Business

(NEW YORK) — Warehouses in and around U.S. ports are running out of room, experts say, adding another challenge to the country’s already crippled supply chain.

“We are either at or over capacity, and demand for space is the greatest I have ever seen,” said Michael Sarcona, president of Sarcona Management Inc. He operates several warehouses in the Newark area, the third-largest port in North America.

Hundreds of thousands of shipping containers faced record backlog at U.S. ports over the past several weeks. Now that some have made landfall, the goods stored in those containers may soon outpace warehouse capacity.

Warehouse vacancy in the country has reached 3.6%, a record low, according to recent data from Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis (CBRE), an American commercial real estate services and investment firm.

“Three-and-a-half percent is effectively zero,” said John Morris, executive managing director lead for CBRE’s industrial and logistics business in the Americas. “For the year, we have basically an effective shortage of space of about 300 million square feet.”

Even if retailers can get more products shipped to the U.S., Morris explained, they will struggle to find places to store them and move them along the supply chain.

“In an efficient supply chain, you want about 15% availability of warehouse capacity in these markets and across the country,” said Craig Fuller, CEO and founder of FreightWaves, a global logistics industry data and analytics company. “At 3.6%, these warehouses are operating beyond their available capacity to even function properly.”

Warehouses in the port of Los Angeles, the largest port in North America, have a record low vacancy of 1% , according to CBRE’s analysis. This is the lowest vacancy CBRE has ever recorded for the port.

“That vacancy rate is down by more than half over the last year,” said Chris Caton, the global head of strategy and analytics at Prologis, the world’s largest logistics real estate developer. “So there is extreme scarcity in these port markets.”

Warehouse vacancy at ports in central and northern New Jersey sit around 2%. Sarcona operates eight warehouse locations in Newark with a combined capacity of almost 2 million square feet, but has a team of employees and real estate agents urgently searching for more space.

How will this impact consumers?

Consumers likely won’t be able to rely on online shopping the way they once did, according to experts.

“I’m worried that the inability of the supply chain to keep up, ends up having an impact on the wonderful growth we’ve seen in this omni-channel retail economy,” said Morris, referring to online shopping platforms that allow consumers easy and timely access to big and small brand items.

“I think we’ve lost the predictability of when products are going to be delivered to consumers,” said Fuller, explaining that sellers likely won’t be able to guarantee delivery times this holiday season. “I’ve been ordering Christmas items since mid-October — [because] if anyone tells you they can tell you when something’s going to be delivered, they’re either not truthful or they’re misinformed.”

Fuller believes the uncertainty could push consumers back into stores.

“I think people are going to find that as we get closer and closer to the Christmas holiday, that the items that they normally would be able to buy online, they’re going to have to go into stores to get it,” Fuller said.

How did this happen?

Rebounding consumer demand has led to record imports through U.S. ports on both coasts. Warehouses at those ports are the first stop for items coming into the U.S., and they’re overwhelmed.

“Are we out of space? The answer is not yet,” Morris said. “Is supply and construction keeping up with demand? Just barely… like… just barely.”

One factor: Land around these ports is becoming increasingly in demand.

“In the most sought after locations, pricing is spiking — we’ve never seen rents rise like they have,” Caton said, explaining the challenges facing warehouse creation and development.

The issues relate to the physics and scarcity of land in these key locations, per Caton.

“If you want to build a 500,000-square-foot facility in New Jersey, you need 30 to 35 acres of land that’s relatively flat and well served by infrastructure, and that is just increasingly scarce,” Caton said.

Adding to the congestion, these warehouses often send goods to distribution centers, which in turn send those items out to consumers or to brick and mortar businesses. These centers “are also at capacity or overcapacity,” Sarcona, the warehouse owner, said.

When does this all get fixed?

“Perhaps in Q3 of next year” this will all be fixed, Morris said.

The U.S. will use over 1 billion square feet of storage space this year, compared to 800 million last year. And there are already 500 million square feet of storage in development, per CBRE.

But even with more storage locations being built, supply chain issues continue.

“It’s hard to get the materials to finish that construction,” Morris said. “With a broken supply chain for construction materials, cement roofing trusses, the pins that hold the roof to the wall, they’re short on all of that.”

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(NEW YORK) — Meta, the newly named parent company of Facebook, announced Tuesday that it was shutting down its use of a facial recognition system on its social media platform.

The announcement comes after mounting pressure from advocacy groups concerned about privacy issues, allegations of racial bias in algorithms and additional concerns related to how artificial intelligence technology identifies people’s faces in pictures. It also notably comes amid renewed scrutiny of the tech giant from lawmakers and beyond.

“We need to weigh the positive use cases for facial recognition against growing societal concerns, especially as regulators have yet to provide clear rules,” Jerome Pesenti, the vice president of artificial intelligence at Meta, said in a company blogpost Tuesday. “In the coming weeks, we will shut down the Face Recognition system on Facebook as part of a company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in our products.”

“As part of this change, people who have opted in to our Face Recognition setting will no longer be automatically recognized in photos and videos, and we will delete the facial recognition template used to identify them,” Pesenti added.

Pesenti said that more than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted in to use facial recognition, and its removal “will result in the deletion of more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates.”

Looking ahead, Pesenti said Meta still sees facial recognition technology as a tool that could be used for people needing to verify their identity or to prevent fraud or impersonation, and said the company will continue to work on these technologies while “engaging outside experts.”

“But the many specific instances where facial recognition can be helpful need to be weighed against growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole,” Pesenti added. “There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use. Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.”

Removing the Facebook’s facial recognition system will lead to a number of changes for users, Pesenti noted, including that the platform will no longer automatically recognize if people’s faces appear in photos or videos, and people will no longer be able to turn it on for suggestions on whom to tag in photos. The company also intends to delete the template used to identify users who have employed the setting.

The change will affect the automatic alt text feature, which creates image descriptions for blind and visually impaired people, Pesenti added, saying the descriptions will no longer include the names of people recognized in photos but will function normally otherwise.

The announcement comes amid mounting controversies for the tech giant. A company whistleblower, Frances Haugen, testified before lawmakers just weeks ago, alleging blatant disregard from Facebook executives when they learned their platform could have harmful effects on democracy and the mental health of young people.

Some digital rights advocacy groups welcomed Facebook’s recognition of the pitfalls of facial recognition technology, though still urged for an all-out ban.

“Facial recognition is one of the most dangerous and politically toxic technologies ever created. Even Facebook knows that,” Caitlin Seeley George, campaign director for the nonprofit advocacy group Fight for the Future, told ABC News in a statement shortly after the announcement was made.

“From misidentifying Black and Brown people (which has already led to wrongful arrests) to making it impossible to move through our lives without being constantly surveilled, we cannot trust governments, law enforcement, or private companies with this kind of invasive surveillance,” she added. “And even as algorithms improve, facial recognition will only be more dangerous.”

The tech could allow governments to target and crack down on religious minorities or political dissenters, create new tools for stalking or identity theft and more, Seeley George added, saying simply: “It should be banned.”

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(NEW YORK) — As climate change takes center stage with global leaders, it’s a perfect time to take a look around our own homes to see what small changes can help reduce one’s carbon footprint.

ABC News’ technology and consumer correspondent Becky Worley kicked off “This Green House” on Monday to share tips to help the planet and cut costs on energy bills.

Home Swaps by Room

Swap a gas range for an electric option. Gas cooking can waste 34% more energy than cooking with electricity.

Opt for an energy star-certified fridge that cuts the energy use down by nearly 50%.

Change out old incandescent light bulbs in favor of LED bulbs that cost less and use 90% less energy.

Water heaters can make up 30% of a household’s total energy cost, more than all other major appliances like the fridge, dryer and dishwasher combined, so seek out a new energy-efficient model made with new technology.

Worley spoke with a contractor who recommended a budget and planet-friendly project like adding weather stripping around windows to keep the draft out and heat inside the house.

Especially with older windows, weather stripping can help with energy savings as a whole.

“If you don’t weatherstrip, with all the leaks, it can be, like, having a window open all winter long,” Worley explained. “Home heating is one of the highest costs and the biggest energy sucks in a home.”

Other Energy-Efficient Swaps and Hacks

In order to save without swapping out each appliance, Worley shared some additional tips to save on electricity with larger appliances.

First, if replacing any appliance from a dishwasher or refrigerator to a television, Energy Star media manager Brittney Gordon told GMA to look for the blue energy star label “to get those savings that you’re looking for.”

There are also yellow energy guide labels on appliances that Worley said list the FTC’s annual cost of running that particular appliance so you know what you should be spending.

Another important swap is the hot water heater, which Worley said “cost about $600 a year to operate” and according to Lowe’s, the average life span is just 10 years.

When a hot water heater needs replacing, Gordon recommends switching to a heat pump, which she said “is the best-kept secret” and “the number one most efficient way to heat water.” Plus, homeowners with the heat pump will receive a rebate upwards of $1,000 to save even more on their home.

For folks not ready or not looking to immediately upgrade their refrigerator, Worley shared a trick to reduce the energy consumption by 30%.

“Cleaning the coils at the back. All you need is a screwdriver and vacuum cleaner and you are good to go,” Worley said. “That’s a tip for those at home who aren’t planning to upgrade.”

Worley also suggested adding a smart thermostat to the house to help regulate heat use and cut down over 20% on heating costs.

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(NEW YORK) — Members of the United Auto Workers Union are set to vote Tuesday on a tentative agreement that would end the ongoing strike of more than 10,000 John Deere workers.

News of the tentative deal, which would give approximately double the wage increase compared the previously rejected offer that kicked off the strike on Oct. 14, comes as unique labor market conditions have resulted in workers wielding new power as the pandemic wanes.

An apparent shortage of workers accepting low-wage jobs has left many major companies reeling for staff and has been linked to the spate of strikes that have rocked the private sector in recent weeks. The labor crunch — combined with recent record-high rates of people quitting their jobs and record-high job openings, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data — have resulted in workers gaining new leverage as they seek to bargain for better pay or working conditions.

UAW leadership and John Deere announced a tentative agreement had been reached between the union’s elected national bargaining team and officials at the agricultural machinery giant Saturday, but workers remain on strike until the ratification vote Tuesday.

The terms of the new agreement would guarantee a 10% wage increase for all union employees in the first year of the contract, and 5% each in the third and fifth year of the deal, as well as 3% lump sum payments in the second, fourth and fifth years of the deal, according to a contract breakdown document shared with ABC News by the union. Moreover, employees would receive an $8,500 ratification bonus.

There would also be improved retirement benefit options and no changes to the cost of their health insurance.

The UAW on Oct. 14 rejected a contract offer that would have offered a ratification bonus of $3,500 and immediate raises of 5% to 6%.

“Our UAW John Deere national bargaining team went back to our local members after the previous tentative agreement and canvassed the concerns and priorities of membership,” UAW President Ray Curry said in a statement announcing news of the new tentative agreement.

“We want to thank the UAW bargaining team and striking UAW members and their families for the sacrifices they have made to achieve these gains,” Curry added. “Our members have enjoyed the support of our communities and the entire labor movement nationwide as they have stood together in support and solidarity these past few weeks.”

John Deere, meanwhile, confirmed in a statement on its website that a second tentative agreement on a labor contract had been reached with the union and that the “UAW will call for a vote on the new tentative agreement.”

The striking John Deere workers have received well-wishes and support from lawmakers and the public, as new employee activism during so-called “Striketober” has fueled momentum for the post-pandemic labor movement.

A GoFundMe set up to support the striking Deere workers has raised more than $135,000 from over 3,000 donors.

The first strike in more than three decades at John Deere comes after the company reported earning a record-high $4.68 billion during the first nine months of the 2021 fiscal year, more than double the $1.993 billion reported during the same time last year.

John Deere’s chairman and CEO John May, meanwhile, earned compensation of some $15.58 million in fiscal year 2020, according to a company SEC filing. This would make the ratio of the CEO’s total compensation to a median employee’s total compensation in 2020 approximately 220 to 1, the SEC filing states.

The recent bout of employee activism that has manifested in work stoppages and strikes in recent weeks comes after the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic that took an inordinate toll on workers deemed “essential,” but also after decades of soaring income inequality in the U.S., experts have said.

“I think workers have reached a tipping point,” Tim Schlittner, the communications director of the coalition of labor unions AFL-CIO, told ABC News last month shortly after the Deere strike commenced. “For too long they’ve been called essential, but treated as expendable, and workers have decided that enough is enough.”

Schlittner said the pandemic also exposed some deep “imbalances of power in the economy.”

“The pandemic has made clear what’s important and what’s not, and workers are looking at work in a new way, and demanding more of a return on their labor and demanding things like basic respect, dignity and safety on the job,” he said. “The pandemic has put on display for everyone to see how important workers are to this country, and you can’t call workers essential for 18 months and then treat them like crap when they all come back on the job.”

 

 

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(NEW YORK) — Members of the United Auto Workers Union are set to vote Tuesday on a tentative agreement that would end the ongoing strike of more than 10,000 John Deere workers.

News of the tentative deal, which would give approximately double the wage increase compared the previously rejected offer that kicked off the strike on Oct. 14, comes as unique labor market conditions have resulted in workers wielding new power as the pandemic wanes.

An apparent shortage of workers accepting low-wage jobs has left many major companies reeling for staff and has been linked to the spate of strikes that have rocked the private sector in recent weeks. The labor crunch — combined with recent record-high rates of people quitting their jobs and record-high job openings, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data — have resulted in workers gaining new leverage as they seek to bargain for better pay or working conditions.

UAW leadership and John Deere announced a tentative agreement had been reached between the union’s elected national bargaining team and officials at the agricultural machinery giant Saturday, but workers remain on strike until the ratification vote Tuesday.

The terms of the new agreement would guarantee a 10% wage increase for all union employees in the first year of the contract, and 5% each in the third and fifth year of the deal, as well as 3% lump sum payments in the second, fourth and fifth years of the deal, according to a contract breakdown document shared with ABC News by the union. Moreover, employees would receive an $8,500 ratification bonus.

There would also be improved retirement benefit options and no changes to the cost of their health insurance.

The UAW on Oct. 14 rejected a contract offer that would have offered a ratification bonus of $3,500 and immediate raises of 5% to 6%.

“Our UAW John Deere national bargaining team went back to our local members after the previous tentative agreement and canvassed the concerns and priorities of membership,” UAW President Ray Curry said in a statement announcing news of the new tentative agreement.

“We want to thank the UAW bargaining team and striking UAW members and their families for the sacrifices they have made to achieve these gains,” Curry added. “Our members have enjoyed the support of our communities and the entire labor movement nationwide as they have stood together in support and solidarity these past few weeks.”

John Deere, meanwhile, confirmed in a statement on its website that a second tentative agreement on a labor contract had been reached with the union and that the “UAW will call for a vote on the new tentative agreement.”

The striking John Deere workers have received well-wishes and support from lawmakers and the public, as new employee activism during so-called “Striketober” has fueled momentum for the post-pandemic labor movement.

A GoFundMe set up to support the striking Deere workers has raised more than $135,000 from over 3,000 donors.

The first strike in more than three decades at John Deere comes after the company reported earning a record-high $4.68 billion during the first nine months of the 2021 fiscal year, more than double the $1.993 billion reported during the same time last year.

John Deere’s chairman and CEO John May, meanwhile, earned compensation of some $15.58 million in fiscal year 2020, according to a company SEC filing. This would make the ratio of the CEO’s total compensation to a median employee’s total compensation in 2020 approximately 220 to 1, the SEC filing states.

The recent bout of employee activism that has manifested in work stoppages and strikes in recent weeks comes after the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic that took an inordinate toll on workers deemed “essential,” but also after decades of soaring income inequality in the U.S., experts have said.

“I think workers have reached a tipping point,” Tim Schlittner, the communications director of the coalition of labor unions AFL-CIO, told ABC News last month shortly after the Deere strike commenced. “For too long they’ve been called essential, but treated as expendable, and workers have decided that enough is enough.”

Schlittner said the pandemic also exposed some deep “imbalances of power in the economy.”

“The pandemic has made clear what’s important and what’s not, and workers are looking at work in a new way, and demanding more of a return on their labor and demanding things like basic respect, dignity and safety on the job,” he said. “The pandemic has put on display for everyone to see how important workers are to this country, and you can’t call workers essential for 18 months and then treat them like crap when they all come back on the job.”

 

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Elon Musk’s SpaceX is gearing up to send a crew of astronauts to the International Space Station for the fourth time.

The mission, dubbed Crew-3, will carry NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, along with European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer, to the ISS for a six-month stay in orbit.

The spaceflight, moved to Wednesday from Sunday because of weather, will be the first for three of the four crew members.

The veteran on the mission is Marshburn. The doctor and former NASA flight surgeon, making his third trip to space, said this research could one day answer bigger questions about human existence.

“It’s every one of us who has looked into the night sky and wondered, ‘How does the universe work, and how did life come to our planet Earth?'” Marshburn told ABC News.

Barron, an astronaut who has experience on submarines, said her time in Navy has helped prepare her for this moment — and that she made a playlist for the ride out.

“There are some strong millennial favorites on my playlist and throwbacks to the ’90s,” she joked.

They will launch aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket.

The crew is scheduled to spend 22 hours in the capsule before docking with the ISS. The team decided to call the new capsule “Endurance” — a tribute to the human spirit and a historic sailing vessel used by Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton.

SpaceX launched two NASA astronauts to the ISS successfully for the first time in June 2020, which cleared them to continue conducting flights with their rocket and Crew Dragon. It was the first crewed launch to depart from American soil in nearly a decade.

Last month SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission made history as civilians traveled the greatest distance away from Earth — 367 miles — even farther than the International Space Station.

But on that flight they discovered an issue with the toilet inside the Crew Dragon that almost hampered the Crew-3 launch. A tube became unglued and spilled urine onto fans beneath the floor.

“It had no impact on Inspiration4 at all,” William Gerstenmair, SpaceX’s vice president, said during a press conference. “We didn’t really even notice it, the crew didn’t notice it, until we got the vehicle back and we looked under the floor and we saw the fact that there was contamination.”

Engineers eventually fixed the problem.

SpaceX is contracted to launch up to six crewed flights for NASA, with two more scheduled for 2022.

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(NEW YORK) — American Airlines has canceled more than 2,000 flights since Friday — stranding tens of thousands of passengers temporarily at U.S. airports across the country. American is just the latest airline to suffer crippling logistical failures amid staffing shortages.

The airline said high winds at its Dallas-Fort Worth hub on Thursday left flight crews out of their regular position and sparked the dayslong cancellations.

“The problem with most of the large airlines is if they if one hub sneezes, the other hubs catch colds,” aviation expert Henry Harteveldt told ABC News. “The airlines’ networks are all interconnected.”

American COO David Seymour said in an internal memo that in order to provide scheduling certainty for their crews, they were forced to proactively cancel some flights “for the last few days this month.”

American has already canceled 300 flights Monday morning, but anticipates they will get through “the brief irregular ops period quickly with the start of a new month.”

“Unfortunately, when bad weather hits an airline at the end of the month, the problems are exacerbated because often crews are out of the legal amount of time they’re allowed to work,” Harteveldt said.

A staffing boost from the 1,800 American flight attendants set to return from leave Monday should help American re-stabilize this week, experts said.

Southwest had a similar operational meltdown three weeks ago when the airline canceled 2,000 flights over three days.

The airline blamed the multi-day mess on air traffic control issues, bad weather and “other external constraints.”

In response, Southwest said it’s going to hire more than 5,000 employees by the end of the year to mitigate future issues and has 50% of the goal met.

Experts are worried American and Southwest’s inability to stabilize their schedules quickly is a potential warning of what’s to come this winter.

With airlines booking their flights to 100% capacity, experts are concerned there is no wiggle room left in the system to recover if a major airline suffers any logistical failure during the busy travel season.

“The chaos that is the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday travel season will be even more chaotic this year,” Harteveldt said.

ABC News’ Annie Ochitwa and Sam Sweeney contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Earlier this year, multiple Facebook employees questioned the apparent restrictions on well-known Palestinian activist Mohammed El-Kurd’s Instagram account, according to internal Facebook documents shared with ABC News and a group of other news organizations.

The document, titled “Concerns with added restrictions/demotions on content pertaining to Palestine,” shows concern among some employees over content moderation decisions during the May escalation of violence in Gaza and the West Bank.

The documents were disclosed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former employee, and provided to Congress in redacted form by Haugen’s legal counsel. They were provided to ABC News by a congressional staffer.

Facebook’s independent Oversight Board called for an investigation into whether moderation disproportionately targeted Palestinians last month.

The document also points to frustration by employees who were, in the moment, unable to pin down exactly why an activist’s online reach was being limited.

In the post, the Facebook employee, whose name was redacted, warned the Instagram Stories of El-Kurd, a prominent activist in the East Jerusalem area of Sheikh Jarrah, were apparently being “demoted” in error. Demotion refers to the practice of limiting the reach of a post judged to violate Facebook’s rules.

And El-Kurd’s account wasn’t the only one facing apparent restrictions, according to the document’s author.

“Can we investigate the reasons why posts and stories pertaining to Palestine lately have had limited reach and engagement, especially when more people than ever from around the world are watching the situation unfold?” the author wrote.

While the employee’s post is not dated, it includes an unredacted link to a May 12 tweet by El-Kurd, which includes a photo of an Instagram error message.

“I keep getting messages like this one. My Instagram story views went down from 150k to like 50k. So much of what I post is disappearing. Why are you silencing Palestinians?” his tweet read.

At the time of El-Kurd’s May 12 tweet, violence had already broken out over the forced evictions of Palestinians in East Jerusalem. In the resulting crisis, according to the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, around 245 Palestinians, including 63 children, were “seemingly killed by Israeli Defense Forces.” Rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups resulted in 13 deaths in Israel, including two children, according to Human Rights Watch.

A Facebook spokesperson noted that in May, Instagram experienced a technical glitch affecting the Stories of millions of users, including many Palestinians. The issue was quickly fixed, the company said. Facebook also acknowledged reports that users felt Stories about the conflict were having an unexpectedly limited reach, which the company said was due to a change to the way stories are prioritized that privileged original posts over re-shares. That change was later reversed, the company said Thursday.

According to the internal document about El-Kurd, the activist had previously been the subject of “false positives,” the mistaken removal or limiting of a piece of content.

This ran counter to a new effort within Facebook, according to the document.

“There have been false positive[s] reported against his account in the past and now that we (FB) have taken a stance to minimize our over-enforcing on content from Palestine — due to the necessity of allowing folks on the ground to share what’s going on — there should be no reason his content is getting removed or restricted,” the document read.

A follow-up comment added to the undated post points to confusion and delays in resolving the problem.

“I’d really like to understand what exactly is breaking down here and why. What is being done to fix it given that this is an issue that was brought up a week ago?” the unidentified commenter wrote.

Another commenter chimed in, reporting that they had investigated the issue and not found any restrictions put in place by the “Inauthentic Behavior” team. Inauthentic Behavior is a term used within Facebook for a range of violations, including the use of false identities and the artificial boosting of a post’s popularity.

As employees continued to look for a cause of the possible crackdown on El-Kurd’s account, other comments expressed frustration.

“Also getting reports about this from friends and the conversations are harder and harder as days pass without a root cause being found and tackled internally,” another comment read.

It’s not clear, according to the document, whether a cause was ever found.

“We’re sorry to anyone who felt they couldn’t bring attention to important events,” Facebook spokesperson Drew Pusateri said in a statement to ABC News Thursday.

El-Kurd has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment.

In the wake of that crisis, nearly 200 Facebook employees signed an open letter calling on Facebook to address claims of censorship against pro-Palestinian voices on the platform, according to a report by the Financial Times.

Facebook’s Oversight Board called for an independent review into “allegations that Facebook has disproportionately removed or demoted content from Palestinian users and content in Arabic,” in a Sept. 14 statement. The board also called for a probe into whether Facebook was “not doing enough to remove content that incites violence against Israeli civilians.”

The Oversight Board said Facebook had wrongfully taken down a post, which mentioned a Palestinian militant group but which did not contain any incitement to violence.

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(NEW YORK) — In the shadow of mounting controversies for his beleaguered tech firm, CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out his vision for the future of the internet at a company conference Thursday, which he sees as evolving on the so-called “metaverse.”

Zuckerberg also announced that the name of his tech giant will be changed to “Meta” to reflect the shifting interests, though critics have accused the company of attempting to use its high-profile name change announcement to shift focus from the renewed scrutiny it has faced from lawmakers and beyond in recent weeks.

The metaverse, a three-dimensional digital world created by augmented and virtual reality products and services, will be “the successor to the mobile internet,” Zuckerberg said during his keynote speech to kick off Facebook’s Connect conference on Thursday. The chief executive demonstrated some of the experiences he said will soon be available in the digital realm — including connecting with friends and family, gaming, working out and even working remotely via a digital avatar and VR hardware.

“We’re now looking at and reporting on our business as two different segments, one for our family of apps and one for work on future platforms, and as part of this, it is time for us to adopt a new company brand to encompass everything that we do to reflect who we are and what we hope to build,” he said.

“I am proud to announce that starting today, our company is now meta,” Zuckerberg added.

The Facebook chief said the word comes from the Greek term for “beyond,” and is meant to symbolize that “there is always more to build, there is always a next chapter to the story.”

“Our mission remains the same still about bringing people together, our apps and their brands, they’re not changing either,” the CEO added. “We’re still the company that designs technology around people, now we have a new North Star to help bring the metaverse to life, and we have a new name that reflects the full breadth of what we do and the future that we want to help build.”

Finally, Zuckerberg said, “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first.”

The name change announcement comes just weeks after a company whistleblower, Frances Haugen, testified before lawmakers, alleging blatant disregard from Facebook executives when they learned their platform could have harmful effects on democracy and the mental health of young people.

Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, accused Facebook of “choosing to prioritize its profits over people” in her opening statement before lawmakers on the Senate Commerce subcommittee.

“You can declare moral bankruptcy and we can figure out a fix [to] these things together because we solve problems together,” Haugen said.

Zuckerberg did not directly address Haugen’s claims during his remarks Thursday, saying only, “the last few years have been humbling for me and our company in a lot of ways.” During his remarks, which lasted over an hour, he mostly demonstrated how he sees people could use the metaverse and virtual or augmented reality tools in the near and far-off future.

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(NEW YORK) — A woman from New York is suing The Kellogg Company for $5 million because she says the company’s Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts product doesn’t have enough strawberries in its filling.

Elizabeth Russett filed a class-action lawsuit on Oct. 19 with lawyer Spencer Sheehan against Kellogg’s for falsely advertising the contents of its pastry.

“The strawberry representations are misleading because the Product has less strawberries than consumers expect based on the labeling,” the lawsuit says.

“The amount of strawberry ingredients is insufficient not merely to provide the nutrient benefits of strawberries but to provide a strawberry taste.”

The lawsuit asks for $5 million in damages under the Class Action Fairness Act and a jury trial, claiming that customers wouldn’t have purchased the treats repeatedly had they known it had fewer strawberries than expected. Russett is joined by three other plaintiffs — Illinois’ Stacy Chiappetta and Anita Harris and New York’s Kelvin Brown — who are also represented by Sheehan.

Despite its name, the Whole Grain Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts’ box states the pastries have less than 2% of pears, apples and strawberries with dried pears and dried apples listed before dried strawberries. The product is described on the company’s website as having “sweet frosting decorated with rainbow sprinkles and filled with strawberry-flavored goodness.”

“The Product’s common or usual name of ‘ Whole Grain Frosted Strawberry Toaster Pastries,’ is false, deceptive, and misleading, because it contains mostly non-strawberry fruit ingredients,” Russett’s lawsuit says.

The plaintiff also takes issue with the absence of information regarding artificial flavoring and added coloring on the front label and marketing materials.

Kellogg’s said in a statement to ABC News: “While we don’t comment on pending litigation, we can tell you the ingredients in and labeling of all of our Pop-Tart products fully comply with all legal requirements.”

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