Meta Platforms Inc’s (META.O) social media apps appeared to be back up after facing a brief disruption in the United States on Wednesday, data on outage tracking website Downdetector.com showed.

At the peak of the outage, more than 17,000 user reports had indicated issues with Instagram in the United States, as of 2352 GMT. Over 13,000 incidents were reported for the Facebook app and outage reports also briefly spiked for WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger around the same time.

Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources including user-submitted errors on its platform.

Outages of Big Tech platforms are not uncommon as several companies ranging from Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google to Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) have seen service disruptions.

Microsoft was hit with a networking outage earlier on Wednesday that took down its cloud platform Azure along with services such as Teams and Outlook, affecting millions of users globally.

Meta did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

• Media personality Lauren Sánchez has been publically dating billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos since 2019. 
• She spoke in her first solo interview with the Wall Street Journal since news broke of their relationship.
• Sánchez discussed how she ended up becoming a pilot.

In her first solo interview since her relationship with Amazon founder and Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos was made public, former journalist and media personality Lauren Sánchez discussed her path to becoming a pilot with The Wall Street Journal. 

Tabloids like Page Six and The National Enquirer outed Sánchez, 53, and Bezos, 59, as a couple in January 2019, just hours after Bezos announced a split with his then-wife MacKenzie Scott. Sánchez was also married to her former spouse, Patrick Whitesell, the executive chairman at William Morris Endeavor, at the time.

The Journal talked to her exclusively for the first time since the scandal.

Sánchez is known for having appeared as a guest host on “The View,” co-hosting Fox 11’s “Good Day LA” show, and anchoring “Extra,” the entertainment TV program. Additionally, she’s starred in movie roles as an anchor in “Fight Club” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” according to IMDB. 

But at 18 years old, she had dreams of being a flight attendant, prompting her to move from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Los Angeles, California, in pursuit of the career path, she told The Journal. Sánchez’s career move fell short when she narrowly failed a weigh-in for the role at Southwest Airlines in 1989, she added.

“Back then, they weighed you, and I weighed 121 pounds,” Sánchez said. “They said, ‘You need to be 115.'”  But she said if she were that age again, she’d know: “I don’t want to be a stewardess. I want to be the pilot!” 

Both of her parents were pilots, and 22 years after being told she weighed too much to be a flight attendant, Sánchez attended a flight school in LA to get her pilot’s license in 2011. 

Jeff Bezos (left) and Lauren Sanchez (right).

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

Now, she’s a licensed helicopter pilot.

“This is one of the only places I feel entirely in control,” Sánchez told the outlet.

Sánchez says she tries to get in the sky at least three times a week, sometimes flying with Bezos and their blended family to various locations around the globe.

“I don’t know why more women don’t do it,” she told The Journal. She added that when women find out about her piloting, “They’re like, ‘What? You’re such a badass!’ And I want to say it’s really not that hard. I do want more women to get involved in it.”

Sánchez is planning to release a children’s book titled “Flynn, The Fly Who Flew” later this year inspired by one of her helicopter rides, according to the Journal.

“I was in the helicopter, and there was a fly,” she told the outlet. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, look, a fly who flew! This is such a great children’s book. And it stuck.’ Except now it’s a rocket [in the book].”

“I hope that a reader, especially children, will see that if you wander and explore, you never know what you’ll discover. You shouldn’t stay in one place. Don’t be typical,” she continued.

Sánchez doesn’t just fly helicopters, she is the founder of Black Ops Aviation, an ariel filming company, and the vice chair of Bezos Earth Fund, an organization committed to fighting climate change.

She is also set to lead Blue Origin’s female-led mission to space in 2024. “It’s going to be women who are making a difference in the world and who are impactful and have a message to send,'” Sánchez told The Journal.

Peter DaSilva/Reuters

• Kate Howells found out she had been laid off from Google hours after giving birth.
• She was one of the 12,000 Google employees caught in the latest slew of tech layoffs.
• Howells said Google has not responded to her query about whether she will get her maternity leave benefits.

Kate Howells gave birth to her second child on January 19. She said that barely ten hours later, while still in the hospital holding her baby, she found out that she had been laid off from her job at Google. 

She was one of the 12,000 Google employees caught in the latest slew of tech layoffs, which was announced on Friday. 

Howells, who worked at Google in a variety of roles over the course of almost ten years, wrote in a LinkedIn post that getting laid off from her job while recovering from labor led to a lot of mixed emotions during her stay at the hospital. Most recently, she served as the head of reach for global client and agency solutions at Google, per her profile.

She used the hashtag #thegolden12k, which has been used by a number of other ex-Google employees posting about their retrenchment.  

“I’ve read before that job loss is one of the top ten most stressful experiences you can have in life, and that welcoming a new child is one of the happiest. So what happens in the extremely unusual circumstance that those things collide within ten hours? A very intense and emotionally confusing postpartum hospital stay,” she wrote in her post.

She said she would be focusing on her family, which would be relocating from New York to Phoenix, Arizona. She also said she’s certain that she’ll be able to bounce back from this obstacle. 

“The end point isn’t a clear picture for me amidst this newborn haze, but I know I can take back control of this story and when I look back I’ll say I’m so grateful this led me to {fill in the blank},” she said in her post.

A comment on Howells’ post asked her if Google would continue to give her maternity benefits, to which she replied that she had not been informed about it.

“As of now Google has not provided me any information about the status of my maternity leave benefits. I reached out to HR a couple of days ago asking for clarity and have not heard back,” her reply read. 

Representatives for Google did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. 

Indoctrination — “The process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs.” Brainwashing — the process of pressuring someone into adopting radically different beliefs by using systematic and often forcible means.” Ron DeSantis — Governor of Florida who participates in the above-mentioned behaviors. (My words.)

Governor Ron DeSantis is defending himself for rejecting an advanced placement African American studies class. Ronny-boy says this class “pushes an agenda.” Is that so, Ron DeSantis? Of course, it isn’t. Ron DeSantis is doing something that is quite popular in republican circles. He is: projecting — “taking emotions and traits about oneself and attributing them to someone else.”

Ron Desantis is projecting. He is the one with an agenda. He is the one who is using the indoctrination and even brainwashing to push his ugly, racist agenda for the purpose of rewriting history, the way HE wishes it were.

DeSantis is walking a very thin line here. He must be careful. I say this because DeSantis wants to run for president. And based on his actions and behavior, I figure the number of minorities who will vote for him is probably around zero.

This is likely why he’s speaking out. DeSantis is getting some VERY bad press on this story which shows no sign of dying down. It is unlike DeSantis to be on the defensive like this. He probably knows he screwed up.

The man is showing himself to be a homophobic, thin-skinned racist, and every time he pulls one of these stunts, his popularity plunges. It’s as many figured. DeSantis is the classic bully. He is VERY good at yelling and scowling and deflecting responsibility, but he’s absolutely awful at taking responsibility.

I do not expect this charmless, charisma-less man to get far in the presidential race. And there is nothing we can do to oust him from the Governor’s mansion. What we CAN do is keep the spotlight on him and his destructive attempts to ruin the sunshine state. The more people who know who this person is and what he’s about, the less popular he will continue to be.

The post This scandal is getting ugly for Ron DeSantis appeared first on Palmer Report.

Courtesy of Margie Marsh.

• The Carnival Sunshine became a “cruise to nowhere” after windy weather kept the ship from docking.
• Longtime cruiser Margie Marsh told Insider she hadn’t even planned to get off the boat in the first place.
• But the cancelled port stop challenged her efforts to seek peace and quiet onboard the ship.

The Carnival Sunshine’s Bahamas-bound journey became a “cruise to nowhere” earlier this month after inclement weather kept the 3,000-person ship from docking in Nassau — the only planned port stop during the four-day journey.

Gusty winds ruined passengers’ plans to participate in prepaid shore excursions, including swimming with dolphins, snorkeling with stingrays, and touring Nassau’s historical old town, leaving a ship full of disappointed patrons in the wake.

But Margie Marsh, 66, a veteran cruise goer who has been to the Bahamas several times already and even previously sailed on the Carnival Sunshine, was let down for an entirely different reason.

The South Carolina-based longtime cruiser told Insider she booked the mid-January trip as a mini-vacation in an attempt to break up the monotony of the winter months and seek some sunshine.

“I wasn’t even planning to get off the boat,” Marsh said. “Sometimes it just pays to stay on the boat because there’s nobody walking around.” 

Instead, Marsh planned to sit by the ship’s pool reading a book and enjoying the solitude as her fellow passengers rushed the port to make their excursions, she said in an interview this week.

But as the boat inched closer to Nassau on the morning of Saturday, January 14, Marsh said she instinctively knew something was not quite right. She had traveled this exact route enough times to know they wouldn’t be docking at their scheduled 9 a.m. arrival time.

Soon enough, the ship’s captain came over the loudspeaker and announced the bad news: It was too windy to dock safely; their journey had officially become a “cruise to nowhere.”

Another passenger onboard the Carnival Sunshine told Insider earlier this month that the cancellation was a massive disappointment for her family, all of whom were first-time cruise goers and international travelers. 

Marsh was disappointed for a different reason.

“Really the only thing it changed for me was basically you’ve now got everybody on the ship all day,” she said. “There’s no way I was going to sit at the pool.”

The windy weather and lack of sunshine ultimately rendered her pool plans untenable regardless, she said.

While Carnival cruise staff worked overtime to keep guests busy amid the setback — Marsh said they planned extra games, activities, entertainment, and crucial football viewing opportunities — she sought out the ship’s spa to ensure she got the peace and quiet she had been seeking.

“The best amenity was the spa area. They had these thermal chairs, really nice and toasty-warm,” she said. “It was so cold and windy, you had views outside. You could just sit on these chairs and look out.”

A spokesperson for Carnival confirmed to Insider that passengers were refunded their port fees, as well as taxes and shore excursion expenditures. Cruise goers told Insider each stateroom also received a $100 onboard credit, as well as a voucher for money off a future cruise. 

Marsh said she thought Carnival’s response was beyond generous.

“I was surprised,” she said. “I’ve never known them to give up credits like that.” 

She isn’t sure how she plans to use her voucher; she wouldn’t mind trying this exact trip again next year, she said.

But first, she has to check off her list the three upcoming cruises she already has booked.

Yasin Ozturk/Getty Images

• Elon Musk answered a question on Tesla’s earnings call by saying how popular he is online. 
• He talked up his 127 million Twitter followers and said his account might be the most interacted with across social media sites. 
• Tesla reported strong fourth-quarter earnings that beat analyst expectations. 

Elon Musk is all Twitter all the time these days — even when he’s on Tesla’s quarterly earnings call. 

On a Wednesday call with investors in his car company, Musk talked up how popular he is on his newly acquired social network. The comments came in response to an investor question about what Tesla is doing to mitigate brand damage resulting from Musk’s running political commentary on Twitter.

Polls have shown that Tesla’s favorability is declining among Democrats, suggesting Musk’s public embrace of the right is alienating left-leaning customers. 

“Let me check my Twitter account. OK, so I’ve got 127 million followers, and it continues to grow very rapidly,” Musk said. “That suggests that I’m reasonably popular. Now, I might not be popular with some people, but for the vast majority of people, my follower count speaks for itself,” 

“I’m the most interacted social media account, I think maybe in the world, certainly on Twitter,” the billionaire added. 

Musk’s increasingly erratic presence on Twitter — where he’s posted conservative memes, bashed Anthony Fauci, and called out wokeism — has pushed some longtime Tesla owners to abandon the brand. 

Musk, who now leads Twitter, Tesla, and several other ventures, praised Twitter’s potential for driving sales and encouraged more companies to use the platform. Musk’s chaotic buyout of the website, which closed in October, saw heaps of high-profile advertisers pull spending. 

“I think Twitter’s actually an incredibly powerful tool for driving demand for Tesla. And I would really encourage companies out there of all kinds, automotive or otherwise, to make more use of Twitter and to use their Twitter accounts in ways that are interesting, and informative, entertaining,” Musk said. 

To be sure, Musk also talked about Tesla’s finances. The company reported $24.32 billion in revenue during the last three months of 2022, beating Wall Street’s expectations. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.19 also beat analyst estimates.

Tesla shares jumped about 5.4% in late trading following the results. 

Are you a Tesla owner, employee, or shareholder with a story to share? Contact this reporter at tlevin@insider.com

When friends of farm supervisor Marciano Martinez heard of the shooting at the Half Moon Bay mushroom plantations on Monday, they had a sinking feeling.

They knew he had to have been there: Martinez, a migrant from Mexico, worked every day except Saturdays. He rarely took time off for holidays like Thanksgiving. When an alarm went off at night, he’d rush on site. Even with friends in social situations, he’d lament when a crop didn’t turn out well, blaming poor seeds, or he’d rave about a stellar harvest.

“He took so much pride in his job,” close family friend Alicia Ortega said in an interview, looking at the ceiling as she tried to hold back tears.

“He used to send me pictures of mushrooms. ‘Look how beautiful they grow,’ he’d say. His phone was full of pictures of mushrooms.”

Martinez, 50, was among seven people killed by Chunli Zhao, 66, a fellow immigrant mushroom farm worker who appeared in court on Wednesday after he was charged with murder.

Beyond his devotion to work, Martinez was praised as a fiercely loyal and good-hearted man. Unmarried and with no children, he gradually became a part of Ortega’s family, she said.

On Christmas Day 2020, she and her family even managed to drag Martinez away from the farm to open presents — for just half an hour, before he went back to work.

When Ortega’s husband, Reyes Vargas, was ill, Martinez would rush to the hospital after work. He helped them fix their car — even though, Ortega remembered with a laugh, he wasn’t very handy.

As Ortega’s husband took a turn for the worse, he asked Martinez to look after his wife, Ortega recounted. Martinez promised.

And after her husband passed away in 2020, a devastated Ortega said Martinez indeed became a rock of support.

“Even when I was sad or crying, he made sure that I smiled. He turned my life around,” Ortega said during the interview in her living room, the warm California sun hitting her face.

Martinez loved romantic Mexican bands, and he played accordion at church and parties.

In turn, Ortega, a talented cook, would prepare Mexican chiles rellenos, tongue tacos or her coveted homemade tortillas.

On Monday, the day of the shooting, she had surprised him with one of his favorites for lunch: rib-eye steak, peppers and baked potato.

“A coworker told me he enjoyed his meal like never before,” Ortega said. She took a deep breath. “I had no idea it was going to be his last.”

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 — 

The historic centre of the Ukrainian port city of Odesa and web-sites in Yemen and Lebanon ended up included to the Earth Heritage List Wednesday by the United Nations Instructional, Scientific and Cultural Business (UNESCO).

All three internet sites had been at the same time additional to UNESCO’s Record of Planet Heritage in Risk.

UNESCO’s founding Conference obliges all associates – amid whom are Russia and Ukraine – to “not just take any deliberate steps that immediately or indirectly destruction their heritage or that of a further Point out Bash to the Conference.”

Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, stated in a assertion that he hoped the listing would support guard Odesa from the war.

“Odesa, a free of charge city, a environment metropolis, a legendary port that has remaining its mark on cinema, literature and the arts, is so positioned under the reinforced defense of the international group,” Azoulay said.

“While the war carries on, this inscription embodies our collective determination to be certain that this metropolis, which has normally surmounted international upheavals, is preserved from more destruction.”

The statement claimed that the choice would give Ukraine obtain to “technical and economic intercontinental assistance” to safeguard and rehabilitate the city middle.

The inscription was created in the course of an extraordinary session of the Globe Heritage Committee in Paris.

The conference resolved a few threatened web pages:

• Historic Middle of Odesa (Ukraine)
• Rachid Karami Worldwide Truthful-Tripoli (Lebanon)
• Landmarks of the Historic Kingdom of Saba in Marib Governorate (Yemen)

All 3 are now outlined on the two the Planet Heritage Record and the Record of Earth Heritage in Danger.

In Yemen, the web page involves seven archaeological web pages that display the architectural, aesthetic and technological achievements of the Kingdom of Saba from the 1st millennium BCE to the arrival of Islam around 630 CE.

The web-site was added to the “in danger” list because of to threats posed to the site from the ongoing conflict in Yemen.

The web site in Lebanon, Rachid Karami Worldwide Reasonable in Tripoli, was developed in 1962 by the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. Its main developing is a boomerang-formed coated exhibition hall.

“It is just one of the important representative performs of 20th-century modern day architecture in the Arab In the vicinity of East,” UNESCO explained in a news launch.

It was additional to the threatened listing because of to its “alarming condition of conservation, the deficiency of money sources for its servicing, and the latent risk of growth proposals that could have an impact on the integrity of the intricate,” UNESCO explained.

Major impression: The historic center of Odesa, Ukraine, is now stated on UNESCO’s Entire world Heritage Record. (bergamont/iStockphoto/Getty Illustrations or photos)

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