An activist from the Extinction Rebellion (XR) climate change group sits on a giant wooden rocket as they block the exit to an Amazon distribution centre in Tilbury, east of London.
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Protestors from the Extinction Rebellion movement blockaded Amazon distribution centers across the U.K. on Friday as part of an effort to stop the e-commerce giant from shipping Black Friday orders.
Scores of activists from Extinction Rebellion locked themselves to one another and assembled structures outside Amazon’s distribution sites, causing disruption on one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
It’s unclear how manyAmazon deliveries will now be delayed as a result of the protests.
The climate change campaign group said it wanted to draw attention to Amazon’s treatment of its workforce and wasteful business practices.
Activists blockaded 13 distribution centers across the U.K., including the company’s largest U.K. warehouse in Dunfermline, Scotland.
Activists from Extinction Rebellion blocked the entrance to the Amazon fulfilment centre in Doncaster, preventing lorries from entering or leaving on Black Friday, the global retail giant’s busiest day of the year.
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“If everyone understood the mass death, destruction and chaos coming down the tracks, millions would be on the streets demanding action, and getting it,” Extinction Rebellion wrote on Twitter.
The group added: “Direct action is also a way of ordinary people doing what governments should be doing — stopping, or at least pausing, the harm caused by people like @JeffBezos.”
Other sites that were targeted by Extinction Rebellion include Doncaster, Darlington, Newcastle upon Tyne, Manchester, Peterborough, Derby, Coventry, Rugeley, Dartford, Bristol, Tilbury and Milton Keynes.
Protests also took place outside Amazon warehouses in the Netherlands and Germany.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.
This photo illustration created on Jan. 7, 2025, in Washington, D.C., shows an image of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and an image of the Meta logo.
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Meta’s core online advertising business could take a $7 billion hit this year due to President Donald Trump’s tough China tariffs impacting retailers in the country.
The MoffettNathanson analysts pointed to Meta’s latest annual report in which the company revealed that its China revenue was $18.35 billion in 2024, equating to a little over 11% of total its total sales. Like other analysts, MoffettNathanson believe Temu and Shien comprise the bulk of Meta’s China business, and if those online retailers cut back on their ad campaigns this year, the social networking giant’s 2025 ad sales could be impacted by $7 billion.
Meta did not immediately respond for a request for comment.
There are already signs of a pullback, the analysts wrote, citing a CNBC report about Temu reducing its U.S. advertising spending and seeing a big drop in its Apple App Store rankings following Trump’s China tariffs.
“China’s importance to Meta’s business cannot be overstated,” the analysts wrote in the note. “While Meta does not provide a country-level breakdown of revenue within Europe, we logically can presume that China is Meta’s second-largest revenue source after the United States — a remarkable position for a country where Meta has no users or active platforms.”
Meta could be in even more trouble if the broader markets heads into a recession this year, as some analysts and corporate financial chiefs have predicted. A “truly prolonged economic downturn” combined with the U.S. and China trade dispute “could wipe $23 billion in 2025 advertising revenues off Meta’s books and crush our 2025 earnings by -25%,” the analysts said.
“As noted earlier, we believe Meta is particularly exposed to a pullback in ad spend from Chinese advertisers,” the analysts said. “In a scenario where a recession is triggered or exacerbated by escalating trade tensions, Meta would face a dual headwind: cyclical advertising weakness and a targeted decline in Chinese ad spend.”
The MoffettNathanson analysts still maintain a Buy rating on Meta, said they have but decreased their target price by $185 to $525.
Meta shares have dropped about 19% to $499.36 since Trump was officially sworn in as U.S. president for the second time.
The company reports its first-quarter earnings next Wednesday.
It’s been a brutal year for Tesla shareholders so far, and a hugely profitable one for short sellers, who bet on a decline in the company’s stock price.
Tesla shorts have generated $11.5 billion in mark-to-market profits in 2025, according to data from S3 Partners. The data reflected Monday’s closing price of $227.50, at which point Tesla shares were down 44% for the year.
The stock rallied about 4% on Tuesday, along with gains in the broader market, heading into Tesla’s first-quarter earnings report after the close of trading. Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The electric vehicle maker is expected to report a slight decline in year-over-year revenue weeks after announcing a 13% drop in vehicle deliveries for the quarter. With CEO Elon Musk playing a central role in President Donald Trump’s administration, responsible for dramatically cutting the size and capacity of the federal government, Tesla has faced widespread protests in the U.S. and Europe, where Musk has actively supported Germany’s far-right AfD party.
Tesla shares plummeted 36% in the first quarter, their worst performance for any period since 2022, and have continued to drop in April, largely on concerns that President Trump’s sweeping tariffs on top trade partners will increase the cost of parts and materials crucial for EV production, including manufacturing equipment,automotive glass, printed circuit boards and battery cells.
The company is also struggling to keep pace with lower-cost competitors in China, and is a laggard in the robotaxi market, which is currently dominated in the U.S. by Alphabet’s Waymo. Tesla has promised to launch its first driverless ride-hailing offering in Austin, Texas, in June.
Tesla has been the biggest stock decliner among tech megacaps this year, followed by Nvidia, which was down about 28% as of Monday’s close. The chipmaker has been the second-best profit generator for short sellers, generating returns of $9.4 billion, according to S3.
Nvidia is currently the most-shorted stock in terms of value, with $24.6 billion worth sold short, S3 said. Apple is second at $22.2 billion, and Tesla is third at $17.6 billion.
Musk has a long and antagonistic history with short sellers, who have made plenty of money at times during Tesla’s 15 years on the stock market, but have also been burned badly for extended stretches.
In 2020, Tesla publicly mocked short sellers, promoting red satin shorts for sale.
“Limited edition shorts now available at Tesla.com/shortshorts” Musk wrote in a social media post in July of that year, as the stock was in the midst of a steep rally.
Two years earlier, hedge fund manager David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital posted a tweet that he received the pairs of short shorts that Musk had promised him.
“I want to thank @elonmusk for the shorts. He is a man of his word!” Einhorn wrote. Einhorn had previously disclosed that his firm’s bet against Tesla “was our second biggest loser” in the most recent quarter.
In February 2022, after reports surfaced that the Department of Justice was investigating two investors who had shorted Tesla’s stock, Musk told CNBC that he was “greatly encouraged” by the action and said “hedge funds have used short selling and complex derivatives to take advantage of small investors.”
PlainSite founder Aaron Greenspan, a former Tesla short seller and outspoken critic of Musk, sued the Tesla CEO alleging he engaged in stock price manipulation for years through a variety of schemes.
The case was removed to federal court last year. In 2023, Musk’s social network X banned Greenspan and PlainSite, which publishes legal and other public and company records, from the platform.
Instagram on Tuesday launched its standalone Edits video creation app that offers features similar to those already available from TikTok parent Bytedance.
The new app allows creators to organize project ideas, shoot and edit video, and access insights about content. Edits includes background replacement, automatic captioning and artificial intelligence tools that can turn images into video.
“There’s a lot going on in the world right now and no matter what happens, we think it’s our job to create the most compelling creative tools for those of you who make videos for not just Instagram but for platforms out there,” said Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, in a Reel posted in January announcing the app.
Edits appears to be Meta‘s answer to CapCut, TikTok’s sister app that is also owned by China-based parent company ByteDance, which allows users to create and edit video on their phone or computer.
Instagram Edits app.
Courtesy: Instagram
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With TikTok’s future uncertain, Instagram’s move to launch Edits could be seen as a step to gain ground in the next era of short video creation in the creator economy.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump for a second time extended the deadline for ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or face an effective ban. The deadline is now mid-June.