US Business

Google parent Alphabet on Tuesday reported quarterly earnings that fell short of market expectations as belts tightened in the digital ad market that drives its revenue.

Alphabet said it made a profit of $14 billion in the third quarter on ad revenue that grew just 6 percent to $69 billion when compared with the same period of last year.

Aside from one period at the start of the Covid pandemic, that would mark the weakest revenue growth at Alphabet for any quarter since 2014.

“When Google stumbles, it’s a bad omen for digital advertising at large,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Evelyn Mitchell.

“This disappointing quarter for Google signifies hard times ahead if market conditions continue to deteriorate.”

Alphabet shares slipped 6.8 percent to $97.35 in after-market trades that followed the release of the earnings report.

Google’s foundation in advertising on its heavily used search engine does give it an advantage, however, over other ad-reliant tech firms such as Meta, Snap and Twitter, the analyst added.

“Over time, we’ve had periods of extraordinary growth and then there are periods I viewed as a moment where you take the time to optimize the company to make sure we are set up for the next decade of growth ahead,” Alphabet and Google chief Sundar Pichai said on an earnings call.

“I view this as one of those moments.”

Alphabet chief financial officer Ruth Porat said the financial results in the quarter showed “healthy fundamental growth in Search and momentum in Cloud” computing revenue, but suffered from foreign exchange rates given the strong US dollar.

“We’re working to realign resources to fuel our highest growth priorities,” Porat said.

Big tech firms are grappling with multiple challenges, from inflation to the war in Ukraine, putting pressure on earnings.

Alphabet recruited throughout the pandemic, but announced a slowdown in hiring as ad revenue growth cooled this year.

“Within this slower headcount growth next year we will continue hiring for critical roles, particularly focused on top engineering and technical talent,” Porat said.

Many other tech companies have decided to lay off staff, including Netflix and Twitter, or slow the pace of hiring, such as Microsoft and Snap. 

– YouTube squeeze? –

Worsening the financial situation for Alphabet is the fact that Google tends not to aggressively promote advertising on its platform with tactics such as trying to convince businesses that online marketing is a smart move during tough economic times, said independent tech analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group.

“They don’t like the idea of making their money off advertising, so they don’t treat the market very well,” Enderle contended.

“Now, you are seeing the adverse impact of not taking your revenue source seriously.”

The earnings report also showed that ad revenue at YouTube was slightly lower than it was in the same quarter a year earlier, despite a hot trend of people watching video on-demand on the internet.

“Overall, I feel YouTube remains in a really good position to continue to benefit from the streaming boom,” chief business officer Philipp Schindler said during an earnings call.

However, Alphabet noticed a “pullback in spending” by advertisers at YouTube in the quarter, Schindler told analysts.

“They have a ton of competition in video, and TikTok is probably hitting YouTube pretty hard,” Enderle said.

Netflix last week reported that it gained subscribers in the recent quarter, calming investor fears that the streaming giant was losing paying customers.

The company said it ended the third quarter with slightly more than 223 million subscribers worldwide, up some 2.4 million, after seeing subscriber ranks ebb during the first half of the year.

The turn-around in subscriber growth comes as Netflix is poised to debut a subscription option subsidized by ads in November across a dozen countries.

Rival streaming platform Disney+ is to launch ad-subsidized subscriptions in December.

Armed “poll watchers” stand guard in a suburban parking lot in Arizona, convinced they are doing their bit to prevent the supposed ballot stuffing they fear could cost the Republicans victory in the US midterm elections.

“It’s a deterrent,” 78-year-old retiree Gabor Zolna tells AFP, gesturing to the cameras that he and his fellow unofficial observers are wearing as they wait near early-voting drop-off boxes.

A holstered weapon protrudes from his down jacket.

“We’re really here to deter people who want to go and stuff ballots in the boxes,” says Nicole, who wears a mask and says only that she is a 52-year-old retiree.

Along with a woman who gives her name as Lynnette and says she works for the local government, the trio are here to “save the Republic,” insists Nicole.

All three believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. They are not alone — around 70 percent of registered Republicans in the United States believe the same, multiple polls have shown.

President Joe Biden won deeply divided Arizona by a mere 10,000 votes, overturning decades of Republican victories in a state that has become Ground Zero for election conspiracy theories.

Multiple investigations, including a partisan “audit” of Maricopa County by Cyber Ninjas, a company hired by Republicans, found no widespread fraud in the 2020 vote.

But for the three ballot watchers AFP encountered this week, that does not matter. 

As well as an unshakeable belief that they were robbed at the ballot box, all three also expressed views that diverge considerably from mainstream thinking; Zolna insisted astronauts have not visited the Moon, and Lynnette believes the Earth is flat.

– Lawsuit –

Over the last few days, tensions have risen around the drop-off box in front of Mesa’s juvenile court.

On Friday the local sheriff intervened to remove two armed men in paramilitary-style clothing.

On Monday the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans and national group Voto Latino filed a federal lawsuit demanding a restraining order against armed and sometimes masked supporters of Clean Elections USA, a self-proclaimed “grassroots organization committed to  election integrity.”

There is now an increased police presence around the drop boxes, and the Maricopa County Elections Department has urged concerned citizens to step back.

“Although monitoring and transparency in our elections is critical, voter intimidation is unlawful. For those who want to be involved in election integrity, become a poll worker or an official observer with your political party,” it said in a statement.

With just weeks to go until the November 8 midterm elections that will decide control of Congress, as well as a raft of key state positions, the atmosphere of distrust and suspicion is growing.

In the parking lot, Kevin Smith sat in his pick-up truck with his large dog on the front seat.

“I want to watch the watchers, and see how they feel about being intimidated,” the 52-year-old said, gesturing to the animal.

It was not possible to tell if the presence of the armed poll watchers affected turnout, but one voter who dropped off her ballot said it was off-putting.

“It’s weird,” said Kristin Wilde. “I’ve already filled out my ballot, so I’m not going to change who I voted for. But yeah, if I was aware of guns, I might not have come down here.”

– Narrow victory –

Midterm elections are when Americans vote for a third of the Senate, all of the House, and myriad local posts from state governor to school board members.

But even though the stakes are high, it has traditionally been hard to get voters interested.

Not so this time.

“The intensity and the tension around this election is unprecedented,” says Gina Woodall, a political scientist at Arizona State University.

In Arizona, the Republican Party establishment has embraced conspiracy theories since Biden’s narrow victory. 

Its candidates for governor, senator and secretary of state are all vehement supporters of the discredited theory that the 2020 vote was invalid.

The heightened atmosphere is worrying election officials in Maricopa county, where they began counting absentee ballots on Monday.

“We have seen an increased amount of threats against election workers,” said Megan Gilbertson, Maricopa County Elections Department’s communications director.

But, she insists, the elections will be secure.

At the downtown Phoenix building, which was besieged by dozens of protesters in 2020, the 16 machines that read the ballots are filmed 24 hours a day.

All hand-written ballots are checked by a pair of observers, one Democrat and one Republican. 

This year, many of them are newcomers. And while most attest that operations are going well, some remain unconvinced. 

“I only see one part of the voting process,” one Republican volunteer who declines to give his name tells AFP.

“I know nothing about what happens before or after that part.”

President Joe Biden got an updated Covid-19 vaccine booster shot Tuesday and urged Americans to follow his example ahead of winter, saying no one need die anymore from the once devastating virus.

Biden, 79, contracted the coronavirus three months ago with mild symptoms and already received a second booster for the vaccine at the end of March.

His updated shot, given in front of journalists at the White House, targets two subvariants of the virus.

Biden announced efforts to get more Americans boosted with the new version of the vaccine ahead of major holiday travel periods at Thanksgiving and the end of the year.

“I’m calling on all Americans… to get their shot just as soon as they can,” he said. “There’s still hundreds of people dying each day from Covid, hundreds. That number’s likely to rise this winter, but… this year, nearly every death is preventable.”

Biden said the government and major pharmacy chains, whose leaders joined him on stage to witness the injection, were working together to make sure that the booster was widely available and free of charge.

“Almost everyone who will die from Covid this year will not be up to date on the shots” or have taken the government-funded therapeutics when they get infected, he underlined.

Addressing the long history of political splits on the vaccination issue, Biden pleaded for Americans to “start fresh as a country, put all the old battles over Covid behind us, put all the partisan politics aside.”

“We’ve already lost one million Americans to Covid,” Biden said, calling it “this terrible disease.”

So far only 20 million Americans, including just one in five elderly people, have got the updated shot, according to the White House.

German sportswear giant Adidas said Tuesday it was ending its partnership with Kanye West after a series of anti-Semitic outbursts by the controversial rapper.

Recent comments by West — now known formally as Ye — were “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous”, Adidas said in a statement. 

“After a thorough review, the company has taken the decision to terminate the partnership with Ye immediately”.

Adidas said it would “end production” of the highly successful “Yeezy” line designed together with West and “stop all payments to Ye and his companies”.

The abrupt end to the collaboration between the sports outfitter and rapper would slash Adidas’s net income in 2022 by “up to 250 million euros ($246 million)”, the company estimated.

Adidas’s decision to dump the artist was “overdue”, said Josef Schuster of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

“For weeks, West has caused worldwide furore with his anti-Semitic remarks,” Schuster said, adding that the rapper’s comments had become “intolerable”.

– T-shirt statement –

Adidas began a review of its relationship with West earlier this month after he appeared at a Paris fashion show wearing a shirt emblazoned with “White Lives Matter”, a slogan created as a backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Days later he was locked out of Twitter and Instagram for threatening to “Go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE”, using a reference to US military readiness.

Comments made by West “violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness”, Adidas said Tuesday.

The artist was associated with rival sportswear company Nike for years but broke away in 2013, lending his name to Adidas as they launched their first Yeezy shoe together in 2015 — a partnership that went on to make him a billionaire.

Along with Beyonce, Stella McCartney and Pharrell Williams, West’s has been one of the top names used by Adidas to boost sales, especially online.

Adidas’s announcement was followed later Tuesday by US company Gap, which said it was taking “immediate steps to remove Yeezy Gap product from our stores” in addition to shutting down YeezyGap.com.

West and Gap had announced in September that they planned to end their partnership, although Gap said at the time it planned to release several co-branded products already in development.

Paris-based fashion house Balenciaga also ended ties with the rapper last week, saying it “no longer (has) any relationship nor any plans for future projects related to this artist”.

One of Hollywood’s biggest talent agencies, CAA, said on Monday it was dropping West, while film and TV producer MRC said it was shelving an already-finished documentary about the artist.

– Inflammatory remarks –

Adidas’s decision would stop West from “using the company’s immense platform to amplify his hateful ideology about Jews”, the World Jewish Congress said in a statement.

The German group’s “delayed move” in response to the anti-Semitic comments had come after “massive public outcry”, the WJC said.

Rights campaigners and entertainment world figures had heaped pressure on Adidas to stop working with the rapper.

“Those who continue to do business with West are giving his misguided hate an audience”, wrote Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel in the Financial Times.

“There should be no tolerance anywhere for West’s anti-Semitism.”

West’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian also appeared to join the pile-on, without mentioning the father of her children by name.

“Hate speech is never OK or excusable,” she wrote Monday on Twitter and Instagram.

“I stand together with the Jewish community and call on the terrible violence and hateful rhetoric towards them to come to an immediate end.”

Adidas fell on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange following its announcement, finishing 3.2 percent lower.

Israel’s president said Tuesday he was sharing intelligence with the United States to prove Iran supplied Russian-operated drones that have reaped destruction in Ukraine, as he urged a tough response.

The United States and European Union have already reached a similar conclusion but Israel has been pushing for tough action against Iran’s clerical state, which it views as its biggest threat.

President Isaac Herzog, who holds a largely ceremonial role, held talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on a visit to Washington in which he will meet President Joe Biden on Wednesday.

“Iranian weapons play a key role in destabilizing our world, and the international community must learn its lessons, now and in the future,” Herzog said.

“The world must speak with Iran in the same language — a tough, united and uncompromising language.”

Herzog’s office in a statement said he would share images assessed by Israel that show similarities between drones downed in Ukraine and parts tested in Iran in December 2021 and displayed at an exposition in Iran in 2014.

Blinken, at the start of a meeting with Herzog, said the United States and Israel were “standing together against the dangerous, destabilizing and terrorizing actions that Iran is taking.”

“The provision of drones by Iran to Russia to enable further aggression against Ukraine and Ukrainian people is showing horrific results on the ground in Ukraine,” Blinken said.

The top US diplomat also weighed in on violence in the occupied West Bank, where major raids on Tuesday targeting a militant group killed six Palestinians, bringing thousands of mourners into the streets.

Blinken said he would speak to Herzog about “the real concern that we have about violence that we’re seeing on the West Bank.”

“We’re urging everyone to take the necessary steps to try to de-escalate that violence and to avoid actions or statements that may incite it,” Blinken said.

Herzog’s visit comes days ahead of Israel’s fifth election in less than four years in which hawkish ex-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has had tense relations with Democratic US administrations, is seeking a comeback.

Despite Israel’s findings on Iranian drones, it has been cautious in how far to support Ukraine, mindful of Russia’s active military role in the Jewish state’s neighbor Syria.

Israel has not been willing to provide Ukraine with the Iron Dome, its state-of-the-art defensive air umbrella developed with the United States.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, addressing an Israeli forum on Monday, said that Russia had ordered 2,000 drones from Iran and urged Israel to “help Ukraine for real.”

“This alliance of theirs simply would not have happened if your politicians had made only one decision at the time… it seems that it was adopted a long time ago -– in 2014, when Russia began its aggression against Ukraine,” Zelensky told a conference organised by the newspaper Haaretz.

Ashton Carter, who served as US secretary of defense during Barack Obama’s administration, has died at age 68, his family said Tuesday.

“It is with deep and profound sadness that the family of former Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter shares that Secretary Carter passed away Monday evening in Boston after a sudden cardiac event,” his family said in a statement.

“He was a beloved husband, father, mentor, and friend. His sudden loss will be felt by all who knew him.”

Carter held the top job at the Pentagon from 2015 to 2017 — a period that covered the height of the war against the Islamic State (IS) group, which lost swathes of territory it seized in Iraq and Syria to local ground forces backed by a US-led international coalition.

He also oversaw sweeping changes to the US military, including the opening of combat positions to women and the lifting of a ban on transgender personnel openly serving in the armed forces.

Donald Trump sought to reverse the latter move during his presidency, but his administration’s restrictions on transgender personnel were overturned by Joe Biden when he took office in 2021.

Biden — who was vice president during Carter’s time as defense chief — praised him as a “great American of the utmost integrity.”

He “was a leader on all the major national security issues of our times — from nuclear deterrence to proliferation prevention to missile defense to emerging technology challenges to the fight against Al-Qaeda and ISIS,” Biden said, using an acronym for IS.

Obama also mourned his former defense secretary, saying he was “a keen student of history, a brilliant physicist, and a steadfast defender of our men and women in uniform.”

He “left America — and the world — safer through his lifetime of service,” the former president said.

And US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Carter “was both a defense intellectual and a skillful policymaker who tirelessly sought a more secure America in a more just world.” 

After leaving the Pentagon, Carter became the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

He is survived by his wife and two children.

Left-wing US lawmakers on Tuesday withdrew a letter that appealed to President Joe Biden to negotiate with Russia, saying they were not joining Republicans who question support for Ukraine.

Days before congressional elections, Representative Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, took responsibility and said that staff released the letter Monday that had been drafted months ago and was not vetted.

She regretted that the letter was being “conflated” with recent remarks by House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy who warned there would be no “blank check” to Ukraine if his party wins control of the chamber on November 8.

“The proximity of these statements created the unfortunate appearance that Democrats… are somehow aligned with Republicans who seek to pull the plug on American support for President (Volodymyr) Zelensky,” Jayapal said in a statement.

“Nothing could be further from the truth. Every war ends with diplomacy, and this one will too after Ukrainian victory,” she said.

The original letter, signed by 30 Democrats, urged the Biden administration to negotiate directly with Russia,  saying that funding for weapons created a “responsibility for the United States to seriously explore all possible avenues.”

The appeal held out the possibility of sanctions relief for Russia and a potential new European security framework with guarantees for all sides.

Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February demanding that the former Soviet republic never be allowed to join NATO, a stance that US officials saw as a red herring as Kyiv was unlikely to enter the alliance anytime soon.

The Biden administration says that Russia is not serious about diplomacy, unleashing a slew of devastating attacks on Ukraine including on civilian infrastructure.

The letter on Monday triggered defensiveness among some Democrats who had signed it, with some questioning the timing.

Representative Mark Takano, one of the signatories, released his own statement vowing to back continued funding “to aid Ukrainian self-determination and ensure the people of Ukraine have the tools they need to protect their hard-won democracy.”

Lawmakers across party lines backed a $40 billion package for Ukraine in May, with the limited opposition coming mostly from hard-right Republicans close to former president Donald Trump, who in the past has professed admiration for Putin.

A 19-year-old gunman who shot dead two people on Monday at a St Louis high school had 600 rounds of ammunition and the rapid response by police prevented an even more “horrific scene,” the city police chief said.

Orlando Harris, who graduated last year from Central Visual & Performing Arts High School, was killed by police officers who responded swiftly to the attack at the school.

St Louis police chief Mike Sack said Harris was armed with an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle and had multiple magazines of ammunition strapped to his chest and in a bag that he was carrying.

“It appears that he came into the building with more than 600 rounds of ammunition on his person,” Sack said at a press conference on Tuesday. “600 rounds is a lot of ammunition.”

“This could have been a horrific scene,” Sack said. “It was not, by the grace of God.”

According to police, armed officers responded within four minutes to the report of an “active shooter” at the school and killed Harris in an exchange of gunfire.

Sack also said a handwritten document had been found in Harris’s car in which he expressed a desire to “conduct the school shooting.”

“I don’t have any friends. I don’t have any family,” he quoted the document as saying. “I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’ve never had a social life. I’ve been an isolated loner my entire life.

“This was the perfect storm for a mass shooter,” it said.

A 61-year-old physical education teacher and a 16-year-old student were killed in the attack and seven other people were injured.

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones also attended the press conference and said mass shootings in the United States constitute a “public health crisis that requires federal action.”

“The scourge of gun violence that continues to claim the lives of our children and families in their communities is a national emergency,” Jones said.

In May, a teenage gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Days earlier, a young white man killed 10 Black people in a racist attack in a supermarket in New York state.

Those shootings helped galvanize support for the first significant bill on gun safety in decades, which President Joe Biden signed into law in June.

It included enhanced background checks for younger buyers and federal cash for states introducing “red flag” laws that allow courts to temporarily remove weapons from people who are considered a threat.

But the measure fell far short of an assault weapons ban sought by Biden.