22/05/2026

FRIDAY | MAY 22, 2026

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Meta lays off 8,000 employees NEW YORK: Meta began laying off roughly 8,000 employees on Wednesday, about 10% of its global workforce, as co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg pushes to redirect resources towards an ambitious artificial intelligence agenda. According to Bloomberg, notifications went out beginning in the early morning hours, with Singapore-based workers among the first to be informed. In addition to the cuts, Meta said last month it would cancel plans to hire 6,000 people and shift 7,000 other employees into AI workflow-related roles. In a memo to staff on Wednesday, posted by Business Insider , Zuckerberg expressed thanks to departing employees and sought to reassure those remaining. “It’s always sad to say good-bye to people who have contributed to our mission and to building this company,” he wrote. “I feel the weight of that.” Zuckerberg said he did not expect additional company-wide layoffs this year, and acknowledged the company had fallen short in its communications with staff. He struck an optimistic tone about the company’s direction, saying Meta was “one of the few companies positioned to help define the future” and reaffirming his goal of delivering “personal superintelligence” to users worldwide. The restructuring is the largest company wide round of cuts since Zuckerberg’s 2022 2023 “Year of Efficiency” campaign, which eliminated roughly 21,000 positions. The move comes as Meta dramatically ramps up spending on AI infrastructure. Meta has forecasted capital expenditures to reach between US$125 billion and US$145 billion (RM496 billion and RM575.5 billion) for the year, more than double the company’s 2025 outlay. – AFP Darwin Port sale delay irks Australia SYDNEY: Defence Minister Richard Marles said yesterday that Canberra was “disappointed” the Chinese leaseholder of strategic Darwin Port was challenging efforts to return it to local ownership. Private company Landbridge acquired a 99-year lease to Darwin Port in 2015, prompting criticism of Australia from then-US president Barack Obama. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledged last year to return the northern port, which sits across the harbour from a defence base hosting 2,000 US Marines annually and tarmacs upgraded for US bomber aircraft, to Australian ownership. In April, Landbridge’s owner Ye Cheng lodged a complaint in the World Bank’s tribunal for investment disputes, alleging Australia’s push for the company to sell the port had breached its free trade agreement with China and was taking a discriminatory approach. “We’re committed to putting the Port of Darwin back into Australian hands,” Marles told reporters yesterday on a visit to Darwin. “We’re disappointed about the steps that have been taken to put this towards the place of an international tribunal. Obviously, we will do everything in our power to defend that matter.” Marles also noted the US military was committed to “doing more from Darwin”. Darwin is Australia’s closest port to Asia. In January, China’s ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian warned if Landbridge were forced to leave the port it could affect trade and investment between China and Australia. – AFP

Choi Seung-ho (right), head of Samsung Electronics union and Yeo Myung-koo, head of the People Team under Samsung’s Device Solutions division and the company’s chief management negotiator, shaking hands after reaching a tentative pay deal on Wednesday night.

– YONHAP/ REUTERSPIC

Samsung union suspends planned 18-day strike

o Tentative pay deal reached

The Cuban government in a statement said that the 1996 shootdown was “legitimate self defence” against an airspace violation. President Miguel Diaz-Canel wrote on X that the charges carry no legal basis and “add to the file they are fabricating to justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba”. Five other Cubans were also charged, including the air force pilots who shot down the planes. Four people died in the 1996 incident, sending relations plummeting. Two decades later, Raul Castro joined US president Barack Obama in an effort to reconcile. Trump reversed Obama’s effort to improve relations and has been steadily tightening sanctions on the island, already under a US embargo almost continuously since the communist revolution. – AFP management relations at Samsung Electronics going forward,” he said. Samsung accepted the union’s demands to abolish the 50% cap on bonuses, to link bonuses to operating profits and to formalise the changes in contracts, said one of the union negotiators, who declined to be named as he was not authorised to talk to the media. “It’s a very nice deal.” In addition, Samsung is expected to set aside about 10.5% of “agreed business performance” for special bonuses for the chip division which houses its memory and logic chip businesses, according to a document shared by the union. The union negotiator said the performance metric referred to operating profit. The special bonuses will be paid in company stock for at least 10 years, with targets for the chip division to achieve more than 200 trillion won (RM530.2 billion) in annual operating profit from 2026 to 2028 and 100 trillion won from 2029 to 2035, the document showed. Samsung declined to comment. – Reuters

website had set the dates as May 23 to 28. Samsung Electronics said in a separate statement that the two parties had reached a tentative agreement on wages and collective bargaining and pledged to “build mature and constructive labour-management relations”. The 11th-hour deal came after days of talks that broke down multiple times, including earlier on Wednesday when the union announced that it would go ahead with the strike. Talks restarted later in the day after Labour Minister Kim Young-hoon personally stepped in to mediate. The two sides had been at odds over how performance bonuses would be distributed between the conglomerate’s hugely profitable memory business and loss-making logic chip businesses. Choi said they had agreed on how to distribute profit to loss-making businesses and he expects union members to approve the wage deal. “We will do our utmost to stabilise labour

SUWON: Samsung Electronics’ union said it would suspend a strike shortly before it was set to begin yesterday after it reached a tentative pay deal with the company, averting action that threatened South Korea’s economy and global chip supply. The planned 18 days of strike action by nearly 48,000 union members will be suspended while the tentative agreement is put to a vote by members. Samsung remains one of the most sought after workplaces in Korea, but employees were angry about the pay gap with smaller rival SK Hynix and also the proposed distribution of bonuses between Samsung’s business units. The vote will take place from today to Wednesday, union leader Choi Seung-ho told reporters late on Wednesday. An earlier notice posted on the union’s

US charges former Cuban president with murder MIAMI: The United States on Wednesday indicted Cuba’s former leader Raul Castro on murder charges, fuelling speculation that President Donald Trump will try to topple the communist state. “There won’t be escalation. I don’t think there needs to be. Look, the place is falling apart. It’s a mess, and they sort of lost control,” he told reporters.

The charges against the former president, who at 94 years old remains influential in Cuban politics, stem from the 1996 downing of two civilian planes manned by anti-Castro pilots. Castro is the younger brother of Fidel Castro, the late iconic US nemesis who led Cuba’s 1959 communist revolution. “We expect that he will show up here by his own will or by another way and go to prison,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told a news conference in Miami attended by cheering Cuban-Americans. In addition to murder, Castro has been charged with conspiracy to kill Americans and destruction of aircraft. The US government previously seized on a domestic indictment to justify military action in January that toppled and seized Venezuelan

Castro ...remains influential. – AFPFILEPIC

president Nicolas Maduro, a staunch ally of Cuba. Trump hailed the indictment on Wednesday as a “very big moment” but played down prospects of moving on Cuba, whose economy has been in deepening crisis for months amid a US oil blockade.