Secretary General Antonio Guterres wants to shrink the regular budget by 15% to improve efficiency and cut costs as the United Nations runs into a cash crisis as it turns 80

International News via Reuters:

U.N. cost savings plans for next year envisage far smaller cuts to senior staff than to lower ranks, a draft budget document shows, a contrast likely to fuel division just as financial support for the institution is slipping.

Secretary General Antonio Guterres wants to shrink the regular budget by 15% to improve efficiency and cut costs as the United Nations runs into a cash crisis as it turns 80.

A copy of the revised 2026 budget showed just two of 58 department head posts in the layer of under-secretaries-general beneath Guterres, or 3%, will go.

That compares with around 19% across the board and up to 28% for one lower-ranking category, according to Reuters calculations based on the U.N. document.

CRITICISM OF TOP-HEAVY U.N. STRUCTURE BARELY ADDRESSED

Ian Richards, president of the U.N. Geneva Staff Union, said Guterres’ proposals “will make the global body more top-heavy and bureaucratic”.

U.N. humanitarian agencies with their own budgets are set to shed more than a quarter of jobs.

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said it was “inevitable” that the biggest reductions were where the workforce of more than 14,000 was largest.

“The timing of the UN80 revised estimates precluded more significant organizational restructuring that could reduce senior-level posts,” he said.

But he added that there was potential for further reductions in the future, including at senior levels.

The U.S. and China are the two biggest contributors, together making up 40% of the regular budget, and both are in arrears.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who is sceptical of multilateral institutions, slammed the U.N. this week at its headquarters, though he later told Guterres he backs it “100%”.

The number of senior posts has swollen over the decades – something that a U.N. internal memo this year sought to address through a major overhaul.

COUNTRIES GUARD PRESTIGIOUS U.N. POSITIONS

A non-American under-secretary-general in New York with no dependants earns a tax-free net salary of nearly $270,000, a U.N. website showed. Extra grants and allowances are given for relocation costs, a non-working spouse and children.

U.N. officials say these cabinet-rank posts are the toughest to eliminate, partly because countries view them as sources of prestige and influence. Unwritten rules reserve some for specific states.

Ronny Patz, an expert in U.N. financing, said Guterres appeared to have tried to avoid a backlash by sparing posts at the top. “It’s definitely not a bold proposal. He’s left out some of the hardest choices.”

The proposals are not final and require approval by the General Assembly’s ‘Fifth Committee’ in December after consultations with countries.

Dujarric said reducing senior posts meant structural changes, which would require member states’ approval.

Under the proposed budget, the under-secretary-general roles to be trimmed are one for policy and the special adviser on Cyprus. In the next layer down, six assistant secretary-general posts will be cut, or 11%.

Doubts about the U.N.’s future abound internally; in a survey of employees in August, less than a fifth voiced confidence in Guterres’ leadership.

Less than 10% said they thought U.N. job reforms to date were based on a sound rationale.

Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols in New YorkEditing by Dave Graham and Kevin Liffey

The study, which Meta disputed as misleading, comes amid renewed pressure on tech companies to protect children and other vulnerable users of their social-media platforms

International News via Reuters:

Numerous safety features that Meta has said it has implemented to protect young users on Instagram over the years do not work well or, in some cases, don’t exist, according to a report from child-safety advocacy groups that was corroborated by researchers at Northeastern University.

The study, which Meta disputed as misleading, comes amid renewed pressure on tech companies to protect children and other vulnerable users of their social-media platforms.

Of 47 safety features tested, the groups judged only eight to be completely effective. The rest were either flawed, “no longer available or were substantially ineffective,” the report stated. 

Features meant to prevent young users from surfacing self-harm-related content by blocking search terms were easily circumvented, the researchers reported. Anti-bullying message filters also failed to activate, even when prompted with the same harassing phrases Meta had used in a press release promoting them. And a feature meant to redirect teens from bingeing on self-harm-related content never triggered, the researchers found. 

Researchers did find that some of the teen account safety features worked as advertised, such as a “quiet mode” meant to temporarily disable notifications at night, and a feature requiring parents to approve changes to a child’s account settings. 

Titled “Teen Accounts, Broken Promises,” the report compiled and analyzed Instagram’s publicly announced updates of youth safety and well-being features going back more than a decade. Two of the groups behind the report – Molly Rose Foundation in the United Kingdom and Parents for Safe Online Spaces in the U.S. – were founded by parents who allege their children died as a result of bullying and self-harm content on the social-media company’s platforms.

The findings call into question Meta’s efforts “to protect teens from the worst parts of the platform,” said Laura Edelson, a professor at Northeastern University who oversaw a review of the findings. “Using realistic testing scenarios, we can see that many of Instagram’s safety tools simply are not working.”

Meta – which on Thursday said it was expanding teen accounts to Facebook users internationally – called the findings erroneous and misleading. 

“This report repeatedly misrepresents our efforts to empower parents and protect teens, misstating how our safety tools work and how millions of parents and teens are using them today,” said Meta spokesman Andy Stone. He disputed some of the report’s appraisals, calling them “dangerously misleading,” and said the company’s approach to teen account features and parental controls has changed over time. 

“Teens who were placed into these protections saw less sensitive content, experienced less unwanted contact, and spent less time on Instagram at night,” Stone said. “We’ll continue improving our tools, and we welcome constructive feedback – but this report is not that.”

The advocacy groups and the university researchers received tips from Arturo Bejar, a former Meta safety executive, indicating that the Instagram features were flawed. Bejar worked at Meta until 2015, then came back in late 2019 as a consultant for Instagram until 2021. During his second stint at the company, he told Reuters, Meta failed to respond to data indicating severe teen safety concerns on Instagram. 

“I experienced firsthand how good safety ideas got whittled down to ineffective features by management,” Bejar said. “Seeing Meta’s claims about their safety tools made me realize it was critical to do a vigorous review.”

Meta spokesman Stone said the company responded to the concerns Bejar raised while employed at Meta with actions to make its products safer. 

GETTING AROUND SEARCH-TERM BLOCKERS

Reuters confirmed some of the report’s findings by running tests of its own and reviewing internal Meta documents. 

In one test, Reuters used simple variations of banned search terms on Instagram to find content meant to be off limits for teens. Meta had blocked the search term “skinny thighs” – a hashtag long used by accounts promoting eating-disorder content. But when a teen test account entered the words without a space between them, the search surfaced anorexia-related content.  

Meta documents seen by the news agency show that as the company was promoting teen-safety features on Instagram last year, it was aware that some had significant flaws.

For instance, safety employees warned in the last year that Meta had failed to maintain its automated-detection systems for eating-disorder and self-harm content, the documents seen by Reuters show. As a result, Meta couldn’t reliably avoid promoting content that glorifies eating disorders and suicide to teens as it had promised, or divert users who appeared to be consuming large amounts of such material, according to the documents.

Safety staffers also acknowledged that a system to block search terms used by potential child predators wasn’t being updated in a timely fashion, according to internal documents and people familiar with Meta’s product development.

Stone said that the internal concerns raised about deficient search term restrictions have since been addressed by combining a newly automated system with human input. 

Last month, U.S. senators began an investigation into Meta after Reuters reported on an internal policy document that permitted the company’s chatbots to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.” This month, former Meta employees told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing that the company had suppressed research showing that preteen users of its virtual reality products were being exposed to child predators. Stone called the ex-employees’ allegations “nonsense.”

Meta is making a fresh push to demonstrate its steps to protect children. On Thursday, it announced an expansion of its teen accounts to Facebook users outside the United States and said it would pursue new local partnerships with middle and high schools.

“We want parents to feel good about their teens using social media,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said.

Reporting by Jeff Horwitz. Edited by Steve Stecklow and Michael Williams.

The luxury carmaker owned by India’s Tata Motors has three factories in Britain which together produce about 1,000 cars per day

International News via Reuters:

Britain’s government is considering throwing a financial lifeline to carmaker Jaguar Land Rover’s suppliers after a shutdown caused by a cyberattack was extended until October, a government source said on Thursday. 

The luxury carmaker owned by India’s Tata Motors has three factories in Britain which together produce about 1,000 cars per day. The company is losing at least 50 million pounds ($68 million) a week, according to the BBC, with many of its 33,000 staff told to stay at home. 

Business minister Peter Kyle and industry minister Chris McDonald visited JLR on Tuesday and talked to the CEO about how the company can work towards restarting production.

“We have two priorities – helping Jaguar Land Rover get back up and running as soon as possible, and the long-term health of the supply chain,” said McDonald.

“The government is looking at several ways to provide support to JLR suppliers,” the source said.

GOVERNMENT COULD BUY COMPONENTS

Schemes under consideration included the government buying component parts from the suppliers to enable them to survive until JLR resumes production, according to a BBC report.

Another option was providing government-backed loans to suppliers, the BBC said, although it added that the idea was not popular with suppliers.

When asked about the government stepping in, the business department pointed to a statement on Tuesday in which Kyle said “we are doing everything we can to minimise the impact of this incident.”

JLR WORKING TO PRIORITISE SUPPLIER PAYMENTS

The British parliament’s Business and Trade Select Committee will hear from companies in JLR’s supply chain on Thursday.

Tata Motors finance chief P B Balaji told the committee’s chair Liam Byrne in a letter dated on Tuesday that JLR was working with its supply partners to prioritise payments to “those with the greatest need,” adding that JLR intended to settle any outstanding payments “in the coming weeks”.

He said JLR was “fully empowered to take decisions that best reflect the interests of its business and commercial partners,” in the letter, which was published by the committee.

“As part of TML and the Tata Group, JLR benefits from faster, preferential access to competitive credit rates through its global banking relationships,” he said.

“We are engaged across multiple stakeholders to find solutions to support JLR’s commercial partners and hope to find a practical workable solution at the earliest.”

Mike Hawes, the head of Britain’s automotive trade body SMMT, said the cyberattack’s impact on the supply chain and wider industry on which it depends was “severe and of indeterminate duration”.

He said in an emailed statement that SMMT was working with JLR, the government and suppliers to identify what additional supportive measures might be needed.

Reporting by Paul Sandle, Muvija M and Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Mark Potter and Hugh Lawson

The sentence was harsher than many expected and marked a spectacular downfall for Sarkozy, who was president from 2007-2012

International News via Reuters:

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to five years in jail on Thursday for criminal conspiracy over attempts to raise campaign funds from Libya and will soon become the first former president of France to serve time in prison.

The sentence was harsher than many expected and marked a spectacular downfall for Sarkozy, who was president from 2007-2012. He will spend time in jail even if he appeals the ruling – which he said he would do.

As he exited the courtroom, Sarkozy, visibly moved, expressed his anger at what he said was a “scandalous” ruling.

“If they absolutely want me to sleep in jail, I will sleep in jail, but with my head held high,” he told reporters, adding that he was innocent. “I will not apologise for something I didn’t do.”

“What happened today … is of extreme gravity in regard to the rule of law, and for the trust one can have in the justice system,” he said of the ruling, as his model and singer-songwriter wife Carla Bruni stood by him.

Sarkozy was found guilty of criminal conspiracy over efforts by close aides to procure funds for his 2007 presidential bid from Libya during the rule of late dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

He was acquitted by the Paris court of all other charges, including corruption and receiving illegal campaign financing.

SARKOZY WILL GO TO JAIL

However, the prison sentence is enforceable immediately, with the judge saying Sarkozy would have just a short period to put his affairs in order before prosecutors call on him to head to jail. That should happen within a month.

“We were shocked because when we started hearing the decision being read out, we thought his innocence would be recognised,” one of his lawyers, Jean-Michel Darrois, told reporters. “We hope the appeals court will see things more clearly and will recognise his innocence.”

Sarkozy, who has always denied the charges, was accused of making a deal with Gaddafi in 2005, when he was France’s interior minister, to obtain campaign financing in exchange for supporting the then-isolated Libyan government on the international stage. 

The judge said there was no proof that Sarkozy made such a deal with Gaddafi, nor that money that was sent from Libya reached Sarkozy’s campaign coffers, even if the timing was “compatible” and the paths the money went through were “very opaque”.

But she said Sarkozy was guilty of criminal conspiracy between 2005 and 2007 for having let close aides get in touch with people in Libya to try and obtain campaign financing. From May 2007, he was president and covered by presidential immunity, the court added.    

This was the second time this year that a French court handed down a ruling with immediate effect on a major political figure.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen was convicted in March of embezzling EU funds and given an immediate five-year ban on running for office.

Le Pen was prompt to react to Sarkozy’s sentencing, saying it was “a grave danger” that judges were opting for immediately enforceable rulings and not waiting for appeals.

Reactions among French politicians were mixed, with several on the right rushing to give support and criticise what they said was a biased ruling, while on the left, some welcomed the ruling as proof of the independence of the judiciary.

Vincent Brengarth, lawyer for economic justice campaign group Sherpa, which was party to the Libya trial, also welcomed the ruling. “This confirms we have an independent justice system that can be brave,” he said.

SARKOZY’S LEGAL WOES 

Despite his legal battles, and having his Legion of Honour, France’s highest distinction, stripped in June, Sarkozy remains an influential figure on the French political stage.

He recently met with his former protege, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, and has also lent credibility to Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), saying the far-right, anti-immigrant party now forms part of the “republican arc.”

Sarkozy has faced several legal battles since leaving office.

Last year, France’s highest court upheld his conviction for corruption and influence peddling, ordering him to wear an electronic tag for a year, a first for a former French head of state. The tag has now been removed.

Also last year, an appeals court confirmed a separate conviction for illegal campaign financing over his failed re-election bid in 2012. A final ruling from France’s highest court is expected on that case next month.

Reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro; additional reporting by Dominique Vidalon, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Makini Brice, Elizabeth Pineau; Writing by Ingrid Melander and Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Toby Chopra, Alexandra Hudson

In his first year on the job, Niccol has zeroed in on investing in Starbucks’ stores to reduce service times and restore a coffee-house environment, while also trimming management layers

International News via Reuters:

Starbucks said on Thursday it would shutter underperforming stores in North America and cut 900 jobs in a $1 billion restructuring effort, as CEO Brian Niccol presses ahead with his plan to revive the company’s fortunes.

In his first year on the job, Niccol has zeroed in on investing in Starbucks’ stores to reduce service times and restore a coffee-house environment, while also trimming management layers.

The company has posted six straight quarters of sales decline in the U.S. as demand for its pricey lattes took a hit from consumers turning picky and competition ramping up.

“During the review, we identified coffeehouses where we’re unable to create the physical environment our customers and partners expect, or where we don’t see a path to financial performance, and these locations will be closed,” Niccol said in a letter to employees.

The company expects a majority of the store closures to be completed by the end of this fiscal year, taking its company-operated store count in North America down by about 1%.

The CEO said the company would end the fiscal year with nearly 18,300 total Starbucks locations – company operated and licensed – across the U.S. and Canada. This compares to the 18,734 locations disclosed in a July regulatory filing.

INVESTING IN QUICKER SERVICE

Niccol has enjoyed the confidence of investors since taking over after his leadership at Chipotle Mexican Grill where he is credited with leading a turnaround at the burrito chain.

“I continue to like the turnaround story here as we continue to get more visibility into the future. The company has always invested in innovation and becoming more lean will enhance the story moving forward,” said Dave Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, which holds Starbucks stock.

Starbucks said on Thursday the job cuts would be in its support teams and added the company would also close many open positions.

The company employed about 10,000 people in non-coffee-house roles in the U.S., as of September 29, 2024.

“This is a more significant action that we understand will impact partners and customers,” Niccol said.

At the same time, Starbucks is investing to improve staffing and incorporate technology to more efficiently sequence orders at its coffee shops and enhance customer experience.

The company said earlier this year it would eliminate 1,100 corporate roles. In August, it also announced a modest 2% hike to all salaried employees in North America this year.

Starbucks shares were down marginally in early trading. They have risen about 9% since Niccol took over in August 2024.

Reporting by Juveria Tabassum in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo and Sriraj Kalluvila