “Das Homeoffice”.

SAP is one Germany’s biggest employers and, with a market capitalisation of just under €200bn (£170bn), its most valuable listed business.

A spokesman for SAP said: “We’re evolving our flexible work policy to align with best practices in the market and our own experience as a front runner in hybrid work.”

A study by the European Central Bank last year found that a third of eurozone workers wanted to work from home more than their employers allowed and were willing to quit if they found a better deal.

Media layoffs: Google, Paramount, Disney, and others commit to job cuts in 2024


Alexandra Canal
·Senior Reporter
Fri, February 2, 2024 


The media and entertainment industry's reckoning will continue in 2024 with more layoffs as rising costs and debt-ridden balance sheets continue to weigh on the embattled sector.

Partly in an attempt to appease Wall Street, these companies over the past year have slashed billions of dollars' worth of costs. In addition, under profit pressure, they rolled out ad-supported tiers, bundled their offerings, and raised the monthly prices of subscription plans.

But all of that wasn't enough to satisfy investors.

Valuation levels remain depressed. And streaming profitability still has a long way to go, with virtually all media companies (with the exception of Netflix) losing money on that business. The bottom line: more job cuts.

Here's what top media and entertainment companies have in mind when it comes to layoffs in 2024:

Media layoffs: Google's YouTube, Paramount, Disney, and others others commit to layoffs in 2024 (Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images) (NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Paramount Global

As M&A rumors swirl about the future of the Paramount Global (PARA), CEO Bob Bakish announced layoffs in an internal memo obtained by Yahoo Finance on Thursday.

The executive cited the need to "operate as a leaner company and spend less."

"As it has over the past few years, this does mean we will continue to reduce our workforce globally. These decisions are never easy, but are essential on our path to earnings growth," the memo read.

No specific numbers or timeline were provided. Paramount reports quarterly results on Feb. 28.

YouTube

Not even tech giant Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) has been immune to layoffs.

In mid-January, the company cut 100 YouTube employees from its creator management and operations divisions, a spokesperson confirmed to Yahoo Finance — its first corporate restructuring in a decade. YouTube has 7,173 employees worldwide.

According to an internal memo viewed by Yahoo Finance, the cuts will effect YouTube’s creator management and operations teams.

The workforce reduction comes after Alphabet slashed thousands of jobs across its engineering, hardware, and advertising teams in an effort to reduce head count.

Meanwhile, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a widely cited internal memo that more layoffs were likely needed across the entire company in 2024 in order for the company to reach its goals.

Universal Music Group

Universal Music Group (UMG), one of the industry's most prominent record labels, plans to lay off hundreds of employees later this quarter, according to Bloomberg.

The layoffs, part of a broader restructuring, will supposedly be the largest since the company went public in 2021, Bloomberg noted.

While UMG wouldn't fully confirm the report, a spokesperson hinted at the cuts in a company statement provided to Yahoo Finance: "We are creating efficiencies in other areas of the business so we can remain nimble and responsive to the dynamic market, while realizing the benefits of our scale."

Pixar

Disney's (DIS) animation unit will reportedly lay off as much as 20% of its 1,300 employees, according to TechCrunch. The cuts come as streaming profitability lags while the company's box office has struggled.

Disney did not immediately respond to Yahoo Finance's request for confirmation on the report.

Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, Calif. (Alamy) (JHVEPhoto via Getty Images)

The Messenger

Digital news startup The Messenger will shut down after less than a year since its May 2023 launch.

The company, which hired about 300 journalists at the time of its debut, was founded by media entrepreneur Jimmy Finkelstein.

Employees did not know the shutdown was coming, which triggered a proposed class-action lawsuit against the company from its former employees — just one day after its folding.

In a memo to staff, cited by multiple outlets, Finkelstein blamed "economic headwinds" that have plagued media companies at large, writing, "Unfortunately, as a new company, we encountered even more significant challenges than others and could not survive those headwinds."

The New York Times first reported the closure. The Messenger did not immediately respond to Yahoo Finance's request for comment.

Sky Group

British media company Sky Group, which is owned by Comcast (CMCSA), plans to slash 1,000 jobs over the next year, with a significant proportion of job losses within its engineering division. That represents about 4% of the business.

The news comes after the company cut hundreds of jobs last year as it plans a shift from satellite to internet-based TV.

"The launch of Sky Glass and Sky Stream represents a shift in our business to deliver TV over IP (an internet connection) rather than satellite," a Sky spokesperson told Yahoo Finance. "Increasingly, customers are choosing Sky Glass and Sky Stream which don’t require specialist installation, and that has led us to change the number of roles we need to deliver our services."

The Wall Street Journal

The newspaper plans to lay off a small number of workers within its Washington bureau amid a broader restructuring effort, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The move, first reported by Axios, will relocate some Washington-based economics coverage to New York. Those who have their jobs eliminated will be able to apply for new jobs.

Business Insider

The online publication, a subsidiary of German publisher Axel Springer SE, said Thursday it will cut "about 8%" of its staff — a recent trend that's permeated across major news organizations throughout the country. (See Los Angeles Times next.)

"We closed out last year with a plan in place, a clear target audience, and a vision," Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng wrote in a memo to staff. "This year is about making it happen and focusing our company and efforts towards this future. Unfortunately, this also means we need to scale back in some areas of our organization."

The exact number of impacted employees was not immediately clear, but the cuts do represent the second round of layoffs in less than a year.

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times announced sweeping layoffs on Tuesday that eliminated the jobs of at least 115 staff members, or roughly 20% of its newsroom.

The workforce reduction was the largest in the newspaper's 142-year history, according to the Times.

The paper's owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, said the cuts were necessary in order to account for the loss of as much as $40 million a year due to a bleak advertising environment.

Sports Illustrated

One of the most storied sports publications laid off most (or possibly all) of its staff last week after its publisher, Arena Group Holdings, had its license to operate the publication revoked.

Arena Group failed to make a $3.8 million quarterly licensing payment to Authentic Brands Group, which has owned the magazine since 2019. Authentic Brands Group sold the publishing rights to Arena Group in a 10-year deal that same year.

"This is another difficult day in what has been a difficult four years for Sports Illustrated under Arena Group," the publication's union wrote in a statement following the news.




Alexandra Canal is a Senior Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @allie_canal, LinkedIn, and email her at alexandra.canal@yahoofinance.com.

Meta spent billions to close offices and lay people off. Now we know why.

Peter Kafka
Updated Fri, February 2, 2024 



Meta lost an astonishing $16 billion on the Metaverse last year.


But Wall Street loves Meta as of late Thursday: Its stock is up another 12%.


One big reason: Even with the Metaverse losses, Meta's margins are way better.

Remember when investors were worried that Mark Zuckerberg was incinerating money on the Metaverse and virtual reality?

Well, that's still happening: Last year, Meta lost $16.1 billion on its "Reality Labs" division, which brings you Oculus goggles. That's up from a loss of $13.7 billion in 2022.

Those losses are accelerating, too: In the last quarter of 2023, Meta lost $4.6 billion on the Metaverse.


Zuckerberg is promising investors there's more to come: "For Reality Labs, we expect operating losses to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and our investments to further scale our ecosystem," Meta said in its most recent earnings release.

But this time around, investors seem cool with Zuckerberg's Metaverse investments. Meta's stock, already at an all-time high, has shot up by some 12% on the news.

What gives?

Here's an easy answer: Meta says it will continue to buy back its stock — something Wall Street always loves — and, for the first time in its history, it will start rewarding shareholders with dividends.

But the bigger picture is that Meta has spent the last couple of years pushing people out the door and getting out of leases, among other things. And that has improved the company's bottom line — even while Meta is bleeding red ink on the future.

Last year, Meta spent $3.5 billion shrinking itself: $2.5 billion came from "facilities consolidation" — closing and combining offices — and another $1 billion from "severance and other personnel costs" — that is, firing people. The company operates with 67,300 employees, a staggering 22% decrease over the last year.

And all of that means Meta's profit margins are way better: While its revenues increased by 16% — a number most Big Tech companies would be very happy with these days — its operating income increased by 62%, and its profits increased by 69%.

And while Zuckerberg and other Big Tech leaders have said they've been cutting to make their companies more efficient and dynamic, those bottom-line results are the point: They want to show Wall Street they can still increase profits — even if their go-go growth days are behind them, and even if they're still plowing money into new stuff.

Mark Zuckerberg made more than $28 billion this morning after Meta stock makes record surge

Eva Rothenberg, CNN
Fri, February 2, 2024 



Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth increased by more than $28 billion between your morning coffee and your lunch break.

The Meta founder and CEO — who is already worth more than $140 billion, according to Bloomberg’s billionaire index — has cleaned up from Meta’s share price skyrocketing over the past day, after the company announced its first-ever cash dividend program.

On Friday, shares of Meta (META) jumped more than 20% on the news of a quarterly dividend of $0.50 per share to be paid out on March 26 to shareholders of record as of February 22.

Zuckerberg owns about 350 million shares of the company, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission

Unless he sells or buys more shares of company stock, and assuming the quarterly dividend remains at the same level, Zuckerberg will also gain off of the company’s dividend payouts to the tune of approximately $700 million per year.

While dividends excite shareholders because they reward investors for just holding the stock, they’re also widely criticized for artificially inflating the stock price without spending on employees or improvements to the underlying business.

This upswing plasters over potential harm to Meta stock after Zuckerberg, alongside other social media company heads, testified Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the risks their products pose to young people.

Zuckerberg was pressed about internal Meta documents that suggested the company estimates the lifetime value of a teen user at $270, as well as Meta’s transparency regarding how its monetizes user data.

Zuckerberg apologized to the parents in attendance, who say their children were victims of social media.

“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through,” he said. “No one should go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.”

The story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s Clare Duffy and Brian Fung contributed to this reporting.

Meta Soundly Tops Q4 Revenues Estimates as Company Doubles-Down on AI Development

Natalie Korach
Thu, February 1, 2024 


Meta, bucking broader industry struggles with digital advertising, rode stronger advertising results and restructuring savings to report higher-than-expected earnings of $14 billion for the fourth quarter of 2023, as the company said it was accelerating a rapid pivot towards AI development initiatives while continuing to pour investment into metaverse research.

Here are the top-line results:

Revenues: $40.11 billion, rose 25% from the year-ago period

Net income: $14.02 billion, a 201% increase over $4.7 billion in Q4 of 2022

Daily active users: Grew by 8% to 3.19 billion on average

Meta’s revenues of $40.11 billion, and diluted earnings of $5.33 per share for its fourth quarter of 2023, beat Wall Street expectations, results the company attributed in part to advancing AI technology.

Meta shares jumped over 14% in after-hours trading on Thursday.

“We’ve made a lot of progress on our vision for advancing AI and the metaverse,” Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the shareholder statement.

Meta’s net income for the quarter marked a massive 201% increase from the same period a year ago. Daily active user numbers across its family of apps, which include Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, climbed to an average of 3.19 billion, up by 8% compared to last year.

Driving that quarterly growth, in part, was a 21% jump in ad impressions across Meta’s family of apps, with the average price paid per ad ticking up by 2%. For the full year, however, ad impressions rose 28% while the price per ad fell 9%.

If foreign exchange rates remained constant with the Q4 of 2022, revenue would have been $816 million and $374 million lower, an increase of 22% and 15% on a constant currency basis for the fourth quarter and full year 2023, respectively, the company said Thursday.

Analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research were expecting Meta to report earnings of $4.83 per share and revenue of $38.99 billion.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, Meta reported revenues of $32.17 billion which was down 4% from the same period in 2021. Net income fell 55% to $4.7 billion for the fourth quarter of 2022, compared to the year prior.

On Thursday’s shareholders call, Zuckerberg emphasized the company’s intentions to improve and develop AI technology, saying “Overall, we’re playing to win here.”

Zuckerberg noted that Meta’s efforts to slim down the company in the “year of efficiency,” have been successful, “making Meta a stronger technology company, and improving our business to give us the stability to deliver our ambitious long-term vision for AI and the metaverse.”

Meta saw a revenue bump from facilities consolidation, more so than from cutting staffers. Overall restructuring costs totaled $1.15 billion in the quarter, with $1.1 billion of that coming from facilities. Meta decreased its headcount 22% year-over-year. The company said that at year-end it had completed its data center initiatives and planned employee layoffs, and “substantially completed the facilities consolidation initiatives.”

Zuckerberg’s efforts to slim down Meta are connected to his desire to pursue more ambitious AI development. “We’ve been working on general intelligence research for more than a decade,” Zuckerberg said. “But now, general intelligence will be the theme of our product work as well.”

The Meta CEO also highlighted the performance of social media platform Threads, with the platform currently boasting more than 130 million monthly active users, more people actively using it than when it launched in July. “So that one’s I think on track to be a major success,” Zuckerberg said.

Looking ahead, Meta expects the first quarter of 2024 total revenue to be in the range of $34.5 to $37 billion. The company is also anticipating higher infrastructure-related costs during 2024, as Meta continues to increase capital investments.

Meta is expecting AI and non-AI hardware to drive growth in 2024, as well as further investment in new data center architecture. The company reiterated that its efforts will increasingly focus on AI research and product development, which will require consistent investment beyond a one-year period.

Even as Meta doubles down keeping up with its Big Tech rivals in AI development, the company is still pouring investment into the metaverse. Meta’s Reality Labs unit saw a Q4 operating loss of $4.6 billion, due to higher headcount expenses and research and development spending. Reality labs expenses were $5.7 billion, up 14% year over year.

The company is anticipating more losses for Reality Labs in 2024, as investment into AI development grows. “We expect Reality Labs operating losses to increase meaningfully year over year,” Meta CFO Susan Li said Thursday.


Meta revenue soars as it pivots to AI and announces dividends for investors

Kari Paul

THE GUARDIAN
Thu, February 1, 2024

The Meta logo in Brussels, Belgium

Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters


Meta shares soared 15% in after-hours trading following a strong fourth-quarter earnings report released the day after Mark Zuckerberg was roundly condemned in a contentious congressional hearing.

The company also announced it will pay a 50¢-per-share dividend to investors for the first time, and has authorized a $50bn share buyback program.

Overall, Meta reported fourth-quarter revenue of $40.1bn, beating the predicted $39.18bn and up 25% year-over-year. The report comes as Meta, like many of its big tech peers, is seeking to integrate artificial intelligence tools into its core products. In a statement accompanying the report, Zuckerberg said Meta has “made a lot of progress on our vision for advancing AI and the metaverse”.

“We expect our ambitious long-term AI research and product development efforts will require growing infrastructure investments beyond this year,” the company’s press release read.

Related: ‘It was forced’: grieving parents unfazed by sorry tech CEOs at US Senate hearing

In the previous quarter’s earnings call, Zuckerberg touted Meta’s plans to invest in AI, stating that it would be the company’s biggest investment area in 2024. Zuckerberg said in a video shared to Instagram earlier in January that the company would be acquiring $9bn worth of Nvidia chips to support its push to scale AI

AI will be used to enhance advertising campaigns and fuel advertising revenue as well as support new Meta products, including AI chatbots, Zuckerberg has said. Revenue from advertising, the company’s core business, was $38.7bn, compared with $31.25bn for the same time period the prior year. Meta’s hardware products such as the Quest 3 VR headset have yet to contribute any sizable percentage of the company’s revenue. Zuckerberg said on Thursday’s call he expects Meta to begin rolling out AI services more widely in coming months.

Meta laid off more than 20,000 workers in 2023 as part of what Zuckerberg branded a “year of efficiency”, focusing on cost-cutting measures. Those efforts appeared to have paid off, with Meta’s operating margin doubling to 41% from 20% in the same quarter of 2022. Meanwhile, expenses decreased 8% year over year to $23.73bn. Chief financial officer Susan Li stated on the call that Meta had more than 67,300 employees at the end of quarter four, down 22% from the same time a year prior but up 2% from quarter three after “hiring efforts have resumed”.

Regulatory headwinds appear to be top of mind for investors following Meta’s public browbeating at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, which was convened to interrogate Zuckerberg and other tech executives over their platforms’ impact on young users. He offered condolences to parents in the crowd whose children had died after online exploitation.

Throughout the hearing, Congress members touted legislation that could strip Meta and other platforms of legal immunity for content posted on its platforms and comes months after Meta was hit with a massive lawsuit by attorneys general of 41 states suing the company over its impact on young users. New Mexico’s attorney general has additionally sued the company for allegedly failing to prevent child sexual exploitation and trafficking.

As a result of regulatory concerns, Meta has sought to diversify its core business – which has historically relied on advertising by way of collecting huge amounts of user data. Reality Labs, the segment responsible for developing its virtual reality products, faced losses of $4.65bn in the fourth quarter, up from $4.28bn for the same period the previous year and contributing to an overall loss of $16.12bn for the year of 2023. In a press release, Meta said it expected operating losses for Reality Labs to “increase meaningfully year-over-year” as it continues to try to scale the ecosystem.

In addition to regulatory concerns, Meta has seen a squeeze on user numbers for its platforms as young users in particular defect to newer platforms like TikTok. The company’s platforms are seeing more rapid growth outside of the US, said Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg.

“On the usage front, Facebook continued to squeeze user growth, but as expected, most new users came from outside of North America,” she said. “In the US, popularity among teens has become a liability in the eyes of lawmakers, which could hamper both Facebook’s and Instagram’s growth efforts there.


Meta's Reality labs had its best quarter, but still lost more than $4 billion

Meta will also no longer report on how many people use Facebook.

Karissa Bell
·Senior Editor
Thu, February 1, 2024

JOSH EDELSON via Getty Images

Reality Labs, Meta’s division for AR, VR and the metaverse, just had its best quarter yet despite continuing its multibillion-dollar losing streak. Reality Labs generated more than $1 billion in revenue during the final quarter of 2023 thanks to its Quest headsets and the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

While crossing $1 billion in revenue is a new milestone for the company’s metaverse group, it’s still expected to continue racking up massive losses for the foreseeable future. Reality Labs lost $4.6 billion in the quarter, and more than $16 billion in 2023. Meta CFO Susan Li said that these losses are expected to “increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and our investments to further scale our ecosystem.”

The fourth-quarter, which encompasses the holiday shopping season, has typically been when reality does the best. During a call with analysts, Mark Zuckerberg suggested that the company’s smart glasses had done particularly well, saying that Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica was “planning on making more [smart glasses] than we'd both expected due to high demand.” He added that both Quest 2 and Quest 3 were “performing well,” calling Quest 3 the “most popular mixed reality device.”

Reality Labs aside, Meta had a strong quarter, reporting $40.1 billion to close out 2023, bringing its total revenue for the year to just under $135 billion. Facebook’s user base also grew to 2.1 billion daily active users (DAUs). Meta CFO Susan Li said that the company was “transitioning away” from sharing the metric and would no longer report on Facebook’s daily or monthly active users or its “family monthly active people.”

The company had shared that it would eventually stop reporting user numbers back in 2019 as Facebook’s growth began to slow. But the change shows how Facebook’s position in the company’s “family of apps” has changed in recent years. A report from Pew Research earlier this week found that Instagram is continuing to grow in the US while Facebook use remains flat.

Meta’s newest app, Threads, is still growing, however. Zuckerberg said the service has 130 million monthly users, up from “just under” 100 million last fall. “Threads now has more people actively using it today than it did during its initial launch peak," Zuckerberg said, referring to the app’s initial, but short-lived, surge in growth.

Zuckerberg also talked more about his newly-stated ambition to create artificial general intelligence, or AGI at Meta, saying it would be the “theme” of the company’s product work going forward. “This next generation of services requires building full general intelligence,” he said. “It's clear that we're going to need our models to be able to reason, plan, code, remember and many other cognitive abilities in order to provide the best versions of the services that we envision.”

The Meta CEO also indicated the company would be unlikely to offer any of its apps in alternative app stores in Europe, following Apple's controversial new developer policies. "The way that they've implemented it, I would be very surprised if any developer chose to go into the alternative app stores," he said. "They've made it so onerous, and I think so at odds with the intent of what the EU regulation was, that I think it's just going to be very difficult for anyone, including ourselves, to really seriously entertain."


Meta's soaring profits just paid for its first-ever dividend

Sarah Jackson
Updated Fri, February 2, 2024 

Meta's soaring profits just paid for its first-ever dividend


Mark Zuckerberg's Meta announced its first-ever dividend in its earnings release Thursday.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / Getty Images

Meta says it's going to start paying its first-ever dividend.


The company's earnings blew expectations out of the water on Thursday.


Mark Zuckerberg's social media giant also announced a $50 billion stock buyback.

With profits soaring and its shares hitting record highs, Meta has announced its first-ever dividend.

The company declared a dividend of $0.50 per share in its earnings report Thursday for the fourth quarter and fiscal year of 2023.

The cash dividend will be paid quarterly "subject to market conditions and approval by our board of directors," the earnings release said.

Meta CFO Susan Li said in an earnings call Thursday that the payouts would be regular dividends, pending board approval.

It'll be paid on March 26 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on February 22.

Meta joins other tech firms like Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle in paying a dividend. The company also announced it has authorized a $50 billion buyback boost.

Last February, Meta said it would buy back another $40 billion worth of shares from investors.

Meta's stock was up nearly 14% after-hours Thursday, cruising to a new all-time high.

The company reported $134.9 billion in revenue for the year, up 16% from 2022, and $39.1 billion in net income, up 69% year-over-year.

"We had a good quarter as our community and business continue to grow," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the earnings release.

Hunt to uncover story of mysterious Canada shipwreck

Nadine Yousif & Eloise Alanna - BBC News, Toronto
Fri, February 2, 2024 
The British Broadcasting Corporation

A mysterious shipwreck that washed up on shore in Newfoundland, Canada, has captured the imagination of locals.

Wanda Blackmore said her son was out sea duck hunting when he stumbled upon the 24-metre long, wooden ship that likely dates back to the 19th Century.

"On his way home, he saw a dark object out in the water," she said.

Locals think the wreck could be a vital piece of Newfoundland history, and experts now intend to uncover what it was before it met its watery grave.

"It could be the ship that brought my ancestors, or my husband's ancestors," said Ms Blackmore, who has English, Irish and Scottish roots.

A team of archaeologists will survey the wreck on Saturday to gather clues on when this particular ship may have been built and why.

The team has to work quickly, as there are fears that strong waves could pull the ship away from the coast and towards deeper waters. They also have to get out there while the tide is still low.

Their process involves measuring the timbers to estimate its original size, as well as trying to determine the age of the trees used to build it, said Neil Burgess, president of the Shipwreck Preservation Society of Newfoundland and Labrador.

"I am hoping we'll be able to figure out more and more of the story, and to be able to piece together where this ship came from and how it ended up here, " Mr Burgess said.

It is familiar work, however, for this team of experts.

Jamie Brake, Newfoundland's provincial archaeologist, said the island has seen countless shipwrecks over the years.

"We live on an island that has a major seafaring history," Mr Brake said.

The wreck appeared on the shores of the small coastal town of Cape Ray on the south-west coast of the island of Newfoundland. Only about 250 people live in Cape Ray, which looks over a rugged part of the Atlantic, with large, shallow rocks that have destroyed dozens of ships since the 1800s.

A team of experts have been surveying the ship's wreckage in hopes of uncovering clues about its origin

Some believe that powerful Hurricane Fiona, which in September 2022 travelled north from the Caribbean and through the Atlantic Ocean before hitting Canada, may have helped dislodge the ship from the ocean floor.

It is the many unknowns around the ship, however, that have captured the province's imagination and caused many to regularly travel to the site to take pictures with the wreck.

Bert Osmond lives in the area and told the Canadian Press that he visits the ship regularly to make sure it has not been washed away by the powerful tide.

"A lot of people's concern is we don't want it to go back out to sea," he told the Canadian news outlet. "If it goes back out to sea, we're not going to know nothing."

That thirst for information has driven many to connect the ships origins to their own, with some wondering if it may have been carrying immigrants from Great Britain or Ireland over to Canada.

Ms Blackmore said many of the residents in Cape Ray can trace back their ancestors' roots in the area to as early as the 18th Century.

The vast majority of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians - about 90% - are descendants of people who came from the British Isles between the early 17th century and the late 19th century.

This resettling was rooted in a seasonal, trans-Atlantic migratory cod fishing tradition that lasted for centuries.

Mr Osmond said that seafaring history means that many in the region feel a special connection to the ship and the history it may hold.

"I was amazed with her, and I still am," he said.


Piece of history from 1800s discovered on Canadian beach

Brian Lada
Thu, February 1, 2024 

The remnants of a shipwreck that were discovered near Cape Ray, Canada, in January. (Corey Purchase NiCor Photos via Storyful)


A piece of history has been found along the coast of Canada: the remnants of a shipwreck dating back more than 100 years.

The shipwreck was found near Cape Ray, Canada, located on the southwestern tip of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Experts believe that the ship was dislodged from its resting place on the bottom of the ocean in 2022 during Tropical Rainstorm Fiona, which was the "most intense storm on record" to slam Atlantic Canada. Currents and coastal erosion since the storm have gradually pushed the shipwreck to the coastline.

Based on the construction and shape of the ship, experts believe that it dates back to the 1800s, but the exact name of the vessel and the date it sank are still a mystery.

This is just one of many shipwrecks that have washed up in recent weeks on a coast in North America. In January, another shipwreck was unearthed along the coast of Oregon, the remnants of a boat that dates back to 1929.


Bones found on beach in Canada may be linked to 1800s shipwreck

Stephen Smith
Fri, February 2, 2024 

Human remains recently discovered on a beach in Canada may be connected to a shipwreck from the 19th century, police said this week.

The exposed remains were found on a cliff in western Prince Edward Island this past weekend, according to the Royal Mounted Canadian Police. The bones were located in West Cape on Saturday in an area where human remains have been discovered before, authorities said.

"Police are investigating, and have not ruled out that the remains could be connected to a historical shipwreck burial, " RMCP said in a statement.

The coroner's office was also called to the scene and is investigating.

Human remains were also found in West Cape in the 1950s and 1960s, RMCP Cpl. Gavin Moore said, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

"Those human remains were of course a separate investigation [but] very similar to this one," Moore said. "As it was reported at that time, it was believed that it was possibly connected to a shipwreck from the 1800s."

Officials did not specify which shipwreck the human remains could potentially be from.

Local resident Rodney Wood told CBC that his father found remains in the area several times over decades.

"We didn't even know it was a burial site until they first showed up, according to my father," Wood said. "He said it was about 1950."

While visiting the area with a CBC TV crew on Tuesday, Wood spotted another apparent bone exposed on the beach, which was also reported to police.

A map of Prince Edward Island, Canada. Human remains were found on a beach in West Cape in the western part of the province this past weekend, according to the Royal Mounted Canadian Police. / Credit: Encyclopaedia Britannica/UIG Via Getty Images

Paul Wood, who lives just yards away from where the bones were found this week, told CBC that he expects more human remains will be discovered.

"I just think there's probably more bones to be revealed yet, as erosion occurs," he said. "I'm sure there will be more bodies discovered, I guess."

Human remains from centuries-old shipwrecks have washed up on Canada's shores before. In 2019, the BBC reported that scientists confirmed that human remains of 21 individuals that were unearthed in Gaspé, Quebec were from an 1847 shipwreck. That ship left Ireland and sank off the coast of Cap-des-Rosiers in Gaspé, killing as many as 150 people, the BBC reported

Sierra Space unveils Dream Chaser space plane ahead of 1st flight to ISS (video)

Meredith Garofalo
Fri, February 2, 2024 

SANDUSKY, Ohio — Ohio, the home of the Wright Brothers, is known as the "Birthplace of Aviation." But the state also has some serious spaceflight bona fides, as we were reminded during an event on Thursday (Feb. 1).

On that day, NASA and the Colorado-based company Sierra Space gave reporters an up-close look at Dream Chaser, a private space plane that's scheduled to fly its first-ever mission to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year.

The event took place at NASA's Neil Armstrong Test Facility here in Sandusky. The robotic Dream Chaser and its cargo module — vehicles named "Tenacity" and "Shooting Star," respectively — were stacked vertically, as they will be during launch. The duo stood 55 feet tall (16.8 meters) — roughly the length of a school bus!

Related: Dream Chaser enters final testing ahead of 2024 debut space flight

a black and white space plane stands vertically inside a large white-walled room, with scaffolding in the background.

"In order to convert bold dreams into bold action, it requires an enormous amount of tenacity, perseverance, confidence, determination and passion. And so we name our products after these emotional characteristics that get you through the hard times," former NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, who's now Sierra Space's chief medical officer, said during Thursday's event.

"Building Tenacity has been hard," he added. "There's been a lot of things that we've found collectively that didn't always work right the first time. And we learned a lot that Tenacity has gotten us through the last six years, so there was no other name."

Tenacity's highly anticipated debut will ferry cargo to the ISS for NASA. That uncrewed demonstration mission will help advance science in space and continue to spur a burgeoning economy in low Earth orbit.

Sierra Space's Dream Chaser space plane

But before the inaugural journey can begin, Tenacity and Shooting Star must complete a variety of tests. That's what's happening here in Sandusky: The spacecraft are being put through their paces at the NASA center's Mechanical Vibration Facility. These trials expose the vehicles to the various harsh environments they'll experience on a mission, such as the jarring they'll get during launch, which will occur atop a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket.

"All the testing we've done over the last six years as well developmental testing, all the autonomy and aerodynamics — the remaining testing is the environmental testing of what the vehicle will actually see on the launch pad during the Vulcan ride up," Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice said on Thursday. "The testing is associated with replicating the environment of space, the vacuum of space; that's going to be done in the thermal vac chamber."

Sierra Space received a Commercial Resupply Services-2 (CRS2) multi-year contract from NASA in 2016, to provide at least six ISS cargo delivery missions. According to a recent release from NASA, this is part of an ongoing effort to increase the options of commercial resupply in low Earth orbit.

NASA continues to team up with U.S. private industry when it comes to transporting cargo and astronauts to the station. For example, the agency signed commercial crew deals with Boeing and SpaceX back in 2014. Elon Musk's company has already launched seven operational crewed missions to the ISS and is gearing up for number eight. (Boeing, on the other hand, aims to launch the first crewed test flight of its Starliner capsule this spring.)

The growing involvement of private players in ISS resupply could boost science returns in a big way down the road, NASA officials and exploration advocates say.

"They're continuing the lifeline for the research in zero g that the ISS is doing now and that we hope to do for the future, and we're talking about new materials," Marshburn said.

"A lot of people don't realize that the cytoskeletal structure of both human cells and bacteria actually changes in weightlessness and changes how they react," he added. "NASA has been able to develop new vaccines, crystal growth, all kinds of things you can do in weightlessness. I think we are just at the first few footsteps in a brand-new world with what we are going to be able to do once we start flying."

While Shooting Star will hold true to its name and burn up in Earth's atmosphere after its one and only mission is done, Tenacity will land and be prepped for another liftoff. Indeed, the space plane is designed to fly up to 15 missions.

Tenacity will carry more than 7,800 pounds (3,540 kilograms) of cargo on its first flight, though it could tote up to 11,500 pounds (5,215 kg) on future missions. The space plane is designed to bring home more than 3,500 pounds (1,590 kg) of cargo and experiment samples, while more than 8,700 pounds (3,950 kg) of garbage can be disposed of in the cargo module on reentry.

Related: Meet 'Tenacity': 1st Dream Chaser space plane gets a name

Sierra Space's Dream Chaser space plane

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Dream Chaser's builders aimed to create something both very reusable and very reliable.

"If we're a company that wants to benefit life on Earth, we want to understand what the impact is on it," Vice said. " And so we designed this vehicle to use even a very special fuel; it's hydrogen peroxide and refined kerosene, so that we don't use really hazardous materials. And so it's very unique — we think the ability to fly multiple times on a single vehicle allows us to have a smaller footprint every time we fly."

Launch of Tenacity and Shooting Star is currently targeted for the first half of this year, from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. After liftoff, teams from Sierra Space's Dream Chaser Mission Control Center in Louisville, Colorado, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston will work together to monitor the flight, control the spacecraft, and make in-orbit demonstrations to help certify the system for future missions.

"The research that's done on space station is tremendous, but broader than that, the learning of this huge community is increasing our ability to travel to and from space and learn from it," Phil Dempsey, transportation integration manager for NASA's International Space Station Program, said during Thursday's event.

"There are people sitting at home, you ask them a question — why should I go do that, why should our tax dollars go to that? It's not so much for any one individual reason, but the learning that we have as an industry and as mankind because of space travel and the difficulty of space travel," Dempsey said. "It contributes to what we can do as an overall group of people here on the Earth as we look to do things off the Earth, or enhance work on the Earth or research that benefits us."

New-wave reactor technology could kick-start a nuclear renaissance — and the US is banking on it

Angela Dewan, Ella Nilsen and Lou Robinson, CNN
Thu, February 1, 2024 

Off the Siberian coast, not far from Alaska, a Russian ship has been docked at port for four years. The Akademik Lomonosov, the world’s first floating nuclear power plant, sends energy to around 200,000 people on land using next-wave nuclear technology: small modular reactors.

This technology is also being used below sea level. Dozens of US submarines lurking in the depths of the world’s oceans are propelled by SMRs, as the compact reactors are known.

SMRs — which are smaller and less costly to build than traditional, large-scale reactors — are fast becoming the next great hope for a nuclear renaissance as the world scrambles to cut fossil fuels. And the US, Russia and China are battling for dominance to build and sell them.

The Biden administration and American companies are plowing billions of dollars into SMRs in a bid for business and global influence. China is leading in nuclear technology and construction, and Russia is making almost all the world’s SMR fuel. The US is playing catch-up on both.

There’s no mystery behind why the US wants in on the market. It already lost the wind and solar energy race to China, which now provides most of the world’s solar panels and wind turbines. The big problem: The US hasn’t managed to get an SMR working commercially on land.

Russia's floating nuclear power plant, Akademik Lomonosov, leaving the service base Rosatomflot on August 23, 2019. - Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

SMRs are potentially an enormous global market that could bring money and jobs to the US, which is trying to sell entire fleets of reactors to countries, rather than the bespoke, large-scale power plants that notoriously go over budget and way past deadline.

While SMRs provide less energy — typically a third of a traditional plant — they require less space and can be built in more places. They are made up of small parts that can be easily delivered and assembled on site, like a nuclear plant flatpack.

Most countries are trying to rapidly decarbonize their energy systems to address the climate crisis. Wind and solar now provide at least 12% of the world’s power, and in some places, like the European Union, they provide more than fossil fuels. But there’s an increasing sense of urgency to clean up our energy systems as extreme weather events wreak havoc on the planet and as challenges with renewables remain.

For some experts, nuclear energy — in all forms, large or small — has an important role to play in that transition. The International Energy Agency, which outlined what many experts say is the world’s most realistic plan to decarbonize, sees a need to more than double nuclear energy by 2050.

“There’s definitely a huge race on,” said Josh Freed, who leads the Climate and Energy Program at the think tank Third Way. “China and Russia have more agreements to build all sorts of reactors overseas than the US does. That’s what the US needs to catch up on.”
US targets Russia’s and China’s neighbors

The US is trying to sell SMR technology to countries that have never used nuclear power in their histories. To convince them that SMRs are a good option, they’ll need to pitch hard on safety.

Globally, the construction of conventional nuclear power plants dipped following the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, and fell again after Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011, data from the World Nuclear Industry Status Report shows. They started to tick up soon after, but new projects were heavily concentrated in China.

Most of the world has been cold on nuclear for the past decade or so.

But a nuclear renaissance is coming, the IEA says. The organization predicts nuclear power generation globally will reach an all-time high in 2025. That’s because several traditional nuclear plants in Japan that were put on pause after Fukushima will soon be restarted, and new reactors in China, India, South Korea and Europe will start operating.

It seems that decades-old fears over the safety of nuclear are starting to fade, and people — or their governments at least — are weighing the benefits against the risks, including the problem of storing radioactive waste, which can remain dangerous for thousands of years. That could create a more hospitable market for countries looking to export SMRs.

If SMRs help boost the popularity of nuclear energy, they could become a powerful way to address climate change. Nuclear power, generally, doesn’t emit planet-warming carbon pollution when used and generates more energy per square meter of land use than any fossil fuel or renewable, according to an analysis by Our World in Data.

At the COP28 climate talks in Dubai in December, the US led a pledge to triple the world’s nuclear energy capacity, which 25 nations have now signed onto. And the US government has earmarked $72 million to its international SMR program, known as FIRST, to provide countries with a whole suite of tools — from workshops to engineering and feasibility studies — to provide them with everything they need to buy an SMR fleet made in America.

But bigger money is coming in the form of loans from state financial institutions, like the US Export-Import Bank and its International Development Finance Corporation, which have offered up $3 billion and $1 billion, respectively. Those have gone to two SMRs in Poland designed by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, a US-Japanese partnership headquartered in North Carolina.

The US and American companies are also finding success in Southeast Asia — a region where many countries are seeking to loosen their ties with China — as well as central and eastern Europe, where some nations that depend on Russian gas are trying to cut their reliance on Vladimir Putin’s increasingly hostile nation.

These efforts could threaten Russia’s ambitions abroad. Russia has already built or designed nuclear plants — the traditional type — for China, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Slovakia, Egypt and Iran. Russia is also courting countries with the Akademik Lomonosov in Siberia: The CEO of Russia’s state-owned nuclear company said last year that dozens of countries had expressed interest in Russian-made floating SMRs.

Russia has another edge: its state nuclear company supplies almost all the world’s demand for SMR fuel — enriched uranium known as HALEU.

But the US and UK, among others, are investing in their own fuel production at home. That’s essential — two SMR demonstration projects, one by X-energy in Texas and another by Bill Gates’ TerraPower in Wyoming, were awarded government support to get up and running by 2028. They will need fuel to do so.

China isn’t building many nuclear plants abroad but as the only country to have an SMR in operation on land, it’s in a good position to win a large share of the market.

An aerial view of the core module of China's Linglong One, the world's first commercial SMR, installed on August 10, 2023 in Changjiang Li Autonomous County in Hainan province. - Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG/Getty Images

It’s very difficult for American nuclear energy companies to compete with those from countries like Russia and China, which have state-run utilities that don’t have to prove their power is economical.

“Our nuclear vendors are competing against cheap, natural gas in the US,” said Kirsten Cutler, a Senior Strategist for Nuclear Energy Innovation at the US State Department. “Abroad, they’re competing against authoritarian-backed entities who are throwing in a lot of political pressure and package deals.”

But Cutler points out that nuclear deals create decades-long relationships with other countries that require trust and benefit from stability.

“Who are you going to have that relationship with? Countries recognize the risks of working with authoritarian-backed suppliers and seek partners that will strengthen their independence and their energy security,” Cutler said. “These are not trivial decisions. They’re really important 50 to 100-year decisions, and they seek the United States.”

Flexing diplomatic muscle

If the US intends to prove it can deliver an SMR, it’s not unreasonable to expect the technology to be economically viable — something the country is struggling to show.

In 2020, Oregon-based NuScale’s SMR design was the first in the country to win regulatory approval. But it announced in November 2023 it was pulling the plug on an Idaho-based demonstration project that could have ushered in the next wave of SMRs. Its costs had nearly doubled, which meant the project wouldn’t have been able to generate power at a price people would pay.

Much like large-scale nuclear plants, NuScale’s primary issue was high costs, as already expensive building supplies converged with tight supply chains, inflation and high interest rates.

It was a major blow to the argument that SMRs would be cheaper and faster to build than traditional reactors.

“It certainly dampens the excitement abroad,” said John Parsons, a senior lecturer at MIT and a financial economist focused on nuclear energy. “It makes a big difference in the marketing if the US is out there making it happen. Then people who are interested in nuclear have an easier case in their country.”

In a November statement, NuScale expressed confidence it could keep and find other customers for its power domestically and abroad.

The US is trying to flex its muscle in diplomatic circles to win this race, too.

US climate envoy John Kerry was among the most vocal supporters of nuclear energy at the COP28 climate summit. And according to an analysis by climate consultancy InfluenceMap, the US was the only foreign country to lobby the European Union to include nuclear power in its official list of energy sources the bloc considers “green,” and therefore eligible for central funding. The State Department said it does not comment on diplomatic activities when asked to confirm its lobbying.

US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on December 6, 2023. - Thomas Mukoya/Reuters

While the US nuclear industry struggles with budgets and timelines, its rigorous approach to projects may have some payoff.

European allies, for example, trust the US’ Nuclear Regulatory Commission, particularly on safety standards, the Third Way’s Freed said. If an SMR is licensed by the NRC and built in the US, then it “gets the gold seal” of approval from other countries, he added.

But if the US wants to really make nuclear energy from SMRs more economically viable, it will have to take a look at its fossil fuel production.

“The target here is to produce electricity cheaper than coal and gas plants,” Parsons said. These fossil fuel plants are “terribly simple and cheap to run — they’re just dirty,” he added.

Even if there can be a dramatic takeoff in the US’ SMR industry, it will still take years to scale up. It will probably take until the end of this decade to even glean whether it’s viable, said Mohammed Hamdaoui, vice president of renewables and power at research firm Rystad Energy.

And that’s a problem — the scientific consensus is that the world needs to make deep sustained cuts to carbon pollution this decade to ward off catastrophic climate change.

“I don’t see it being a big player in the energy mix until the second part of the next decade,” Hamdaoui said. “It’s going to take time.”

Nuclear power on the moon: NASA wraps up 1st phase of ambitious reactor project

Andrew Jones
Fri, February 2, 2024 

Illustration of a small, faraway moon base on the hilly, crater-marked surface of the moon.

NASA is wrapping up the design phase of a project to develop concepts for a small, electricity-generating nuclear fission reactor for use on the moon.

The Fission Surface Power Project aims to develop safe, clean and reliable energy sources on the moon, where each nighttime lasts around 14.5 Earth days. Such a system could play a big role in the agency's Artemis program for lunar exploration.

NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy announced contracts to three companies — Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse and IX (a joint venture of Intuitive Machines and X-Energy) — for the initial phase back in 2022.

Related: NASA funds nuclear probes for icy moons, huge new space telescopes and other far-out tech ideas

The trio were tasked with submitting an initial design for a reactor and subsystems, estimated costs and a development schedule that could pave the way for powering a sustained human presence on the lunar surface for at least 10 years.

"The lunar night is challenging from a technical perspective, so having a source of power such as this nuclear reactor, which operates independent of the sun, is an enabling option for long-term exploration and science efforts on the moon," Trudy Kortes, program director for technology demonstration missions within NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, said in a Jan. 31 statement.

A reactor could be especially useful at the lunar south pole, where permanently shadowed regions are thought to have trapped water ice and other volatiles.

NASA next plans to extend Phase 1 contracts to refine the project's direction for Phase 2, which involves final reactor design for a lunar demonstration. Open solicitation for Phase 2 is expected to open in 2025.

"We're getting a lot of information from the three partners," said Lindsay Kaldon, Fission Surface Power project manager at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. "We'll have to take some time to process it all and see what makes sense going into Phase 2 and levy the best out of Phase 1 to set requirements to design a lower-risk system moving forward."

After Phase 2, the target date for delivering a reactor to the launch pad is in the early 2030s, NASA stated.

The agency set requirements for a 40-kilowatt reactor that uses low-enriched uranium and weighs no more than 13,200 pounds (6,000 kilograms). Beyond certain constraints, the agency allowed for flexibility, allowing the companies to bring creative and diverse approaches for technical review.

In the U.S., 40 kW can, on average, provide electrical power for 33 households, according to NASA.

Artist's impression of two spacesuited astronauts working on the moon.

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— NASA, DARPA to launch nuclear rocket to orbit by early 2026

— Rolls-Royce gets funding to develop miniature nuclear reactor for moon base

The reactor plan is one of a number of new nuclear plans for space, including launching a nuclear-powered spacecraft, named DRACO, by early 2026.

NASA also recently awarded contracts for developing more efficient Brayton power converters, which are essential for converting thermal power from nuclear fission into electricity, to Rolls Royce North American Technologies, Brayton Energy and General Electric.
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