Google has eliminated more than one-third of its managers overseeing small teams, an executive told employees last week, as the company continues its focus on efficiencies across the organization.

“Right now, we have 35% fewer managers, with fewer direct reports” than at this time a year ago, said Brian Welle, vice president of people analytics and performance, according to audio of an all-hands meeting reviewed by CNBC. “So a lot of fast progress there.”

At the meeting, employees asked Welle and other executives about job security, “internal barriers” and Google’s culture after several recent rounds of layoffs, buyouts and reorganizations.

Welle said the idea is to reduce bureaucracy and run the company more efficiently.

“When we look across our entire leadership population, that’s mangers, directors and VPs, we want them to be a smaller percentage of our overall workforce over time,” he said.

The 35% reduction refers to the number of managers who oversee fewer than three people, according to a person familiar with the matter. Many of those managers stayed with the company as individual contributors, said the person, who asked not to be named because the details are private.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai weighed in at the meeting, reiterating the need for the company “to be more efficient as we scale up so we don’t solve everything with headcount.”

Google eliminated about 6% of its workforce in 2023, and has implemented cuts in various divisions since then. Alphabet finance chief Anat Ashkenazi, who joined the company last year, said in October that she would push cost cuts “a little further.” Google has offered buyouts to employees since January, and the company has slowed hiring, asking employees to do more with less.

Regarding the buyouts, executives at the town hall said that a total of 10 product areas have presented “Voluntary Exit Program” offers. They’ve applied to U.S.-based employees in search, marketing, hardware and people operations teams this year.

Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, said at last week’s meeting that between 3% and 5% of employees on those teams have accepted the buyouts.

“This has been actually quite successful,” she said, adding “I think we can continue it.”

Pichai said the company executed the voluntary buyouts after listening to employees, who said they preferred that route to blanket layoffs.

“It’s a lot of work that’s gone into implementing the VEP program, and I’m glad we’ve done it,” Pichai said. “It gives people agency, and I’m glad to see it’s worked out well.”

Cicconi said one of the main reasons employees are taking the buyouts is because they want to take time off from work.

“It’s actually quite interesting to see who’s taking a VEP, and it’s people sort of wanting a career break, sometimes to take care of family members,” she said.

CNBC previously reported that the layoffs hurt morale as the company was downsizing while at the same time issuing blowout earnings and seeing its stock price jump. Alphabet’s shares are up 10% this year after climbing 36% in 2024 and 58% the year prior.

At another point in the town hall, employees asked if Google would consider a policy similar to Meta’s “recharge,” a month-long sabbatical that employees earn after five years at the company.

“We have a lot of leaves, not least our vacation, which is there for exactly that — resting and recharging,” said Alexandra Maddison, Google’s senior director of benefits.

She said the company is not going to offer paid sabbatical.

“We’re very confident that our current offering is competitive,” Maddison said.

Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other executives jumped in to compare the two companies’ benefits.

“I don’t think they have a VEP at Meta by the way,” Cicconi said.

Pichai then asked, to some laughs from the audience, “Should we incorporate all policies of Meta while we’re at it? Or should we only pick and choose the few policies we like?”

“Maybe I should try running the company with all of Meta’s policies,” he continued. “No, probably not.”

Flowers, succulents and Formula One race cars helped fuel a 12% revenue bump for Lego during the first half of the year.

The company reported a record 34.6 billion Danish kroner, or $5.4 billion, in revenue as part of its biannual earnings report on Wednesday. Operating profit rose 10% year over year to 9 billion Danish kroner, or $1.4 billion, the company said.

“It’s the best first half ever,” Lego CEO Niels Christiansen told CNBC. “It’s a record on revenue, a record on operating profit, it’s a record on net profit. … So, we are very happy.”

The brick maker launched 314 new sets during the first six months of the year, another record high. Lego has steadily added new product to its portfolio, branching out into home decor with wall art sets. It has also added new license partners and released sets tied to animated children’s program “Bluey” and fan-favorite anime “One Piece.”

Up next is a multiyear partnership with Pokemon, due to hit shelves in 2026.

“You can always find something that you really like, the pop culture you’re into or the passion point you have,” Christiansen said. “That works really well.”

In expanding its catalog of product, Lego has also grown its consumer base. Gateways into the brand such as its line of botanicals — plants, flower bouquets and succulents — and its ongoing partnership with Epic Games — which brings Lego to the digital space and elements from the popular video game Fortnite into the physical world — have encouraged newcomers into the brick-building space, Christiansen said.

“Then they figure out what it is and what it does for them, how it kind of allows them to express themselves, but also de-stress and focus on stuff in a different way,” he said. “So botanicals sets turn out to be good at recruiting new consumers into the brand, and then as soon as they build their botanical set, they may move on to building something else.”

Lego opened 24 new stores globally during the first six months of the year. The company has been opening more physical retail locations in areas that, unlike the U.K. and the U.S., did not grow up with the iconic colored bricks. This includes countries such as China and India.

Having brick-and-mortar places where kids and adults can get their hands on Legos and see the available sets has previously helped bolster sales.

THE SANTA ROSA PLATEAU ECOLOGICAL RESERVE, Calif. — The scientist traipses to a pond wearing rubber boots but he doesn’t enter the water. Instead, Brad Hollingsworth squats next to its swampy edge and retrieves a recording device the size of a deck of cards. He then opens it up and removes a tiny memory card containing 18 hours of sound.

Back at his office at the San Diego Natural History Museum, the herpetologist — an expert in reptiles and amphibians — uses artificial intelligence to analyze the data on the card. Within three minutes, he knows a host of animals visit the pond — where native red-legged frogs were reintroduced after largely disappearing in Southern California. There were owl hoots, woodpecker pecks, coyote howls and tree frog ribbits. But no croaking from the invasive bullfrog, which has decimated the native red-legged frog population over the past century.

It was another good day in his efforts to increase the population of the red-legged frog and restore an ecosystem spanning the U.S.-Mexico border. The efforts come as the Trump administration builds more walls along the border, raising concerns about the impact on wildlife.

At 2 to 5 inches long, red-legged frogs are the largest native frogs in the West and once were found in abundance up and down the California coast and into Baja California in Mexico.

The species is widely believed to be the star of Mark Twain’s 1865 short story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” and their crimson hind legs were eaten during the Gold Rush. But as the red-legged frog declined in numbers, the bullfrog — with its even bigger hind legs — was introduced to menus during California’s booming growth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

AP correspondent Ed Donahue reports on an international effort to bring back a type of frog.

The red-legged frog population was decimated by the insatiable appetite of the bullfrogs and the disease the non-native species brought in, but also because it lost much of its habitat to drought and human development in the shape of homes, dams and more.

Hollingsworth couldn’t estimate the number of red-legged frogs that remain but said they have disappeared from 95% of their historical range in Southern California.

Robert Fisher of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative Program searched for the frog for decades across 250 miles from Los Angeles to the border. He found just one in 2001 and none after that.

Scientists using DNA from red-legged frogs captured in Southern California before their disappearance discovered they were more genetically similar to the population in Mexico than any still in California.

In 2006, Fisher, Hollingsworth and others visited Baja where they had heard of a small population of red-legged frogs. Anny Peralta, then a student of Hollingsworth at San Diego State University, joined them. They found about 20 frogs, and Peralta was inspired to dedicate her life to their recovery.

Peralta and her husband established the nonprofit Fauna del Noroeste in Ensenada, Mexico, which aims to promote the proper management of natural resources. In 2018, they started building ponds in Mexico to boost the frog population that would later provide eggs to repopulate the species across the border.

But just as they were preparing to relocate the egg masses, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Peralta and the U.S. scientists scrambled to secure permits for the unusual cargo and a pilot to fly the two coolers of eggs closer to the border. The rest of their journey north was by road, after the eggs passed a U.S. border guard inspection.

Over the past five years, Hollingsworth and his team have searched for sounds to prove their efforts to repopulate ponds in Southern California worked.

On Jan. 30, he heard the quiet, distinct grunting of the red-legged frog’s breeding call in an audio flagged by AI.

“It felt like a big burden off my shoulder because we were thinking the project might be failing,” Hollingsworth said. “And then the next couple nights we started hearing more and more and more, and more, and more.”

Over the next two months, two males were heard belting it out on microphone 11 at one of the ponds. In March, right below the microphone, the first egg masse was found, showing they had not only hatched from the eggs brought from Mexico but had gone on to produce their own eggs in the United States.

Conservationists are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to monitor animals on the brink of extinction, track the breeding of reintroduced species and collect data on the impact of climate change and other threats.

Herpetologists are building on the AI-powered tools already used to analyze datasets of bird sounds, hoping that it might help build audio landscapes to identify amphibians and track their behavior and breeding patterns, said Zachary Principe of The Nature Conservancy, which is working with the museum on the red-legged frog project. The tools could also help scientists analyze tens of thousands of audio files collected at universities, museums and other institutions.

Scientists working to restore the red-legged frog population in Southern California hope to soon be provided with satellite technology that will send audio recordings to their phones in real time, so they can act immediately if any predators — in particular bullfrogs — are detected.

It could also help track the movement of the frogs, which can be difficult to find in the wild, especially because cold-blooded creatures cannot be detected using thermal imagery.

The AI analysis of the pond audio has saved time for Hollingsworth and the others, who previously had to painstakingly listen to countless hours of audio files to detect the calls of the red-legged frog — which resembles the sound of a thumb being rubbed on a balloon — over the cacophony of other animals.

“There’s tree frogs calling, there’s cows mooing, a road nearby with a motorcycle zooming back and forth,” Hollingsworth said of the ponds’ audio landscape. “There’s owls, there’s ducks splashing, just all this noise”

The red-legged frog is the latest species to see success from binational cooperation along the near-2,000-mile border spanning California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Over the years, Mexican gray wolves have returned to their historic range in the southwestern U.S. and in Mexico, while the California Condor now soars over skies from Baja to Northern California.

Based off the latest count, scientists estimate more than 100 adult red-legged frogs are in the Southern California ponds, and tadpoles were spotted at a new site.

The team plans to continue transporting egg masses from Baja, where the population has jumped from 20 to as many as 400 adult frogs, with the hope of building thriving populations on both sides of the border. Already the sites are seeing fewer mosquitos that can carry diseases like dengue and Zika.

A restoration pond in Baja that Peralta’s organization built recently teemed with froglets, their tiny eyes bobbing on its aquatic fern-covered surface. They could, one day, lay eggs for relocation to the U.S.

“They don’t know about borders or visas or passports,” Peralta said of the frogs. “This is just their habitat, and these populations need to reconnect. I think this shows that we can restore this ecosystem.”

The Trump administration’s latest allegations of mortgage fraud have raised questions about a long-standing housing issue known as owner-occupancy mortgage fraud. But that type of fraud can be difficult to prove, experts say.

President Donald Trump announced in a Truth Social post on Monday night that he was removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. He cited allegations made by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte that Cook committed mortgage fraud by claiming homes in two different states as her primary residence at the same time.

Cook’s attorney on Tuesday said Cook will file a lawsuit to challenge her removal.

“President Trump has no authority to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook,” the lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement.

The Department of Justice has also recently targeted Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James with similar mortgage fraud allegations.

Here are the key things to know about owner-occupancy mortgage fraud, according to experts.

The main reason a borrower could be motivated to claim a primary residence on a mortgage application is to get a lower interest rate for that home.

Typically, mortgages for a primary residence have lower interest rates and homeowner’s insurance costs, said Keith Gumbinger, vice president of mortgage website HSH.

Mortgage interest rates are generally 0.5% to 1% higher for investment properties than for primary homes, according to Bankrate. Homeowners also typically pay about 25% more for insurance as a landlord compared with a standard homeowners policy, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Owner-occupied means “you’re going to live there the majority of the time,” Gumbinger said. But there are limited exceptions, including for military service, parents providing housing for a disabled adult child or children providing housing for parents, according to Fannie Mae.

If a homeowner changes primary residences, they need to inform their mortgage lender that the original property is no longer owner-occupied, Gumbinger said.

There are also federal and state tax benefits for primary residences, according to Albert Campo, a certified public accountant and president of Campo Financial Group in Manalapan, New Jersey.

For example, when an owner sells a home and makes a profit, they can take a capital gains exemption worth up to $250,000 for single filers or $500,000 for married couples filing jointly, as long as they meet certain IRS rules, including owner occupancy for two of the past five years.

For tax purposes, a homeowner can have only one primary residence at a time.

When a taxpayer owns more than one home, proving which one is the primary residence is “always based on facts and circumstances,” Campo said. For example, a primary residence is typically where an owner spends most of their time, votes, files their tax returns and receives mail, he said.

A 2023 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that more than 22,000 “fraudulent borrowers” misrepresented their owner-occupancy status, out of 584,499 loans originated from 2005 to 2017. The data was based on a subsample from more than 15 million loans originated during this period.

Typically, the fraudulent borrowers took out larger loans and had higher mortgage default rates, the authors found.

However, this type of fraud may be “difficult to detect until long after the mortgage has been originated,” the authors wrote.

“There is a difference between the court of law and the court of public opinion,” Jonathan Kanter, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and a former assistant attorney general, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week when asked about Cook. “In the court of law, this is small ball and very difficult to prove.”

“You’d have to establish not only that she filled out the form incorrectly, but she had the specific intent to deceive, to defraud banks, as opposed to just making a mistake,” he said.

During fiscal year 2024, 38 mortgage fraud offenders were sentenced in the federal system, according to the United States Sentencing Commission’s interactive data analyzer. That number is up slightly from 34 offenders in 2023, but down from 426 offenders in 2015, the earliest date in that tool’s dataset. The U.S. Sentencing Commission data does not break out the types of mortgage fraud.

The Trump administration’s latest allegations of mortgage fraud have raised questions about a long-standing housing issue known as owner-occupancy mortgage fraud. But that type of fraud can be difficult to prove, experts say.

President Donald Trump announced in a Truth Social post on Monday night that he was removing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. He cited allegations made by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte that Cook committed mortgage fraud by claiming homes in two different states as her primary residence at the same time.

Cook’s attorney on Tuesday said Cook will file a lawsuit to challenge her removal.

“President Trump has no authority to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook,” the lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement.

The Justice Department has also recently targeted Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James with similar mortgage fraud allegations.

Here are the key things to know about owner-occupancy mortgage fraud, according to experts.

The main reason a borrower could be motivated to claim a primary residence on a mortgage application is to get a lower interest rate for that home.

Typically, mortgages for a primary residence have lower interest rates and homeowner’s insurance costs, said Keith Gumbinger, vice president of mortgage website HSH.

Mortgage interest rates are generally 0.5% to 1% higher for investment properties than for primary homes, according to Bankrate. Homeowners also typically pay about 25% more for insurance as a landlord compared with a standard homeowners policy, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Owner-occupied means “you’re going to live there the majority of the time,” Gumbinger said. But there are limited exceptions, including for military service, parents providing housing for a disabled adult child or children providing housing for parents, according to Fannie Mae.

If a homeowner changes primary residences, they need to inform their mortgage lender that the original property is no longer owner-occupied, Gumbinger said.

There are also federal and state tax benefits for primary residences, according to Albert Campo, a certified public accountant and president of Campo Financial Group in Manalapan, New Jersey.

For example, when an owner sells a home and makes a profit, they can take a capital gains exemption worth up to $250,000 for single filers or $500,000 for married couples filing jointly, as long as they meet certain IRS rules, including owner occupancy for two of the past five years.

For tax purposes, a homeowner can have only one primary residence at a time.

When a taxpayer owns more than one home, proving which one is the primary residence is “always based on facts and circumstances,” Campo said. For example, a primary residence is typically where an owner spends most of their time, votes, files their tax returns and receives mail, he said.

A 2023 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that more than 22,000 “fraudulent borrowers” misrepresented their owner-occupancy status, out of 584,499 loans originated from 2005 to 2017. The data was based on a subsample from more than 15 million loans originated during this period.

Typically, the fraudulent borrowers took out larger loans and had higher mortgage default rates, the authors found.

However, this type of fraud may be “difficult to detect until long after the mortgage has been originated,” the authors wrote.

“There is a difference between the court of law and the court of public opinion,” Jonathan Kanter, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and a former assistant attorney general, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week when asked about Cook. “In the court of law, this is small ball and very difficult to prove.”

“You’d have to establish not only that she filled out the form incorrectly, but she had the specific intent to deceive, to defraud banks, as opposed to just making a mistake,” he said.

During fiscal year 2024, 38 mortgage fraud offenders were sentenced in the federal system, according to the United States Sentencing Commission’s interactive data analyzer. That number is up slightly from 34 offenders in 2023, but down from 426 offenders in 2015, the earliest date in that tool’s dataset. The U.S. Sentencing Commission data does not break out the types of mortgage fraud.