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Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) will cut some jobs in the United States, Canada and Costa Rica by the end of Wednesday as part of its plan to lay off 18,000 employees, the e-commerce giant said in a memo to staff seen by Reuters.

The layoffs are the latest in the U.S. technology sector, with companies cutting their bloated workforce and slashing costs to reverse pandemic-era excesses and prepare for a worsening global economy.

The company is terminating 2,300 employees in Seattle and Bellevue, according to an update on the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) site. The U.S. labor law requires companies planning a mass layoff to inform employees 60 days before the closure.

Amazon.com Chief Executive Andy Jassy said earlier this month the cuts, about 6% of the company’s roughly 300,000 corporate employees, would mostly impact the e-commerce and human resources divisions. read more

Microsoft (MSFT.O) said earlier on Wednesday it would cut about 10,000 jobs and take a $1.2-billion charge. read more

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Election conspiracy theories drove a defeated Republican candidate in New Mexico with a criminal past to hire gunmen to attack homes of Democratic legislators, marking a dangerous new level of U.S. political violence, officials said.

Solomon Pena, 39, was denied bail on Wednesday in his first court hearing on charges he masterminded and took part in four drive-by shootings since Dec. 4 aimed at wounding or killing Democratic officials in Albuquerque, according to police.

Pena allegedly orchestrated the attacks, in which no one was hurt, after he lost a November state House of Representatives race and then visited homes of officials to dispute his 47-percentage-point defeat in a safe Democratic seat.

Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman, lead prosecutor on the case, said Pena took political “garbage” off social media sites and acted upon it.

“He got into this election denial stuff, and when you take rhetoric, extreme political rhetoric, unfortunately, the next step, often lately has become violence,” Bregman said by phone, adding that he would soon file formal charges in the case.

In early December Pena pulled up to the home of then-county commissioner Debbie O’Malley in his sporty Audi A5 and handed her documents from websites falsely claiming elections were rigged nationwide, she said.

Days later her home was hit with around a dozen bullets, and witnesses reported a black Audi matching Pena’s speeding away, a police criminal complaint said.

O’Malley said Pena was driven by a narrative, endorsed by former President Donald Trump, that violence was justified in response to rigged elections.

“One wonders if he just ran for office so that he could cry foul and be seen as a victim of election rigging,” said O’Malley by email.

Roberta Yurcic, a lawyer representing Pena, said charges against her client were “merely accusations.”

“Mr Pena is presumed innocent,” she said in an email.

The string of shootings follows other recent acts of politically motivated violence, including the attack in San Francisco on the husband of then-House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But the New Mexico shooting set a precedent with an aspiring politician named as the suspected mastermind.

Senior members of New Mexico’s Republican party spoke out against political violence, and the Republican National Hispanic Assembly was among Pena supporters who expressed regret at backing the political novice.

The Hispanic advocacy group said it had believed the former U.S. Navy medic and political science graduate had left crime behind after serving seven years in prison for leading a burglary ring.

“Despite our best intentions and candidate vetting protocols we bet on the wrong horse,” the group said in a statement.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said the attacks reinforced President Joe Biden’s message that national leaders must reject violence as a political tool.

“We urge leaders in both parties to reject lies and conspiracies,” Jean-Pierre told reporters.

A former University of Kansas professor avoided prison on Wednesday for making a false statement related to work he was doing in China in the latest setback for a Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice crackdown on Chinese influence within American academia.

Prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson in Kansas City, Kansas, to sentence Feng “Franklin” Tao to 2-1/2 years in prison, even after she had thrown out most of his trial conviction for concealing work he did in China.

Robinson instead sentenced Tao to time served, saying there was no evidence he shared proprietary information with anyone in China and that the chemical engineering professor did research that was “freely shared in the scientific community.”

“This is not an espionage case,” Robinson said. “Maybe that’s what the Department of Justice thought what was going on, but that’s not what was going on.”

Peter Zeidenberg, Tao’s lawyer, said his client was “immensely relieved by the sentence.”

He said Tao will appeal his remaining false statement conviction for failing to disclose his affiliation with a Chinese university on a form submitted to the University of Kansas.

Tao, who was indicted in 2019, was among about two dozen academics who were charged as part of the “China Initiative,” which launched in 2018 during former Republican President Donald Trump’s era and aimed to counter suspected Chinese economic espionage and research theft.

The Justice Department under Democratic President Joe Biden in February 2022 ended the China Initiative following several failed prosecutions and criticism that it chilled research and fueled bias against Asians, though it said it would continue pursuing cases over national security threats posed by China.

Prosecutors said Tao, who worked on renewable energy projects, concealed his affiliation with Fuzhou University in China from the University of Kansas and two federal agencies that provided grant funding for the professor’s research.

A jury in April convicted him of four of the eight counts against him. Robinson in September overturned three wire fraud convictions, citing a lack of evidence.

Migrants on Mexico’s northern border on Wednesday began entering the United States using a mobile app designed to facilitate the process of applying for asylum, although several quickly reported difficulties in using the system.

This month, the Biden administration said it would broaden use of the so-called CBP One app to allow asylum seekers to enter their personal information as a pre-screening step for a U.S. appointment to request asylum.

“I’m really excited, I can’t wait to see my family,” said Alejandra, a Venezuelan migrant who entered El Paso, Texas from the border city of Ciudad Juarez, headed for Florida.

Giovanny Castellanos, another Venezuelan who has been waiting on the Mexican border for months to enter the United States, said he got an appointment quickly.

Castellanos, who spoke as he was lining up to enter Laredo, Texas, from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, recommended migrants avoid taking risks to cross and to use the app instead.

Since it was activated for pre-screening last week, the app has been in such demand that it is telling applicants it has run out of appointments, according to Mexican officials and a dozen migrants, some of whom shared phone screenshots with Reuters.

To receive a U.S. appointment, migrants first must go to a border entry point in Mexico determined by the app. Some migrants told Reuters the app only had appointments far from where they currently are.

Jose Huerta, a Venezuelan migrant in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, told Reuters the app said he could cross for his appointment from Tijuana, a city some 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) to the west opposite San Diego.

“I don’t have money, now I have to walk,” he said.

Traveling between border cities could expose more people to danger, and some migrant advocacy groups want the United States to provide more appointments to asylum-seekers to reduce risks.

“They need to increase the number of appointments per day, we’re confident this will be the case,” said Enrique Lucero, director of migration affairs in Tijuana.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately reply to requests for comment from Reuters about the app.

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(NewsNation) — Republican Congressman George Santos is denying claims that he stole $3,000 from a GoFundMe that was intended to go toward veterinary care for a disabled veteran’s dying dog.

It’s the latest in a long list of scandals Santos faces just weeks into his first term in Congress. A New York Times investigation published last month revealed Santos lied about much of his work background and education, which he later admitted to.

Now, Richard Osthoff, who was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy in 2002, is accusing Santos of setting up a GoFundMe for his dog who needed lifesaving care and taking off with the money in 2016. Osthoff first gave his account of the story to Patch, which reported it on Tuesday.

Osthoff claims his dog, Sapphire, needed surgery to remove a stomach tumor, and a vet tech told him about someone who ran a pet charity that might be able to help. That man, Osthoff says, was Anthony Devolder, and his pet charity was called Friends of Pets United.

Anthony Devolder is the name Santos used for years before entering politics in 2020. Federal prosecutors are looking into Santos’ litany of lies, and several Democrats and Republicans have called on him to resign.

Osthoff and another New Jersey veteran, Michael Boll, say Santos closed the GoFundMe he set up for Sapphire and disappeared after $3,000 was raised. As Osthoff waited to receive the money, Sapphire’s condition worsened to the point she had to be put down.

“It was just excuse, after excuse, after excuse, after excuse,” Osthoff told NewsNation affiliate WPIX. “I had to panhandle for the money to get her euthanized.”

In a text message to a reporter for news outlet Semafor, Santos called the allegations “fake” and said he has no idea who Osthoff is.

The article in Patch includes alleged text messages between Osthoff and Santos, who said that because Osthoff “didn’t do things my way” he put the money to use “for other dogs.”

The New York Times reported that Friends of Pets United was not listed as a charity in official records, and a beneficiary of the fundraiser in 2017 said they had never seen the money.

There is social media evidence that the fundraising campaign occurred, including a 2016 tweet that reads: “Click here to support sapphire The Veteran rescue! by Anthony Devolder.” It has a link to a non-functioning GoFundMe page.

When Olthoff learned Santos was elected to Congress, he said it threw him for a loop.

“I couldn’t breathe for a couple of seconds when I saw him on TV,” Osthoff said.

I have not always been, I’m sad to say, as alert to climate change as I should have been. My colleague Robert Harrington is right. It is the number one danger for all of us, and doing nothing will result in massive loss of life. It actually already has.

We’re witnessing the results of ignoring the peril, from massive floods to burning lands. Since December, the state of California has been in agony. There is something going on there called “atmospheric rivers.” What happens with the rivers is that “moisture unleashes intense blasts of precipitation.” That might be why parts of California have become drenched in water.

Small bodies of water have become raging rivers, roads have become impassible, and people have, in some tragic cases, lost their lives.

At least 19 people have been killed. There is flooding. There are power outages. There are people getting stranded as mudslides, torrents of rain, and raging storms reign down on California.

I am writing this because we all need to do our share. I am also writing it because of a poignant email I received from a friend of mine. She lives out in California. And her apartment has been leaking. Why isn’t the media covering this more, she — and MANY others wondered. So I promised her that I would. And we all need to do better.

Though some in the media have spoken about it, this subject is getting lost. We cannot let it. Please email the media organizations you watch. If you are on social media, tweet them. Imagine if everyone reading this sent an email or a tweet.

The media needs to know we’re watching. They need to know the vital importance of what is happening and what will happen should we do nothing.

Please help me in doing — something — as much as we can — to help all the people of California and all the people everywhere. We need to educate, to let them know we hear them. And we need to make sure this very important issue does not become relegated to darkness like this planet will be if the subject is ignored.

The post Sound the alarm appeared first on Palmer Report.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Wednesday his intelligence services had failed on Jan. 8, when Brasilia buildings were stormed by supporters of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro.

The fresh remarks come as Lula’s criticism of the military mounts, with the commander-in-chief condemning it in recent days for failing to act against the rioting Bolsonaro supporters.

“We made an elementary mistake: my intelligence did not exist (that day),” Lula told TV channel GloboNews in an interview. “We have Army intelligence, Air Force intelligence, ABIN (Brazil’s Intelligence Agency); none of them warned me.”

Lula had previously said he suspected there was collusion by “people in the armed forces” in the insurrection, during which several thousand Bolsonaro supporters invaded and ransacked the Congress building, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court.

“I had the impression it was the beginning of a coup d’état,” Lula said about the riot.

The president stressed he would like to maintain civilized relations with Brazil’s armed forces but noted they must not be politicized. He is set to meet with the Army, Navy and Air Force commanders later this week.

“I don’t want to have problems with the forces, nor they with me. But those who want to be involved in politics should take off the uniform, resign from office and then enter politics,” Lula said.

Earlier this week he dismissed more than 50 military officers guarding the presidential residence and the National Security Advisor’s office, expressing his distrust in them after the Brasilia insurrection.

In the interview, Lula reiterated he would meet U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington on Feb. 10, after getting an invitation when the leaders of the two largest western-hemisphere democracies discussed the Brasilia riots over the phone.

The Brazilian insurrection resembled the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Reuters exclusively reported last week that U.S. and Brazilian lawmakers were looking for ways to cooperate on an investigation into violent protests that rampaged through Brasilia.

“I want to discuss with Biden how democracy is doing in the world, what’s happening here and there,” Lula said, adding he would also ask his U.S. counterpart how he, Biden, was dealing with the strength of right-wing forces.

The Brazilian president said he was also set to meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Brazil later this month, as Reuters first reported last month.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will not seek re-election and plans to step down no later than early February, she said in a televised statement on Thursday.

A general election would be held on Oct. 14, she added.

“This summer, I had hoped to find a way to prepare for not just another year, but another term – because that is what this year requires,” a visibly emotional Ardern said during the statement. “I have not been able to do that.”

Ardern’s term will conclude no later than Feb. 7.

Ardern said she believed the New Zealand Labour Party would win the upcoming election and added that a vote to elect the next Labour leader would be held on Sunday.

New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson, who also serves as finance minister, said in a statement he would not seek to stand as the next Labour leader.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that his campaign was in talks with Meta Platforms (META.O) about a possible return to Facebook and Instagram, two years after the company banned him for inciting violence.

“We are talking to them, and we’ll see how it all works out,” Trump said, according to the report.

“If they took us back, it would help them greatly, and that’s okay with me,” he said. “But they need us more than we need them.”

Meta declined to comment to Reuters.

Trump launched his bid to regain the presidency in 2024 in November.

Meta, the world’s biggest social media company, is set to make a controversial decision on the future of Trump’s accounts this month.

While Trump has shunned Twitter since its decision in November to restore his account, saying he preferred his own Truth Social platform, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that being back on Facebook “will be an important tool for the 2024 campaign to reach voters.”

Meta revoked Trump’s access to Facebook and Instagram after removing two of his posts during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, including a video containing false claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

The company’s independent oversight board ruled later in 2021 that the suspension was justified but objected to its indeterminate nature. In response, Meta committed to reviewing the suspension two years after it began.

“If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to re-evaluate until that risk has receded,” Meta VP of Global Affairs Nick Clegg wrote at the time.