now, for the business news, i m victoria valentine. we start in the us where there is more evidence that, after tens of thousands ofjob cuts, big tech is pulling out of its post pandemic slump. amazon is the latest to reveal it s making much more money than wall street was expecting. sales hit more than $127 billion in the first three months of the year, and the online retail giant says that figure will be higher in the current quarter. it comes after alphabet, the owner of google and youtube, and meta, which owns facebook and instagram, both surprised investors with better than expected results. samira hussain reports from new york. this over the last year and is on has been aggressively cutting costs to help with profitability. it has already laid off 18,000 people and is currently about to eliminate another 9000 jobs. currently about to eliminate another 9000jobs. it currently about to eliminate another 9000 jobs. it would appear that some of those measures are already pay
wanting to spend on advertising spending, and now we are seeing that this is ok for the bigger players like, for example, meta which owns facebook and instagram, as well as alphabet, the parent company of google. they are reporting that revenue has not been hit as badly but it is the smaller companies, the likes of snap and pinterest that are saying it is still really impacting their revenue allocation. we are also seeing snap spending huge amounts of money on its new ai platform as well as augmented reality and many are wondering whether this will indeed yield returns in the company. will indeed yield returns in the company- will indeed yield returns in the company. kay cee, thank ou. the energy crisis triggered by the ukraine war has governments around the world looking for long term solutions that will also address climate change. this week, nine european countries agreed to work together to increase the amount of energy they generate from offshore wind farms. but europe s neighbou
grio perryjuni. perry, what is behind these cuts to the snap program? what s behind them is there was an increase in snap funding because of the stimulus of 2009. and that extension that increase has ended now. neither party really fought to keep this up. it s not as though the republicans didn t push to keep this money up. white house and democrats didn t either. you basically had a situation in washington where neither party this wasn t a divide in the issue but both parties sort of tacitly agreed they were going to let this increase go even though it affects millions of americans as we talked about. yeah. a few more numbers to go over with you elise. 8% of food stamps recipients are in homes with seniors, kids or the disabled. economists have found, listen to this, for every dollar in snap spending $1.70 is generated for the local community. husband republicans want to cut that additional money from the
that s one in seven people. directors of food banks say if further cuts come down they would have to at least double the amount of out put in order to feed needy families struggling to make ends meet. few more numbers to go through, ed. 87% of food stamp recipients are in homes with kids, seniors or disabled. 900,000 veterans rely on food stamps. for every dollar in s.n.a.p. spending, $1.70 is generated for the community. and they want to cut $30 million from this program? it s unlikely the number will be that high. remember, the senate passed a version of events that would only cut $4 billion. house republicans would cut $39 billion. they have to find a middle. this would be the big sticking
at best, this should be a local thing that government should fight. they can do a much better job. i say they do an even better job in the private sector through charity. the problem with the fraud is precisely because the federal government is involved. if you want to get rid of it, abolish the program. morgan, what about cutting out the federal side of this entirely, just focusing on private charities and local governments? i don t think that we should cut out the federal government entirely but it s not just the federal government contributing to this larger issue on snap spending. it s also the states that have loosened their guidelines for people who can qualify even more so than the federal government. part of the reason is because they get federal government incentives to do that. i think that s a big point to make as well. we need to see the regulations or reforms happen on both of those government levels. the other point i would make is we talk about people not being able