Apple on Thursday posted its first quarterly revenue drop in nearly four years after pandemic-driven restrictions on its China factories curtailed sales of the latest iPhone during the holiday season.

The company’s sales of $117 billion for the October-December period represented a 5% decline from the same time in the previous year, a deeper downturn than analysts had projected.

It marks Apple’s first year-over-year decrease in quarterly revenue since the January-March period in 2019 when sales also slipped 5% amid slowing iPhone demand and the fallout of a trade war with China that was being waged by then-President Donald Trump.

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Apple’s profit also eroded during the past quarter, even though the Cupertino, California, company remained a pillar of prosperity. Earnings totaled $30 billion, or $1.88 per share, a 13 decrease from the same time in the previous year. Those results also missed a target of $1.94 per share set by analysts polled by FactSet Research.

Investors reacted to the letdown by initially driving down Apple’s stock by nearly 5% in Thursday’s extended trading. But management remarks made during a conference call with analysts raised hopes that Apple’s disappointing performance may have been a mere hiccup, paring the decrease in the company’s shares to less than 1%.

Apple’s rare stumble came against a backdrop of renewed investor optimism about tech’s outlook for this year, helping to spur a 17% increase in the sector’s bellwether Nasdaq composite index so far this year.

But now Wall Street seems likely to reassess things in light of Apple’s latest results and ongoing worries about a potential recession in the wake of rising interest rates aimed at tamping down inflation, said Investing.com analyst Jesse Cohen.

With Google also disclosing a year-over-year quarterly decline in its digital ad sales on Thursday alongside Apple’s disappointing performance, Cohen said it’s clear there are “several challenges the tech sector faces amid the current economic climate of slowing growth and elevated inflation.”

Read More: These Companies Have Announced the Biggest Layoffs in 2023

Despite the quarterly downturn in its fortunes. Apple hasn’t signaled any intention to resort to mass layoffs — a stark contrast to its peers in technology. Industry giants Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta Platoforms have announced plans to jettison more than a combined 50,000 employees as they adjust to revenue slowdowns or downturns caused by people’s lessening dependence on the digital realm as the pandemic has eased.

“We manage for the long term,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts during the conference call. “We invest in innovation and people.”

Cook had tried to brace investors for tougher sledding in late October when he warned of “increasingly difficult economic conditions” heading into the holiday season. Then, just a few days later, Apple cautioned that China’s attempts to clamp down on the spread of COVID was affecting its production lines and would prevent meeting all the demand for the premium iPhone 14 models during the holidays.

That contributed to an 8% decrease in iPhone sales from the previous year to $65.8 billion in the most recent quarter.

Cook indicated Apple’s supply headaches are now over, assuring analysts that “production is now back where we want it to be.”

In another positive sign, Apple also disclosed that it now has more than 2 billion iPhones, iPads, Macs and other devices in active use for the first time. That is likely to help Apple sell more digital subscriptions and ads, helping to fuel long-term revenue growth.

On February 2, Russian invaders, struggling weighty losses, continued to carry out offensive operations in the Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Novopavlivka instructions.

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Micronesia aims to ‘soon’ sign an extension of its economic and security pact with the United States, its President David Panuelo said on Friday, a deal seen as important in Washington’s efforts to counter Chinese influence in the Pacific.

Micronesia is one of three Pacific Island states that has so-called compacts of free association with the United States, which allows Washington exclusive access to airspace and territorial waters in exchange for financial assistance.

“Our negotiation team actually will be in (Washington) D.C. soon where the two governments will likely be signing an MOU for the extension of the economic provisions for another 20 years,” Panuelo told reporters on a visit to Tokyo.

Gautam Adani has lost $52 billion over six trading days after a collapse in his companies’ share prices.

Ramesh Dave/Mint via Getty Images)

• Indian billionaire Gautam Adani lost $52 billion in net worth over six trading days.
• Adani’s losses were due to a massive selloff in the shares of his companies.
• Shares in Adani Group companies have lost over $100 billion in market cap since a US short seller’s fraud allegations.

Indian tycoon Gautam Adani’s wealth has come under so much pressure in the last week and a half that his losses have outpaced some of the largest fortunes lost in recent years.

Adani — whose empire is under pressure from a US short seller — has already lost $52 billion in just six trading days, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In comparison, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried lost all of his $16 billion fortune in under a week following the collapse of the crypto exchange, per Bloomberg.

Adani is now worth $61.3 billion and on the 21st spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He’s also India’s second-richest person after Mukesh Ambani. However, that’s a steep drop from just last week, when Adani was the planet’s fourth-richest person. At his peak in September 2022, Adani was worth $150 billion, per Bloomberg.

In terms of absolute value, Adani’s wealth wipeout is also larger than that of Brazil’s “negative billionaire” Eike Batista, who lost his entire $35 billion fortune in a year after his oil and mining empire collapsed in 2013.

The spectacular decline in Adani’s net worth is the most serious in terms of its scale and speed of decline since Bloomberg started tracking billionaires in 2012, the news outlet noted. The dramatic decline in Adani’s net worth is because much of his wealth is derived from his stakes in his businesses.

Listed companies under the Adani Group have lost $100 billion in market value so far this year since short seller Hindenburg Research released a scathing report last Tuesday alleging “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme” at the Adani Group.

The Adani Group has been defending itself vigorously, but Hindenburg has also doubled down on its initial report.

Still, the battle has rattled the market. Shares in its flagship company Adani Enterprises are down about 60% this year so far.

However, since much of Adani’s wealth is tied up with his stakes in his companies, there could still be upside for his fortune as share prices fluctuate.

After all, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was the first person ever to lose $200 billion after the electric vehicle maker’s shares declined sharply last year. But his net worth is up $36.5 billion this year so far on the back of strong gains in the stock, per Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Tucker Carlson (left) and Boris Johnson.

Jason Koerner/Getty Images; Aaron Chown/PA Images via Getty Images

• Tucker Carlson has ignited a feud with former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
• During his show on Wednesday, Carlson called Johnson a “terrified old woman.”
• Johnson earlier said he was “amazed and horrified” by how many people were “intimidated by” Carlson.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson are feuding. 

During his show on Wednesday, Carlson accused Johnson of being afraid of going on Fox News to answer questions about his support for Ukraine.

“We knew that Johnson himself was a coward,” Carlson said. “We watched during Covid as he transitioned into a terrified old woman, but we had no idea he was also a liar. We should have known.” 

—Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) February 2, 2023

 

Carlson’s ire may have been stoked by comments Johnson made earlier that day. During a panel discussion with the Atlantic Council, Johnson accused Carlson of influencing “wonderful Republicans” with anti-Ukraine rhetoric.

“I’ve been amazed and horrified by how many people are frightened of a guy called Tucker Carlson,” Johnson said. 

“Has anybody heard of Tucker Carlson? What is it with this guy? All these wonderful Republicans seem somehow intimidated by his perspective,” Johnson said. He added that he was “struck by” how often Carlson’s name came up in conversations.

—Ben Judah (@b_judah) February 1, 2023

 

“Bad ideas are getting into, starting to infect the thinking around the world about what Putin stands for, what he believes in, it’s a disaster,” Johnson added. “He stands for war, aggression, systematic murder, rape, and destruction. That’s what he stands for.”

In March 2022, Mother Jones reported on a leaked Kremlin war memo that instructed Russian state media to feature Carlson “as much as possible” because of how much he criticized the US and NATO. 

During an episode of his show in May, Carlson baselessly claimed the US was getting involved in Ukraine with the intention of toppling Putin from power as “payback for the 2016 election.” In 2021, leaked Kremlin documents seen by The Guardian appeared to confirm that there was a Russian plot in 2016 to make sure then-presidential candidate Donald Trump won the election.

Meanwhile, Johnson has consistently supported Ukraine in the war against Russia. In July, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lauded Johnson as a “true friend of Ukraine” and thanked him for his “decisive and uncompromising help” in the war.

Representatives for Carlson and Johnson did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.

The task was daunting: find a tiny radioactive capsule that had fallen off a truck somewhere in Western Australia’s vast outback sometime in January.

It was described by media and officials alike as searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack, but experts involved in the hunt were upbeat about their prospects.

“A lot of people, they would have expected that it would have been an impossible task, but every single person, we were confident in our abilities to find this,” Bronte Sial, an expert in radiological safety, told Reuters in an interview.

Sial who works for the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, was part of one of six teams scouring 1,400 km (870 miles) of road between Perth and the state’s remote north for the Caesium-137 capsule – just 6mm in diameter and 8mm in length or about the size of a tic-tac sweet.

The cars traveled at a maximum of 70 km/h with sensors dangling out the windows. Radiation detection equipment mounted inside the vehicles, including the Australian-designed CORIS360, scanned the environment.

They were searching for Caesium-137’s distinct signature against a backdrop of radioactive chatter, she said.

Western Australia is buzzing with low-level rays thanks to its A$230 billion ($160 billion) mining industry. Nothing to worry about, Sial added with a laugh.

Sial and her colleague played the Stone Temple Pilots, a 90s rock band, softly in the background. Electronic music would have made it hard to hear the equipment, she said.

“It wasn’t too boring and if anything, we love playing with our instruments, they’re fantastic. I can’t get over their ticking sound,” she added.

The saga of the capsule, part of a gauge used at Rio Tinto’s (RIO.AX) Gudai-Darri iron ore mine – began on Jan. 12 when it left the mine site. Its loss – due to the gauge breaking apart en route – was noticed just under two weeks later in Perth, sparking a huge search that at its peak involved 100 people from at least five government agencies.

A separate team found the capsule on Wednesday morning and it is now in storage at an undisclosed facility in Perth.

Each morning, the teams were handed packed sandwiches and were told by Western Australia’s Department of Fire and Emergency Services where to look. Come evening, they would pull into accommodation booked ahead of time.

Passing trucks, not radiation, were the main danger, said Sial. Road trains – trucks pulling multiple trailers that can stretch the length of two basketball courts – barrel across Western Australia, a sparsely populated state seven times larger than Germany.

Fire trucks escorted the cars and shielded the scientists from traffic when they got out to check the road.

“You do not want people on the road walking around when there’s big trucks around,” she says.

Social media users celebrated the unlikely discovery, with one Twitter user calling the searchers: “Australia Hide and go Seek Champions 2023”.

Sial said their success proved Australian nuclear scientists were able to stand on their own.

“We have been practising for this exact sort of thing. It’s fantastic that we finally could show Australia is more than capable although we don’t have as many reactors.”

The loss or theft of radioactive material happens from time to time in Australia which has 50,000 licensed radiation users.

The Australian Radiation Incident Register reported six incidents of material being found, lost or stolen in 2019. That year, a radioactive gauge was stolen in Queensland state, according to police reports.

($1 = 1.4140 Australian dollars)

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Micronesia aims to ‘soon’ sign a 20-year extension of its defence and economic compact with the United States, its President David Panuelo said on Friday.

Micronesia is one of three pacific island states that has agreements known as compacts of free association with Washington, which allows the U.S. exclusive access to airspace and territorial waters in exchange for financial assistance.

The deals are seen as important in helping the United States counter growing Chinese influence in the region at a time of tension between the two superpowers.

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