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(NEW YORK) — Meta, the parent company of Facebook, reported a second consecutive quarter of declining sales on Wednesday, as the company contends with a widespread drop in online ad spending and rising competition from TikTok.
In addition, an Apple iOS privacy update last year, which limits the capability of advertisers to target users, has continued to weigh on ad sales at the heart of Meta’s business.
Revenue declined 4% year-over-year, the earnings report showed. That slump exceeded the 1% year-over-year decline during the previous quarter.
Shares of Meta were down more than 10% in after-hours trading immediately after the announcement.
Meanwhile, the company reported 2.93 billion daily active users on its family of apps, which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. That figure comprises 4% year-over-year growth, which matches the rise in daily users reported over the prior quarter.
The company’s stock price has fallen roughly 60% in 2022, more than double the decline experienced by the tech-heavy NASDAQ.
The continued revenue decline marks the latest in a series of challenges for Meta this year, including the announcement in June that Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg would depart the company as well as difficulty yielding revenue from its multi-billion-dollar investment in its metaverse project.
Meta declined to respond to a request for comment.
The company has drawn criticism from some investors lately over its large investment in its metaverse project, which has yet to deliver significant returns.
Brad Gerstner, whose fund Altimeter Capital holds hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Meta stock, sharply criticized the company’s strategy in an open letter this week.
“Meta has drifted into the land of excess – too many people, too many ideas, too little urgency,” Gerstner wrote. “This lack of focus and fitness is obscured when growth is easy but deadly when growth slows and technology changes.”
Gerstner called on the company to cut staffing costs by 20% and limit spending on its metaverse project to $5 billion per year.
“Meta needs to get its mojo back,” he wrote.
The report from Meta arrives a day after Microsoft and Google-parent Alphabet announced lackluster quarterly earnings.
Microsoft’s revenue grew at its slowest pace in five years, sending shares in the company tumbling 6%. Alphabet, meanwhile, said its advertising sales rose at its lowest rate in nearly a decade.
(NEW YORK) — Angelo Colon-Ortiz pleaded guilty Wednesday to second-degree murder and unarmed robbery charges in connection with the 2016 killing of Vanessa Marcotte, a Google employee in New York City who was killed while jogging near her mother’s home in Princeton, Massachusetts.
Colon-Ortiz, who was arrested in 2017, was sentenced to life in prison.
Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early said the Marcotte family asked prosecutors to accept the plea to spare them from listening to the details of Vanessa’s death during a trial.
“We know nothing can bring Vanessa back, but we know, through the meticulous work of the prosecutors and investigators involved, justice will be served, and the plea allows Vanessa’s family to move on from this tragedy,” Early said in a statement.
The Marcotte family issued a statement thanking prosecutors and remembering Vanessa.
“We are thankful and gratified the legal process has accomplished what we always wished for, that this man will now be in a place where he can’t hurt anyone else like the way he hurt Vanessa,” the Marcotte family said. “To honor and remember Vanessa, we will continue to educate and protect women through the Vanessa T. Marcotte Foundation.”
The foundation trains women in self-defense and teaches women and girls about jogger safety, violence prevention and healthy relationships.
Marcotte, 27, had worked for Google in New York City. She was visiting family in Massachusetts in August 2016 when she went out for a jog on the afternoon of Aug. 7, 2016, and was reported missing after she did not return to her family’s home. Marcotte’s body was discovered in the woods not far from her family’s home later that evening.
Investigators received more than 1,300 tips but a state trooper’s spotting of an SUV with a driver that matched the suspect’s description proved to be the big break in the case.
The trooper wrote down the license plate number on his hand and authorities were then able to obtain DNA from the suspect, who was identified as Colon-Ortiz. His DNA led to a match from evidence collected at the crime scene.
(WASHINGTON) — A judge has ordered former President Donald Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to travel to Georgia to appear before the grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election there, according to a spokesperson for the Fulton County district attorney’s office.
The ruling from the South Carolina judge comes after Meadows’ lawyer argued in a filing on Monday that Meadows cannot be compelled to testify because, although the special grand jury is investigating alleged criminal conduct, it does not have the ability to return a criminal indictment and can only make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution.
Meadows’ lawyer also argued that as a “special grand jury,” the panel lacks the authority to compel testimony from witnesses who live out of state. Meadows currently resides in South Carolina.
Meadows was on the January 2021 phone call that then-President Trump had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” him enough votes to win the state.
Trump, who has denounced the Fulton County probe, has repeatedly defended his phone call to Raffensperger, calling it “perfect.”
Meadows is likely to appeal the ruling ordering him to appear, according to his lawyer.
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(MILWAUKEE) — A George Floyd mural was vandalized in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, according to ABC affiliate WISN 12. It’s unclear when the mural was vandalized.
Paint was splattered over the face of the Black man who was killed by a Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer in May 2020, sparking a nationwide reckoning on racial injustice and police brutality.
Milwaukee was one of many cities across the country that saw crowds come out, day-after-day, to protest Floyd’s murder. This mural was completed in June 2020, according to local news outlet Urban Milwaukee.
Dom Whitehurst, one of the original painters who helped organize the mural, told WISN 12 that artists plan on repainting it and have discussed installing cameras in the area.
“Initially, I was like, ‘that’s horrible.’ More than likely, race related,” Whitehurst told the local news station. “It’s kind of sad that you have to do that for something so beautiful. This is supposed to be a peaceful representation of the community coming together.”
It’s not the first time a memorial created in honor of racial justice has been vandalized, with similar incidents occurring in New York, California, Michigan and more.
Milwaukee police told ABC News they did not receive a call or a report of the incident; however, the department is attempting to make contact with the building owner regarding the vandalism, officials said.
Anyone with any information is asked to contact Milwaukee Police at (414) 935-7360 or to remain anonymous, contact Crime Stoppers at (414) 224-Tips or P3 Tips.
(LAS VEGAS) — A former Nevada county official accused of fatally stabbing a Las Vegas journalist who was investigating his office has pleaded not guilty to murder.
Robert Telles, 45, appeared briefly in a Clark County courtroom Wednesday morning for his arraignment hearing. He waived his right to have a jury trial set within 60 days.
His next court appearance is scheduled for Nov. 2.
Telles was arrested last month in connection with the death of Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German, who police said was found stabbed to death outside his home on Sept. 3.
He was formally indicted by a Clark County grand jury last week on the charge of murder with use of a deadly weapon. The indictment alleged that Telles, “with malice aforethought,” killed German by stabbing him multiple times.
Telles, who served as the Clark County public administrator, blamed German for ruining his career in politics and his marriage, according to prosecutors.
Telles lost his bid for re-election following an investigation by German in the Review-Journal that exposed turmoil in his office and accusations of bullying, retaliation and an “inappropriate relationship” between Telles and a staffer.
Police said Telles was seen approaching the journalist’s home and allegedly had an altercation with him the day before the murder. He allegedly returned the following day in a disguise — described by police as a straw hat and reflective vest — and stabbed German outside his home, police said.
Telles was arrested on Sept. 7 after DNA evidence found by a SWAT team at his home linked him to the crime scene, police said.
Telles has been held without bail in Clark County Detention Center. He was denied bail during a court appearance this week, despite his attorney’s argument that he is not a threat to the community or a flight risk, Las Vegas ABC affiliate KTNV-TV reported.
Telles’ term as public administrator didn’t expire until Jan. 1, 2023, though he was officially removed from office on Oct. 5, according to KTNV.
(NEW YORK) — Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., is under federal criminal investigation, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News and confirmed by an adviser to the senator.
The investigation is being conducted by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, the sources said. The exact nature of the investigation was not immediately clear.
“Senator Menendez is aware of an investigation that was reported on today, however he does not know the scope of the investigation. As always, should any official inquiries be made, the Senator is available to provide any assistance that is requested of him or his office,” said the adviser, Michael Soliman, in a statement provided to ABC News.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment, as did representatives of the FBI.
The news was first reported by Semafor.
Menendez, who is chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was previously indicted on corruption charges in April 2015 due to his relationship with a Florida eye doctor, Salomon Melgen.
Prosecutors accused Menendez of accepting close to $1 million worth of campaign contributions and lavish gifts — flights on Melgen’s private jet, a first class commercial flight and a flight on a chartered jet; numerous vacations at Melgen’s villa in the Dominican Republic and a hotel room in Paris — from Melgen in return for the political favors. Menendez also allegedly used his office to support the visa applications of several of Melgen’s girlfriends.
He pleaded not guilty. The trial ended with a hung jury and the charges were dismissed in 2018.
Melgen was later convicted of defrauding Medicare patients but had his prison sentence commuted by former President Donald Trump in his final hours in office.
(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) — One person is dead and up to three others are injured after a bridge that was under construction near Kansas City, Missouri, collapsed, authorities said.
Workers were pouring concrete on the bridge deck when it collapsed Wednesday afternoon, before 2 p.m. local time, according to the Clay County Sheriff’s Office.
The bridge collapsed on top of the workers and rescue efforts ensued, Clay County Western Commissioner Jon Carpenter told ABC News.
Three to four workers became trapped, the sheriff’s office said. Two to three of them were able to escape from the collapse themselves and were transported to area hospitals with minor injuries, the sheriff’s office said.
The deceased victim has not been publicly identified.
There were multiple contracting companies on the scene at the time of the collapse and no county employees, authorities said.
The two-lane bridge spans Carroll Creek at Northeast 148th Street and Shady Grove Road in Washington Township, outside of Kearney, about 27 miles northeast of Kansas City.
The bridge has been closed since 2016. Construction began in May 2021, and it was set to reopen in early 2023.
“The Clay County Highway Department states there were no safety concerns on the project prior to today,” the Clay County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Wednesday. “An engineering contractor was on scene today inspecting the bridge before the deck was poured.”
The sheriff’s office said it will turn over the investigation to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
(CLEVELAND) — A pair of competitive fishermen reeled in by suspicious tournament officials after allegedly putting lead weights and fish fillets in their catch pleaded not guilty to criminal charges on Wednesday.
Jacob Runyan, 42, and Chase Cominsky, 35, were indicted by a grand jury on charges including cheating, attempted grand theft and possessing criminal tools — all felonies — earlier this month, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office said.
During their arraignment in a Cleveland courthouse, both Runyan and Cominsky pleaded not guilty to the charges and were released on personal bonds of $2,500, court records show. A pre-trial hearing has been scheduled for Nov. 9.
ABC News reached out to their attorneys for comment.
According to authorities, the two men had participated in the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Tournament in Cleveland on Sept. 30, where anglers competed to see who could catch the heaviest walleye fish. The tournament’s director, Jason Fischer, became suspicious when he noticed their walleyes weighed in far more than expected, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Video of Fischer slicing open the fish shows him pulling out several round weights and fish fillets as the crowd reacts with anger. Cominsky and Runyan were disqualified and instructed to leave, and Cleveland police responded to the scene, according to the prosecutor’s office.
In total, 10 weights were found inside the walleyes — eight weighing 12 ounces and two weighing eight ounces, the prosecutor’s office said. The pair had also stuffed walleye fillets inside the fish.
Had the two men won the tournament, they would have received $28,760, prosecutors said.
“I take all crime very seriously, and I believe what these two individuals attempted to do was not only dishonorable but also criminal,” Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said in a statement on Oct. 12.
As part of the investigation, law enforcement officers with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Hermitage Pennsylvania Police Department on Tuesday seized Cominsky’s boat and trailer used in the tournament, the prosecutor’s office said. The indictment cites both in the possessing criminal tools charge and that they were “intended for use in the commission of a felony.”
In addition to the felony charges, both men were charged with unlawful ownership of wild animals, a misdemeanor, for the alleged possession of walleye parts on their boat, the prosecutor’s office said.
The felony charges are punishable by up to 12 months in prison, and the misdemeanor by up to 30 days in jail, the prosecutor’s office said. A conviction on the unlawful ownership of wild animals charge could also result in an indefinite suspension of their fishing licenses, it said.
In the wake of the scandal, Fischer said “this type of behavior will not be tolerated” and vowed to implement changes to the tournament to “protect the integrity” of the sport.
“[We] witnessed one of the most disgusting, dishonest acts that the fishing world has ever seen in live time,” he said in a video statement posted on Oct. 3. “There’s always been stories about dishonesty in competition, but I personally have never seen anything quite like this.”
(ST LOUIS, Mo.) — The family of the 19-year-old suspect accused of opening fire in a St. Louis, Missouri, high school had recently removed the firearm used in the deadly school shooting from their home, but the teen somehow got ahold of it again, authorities said Wednesday.
One student and one teacher were killed in the Monday morning shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School. Several others were injured.
The suspect, Orlando Harris, who police said was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and more than 600 rounds of ammunition when he “forced entry” into the building, died during an exchange of gunfire, according to St. Louis Police Commissioner Michael Sack.
Sack told reporters during a news conference Wednesday that the family had previously contacted the department about a firearm discovered in the home.
On Oct. 15, police responded to a domestic disturbance at Harris’ home because the “suspect’s mother had located a firearm in the home and wanted it removed,” St. Louis Sgt. Charles Wall said in an update Wednesday evening.
Police determined that Harris legally possessed the gun, and a “third party known to the family” took the gun so it was no longer stored in the home, Wall said.
“While it is not yet clear when or how the suspect came to be in possession of the firearm after this incident, we can confirm that the firearm involved in this incident is the firearm used in the shooting Monday,” Wall said.
Harris — who graduated from the high school last year — had been seeing mental health professionals, Sack said Wednesday, and his family had him committed on some occasions.
Whenever Harris’ family “noticed him, kind of, stepping out of line … they always worked to try and get him back on his medication, back into therapy, whatever it is that he needed,” Sack said.
The family — who has been “fully cooperative” with police — appears to have “done everything they could have possibly done” to help Harris, Sack said, “but sometimes that’s not enough.”
Wall added that “this tragic incident occurred despite their best efforts.”
Harris “felt isolated and alone” and “there was a disconnect between him and what he felt was the school community,” Sack said.
The school “had always been the target,” he said.
Sack said Tuesday that Harris left behind a notebook with writings about his desire to “conduct this school shooting.”
According to Sack, Harris wrote: “I don’t have any friends, I don’t have any family, I’ve never had a girlfriend, I’ve never had a social life.”
Sack said Harris called himself an “isolated loner,” which Harris called a “perfect storm for a mass shooter.”
Harris’ family would search his room on occasion but the family was not aware of his notebook, Sack said.
It’s not yet clear when or how Harris bought the gun, Sack said.
ABC News’ Will Gretsky contributed to this report.
(TOLEDO, Ohio) — At a community block watch meeting earlier this month outside of Toledo, Ohio, residents told personal stories of break-ins, burglaries, road rage and shootings in their neighborhoods and they pressed local police about the response to ongoing crime.
“This is my hometown. This is something unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my lifetime,” Florence McLennan, who helps organize the monthly gatherings, told ABC News. “When I grew up as a child, we didn’t lock our doors. We didn’t close our windows. We could walk anywhere at any time of the day or night. I would be apprehensive to do that today. Things have definitely changed drastically.”
McLennan is not wrong about the last few years.
Until 2021, Toledo averaged about 30 homicides a year. But then the number of homicides more than doubled in 2021 to 71 — and Toledo was not alone. An ABC News analysis found Toledo was one of more than a dozen cities to exceed previous homicide records last year.
While murders have started to decline again this year, both in Toledo and in other major cities around the country, Republican candidates have seized on spikes in violence and voters’ anxieties about the issue in the final stretch of campaigning before the midterm elections.
GOP ads across the country — in Georgia, in Pennsylvania, in Washington state — portray cities as lawless, frightening and out of control.
“Who’s going to sit down and say, ‘I’m pro-crime?’ Nobody,” Leah Wright Rigueur, a history professor at Brandeis University and ABC News political contributor, said in an interview. She referred to campaign messaging on crime as “a relatively easy, dunking point.”
“Here’s the thing about using crime as a political talking point: You don’t actually want to go through the nuances of crime,” she added. “You say, ‘Do you feel safe walking home at night? Do you feel safe in your neighborhood?’ These are things that you can use even in spaces that have disproportionately high safety ratings, even in spaces that have very low crime, because then you’re not just talking about crime, right? You’re also talking about the threat of it.”
Like many other Republicans around the country, J.D. Vance, running for Senate in Ohio, has made crime a cornerstone of his campaign and worked overtime to paint his Democratic opponent, Rep. Tim Ryan, as anti-police.
“Some fringe lunatics on the other side … decide they’re going to declare war on American police instead of violent criminals,” Vance said at a recent rally in Perrysburg, Ohio. “Two years ago, Tim Ryan tried to take qualified immunity from our police officers. If you did that, it would be impossible to recruit the police officers necessary to keep our streets in Ohio safe.” (Ryan’s campaign has said he doesn’t support defunding police, but he has criticized what he called racial disparities in criminal justice.)
At Vance’s event, voters who spoke with ABC News said they had mixed thoughts on the issue. Some did say crime was top of mind, while others said it was less of an issue where they lived.
According to a nationwide ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in September, crime was the fourth-most important issue to voters come November and respondents said they trusted Republicans by 14 points over Democrats on the issue.
Still, many Republicans candidates running for federal office, including Vance, have struggled to propose specific policies to combat crime beyond hiring more police officers, which is often actually decided at the local level.
GOP ads and talking points have focused on blaming Democrats, side-stepping issues of gun regulations and pervasive gun violence, recidivism and rehabilitation of offenders and whether to increase community economic opportunities.
Increasingly, some conservatives’ comments on crime have racially inflammatory undertones.
Speaking at a rally earlier this month next to former President Donald Trump, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said that Democrats were pro-crime and added, “They want reparations because they think people who do the crime are owed that,” the AP reported.
Reparations are almost always raised in America in relation to the country’s history of enslaving Black people.
While Tuberville’s comments were quickly condemned as “racist” by the NAACP and others, a spokesperson soon insisted, “The issue is crime, not race.”
“You can’t come out and say, ‘Black people are dangerous.’ It is ineffective at appealing to, you know, mixed communities or white liberals or white moderates, none of whom want to be associated with racism,” Rigueur said. “But when you do it in a really subtle way, all of a sudden all of these fears and biases that people hold within come rising to the surface and it ends up being a relatively effective political mobilization tool.”
As for practical solutions, Toledo Police Chief George Kral told ABC News that he does need more officers but recruitment has been really hard and that widespread access to guns is also a major issue in his city.
Kral said in the last few years, he has ramped up his work with federal officials to do everything he can to get firearms off the streets.
He argued a combination of factors, many related to COVID-19 restrictions that started in 2020, led to the rise in crime last year.
“We’re social people. We’re not meant to be locked in … They were sick and tired of being sick and tired, and they [went] a little stir crazy,” Kral said in an interview in his office in downtown Toledo.
Add on top of that the social unrest after the murder of George Floyd and the economic depression in parts of his city — and Kral called it all “a perfect storm.”
“We had relatives shooting each other at, at cookouts. We had a sister who shot her brother over a PlayStation game. There’s just no regard for human life anymore,” he said.
The pandemic regulations also created a backlog in the courts that Kral said had serious implications for Toledo. He said criminals were very aware that jails were not holding them as long in pre-trail confinement.
“They told our people, ‘Go ahead, take my gun. I’ll be out in three hours, and I’ll have another gun in five hours.’ There are some prolific offenders here who have been arrested month after month after month after month for the same things,” Kral said. He credited local courts who have recently worked overtime to try to make up for the backlog. But still, he said he worried it could take more than a year still for courts to get caught up.
Kral said the attention on crime in ads and in the political conversation did not help: “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You hear something or say something for a long enough time, you start believing it to be true.”
Toledo activists in the Black Lives Matter movement agreed that the pandemic put extra stressors on locals and contributed to the spikes in crime.
“Our communities were already faced with trauma due to lack of everything. And then the pandemic did anything but exacerbate that lack,” Avis Files with the Brothers and Sisters United Program told ABC News during a small group discussion in the residential Roosevelt neighborhood.
She and her colleagues disagreed that simply adding more cops to the beat was the answer.
“While there is crime, I am literally more afraid of the police and what they might do to me or what they might mistakenly do to a young man,” Files said.
David Bush, a city commissioner who works closely with Files, said that too often he hears that “Black people don’t want cops.”
“That’s not true. What we don’t want is bad — I don’t want bad food, bad teachers, bad cops, bad anything. Right? But if somebody breaks in my house, who do you think I’m calling? Calling the cops,” he said.
Files and Bush said they felt that too often minority communities were scapegoated in the buzzy campaign conversations around crime and that too few politicians were willing to do the long, often slow work of engaging with communities to provide better education, economic opportunities and development to address the root issues in the long term.
“We want what’s good for the community,” Bush said.
