Come spring, chances are there’ll be driving tours in fake panda cars along the A646 between Halifax and Todmorden, with overnight stays in dodgy-looking farmhouses. Happy Valley has done for Calderdale what Peaky Blinders did for Birmingham, and dark telly tourism is all about ticking off locations and looking the part (though I’m not sure hi-vis tabards will catch on). But there are three better, more active ways to explore the Calder valley. Two of these use the Calderdale Way, either the northern section or the southern, both of which involve hill climbs and traverses across fields, hedgerows, stiles – the usual argy-bargy of agricultural rambling.
Category: News
-
Quarter of global population used site daily in December
The number of people using Facebook daily grew to an average of two billion in December – about a quarter of the world’s population.
The bigger-than-expected growth helped drive new optimism about the company, which has been under pressure as its costs rise and advertising sales slump.
Shares in parent company Meta surged more than 15% in after-hours trade as boss Mark Zuckerberg declared 2023 the “year of efficiency”.
He said he was focused on cost cuts.
“We’re in a different environment now,” he said, pointing to the firm’s revenue, which declined in 2022 for the first time in its history after years of double-digit growth.
“We don’t anticipate that that’s going to continue, but I also don’t think it’s going to go back to the way it was before.”
Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, announced a major restructuring last year, including reducing office space and cutting 11,000 jobs or about 13% of staff.
The firm said those moves cost it $4.6bn last year – hitting its profits, which were almost cut in half. It still brought it in $23.2bn in profit for the year.
“2022 was a challenging year but I think we ended it having made good progress,” Mr Zuckerberg said.
In the three months to December, the firm said revenue was $32.2bn, down 4% year-on-year.
But that was better than many analysts had expected.
Meta alarmed investors last year when it posted the first-ever decline in daily Facebook users in its history and signaled it was focusing investments on virtual reality, known as the metaverse.
But in December, the number of users on the site daily was up 4% from a year earlier, adding users even in Europe and the US, and Canada.
Meta said the number of people active across all of its apps each day was up 5% year-on-year.
Mr Zuckerberg said the company was making progress with its video product – Reels – which it has been focused on as it faces off with rivals such as TikTok, which have gained traction, especially among younger users.
Mr Zuckerberg said those efforts were starting to pay off, and ad dollars were starting to follow users to the videos.
Investors seized on the company’s forecast of lower costs and stronger sales than expected in the months ahead, helping send shares higher.
The company also said it would spend an extra $40bn to buy back shares, which dropped sharply last year amid investor doubts about the direction of the company.
-
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Noah Lyles target world records in 2023
World records come as no surprise to some of athletics’ biggest names – and one of Usain Bolt’s long-standing marks is under threat as a World Championships year gets underway.
American star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone believes “anything is possible” following her record-breaking 400m hurdles triumph to win world gold in Eugene last year.
The 23-year-old will be joined by compatriot Noah Lyles, world 200m champion, in Boston for the second World Athletics Indoor Tour event of the season on Saturday, where both athletes will compete for over 60m.
“It wasn’t a huge surprise,” said McLaughlin-Levrone on her record run.
“That was our goal all along. But it was a sigh of relief being able to accomplish it,” added the Olympic champion, speaking to BBC World Service.
Unbeaten over 200m in 2022, Lyles defended his 200m title in emphatic fashion as he broke Michael Johnson’s 26-year-old national record to become the third-fastest man over the distance in history.
And he believes beating Jamaican sprinting legend Bolt’s world record “will not be that hard”.
McLaughlin-Levrone, named World Athlete of the Year for 2022 alongside pole vaulter Armand Duplantis, produced her latest astonishing run as she took almost three-quarters of a second off her own 400m hurdles record to take world gold last year.
Improving her best time to 50.68 seconds in Eugene, she has now run five of the six fastest times in history.
That time over the hurdles would have placed her seventh in the final of the 400m flat.
The three-time world gold medallist’s stunning performances have led many to wonder when she might switch her attention to that event, in which Marita Koch’s record of 47.6 seconds has stood for 37 years.
“There’s room in both to accomplish great things and continue pushing my times,” said McLaughlin-Levrone, who will come up against world 200m champion Shericka Jackson on Saturday.
“I haven’t ran the 400 competitively in a few years. Once we decide what is best for 2023, that’s what we’ll do.
-
Fed announces smaller rate rise as inflation cools
The US central bank has raised interest rates again as it continues its fight to stabilize prices in the world’s largest economy.
The Federal Reserve said it was raising its key rate by 0.25 percentage points.
That marks the smallest increase since last March, after a series of aggressive rate hikes last year.
But officials warned that they did not think they were finished raising rates, despite signs that price increases in the US are slowing.
The bank’s moves are closely watched around the world as the US drives a global shift after years of low-interest rates that followed the financial crisis.
The Bank of England and European Central Bank are expected to announce their own rate increases on Thursday.
The rate rise announced by the Fed on Wednesday was expected. It increases the bank’s benchmark rate to a range of 4.5%-4.75% – the highest since 2007.
By pushing up borrowing costs, the Fed is trying to cool the economy and ease the pressures of pushing up prices.
But officials risk triggering a painful recession, in which the economy slows so sharply that it prompts mass job cuts.
Pressure has mounted on the bank to slow, or stop, its rate hike campaign, as the higher borrowing costs hurt sectors such as housing and the US economy, slows sharply.
Those voices have grown louder amid recent data showing inflation in the US dropping to 6.5% last month.
Many investors have been betting that the bank will raise rates only once more after this meeting.
But Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said bank officials remained worried by data suggesting that the costs of many services – such as health care – are increasing far faster than the 2% pace considered healthy.
He said the bank would rather raise rates too high than declare victory over the problem prematurely.
“The job is not fully done,” he said. “While recent developments are encouraging we will need substantially more evidence to be confident that inflation is on a sustained downward path.”
In the statement announcing its decision, Fed officials said they continued to believe “ongoing” increases would be appropriate.
Projections released in December showed they thought the bank’s benchmark rate could stand above 5% at the end of 2023.
Mr Powell declined to say whether officials had changed their views, noting that there was a lot of “uncertainty” about the outlook.
Stocks rose during and after the news conference, with the S&P 500 ending up more than 1%.
The market gains could be a sign that investors are gaining confidence that the central bank will be able to stabilize prices without a recession, said Jay Bryson, an economist at Wells Fargo.
But Ronald Temple, chief market strategist at Lazard, said if investors get too optimistic that the rate rises are over, it may make the Fed’s job harder.
“Taken together with today’s report indicating near record level job openings, I believe markets remain too dovish regarding how high rates will go and how long they will stay there,” he said.
“The more markets resist the Fed, the tighter conditions will have to be to tame inflation.”