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Hello, this is Oliver Conway from the Global News Podcast.
We report from Thailand where a teenage gunman killed his grandparents and then went on a shooting rampage at his school.
That and the rest of the day's top stories on the Global News Podcast, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Fresh data shows a shock drop in jobs in the US.
It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service.
I'm Hannah Mullane.
Meta has been fined a record penalty of half a billion dollars in a court case over child safety.
And a row is brewing in London over whether pub goers should be allowed to drink standing up.
Hello, and we start today's programme in the US, where we've had fresh data on jobs and unemployment.
Analysts are calling it weak and soft, which isn't what you want when you're in charge of the economy.
US employers lost 23,000 jobs in July and job gains from the previous two months were revised down sharply, which was unexpected.
So what's going on?
Here's Samira Hussain, the BBC's North America business correspondent.
It came as a really big surprise.
Most analysts were expecting to see jobs gains, but we saw the exact opposite.
And there are some that are saying, look, this also is very seasonal.
If you look at things like how many government education jobs that were lost, that has to do with the summer season and summer school being over.
But overall, as a headline, it's not really very good.
Now, if you look at the way US markets have been looking at this, well, they're trading higher because they feel like the chances of a rate hike are lower.
Yeah, so we've been looking at these figures because they suggest what the Fed might do next.
And there's been lots of question marks over interest rates.
What does the data today suggest will happen next?
I think you need to take a step back and think about the way the Fed has been thinking over the last few years.
They have been looking at inflation as the bigger problem that needs to be addressed.
And that, look, the labor market continues to show signs of strength and they're not really too worried about that.
You know, I think there are some that believe that the Fed will continue on with this thinking.
This is just one not so great jobs report, but it also has so many other factors that are looking towards it.
And I think it's really a situation in which the Fed might just keep going with the same track that they are continuing to concentrate on inflation.
Samira Hussain reporting for us from New York.
Meta have been fined a record penalty of more than half a billion dollars in a court case over child safety.
The company that owns Instagram and Facebook received the fine in a New Mexico court for harm and addiction caused by social media.
The judge said Meta was a significant contributor to the mental health crisis among the young and could be classified as a public nuisance.
In response, Meta say they will appeal the ruling.
Juliana Arnold is an online safety advocate and co-founder of Parents Rise.
Her teenage daughter, Cocoa,
Died in New York in 2022 from what Juliana says was an illegal and fake pill that Coco got from someone she had met on social media.
For me as a mother who lost my child to social media harms,
It's obviously you know very bittersweet but it is finally feels good to know that the court didn't just say metal failed kids you know it put a number on it and 567 million has meaning and
The fact that the judge found Meta knowingly built the products, you know, that harmed our children and then just treated the harm as a cost of doing business like it didn't care, really felt a little bit like a little bit of justice being done.
So I think this shows us that, you know, we are moving in the right direction and that this is a first of a number of trials.
That are going to be happening here in the US over the next couple of years.
That was Juliana Arnold there.
Ameta has said in a statement that we work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content.
And we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts.
Randeep Somal, fund manager at M&G Investments, is with us.
Randeep Juliana saying there that there are more court cases to come.
What's the future repercussions for Meta?
Yes, there's an ongoing case right now in Tennessee and one to come in California, which would be quite large given the size of the state.
It's also Meta's home state.
At the moment, the fund is 567 million alongside the civil penalties when we put towards a fund to help.
Combat youth issues on social media.
I think going forward when we look to Meta, this order will mean that they would need to put in a lot more safeguards in order to protect minors and in some cases allowing minors on the site.
So far, we've not seen a big response in the Meta share price.
The company has said that they're going to challenge this in court.
So I think it might be some time till we find out what the final resolution is.
One to watch for sure.
And US President Donald Trump is back with more tariffs today.
This time it's a 15% tariff on imported products made from polysilicon, a crucial material used in semiconductors and solar panels.
Here's Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce, explaining why.
So polysilicon is sort of the foundational product that makes silicon wafers that
Become the AI chips and the chips that are in our phones and everything.
So the president's policies have brought 50% of production into America.
But we need the foundational products made here.
Otherwise, you know, we're making the products here, but we need
The supply chain here.
So this will bring the supply chain here.
We're setting prices so that the Chinese can't dump anymore.
And we're setting tariffs to say, build it here.
We've got the industry here.
It's too small and it's going to explode under your leadership.
Randy, another attempt by America to slow China down and prioritise production in the US?
It is.
If we look over the last three decades when it comes to supply chains, there are certain areas that China really has cornered.
And polysilicon is one of them.
I mean, as stated there, semiconductor chips and solar panels now are huge industries and continuing to grow and likely to see growth over the coming decades.
The US government has seen that this is an issue, including from a national security perspective, that they need to get more of this supply chain under domestic control and not be so reliant on China.
And when it comes to polysilicon,
The raw material, silicon dioxide, actually is found in major sources across the United States, as well as friendly countries like Norway and Australia.
So the US government does have a line of sight of bringing all of this back home.
And this tariff isn't coming in right away either, which is a bit of a different tactic from the US.
There's a few months before it will start.
That's right.
It's a 15% tariff, but also a price floor to give domestic producers that increased advantage.
Now, it will take time.
Supply chains do not move that easily.
So it doesn't come into effect until December 4.
So it gives domestic producers a bit of time to get their manufacturing facilities and their supply chains resolved.
Okay, Randy.
Well, thank you.
In its continuing campaign against Russia's biggest online retailer, Ukraine has hit another wildberries warehouse, this time in the Urals, up to 2,000 kilometres away from the Ukrainian border.
Officials say three drones crashed into the roof, setting it on fire.
And Wildberries say that the blaze has now been put out.
Since mid-July, Ukraine has struck around 20 sites belonging to the online retailer, which it says supplies Russian military.
And here's a phrase you might not have heard of before, vertical drinking.
It's just drinking standing up, really.
But now local officials in the UK's capital are considering asking some pubs and bars to discourage drinkers from doing just that.
London's Westminster City Council have included the recommendations in its draft licensing policy, saying drinking standing up is too noisy and disruptive.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has criticised the proposals, but officials say it's all about managing customers responsibly.
Here's what some pub goers think about the idea.
So I guess there's an argument for sitting down is better.
But I don't know, sometimes there's a bit of a buzz about it, isn't there?
Like pub culture, I suppose.
I wouldn't want to be sat having to squeeze in.
You can talk to other people.
It's a bit more fluid, yeah.
It's a bit more social.
You have more chats with people at the bar.
Sometimes you meet people you don't know, not just your friends.
I feel like there'd definitely be a massive impact.
Well, I think pub goers definitely want to be able to stand up, don't they?
That's it from this edition of World Business Express.
Thank you for listening.
Hello, this is Oliver Conway from the Global News Podcast.
We report from Thailand where a teenage gunman killed his grandparents and then went on a shooting rampage at his school.
That and the rest of the day's top stories on the Global News Podcast wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
